v2.0.0 Changes Discussion Thread

[Jorgen_CAB]

The question then is why don't military organisations do similar things in real life?!?

In very simplified terms, military organizations do not usually build ships straight into mothballs because they need the ships they build to do something, or at least the people in charge think they do. Most national militaries are severely constrained by how much funding they can convince their national governments to give them, which must be justified in terms of "need now" and not "might need in case of major war" - the politicians usually do not appreciate the optics of paying millions of dollars for a shiny new destroyer just to immediately put it in a reserve dock somewhere to be stored up "in case of emergency".

In Aurora, there really are not a lot of demands on a navy besides fighting a wars and carrying out surveys. Currently, PPV is really the only mechanic in place to try and simulate some kind of low-level demand for continual fleet presence, but we do not have needs like anti-piracy patrols, showing the flag, right-of-passage, etc. and in fact even the need for crew training is rather limited since ships will accumulate 100% over time rather than losing skill due to turnover, etc. without dedicated training. Hopefully, the new spoiler race in 2.0 will help to address this but right now the need is not there.

At the same time Aurora also lacks any kind of economic mechanics related to peacetime vs war economy, which means that in times of peace any race is free to build as many ships as they like in anticipation of the next war. In real life, militaries certainly try to do this but they must contend with their governments which have many other things they would like to spend money on. Once a world war starts, suddenly all the governments are much more interested in building planes, tanks, and destroyers.

The reasons why real-world militaries don't build directly to mothballs are there, plentifully, they have just not been translated into Aurora. Without that translation, mothballing will always be an easy way to cheese the maintenance system while building a big navy. This is not a problem unique to Aurora, by the way; Victoria 3 will not have a distinction between active and reserve naval vessels (at least on release), and while many are upset about this I imagine it is for similar reasons to what I've described here and the developers do not want people using reserve mechanics to build up huge fleets in peacetime without some significant cost associated with it.

This is something you have to role-play... in my games the civilian government always holds military spending down to a minimum... 

As with so many things in Aurora most of the soft stuff needs to be role-played as the game is a pretty big sandbox role-playing game.

[Garfunkel]

Well, Pdox shat the bed with the reserve mechanic already in HoI3 so I'm not surprised that they don't want to re-open that can of worms again. IIRC, it's missing from HoI4 too.

But yeah, it basically looks like some players want to be able to have more ships than they can maintain and/or reduce MSP consumption of their fleet in general. Since Steve has repeatedly said that the mineral acquisition part and the fleet logistics management part are important & elementary parts of the game, I don't see him adding a mothball mechanic that would simply let players ignore maintenance - and you can already turn it off if you don't want it all, of course. And I also agree with El Pip that if the cons of mothballing are severe enough so that it isn't a simple MSP circumvention tool, then it probably isn't a viable strategy in Aurora warfare where years of shipbuilding can be lost in few minutes. The sort of desperate delay action from JP to JP while waiting for the Reserve Fleet to get activated and rushed to the front, that we're so familiar from Weber's books, just isn't really viable in Aurora since almost nobody gets empires large enough for that to be possible and there's no NPR that has enough ships and brains to pursue a chase campaign like that either.

Which means that Steve would need to code a complicated mechanic that's only really useful for few RP situations and for PvP campaigns, both of which are pretty rare in my understanding.

I'm surprised about the hand-wringing over balance for this issue; mothballing fleets is a feature you are right to expect in a game such as this and compared to the other ways you can cheese the game I don't think its terribly offensive.

I don't agree that it's a feature that people expect in a game such as this - I can't off the top of my head recall any 4X or grand strategy or space war game where it's possible or at least an integral part of the game. And sure, we are not forced to use such a mechanic but alternatively, you could simulate it by using SM mode to create a dozen massive maintenance stations at Triton and parking your 'mothballed' ships there, and every now and then use SM to add more MSP to them.

[serger]

And that's the way to go .
I on other hand would love to see some kind of max life to a ship. So that you are forced to scrap it after let's say deployment x20 or AFR and IFR will increase over time...

The oldest US operational ship is 50 years old...

The problem that in Aurora we have some nearly eternal military objects - Precursor ships and bases, as one of the most RP-weighty things, not to mention standard TN components, that from the RP perspective are only comprehended as pre-spoiler's heritage - so for the sake of consistency it's better to have even less obligatory wearout that Aurora have now. I'd like to see more weight on the civilian economy needs (TNM consumption for the industry) instead of just military consumption as a drive for obligatory expansion, just because space is enormously old thing and it's much more natural for me to think, that it's civilization is an unstable, fragile and ephemeral thing, while a spaceship can live thousands of years at least.

[Jorgen_CAB]

And that's the way to go .
I on other hand would love to see some kind of max life to a ship. So that you are forced to scrap it after let's say deployment x20 or AFR and IFR will increase over time...

The oldest US operational ship is 50 years old...

The problem that in Aurora we have some nearly eternal military objects - Precursor ships and bases, as one of the most RP-weighty things, not to mention standard TN components, that from the RP perspective are only comprehended as pre-spoiler's heritage - so for the sake of consistency it's better to have even less obligatory wearout that Aurora have now. I'd like to see more weight on the civilian economy needs (TNM consumption for the industry) instead of just military consumption as a drive for obligatory expansion, just because space is enormously old thing and it's much more natural for me to think, that it's civilization is an unstable, fragile and ephemeral thing, while a spaceship can live thousands of years at least.

I would love more civilian drag on TN resources as well... in fact the civilian sector should be the main reason you need TN resources and not your navy.

I have also several times said that I like for ships to age a bit over time so we can't just keep upgrading them in infinity. Currently you just have to role-play this aspect. But at some point it just should not be economically viable to integrate new technology or the core hull simply have been worn down too much to support new upgrades, especially large parts like engines and jump-drives.

[Borealis4x]

And that's the way to go .
I on other hand would love to see some kind of max life to a ship. So that you are forced to scrap it after let's say deployment x20 or AFR and IFR will increase over time...

The oldest US operational ship is 50 years old...

The problem that in Aurora we have some nearly eternal military objects - Precursor ships and bases, as one of the most RP-weighty things, not to mention standard TN components, that from the RP perspective are only comprehended as pre-spoiler's heritage - so for the sake of consistency it's better to have even less obligatory wearout that Aurora have now. I'd like to see more weight on the civilian economy needs (TNM consumption for the industry) instead of just military consumption as a drive for obligatory expansion, just because space is enormously old thing and it's much more natural for me to think, that it's civilization is an unstable, fragile and ephemeral thing, while a spaceship can live thousands of years at least.

I would love more civilian drag on TN resources as well... in fact the civilian sector should be the main reason you need TN resources and not your navy.

I have also several times said that I like for ships to age a bit over time so we can't just keep upgrading them in infinity. Currently you just have to role-play this aspect. But at some point it just should not be economically viable to integrate new technology or the core hull simply have been worn down too much to support new upgrades, especially large parts like engines and jump-drives.

Yeah I hear you. Once I get the 'formula' for a particular class right the only 'designing' I have to do is linearly upgrading the components with higher tech variants of the same size. Only time there is a shakeup is when shields become viable and start taking up tonnage.

On the other hand, I kinda like the idea of spaceship hulls being so hardy that they can be kept in operation for generations as long as they keep getting upgraded. Gives me a cool 40k vibe.

[TallTroll]

>> I have also several times said that I like for ships to age a bit over time so we can't just keep upgrading them in infinity

There are IRL instances of military hardware being used for decades. Soviet T-55s are still in service today with a surprisingly large number of countries, Ethiopia operated captured Italian tankettes from the 1930s until the 1980s, and the USN still has USS Blue Ridge, which was commissioned in 1970 in active service (real active service, not just nominally listed like the Constitution). Coloumbia operated P-51s until about 1980, and the USAF still has B-52s in service (although a lot of the original airframes are gone now, the H variants still in service were manufactured in the late 50s'/early 60s')

[Zincat]

But yeah, it basically looks like some players want to be able to have more ships than they can maintain and/or reduce MSP consumption of their fleet in general. Since Steve has repeatedly said that the mineral acquisition part and the fleet logistics management part are important & elementary parts of the game, I don't see him adding a mothball mechanic that would simply let players ignore maintenance - and you can already turn it off if you don't want it all, of course. And I also agree with El Pip that if the cons of mothballing are severe enough so that it isn't a simple MSP circumvention tool, then it probably isn't a viable strategy in Aurora warfare where years of shipbuilding can be lost in few minutes. The sort of desperate delay action from JP to JP while waiting for the Reserve Fleet to get activated and rushed to the front, that we're so familiar from Weber's books, just isn't really viable in Aurora since almost nobody gets empires large enough for that to be possible and there's no NPR that has enough ships and brains to pursue a chase campaign like that either.

Which means that Steve would need to code a complicated mechanic that's only really useful for few RP situations and for PvP campaigns, both of which are pretty rare in my understanding.

I'm surprised about the hand-wringing over balance for this issue; mothballing fleets is a feature you are right to expect in a game such as this and compared to the other ways you can cheese the game I don't think its terribly offensive.

I don't agree that it's a feature that people expect in a game such as this - I can't off the top of my head recall any 4X or grand strategy or space war game where it's possible or at least an integral part of the game. And sure, we are not forced to use such a mechanic but alternatively, you could simulate it by using SM mode to create a dozen massive maintenance stations at Triton and parking your 'mothballed' ships there, and every now and then use SM to add more MSP to them.

I agree a 100% with all this post. Also, Steve has repeatedly noted that resource acquisition is important to him, and mothballing is a way to circumvent a lot of that.
Also.... this discussion really pops up from time to time 

[Jorgen_CAB]

I agree a 100% with all this post. Also, Steve has repeatedly noted that resource acquisition is important to him, and mothballing is a way to circumvent a lot of that.
Also.... this discussion really pops up from time to time 

In general I agree with the reason that you don't want a mechanic that you simply circumvent maintenance costs with.

I do, however, think there could be more stages of readiness of ships with different pros and cons from a game-play perspective. I would not like to see any mechanic that completely remove the cost of maintaining ships, but there are more things you could do which could add some more choices.

There should be a choice between if you want to scrap a ship or put them into long term storage after a long conflict as one example. If you just build new ships and immediately put them into long term storage you might wonder why you build them in the first place. If the cost of bringing them back from long term storage is big enough you must anticipate the ship being in long term storage for a very long time or it will not be worth it. So building a new ship and putting them into storage would not be very wise.

One "fix" for storing new ships could be that a ship in storage have the maintenance clock run up rather fast at first and then slows down to almost stop after a while. So when you bring the ship back you have to spend some considerable time overhauling them. You don't really want a ship with a normal maintenance cycle of around 2.5 years in the field if the ship act as if it has been 5 years in service since the last overhaul.

[AlStar]

I'm fairly sure it's already been mentioned, but crafting components and/or scrapping ships almost perfectly satisfies the goals put out by the people who want mothballing:
Items in storage have no costs (and never decay).
Building a ship from pre-made components is significantly faster than building from scratch.

About the only problem with it is that it takes up yard slots... but I'm not sure that mothballing shouldn't require that anyway.

[nuclearslurpee]

About the only problem with it is that it takes up yard slots... but I'm not sure that mothballing shouldn't require that anyway.

This is probably the closest thing to actually working mothball mechanics, actually. We already have repair yards, so it would be possible in theory to add a use case where one slip of appropriate size = one mothballed ship in exchange for, say, 25% maintenance cost, requiring an overhaul to reactivate, resetting crew grade, and so on.

By tying this to slipways there is also some population requirement to keep the ships at minimal maintenance, so if the repair yard is not operated at 100% efficiency mothballed ships can suffer maintenance failure the same as ships do currently with insufficient maintenance facilities. Population requirement can also limit overuse of the mechanic since population is an important bottleneck as the game progresses (to the point when mothballing ships is a real possibility).

[TheBawkHawk]

Generally, I am against the idea of mothballing. If mothballing required the use of repair yards / slipways and an investment of resources through either overhauls or some other penalty to ship readiness like crew grade and training, I'd be okay with it.

[Droll]

About the only problem with it is that it takes up yard slots... but I'm not sure that mothballing shouldn't require that anyway.

This is probably the closest thing to actually working mothball mechanics, actually. We already have repair yards, so it would be possible in theory to add a use case where one slip of appropriate size = one mothballed ship in exchange for, say, 25% maintenance cost, requiring an overhaul to reactivate, resetting crew grade, and so on.

By tying this to slipways there is also some population requirement to keep the ships at minimal maintenance, so if the repair yard is not operated at 100% efficiency mothballed ships can suffer maintenance failure the same as ships do currently with insufficient maintenance facilities. Population requirement can also limit overuse of the mechanic since population is an important bottleneck as the game progresses (to the point when mothballing ships is a real possibility).

It would actually be a great use case for repair yards during peacetime as otherwise they would be sat there unused. Mothballs take up the space during peace, are refurbished during war to make available extra assets and to clear space for the inevitable return of damaged warships. All the while still being beneficial due to the reduction in maintenance/efficiency of repair yards.

[LiquidGold2]

I think it would be really nice if there was a way to mothball military ships so they could be used later without consuming as much maintenance supplies.

Absolutely this.  At the very top of my feature wishlist is a mothballing system.  Even a basic one as described here would be great!

[Andrew]

Why should it be possible to mothball ships?
Historically it only happens in rare and limited circumstances. During the age of sail it was possible but it went wrong frequently and mothballed ships often sufferred from rot and had to be scrapped.
The US Mothballed ships after WW2 due to massive production resulting in several almost unused ships , most of these then went from Mothball to scrap after wasting money for decades on upkeep. Some were taken out of mothballs for Korea , it was very marginal if the cost of mothballing them was less than the cost of keeping them in service would have been. Some carriers were taken out and rebuilt for service however these improved Essex were very marginal ships and again if the same money had been spent on new hulls it may well have been more cost effective,
Finally the Iowa's were taken out of mothball in the 80's to produce ships of marginal capability with very poor electronics and almost no defense against air attacks you got a platform for Cruise missiles which would have been nearly as effective stuck on the deck of a container ship and some heavy guns you could use to bombard third rate opponents with no air or sea power. And you had paid 40 years of maintenance to get those 'cheap' ships.
The British before Jackie Fisher kept old ironclads in reserve which were utterly worthless against anything semi-modern and this was a form of mothball also a vast waste of money on upkeep and even worse waste of manpower and money if they had ever been ativated. Technically HMS Warrior was a reserve ship in 1900 and her combat value was about that of a gnat, an armed merchant cruiser would have been more capable.

Can anyone name a semi-modern example of mothballing which worked?

[El Pip]

Can anyone name a semi-modern example of mothballing which worked?

I think you mentioned the sole example, Korea. Off the top of my head HMS Unicorn was decommissioned and put into reserve post-WW2, but reactivated in 1949 for service it the Far East and ended up serving during Korea and doing some shore bombardment inbetween carrier operations. I believe the RCN and RAN did the same with some cruisers and they also worked well enough. Given the largest cost for naval vessels is crew, saving 4-5 years of crew costs was undoubtedly a saving compared to the relatively low cost of putting into reserve and the re-comissioning.

That said I agree that was a pretty niche scenario and generally it does not work. It requires a very long war where lots of 'new' vessels arrive too late, a big financial problem that demands cuts in spending and then a relatively short gap to the next war so nothing is obsolete.

Aurora can do the first and the last, but really lacks the economic model to do the vital middle one. You can of course RP a difference between peace and wartime 'allowable' spending, but at that point you can RP mothballing as well so the problem solves itself.