Why Space Stations?

[Azuraal]

The "no armor" space stations are actually so nice that I'm wondering the opposite of the thread's title. 
Do you ever design something as a moving ship for a purpose that could instead be done by a space station anymore?

Not moving ship per say, but I did seriously consider building a Fleet logistics hub in a civilian shipyard to be able to put a bunch of armour on it.  Ultimately I didn't But I seriously considered it.

[consiefe]

1. They are much cheaper than counterparts.

2. They can be made gigantic because they can be built by construction factories, not needing shipyard capacity.

3. Only sane way to make habitats or big deep space complexes for maintenance, mining, terreforming purposes.

One general hinderance which stops me fully utilizing space stations is the absence of general logistics commands. If we could assign a colony as a ship's default supply place, it would make deep space complexes (both military and commercial mix) very fun to use. Because for now supplying them means constant monitoring of their supply level as they neither give any notification about it, nor we have any command tools to semi-automate or fully-automate the process.

[Ri0Rdian]

Ships vs Stations have the advantage of flexibility, scalability and lower individual cost. I am one of the people that build big stations, but I can see situations where I or someone else would prefer ships because they are simply better for the task.

The question is not what is better, but why is it better in situation X. I might have 2.5m ton terraformer station but still use planet based installations for example (if you can spare the infrastructure for population, it is the best). 



The ONLY reason why stations might be objectively better is this: No refit needed. None. Zilch. My Sorium harvester station if scaled with enough tanks can seem like a waste but at endgame tech and with a commander it can fill its tanks in two years. In 200 years or whenever, the tech applies to it. Same for terraformer. OR asteroid miner.

Refuelling tech + mining/harvesting/terraforming are techs that do not lead to new component so the biggest problem of bases, that is mostly encountered with Defensive ones (need new guns, sensors, armour etc) is avoided.

On the other hand... they have no armour, few shots and you are a toast. That is why I use mine only with sufficient fleet and JPs protected by bases.

[kenlon]

Why stations? Because building ships with enough Orbital Hab capacity to get 50M+ population on Venus and Minerva would be ludicrously resource intensive.

[Treahblade]

The "no armor" space stations are actually so nice that I'm wondering the opposite of the thread's title.
Do you ever design something as a moving ship for a purpose that could instead be done by a space station anymore?

My mining platforms do not move as they tend to stay around a body for several years. My sorium harvesters however have engines simply because of the automated orders you can give them and they also double duty as tankers for my military and other fleets. They can deploy to a new system and just hang out near a gas giant as a type of mobile gas station in a uncivilized system. I don't use mass drivers so I ship everything around which increases the micro quite a bit so its one reason also why the harvesters move on their own.

[skoormit]

Space Stations can be build by construction factories, you don't need shipyards for them, that is big advantage. To compensate for that, they have no armor (you need to check No Armour) and it is not possible to equip them with military components.

So there is no limit to their tonnage?

Kinda weird that armor is the thing that differentiates space stations from ships.

...
The mechanical limitation for industry on a planet to build any structure in space is that it has no armour, no engines and no military components. If these conditions is not met you need to build everything in a shipyard even if it technically is a station.
...

The weird thing is not the restriction on armor, it's the restriction on engines and military components.
After all, construction factories can build engines and military components by themselves.
Apparently they just can't attach them to structures in space.
Why is attaching a 50-ton active scanner different than attaching a 51-ton active scanner?

[skoormit]

Ships vs Stations have the advantage of flexibility, scalability and lower individual cost. I am one of the people that build big stations, but I can see situations where I or someone else would prefer ships because they are simply better for the task.

The question is not what is better, but why is it better in situation X. I might have 2.5m ton terraformer station but still use planet based installations for example (if you can spare the infrastructure for population, it is the best). 



The ONLY reason why stations might be objectively better is this: No refit needed. None. Zilch. My Sorium harvester station if scaled with enough tanks can seem like a waste but at endgame tech and with a commander it can fill its tanks in two years. In 200 years or whenever, the tech applies to it. Same for terraformer. OR asteroid miner.

Refuelling tech + mining/harvesting/terraforming are techs that do not lead to new component so the biggest problem of bases, that is mostly encountered with Defensive ones (need new guns, sensors, armour etc) is avoided.

On the other hand... they have no armour, few shots and you are a toast. That is why I use mine only with sufficient fleet and JPs protected by bases.

Infrastructure might be just lying around, sure, but I would much rather put that population to work doing research.

[liveware]

Well there is limit to what Aurora allows before you start to get errors, i believe that is based on 32 bit integer. You also need tugs to move them so you are limited by what your tugs can manage with their engines.

There is post from Steve about space stations: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg106780#msg106780

There are limits. I found some in the thread below. The Int32 problem seems to be a source code level constraint:

The ship below IS game breakingly large:

Code: [Select]

Exodus class Migration Vessel      2,959,707,023 tons       5,938,794 Crew       33,647,068.2 BP       TCS 59,194,140    TH 16,000,000    EM 0
270 km/s      Armour 100-183629       Shields 0-0       HTK 527491      Sensors 11/11/0/0      DCR 1010      PPV 0
MSP 101,105    Max Repair 2400 MSP
Hangar Deck Capacity 250,000 tons     Cargo 1,000,000    Cryogenic Berths 200,000,000    Habitation Capacity 1,000,000,000    Passengers 10000000    Cargo Shuttle Multiplier 10    Tractor Beam     
Rear Admiral (Lower Half)    Control Rating 4   BRG   AUX   ENG   SCI   DIP   
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Flight Crew Berths 5,000   
Jump Point Stabilisation: 90 days
Recreational Facilities
Fuel Harvester: 2500 modules producing 100,000,000 litres per annum
Terraformer: 4000 modules producing 1 atm per annum
Orbital Miner: 2500 modules producing 25,000 tons per mineral per annum
Maintenance Modules: 250 module(s) capable of supporting ships of 250,000 tons
Refuelling Hub - Capable of refuelling multiple ships simultaneously
Ordnance Transfer Hub - Capable of transferring ordnance to multiple ships simultaneously

Shepherd-Jordan Commercial Magneto-plasma Drive  EP3200.00 (5000)    Power 16000000.0    Fuel Use 2.52%    Signature 3200.00    Explosion 5%
Fuel Capacity 2,000,000,000 Litres    Range 4.8 billion km (207 days at full power)

Shepherd-Jordan CIWS-250 (1000x8)    Range 1000 km     TS: 25,000 km/s     ROF 5       
Shepherd-Jordan Active Search Sensor AS31-R50 (50%) (1)     GPS 1050     Range 31.6m km    Resolution 50
Shepherd-Jordan Active Search Sensor AS8-R1 (50%) (1)     GPS 21     Range 8.6m km    MCR 771.7k km    Resolution 1
Shepherd-Jordan Active Search Sensor AS50-R200 (50%) (1)     GPS 4200     Range 50.1m km    Resolution 200
Shepherd-Jordan EM Sensor EM1.0-11.0 (50%) (1)     Sensitivity 11.0     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  26.2m km
Shepherd-Jordan Thermal Sensor TH1.0-11.0 (50%) (1)     Sensitivity 11.0     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  26.2m km

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes


The game throws an error message about a number being to big/small for int32 whenever you try to view the class design, but it can be built via SM.  I was unable to make it any larger than shown due to the in32 error messages. However, even if built the ship is immobile because it cannot be refueled, even via SM refuel. It takes about 5 years to load all of the colonists that it can hold.

The cryo chambers seem to be the limiting factor. I could not add more than about 210 000 000 berths worth of cryo chambers before errors started to pop up.

A somewhat smaller version of this vessel might be interesting to attempt. Or if Mr Steve is feeling adventurous raising the int32 limit to int64 might also be interesting.

The original thread is here: aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=10774.0