reserve fleet idea

[sneer (OP)]

I was thinking about weeks to months for the process  closer to 6-12 weeks of work time depending on tonnage
and restricting this to naval shipyards only ( or maybe commercial too but with significant time handicap)

[Jorgen_CAB]

In practice though... what are the difference of scrapping the ships and the rebuild them using the saved components... it practically give the same result?

You will need to keep one Shipyard retooled for the old class of ships so you can quickly rebuild them if you need them. If you have all the components to rebuild the ships they will not really take very long to construct again. It might not take long to retool a yard producing the new ships either as long as the ships still have some common components used.

Being able to scrap and build components and store them is a great way to prepare yourself for mass production of ships in a pinch.

I use this strategy all the time as having a large stading fleet doing nothing is a complete waste of resources and energy. The only thing you need an active fleet for is defending and patroling your territory not attacking anyone, having that capacity is just a luxury. But it is better to build that fleet when you need it, so you can tailor it for the task it needs to solve.

I usually keep one or two tech level components around, even older components can be quite effective if just combined with the right newer components... or even on their own. An older missile ship probably only need better missile fire-controls to become a pretty decent ship. A beam ship likewise with some new fire-controls. Most of the time it is better to have a bunch of outdated ships now than a few imaginary modern ones that only exist on the drawing boards.

[papent]

I would say those numbers are too low by one or 2 orders of magnitude
with your numbers reactivating a 10,000 ton ship would take 100,000 seconds or 27 hours. I would think 270 hours was way too short , so at least 1000 seconds per ton to get something which is an actual issue and reflects how long activating a ship takes

I was thinking about weeks to months for the process  closer to 6-12 weeks of work time depending on tonnage
and restricting this to naval shipyards only ( or maybe commercial too but with significant time handicap)

Running the numbers for a ship in my current campaign and to reactivate a hunter light cruiser which is 11,746 tons and 2,613.8 BP would take 76 hours to provide a ship that will need to replenish crew, fuel, MSP, munitions and be placed into overhaul.

I should have mentioned this in my last reply and it would provide context as why the activation seems to be fast as the vessel would return to active service at 90% of it's max maintenance clock and would immediately need an overhaul or risk critical failure, I inferred such a thing in my first reply in this thread but never implicitly said it.

my reasoning on allowing any shipyard perform the process is to allow a backwater yard to be the deposition site or allow a repair dock ship to perform the procedure far away from where anyone may find the ships (Katana fleet situation incase the empire that mothballed the ships dies out) and let the maintenance vessels do the primary work of getting the ships back into serviceable condition. 

IRL NOTE: my mind pictured mothball ships being in some condition similar to type 1500 storage and anytime an aircraft/spacecraft comes out of that status it's brought into a condition where it's ready for an ISO or phase inspection (maintenance overhaul) to return it to full mission capability.

In practice though... what are the difference of scrapping the ships and the rebuild them using the saved components... it practically give the same result?

You will need to keep one Shipyard retooled for the old class of ships so you can quickly rebuild them if you need them. If you have all the components to rebuild the ships they will not really take very long to construct again. It might not take long to retool a yard producing the new ships either as long as the ships still have some common components used.

Being able to scrap and build components and store them is a great way to prepare yourself for mass production of ships in a pinch.

In practice kinda yes and no: because armor, quarters, fuel storage, cargo/hanger bays can't be stored and depending on the type of ship that can be a substantial portion of the vessel. holding a yard to build older vessels? to the gamer that's suboptimal & to the RPlayer that's illogical.  storing craft for a rainy day is prudent just incase of unexpected fun.

I use this strategy all the time as having a large stading fleet doing nothing is a complete waste of resources and energy. The only thing you need an active fleet for is defending and patroling your territory not attacking anyone, having that capacity is just a luxury. But it is better to build that fleet when you need it, so you can tailor it for the task it needs to solve.

I usually keep one or two tech level components around, even older components can be quite effective if just combined with the right newer components... or even on their own. An older missile ship probably only need better missile fire-controls to become a pretty decent ship. A beam ship likewise with some new fire-controls. Most of the time it is better to have a bunch of outdated ships now than a few imaginary modern ones that only exist on the drawing boards.

 the last half of of building new hybrid ships out of old components is something I heartly approve of and do the same however it's not quite the same as dusting off some F-117 or prepping the Iowa for another service period.

[Garfunkel]

Yeah, mothballing has never been as prevalent or as useful as romantics make it seem. It's a weird fixation that a lot of people seem to have, that mothballing is easy, cheap, real and should be an integral feature of Aurora.

Just scrap your old ships if you can't maintain them.

It's prevalent and common practice to mothball aircraft/spacecraft from the USAF and North American airlines to the PLAAF.  I've personally been a team member to regenerated an older C-130 into a specialized mission variant and older space assets have been pulled out of long term storage for usage.

If you have the assets why not store it. Unlike a sea vessel a spaceship/craft would be more like an aircraft not being stored in a medium that rapidly corrodes the unit.

I'm sorry dude but a thing that has been done ONCE by the United States after World War 2 is not "prevalent and common". No other country has mothballed bunch of ships in order to reactivate them again in the future in case of dire need. Aircraft are not really relevant comparison for Aurora but even if we allow them, we find that it's once again pretty much the United States only that does it routinely - some other countries have done a little bit here and there, mostly the Soviet Union. So even in the most optimistic read on human history, mothballing is not prevalent and common.

And as others stated, sure you don't have salty seawater corroding the ship but vacuum does bad things to objects too, as does extreme cold. I don't want to come across as an asshole, just here to smeg on you, but the idea has been brought up many times - just like robot ships - and there's never been a good solution to prevent the exploits mentioned, nor has there been a good justification for the mechanic to exist in the first place. I understand that it's a thing from some space war books, where the 'Active' Fleet fights a desperate delaying action against an overwhelming enemy while the 'Reserve' Fleet is brought up to readiness but other than a specific dramatic event, it comes across as a player wanting to have their cake and eat it too.

[El Pip]

[quote author=Garfunkel link=topic=13174.msg163542#msg163542
I'm sorry dude but a thing that has been done ONCE by the United States after World War 2 is not "prevalent and common". No other country has mothballed bunch of ships in order to reactivate them again in the future in case of dire need. [/QUOTE]
Well that is obviously untrue. Here is the Royal Navy 'Cocooning' the Reserve Fleet in 1950 - https://www.britishpathe.com/video/reserve-fleet

So the specific justification would be the end of a massive war that has left the navy with far more ships than it can support in peacetime. Which doesn't really work in Aurora as the economy is always full wartime, all the time.

As late as the 1980s there were decommissioned warships in the Standby Squadron/Reserve Fleet. Four old frigates got reactivated for the Falklands War, not to serve there but to backfill the more modern ships that had been sent south. The cruisers Tiger and Blake were also being reactivated for the Falklands until it became apparent they would be ready too late.

Perhaps a bit more applicable for Aurora particularly in a time of raiders - send your modern guard ships out to the front and backfill with old designs pulled from mothballs could be a thing? But then you presumably retired the old designs for a good reason, like them being incapable even as guard ships.

Overall I think I agree this mechanism is not worth the effort to implement. Reserve Fleets in general appear to have been a waste of time, even if you have time to do the work what you end up with is an out of date ship with a crew who aren't confident running it, something you can send to a backwater or presence posting but would have to be truly desperate to send to the front.

I'm sure you can craft rules that make Aurora reserves similar to historical ones (can't mothball unless ship is >xx years old, reactivation takes months, crew get a -10% grade regardless of Empire / design setting, etc). But it seems a lot of coding effort for a very niche capability.

[papent]

I'm sorry dude but a thing that has been done ONCE by the United States after World War 2 is not "prevalent and common". No other country has mothballed bunch of ships in order to reactivate them again in the future in case of dire need. Aircraft are not really relevant comparison for Aurora but even if we allow them, we find that it's once again pretty much the United States only that does it routinely - some other countries have done a little bit here and there, mostly the Soviet Union. So even in the most optimistic read on human history, mothballing is not prevalent and common.

And as others stated, sure you don't have salty seawater corroding the ship but vacuum does bad things to objects too, as does extreme cold. I don't want to come across as an asshole, just here to smeg on you, but the idea has been brought up many times - just like robot ships - and there's never been a good solution to prevent the exploits mentioned, nor has there been a good justification for the mechanic to exist in the first place. I understand that it's a thing from some space war books, where the 'Active' Fleet fights a desperate delaying action against an overwhelming enemy while the 'Reserve' Fleet is brought up to readiness but other than a specific dramatic event, it comes across as a player wanting to have their cake and eat it too.

Mothballing of craft/vessels of all types is pretty common and reactivation is also frequent, if it wasn't why would there be so much investment into the enterprise?

I know the Iowa is the vessel most most people think of when on this subject but capital ships are rarely reactivated, the most common vessels to be reactivated are amphib ships (such as the Ashland a 3x commissioned USS warship), destroyers/frigates, or special mission designs.

Even today ships are still mothballed and it's not without reasoning. (Most of theses usually sold to a lower tier force within 5 years or reactivated by the original operator as the strategic Calculus changes)

Aircraft/space units are sometimes mothballed directly off the production line or within IOC window because of budgetary, operational, or doctrinal reasoning. (I.E C-27J program) Then later on these craft are unmothballed, refurbed, and returned to service (the HC-27J in USCG service).

in the USDOD the FMS & 1033 MSP program often returns these mothball assets to service instead of having them languish until scrapping.

There's my informed 2 bits on the subject. There is more IRL precedent on this if you would like.

In aurora 4x
As El Pip mentioned it's useful to backfill for your modern designs or utilize to fill in for combat losses.

programming wise - it could be simply a setting a flag on the ship when it's mothballed to not check mx status or roll for failures until the ship is reactivated.

[nuclearslurpee]

I don't want to come across as an asshole, just here to smeg on you, but the idea has been brought up many times - just like robot ships - and there's never been a good solution to prevent the exploits mentioned, nor has there been a good justification for the mechanic to exist in the first place. I understand that it's a thing from some space war books, where the 'Active' Fleet fights a desperate delaying action against an overwhelming enemy while the 'Reserve' Fleet is brought up to readiness but other than a specific dramatic event, it comes across as a player wanting to have their cake and eat it too.

Historical (in)correctness aside, this is my eternal frustration on the topic: people in favor keep trying to propose new and increasingly complex ways to implement mothballing, without actually addressing the core problems with the mechanic which several quite knowledgeable players have repeatedly highlighted. I don't think anyone would have a problem with a mechanic to put old ships into storage for possible future reactivation, but no one has yet given a good solution for the problem of placing newly built vessels into mothballs to support an oversized fleet of modern ships and largely circumvent the maintenance mechanics. There is no mechanic suggested which can make mothballing work for older vessels and not new ones*, and this is exactly the same exploit which was (is?) present in Starfire that likely led Steve to not include the mechanic in Aurora in the first place.

*The suggestion by El Pip to limit to ships of XX years age is the closest I've yet seen, and even that is entirely arbitrary, would interact poorly with different tech levels/research rates, and no matter what value of XX was chosen would interfere with somebody's roleplay setting I am sure.

[El Pip]

*The suggestion by El Pip to limit to ships of XX years age is the closest I've yet seen, and even that is entirely arbitrary, would interact poorly with different tech levels/research rates, and no matter what value of XX was chosen would interfere with somebody's roleplay setting I am sure.

If anyone were serious about the mechanism then there are other options, say only the oldest 20% of the fleet is eligible (with that percent changeable as an option) age is based on launch date. Military tonnage only, FACs and fighters don't count either. Of course that is still gameable, just build a load of 1001t cheap ships to bloat fleet numbers, but in 'normal' play it should mostly give the intended result.

If there were a serious wartime/peacetime economy in Aurora I think I'd be more in favour of mothballing, or at least thinking about it properly, because then you could have huge wartime fleets that are unsupportable on peacetime budgets. So at the end of the war you would have a meaningful choice; do you invest a lot of shipyard time and resources into mothballing some of the fleet or do you just scrap them and used the released resources to build new ships with all the new tech and lessons learned. (This assumes putting a ship in reserve takes significantly longer than scrapping, etc). But in the absence of that, I'm still unconvinced it's worth the effort to implement.

[Scandinavian]

An area of the game where one could play with reserves/mothballing/reactivation mechanics would be in ground forces. It seems... questionable to me to introduce mothballing/reactivation mechanics to spacecraft without first having a mobilization/cadre/reserve/arsenal mechanic for your ground forces.

For ground forces it's less critical that it isn't exploitable - since the exploit of overbuilding weapons and then only actually giving them to your dudes once you need to turn the arsenal into an army...
... is what a mass mobilization army does for you.

Playing with mobilization mechanics would also provide a sandbox for playing around with how various mechanical incentives work. Like making it harder to reactivate larger units (it's common enough to have a huge arsenal of small arms that are basically ready to shoot; tanks and artillery turn out to be harder to keep in stockpile).

Of course currently ground forces cost only a relatively piddling amount of Wealth to sustain outside combat. If one wanted to incentivize mass mobilization armies, there'd need to be a more impactful peacetime sustainment mechanic. Which should probably have the opposite tilt from the mothballing mechanic: Sustainment should be more expensive per ton for smaller units than larger ones, because they need more manpower per ton of frontage.

This would also create a stronger distinction between populated and unpopulated worlds, in that it would make it much harder to sustain ground defenses on unpopulated worlds, because you couldn't easily release the manpower back into the labor pool and draw it up as needed. Which also makes a lot of sense to me.

All of which takes us pretty far afield from spaceship mothballing, except that if one were to design a robust system for ground forces, a spaceship adaptation might be able to inherit a lot of the underlying logic and principles. And that logic would be designed for the use case where mothballing is the norm rather than the exception. Which all else being equal I'd think would make it more robust. For that matter, it could literally use the same formulas for calculations, just treating spaceships as scaled-up ground units. If there is a size incentive that discourages mothballing hundred ton tanks, that would make a thousand ton corvette a marginal candidate for mothballing and a ten thousand ton light cruiser squarely uneconomical.

[sneer (OP)]

manpower rarely is a problem anywhere
peacetime the cost for unit is monetary only
so ground forces mobilization incentive would be wealth which barely is serious threshold

incentive for ships is gallicite shortage when building high tonnage while having high maintenance costs even when inactive
gallicite shortage is usually much more severe than wealth

[papent]

Historical (in)correctness aside, this is my eternal frustration on the topic: people in favor keep trying to propose new and increasingly complex ways to implement mothballing, without actually addressing the core problems with the mechanic which several quite knowledgeable players have repeatedly highlighted. I don't think anyone would have a problem with a mechanic to put old ships into storage for possible future reactivation, but no one has yet given a good solution for the problem of placing newly built vessels into mothballs to support an oversized fleet of modern ships and largely circumvent the maintenance mechanics. There is no mechanic suggested which can make mothballing work for older vessels and not new ones*, and this is exactly the same exploit which was (is?) present in Starfire that likely led Steve to not include the mechanic in Aurora in the first place.

*The suggestion by El Pip to limit to ships of XX years age is the closest I've yet seen, and even that is entirely arbitrary, would interact poorly with different tech levels/research rates, and no matter what value of XX was chosen would interfere with somebody's roleplay setting I am sure.

Some brief notes:

• In the past mothballing was part of Aurora 4x, it was later depreciated.
• The Maintenance mechanic can be switched off/on via one option in settings. not a hard feature but an option most users of aurora use and enjoy

As we previously had discussed about the merits of "exploits"/"balancing" in contrast with interesting/quirky mechanics for gaming/roleplaying that's an matter for Steve and his design principles to determine.

Off-Topic: show

Personally, i'm not going to disregard or abuse a mechanic until it's no fun to me but that's an decision for everyone needs to make for themselves.

If anyone were serious about the mechanism then there are other options, say only the oldest 20% of the fleet is eligible (with that percent changeable as an option) age is based on launch date. Military tonnage only, FACs and fighters don't count either. Of course that is still gameable, just build a load of 1001t cheap ships to bloat fleet numbers, but in 'normal' play it should mostly give the intended result.

If there were a serious wartime/peacetime economy in Aurora I think I'd be more in favour of mothballing, or at least thinking about it properly, because then you could have huge wartime fleets that are unsupportable on peacetime budgets. So at the end of the war you would have a meaningful choice; do you invest a lot of shipyard time and resources into mothballing some of the fleet or do you just scrap them and used the released resources to build new ships with all the new tech and lessons learned. (This assumes putting a ship in reserve takes significantly longer than scrapping, etc). But in the absence of that, I'm still unconvinced it's worth the effort to implement.

Why make limits on which ships to mothball? fleet escorts, small craft, and Troop assault carriers are the most likely to be mothballed as outside of certain scenarios those vessels aren't going to utilized in patrol or small fleet actions.

the complexity would be limited to setting a programming flag on mothball vessels to ignore maintenance/crew/passive sensor checks/failures until the flag is reset or the ship change ownership, if the ship changes ownership (boarded/etc.) treat as the vessel was reactivated. (hopefully you brought maintenance ships with your boarding ships)

Updated Proposed Mothballing Mechanics:

Mothball Task
Any Shipyard (Naval/Commercial/Repair) with an empty slipway of adequate size for the vessel can perform the task of putting a ship into deep storage at the cost of:

• 20% MSP of Max Repair (Minimum of 25 MSP)
• takes ten seconds per ton (with a minimum time of 8 hours)
• Wealth cost = 5% of BP

Reactivation Task
Any Shipyard (Naval/Commercial/Repair) with an empty slipway of adequate size for the vessel can perform the task of reviving a ship from deep storage at the cost of:

• 15% MSP of Max Repair (minimum of 25 MSP)
• takes 15 secs per ton + 1 minute per BP (with a minimum of 8 hours)
• crew at 10% of total complement & crew training set to racial standard or conscript depending on insufficient crew pool/ship design checkbox
• fleet training 0%
• fuel 0%
• MSP 5% of total stored amount or max repair (whichever number is lower.)
• munitions 0%
• maintenance clock set to 90% of maximum

Returning a ship to service gives you a vessel that would be ready for service after a maintenance overhaul and replenishment.

[/list]

Code: [Select]

Hunter class Light Cruiser      11,746 tons       344 Crew       2,613.8 BP       TCS 235    TH 438    EM 2,130
5320 km/s      Armour 5-46       Shields 71-426       HTK 66      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 6      PPV 44.9
Maint Life 1.16 Years     MSP 1,334    AFR 184%    IFR 2.6%    1YR 1,009    5YR 15,136    Max Repair 1093.75 MSP
Magazine 120   
Captain    Control Rating 4   BRG   AUX   ENG   CIC   
Intended Deployment Time: 6 months    Morale Check Required   

This ship in my current campaign would cost to place into mothballs:
32 hours, 130 wealth, & 219 MSP

To pull from mothballs would cost:
92 hours & 164 MSP before a maintenance overhaul, refuel, resupply, ordnance transfer, and crew replacement.

[Andrew]

I am not convinced an F-16 can be reactivated from mothball in those timescales let alone a battleship. Also from a game play perspective you may as well make it instantaneous.  If you time scale of hours was replaced with day's it may be vaguely credible. I don't think you could install all the software updates and patched and then deconflcit them in hours never mind check every electronic system for component failure

Still I see absolutely no reason to add a Mothball option to the game it has never been part of it for good reason. It did feature in Starfire which is the parent of Aurora and was a bad idea then. And also much more expensive and time consuming than your idea.

Times should also scale with ship build cost not size , it is going to be much easier to reactivate a freighter than a battleship as there are a lot less components to check , fix , replace and update.

[papent]

I am not convinced an F-16 can be reactivated from mothball in those timescales let alone a battleship. Also from a game play perspective you may as well make it instantaneous.  If you time scale of hours was replaced with day's it may be vaguely credible. I don't think you could install all the software updates and patched and then deconflcit them in hours never mind check every electronic system for component failure

Still I see absolutely no reason to add a Mothball option to the game it has never been part of it for good reason. It did feature in Starfire which is the parent of Aurora and was a bad idea then. And also much more expensive and time consuming than your idea.

Times should also scale with ship build cost not size , it is going to be much easier to reactivate a freighter than a battleship as there are a lot less components to check , fix , replace and update.

Perhaps you missed the parts of the suggestion where:
The craft would need an immediate maintenance overhaul & That time to reactivate is size + BP.

Also Mothballing of ships were originally a mechanic of Aurora 4x, it would be a returning feature like squadrons.

cheers.

Edit note: Andrew I think you might actually played Aurora 4x way back when Mothballing was still active.

[Demetrious]

Every time this idea comes up, the same objection is raised and never satisfactorily resolved: what prevents players from building ships and immediately putting them into mothballs? There is not really a problem with putting old ships into mothballs, since they will probably be outdated anyways when recalled to service, but rather brand-new ships which can be stored extremely cheaply for 20+ years and still be highly effective when recalled. This was a major exploit in Starfire, the TT game from which Aurora was largely derived, for similar reasons.

The ability to build a fleet several times larger than what a race can support in terms of maintenance and reactivate those ships in a far shorter time frame vastly outweighs any penalty from poor crew performance. So far nobody has come up with a mechanism for mothball fleets which is balanced, not overly complex, and able to prevent building directly to reserve from being a viable or dominant approach.

That six-month reactivation and shakedown cruise time is going to look a lot less attractive when a massive alien fleet comes swarming through mostly undefended space after bypassing your fortified chokepoints with a newly discovered dormant jump point!

Hence, why mothball mechanics have never been implemented; such events are too rare, and any feasible NPR AI code too simple, to reliably generate such threats.

[Serina]

I think being able to mothball new ships directly, only to have to pay in terms of time and possibly MSP later would be something not exactly uncommon.  It's not super uncommon for nations to practice what is essentially total defense, where while the active military isn't super big, the wartime military can quickly ramp up to meet actual wartime needs.  There would indeed need to be a sufficiently long time penalty so that you would generally need to have some fleet presence for dealing with the occasional precursor and whatnot, as well as executing defense in depth for any initial attacks. 

Potential mechanics may include not contributing to PPV, reducing maintenance cost to 1/3 to 1/10th, same with the tonnage maintenance (this way you still have an upper maintenance tonnage limit, but you aren't paying as much for ships you won't be needing in the near to medium term future), but also possibly requiring twice the normal overhaul MSP and maintenance capacity when reactivating, or requiring reactivation through shipyards, and requiring two to three times the normal overhaul length one would otherwise require.  Possibly even a fixed time, meaning you can't simply reactivate your fleets every time you encounter a small precursor base then go smash with three hundred ships and then put them back to sleep.  The cost of reactivation can easily be scaled so that it would cost more to actually reactivate any given ship an x number of time over a certain number of years than simply keeping it working.  It allows for a wartime stockpile, like both superpowers have (or had), with hundreds of tanks, and thousands of military vehicles sitting, waiting for the day they are either needed or scrapped. 

People should not forget that even mothballed ships and vessels still receive regular maintenance, albeit more rarely, and of the more preventative kind.  You can't simply park a car and expect it to run with regular maintenance after ten years.