Landing on Planets

[Kurt (OP)]

So my proposal:

1)  Maintenance facilities are VERY similar to SY - there's an orbital component that shows up on sensors and can be attacked, and an untracked ground component (with shuttles) that builds components.

2)  Planets are no longer considered to have any hangar space (for the purposes of reloading box launchers).  Hanger space associated with a planet must be explicitly built, either in a PDC, or in an OWP.

3)  Ships in orbit (and gaining the benefit of maintenance facilities) really are in orbit.  Ships (including fighters and GB) in a hanger are considered to be in the platform (ship/OWP/PDC) which contains the hanger.  POSSIBLE EXTENSION: Ships in an overhaul state are considered docked at the maintenance facility, and are damaged according to the SY rules if the maintenance facility is attacked.

I think this clears up the ambiguity, while making a minimal change to game mechanics.  

1.  I don't have a problem with creating an orbital component to maintenance facilities, but Steve is the one that is going to have to do the work.  

2.  I like this.  This would affect fighters, which could no long "base" at maintenance facilities but instead would require purpose built hangers, and ships/gunboats with box launchers, which would require either hanger space, or "docking" with orbital maintenance faciltieis (from #1 above).

3.  I like this too.  Now the question is, does Steve agree, and which can he implement most easily?  

I really don't want to get into ships being on planetary surfaces due to the complexities involved with landing/taking off and atmospheric effects. Keeping them in LEO is a lot easier. The idea of maintenance facilities, like shipyards, being in orbit is probably the easiest option. The only downside is that at the moment you can put maintenance modules into PDCs so that would have to end. Perhaps the easiest thing all round is to remove the existing ground-based maintenace facilities entrely, remove the option of PDC-based maintenance modules, extend overhaul ability to ship-based maintenance modules and make maintenance modules a commercial system. This means all maintenance modules are orbital and are built by commercial shipyards, either within bases or ships. It means I can remove code rather than figuring out new code and it also means I don't have to create a new type of object and therefore a new type of contact.

Removing the ability of maintenance facilities to re-arm box launchers is easy enough, although bear in mind you will need some very large hangar bays if you want to be able to re-arm the box launchers of larger ships. The Soviets in my game have 30,000 ton ships with box launchers.

Steve

This all sounds okay.  I don't have a problem with the maintenance facilities being orbital, really, that is the way we are all assuming they work now, even though they are planetary facilities.  Making them orbital would just be recognizing the way we all think they work anyway, and then the maintenance facilities would be just like shipyards, orbital but needing ground-based population support.  (Note: this is exactly what happened with shipyards a long time ago.  They were originally planetary facilities, but we all thought of them as orbital facilities, and finally Steve changed them to make them orbital in game terms).  

Really, the box launcher reset issue is only an issue because of fighters.  Allowing maintenance facilities to reset box launchers means that fighters based at planets don't need any basing facilities.  They can just "float" in orbit forever.  Removing the box-launcher reset ability from maintenance facilities forces those fighters into hangars to reset their weapons, but then in turn creates the issue that some sort of "support" facility will have to be built for larger ships using box launchers.  

Hmmm...let's see.  If you change maintenance facilities so they can't reset box-launchers, then larger ships need large hangers to reset their launchers, which is kind of strange.  This forces the player to build large support hanger facilities to support his fleet and rearm his ships, which may or may not be a good thing depending on how effective you think box launchers are.  If you leave the box-launcher reset issue as it is now, then fighters based at planets don't need any basing facilities, which feels "gamey".  Unless you assume that they are in reality basing at the maintenance facilities, which would be orbital facilities if you change it.   Of course, this isn't what is happening within the game, because nothing is really based at the maintenance facilities, and even if they get totally destroyed none of the ships being maintained or overhauled by them will be damaged, unless you change that too.  

Kurt

[Kurt (OP)]

Now it's getting silly.
If maintenance is done purely by orbital "ships" now, I demand that it can happen without a planet or asteroid, and that ships outside combat can be shut down to never fail.
AND WHY do I have to build ships in huge honky yards, this is space, I demand a shipyard thats just an engine with a half dozen tractor beams and a bridge that holds the husk in space while shuttles bring the prefabbed components to automatically assemble it!

Oh well.

Yes, Zack, those are the ones.
Looks like in the future, we'll have to build them in yards.
However, it will make it easier/a terrible hassle, depending on tactics, to move them over to an other planet, towing is nice, but one by one?
What size are they?

I don't understand what your objection is.  

Kurt

[Andrew]

I would greatly prefer to be able to reload box launchers on ships without haveing to have a hanger , I don't think relaoding missile bays is a dry dock operation so It would seem silly to me to have to build a hanger for my 40,000 ton battleship .
I prefer maintenance facilities to represent orbital facilities as that avoids having to have capital ships land on planets which may intefere with my view on how things should work in  a campaign.
I really however see no reason to change things from the way they work now. I can see a potential problem with fighters and possbly FAC's not needing a base however I think that a solution for this problem which does not invlove changing everthing else would be better.
Perhaps requiring that fighters have to be based in hangers and get no benefit from maintenance facilities , or any ship without an engineering section receives no benefit from maintenance facilities and needs to be based in a hanger to avoid breakdowns. THis would mean most fighters and FAC's except those specially built with a fairly spacious extra would need hangers

[symon]

I always assumed maintenance facilities had a ground AND an orbital component.

[sloanjh]

I really don't want to get into ships being on planetary surfaces due to the complexities involved with landing/taking off and atmospheric effects. Keeping them in LEO is a lot easier. The idea of maintenance facilities, like shipyards, being in orbit is probably the easiest option. The only downside is that at the moment you can put maintenance modules into PDCs so that would have to end. Perhaps the easiest thing all round is to remove the existing ground-based maintenace facilities entrely, remove the option of PDC-based maintenance modules, extend overhaul ability to ship-based maintenance modules and make maintenance modules a commercial system. This means all maintenance modules are orbital and are built by commercial shipyards, either within bases or ships. It means I can remove code rather than figuring out new code and it also means I don't have to create a new type of object and therefore a new type of contact.

Hmmmm - I think I'd prefer status quo over this.  The main issue I have is that it makes constructing and tracking maintenance facilities (I fear) MUCH more difficult (read micromanagement) than the current situation, and the evolution of the game seems to have been away from maintenance complexity.  If it's the case that it's too much coding in order to make a "maintenance yard" flavor of SY, then I think it's better to leave the current system alone and account for orbital infrastructure and shuttles as part of the maintenance facilities.

The caveat to this would be if you introduced major space-station construction rules (i.e. that were built by industrial capacity rather than SY and class designs).  If that were the case, then I would argue that "maintenance bays" should be a system that could be added to a SS, and that each bay could support e.g. 5x its hull capacity (e.g. a 5,000-ton bay could support a total of 25,000 tons of ships at any one time (the 5x represents them cycling through) and one ship in overhaul, with no ship being more the 5,000 tons).

More free-association here: what's the difference between a hangar and a maintenance bay?  It seems like the main thing is that hangars allow a quicker launch.  This is reminiscent of the two types of troop transport bays.  That being said, I think anything that's done to change the maintenance rules should keep them as simple as they are now, without the need for detailed tracking....

Removing the ability of maintenance facilities to re-arm box launchers is easy enough, although bear in mind you will need some very large hangar bays if you want to be able to re-arm the box launchers of larger ships. The Soviets in my game have 30,000 ton ships with box launchers.

Hello, Law of Unintended Consequences

What I was intending to suggest is that one shouldn't be able to base 100 "operational" fighters on a planet with 2-3 maintenance facilities and no hangars.  To put it a different way, I think that operational fighters should be required to base off of either a ground-based or ship-based hangar.  This is a different situation from large ships, because they'll have their own life support.  I can go either way with GB, although it's probably easier to consider them ships.  So this was actually intended as a basing requirement, rather than a reload requirement....

John

[sloanjh]

I would greatly prefer to be able to reload box launchers on ships without haveing to have a hanger , I don't think relaoding missile bays is a dry dock operation so It would seem silly to me to have to build a hanger for my 40,000 ton battleship .
I prefer maintenance facilities to represent orbital facilities as that avoids having to have capital ships land on planets which may intefere with my view on how things should work in  a campaign.
I really however see no reason to change things from the way they work now. I can see a potential problem with fighters and possbly FAC's not needing a base however I think that a solution for this problem which does not invlove changing everthing else would be better.
Perhaps requiring that fighters have to be based in hangers and get no benefit from maintenance facilities , or any ship without an engineering section receives no benefit from maintenance facilities and needs to be based in a hanger to avoid breakdowns. THis would mean most fighters and FAC's except those specially built with a fairly spacious extra would need hangers

I agree with these thoughts - they're what I was trying to express in the post I just made (without seeing all the replies like this one   )

It also sounds like Kurt and I are on the same page, with the exception of the suggestion (like Andrew's here) of simply putting in a requirement that fighters be based in hangers.

John

[UnLimiTeD]

This all sounds okay. I don't have a problem with the maintenance facilities being orbital, really, that is the way we are all assuming they work now, even though they are planetary facilities.

Who is "We"?
I certainly don't.

I'd agree with the proposition to just make maintenance facilities not work for fighters.
Probably each fighter factory should have a small hangar space that combines to a planetary hangar.

I'd also like to have maintenance modules on ships be linked to a freighter with mineral supplies for in space repairs, but thats not worth the coding effort.

[Kurt (OP)]

I would greatly prefer to be able to reload box launchers on ships without haveing to have a hanger , I don't think relaoding missile bays is a dry dock operation so It would seem silly to me to have to build a hanger for my 40,000 ton battleship .
I prefer maintenance facilities to represent orbital facilities as that avoids having to have capital ships land on planets which may intefere with my view on how things should work in  a campaign.
I really however see no reason to change things from the way they work now. I can see a potential problem with fighters and possbly FAC's not needing a base however I think that a solution for this problem which does not invlove changing everthing else would be better.
Perhaps requiring that fighters have to be based in hangers and get no benefit from maintenance facilities , or any ship without an engineering section receives no benefit from maintenance facilities and needs to be based in a hanger to avoid breakdowns. THis would mean most fighters and FAC's except those specially built with a fairly spacious extra would need hangers

I agree with these thoughts - they're what I was trying to express in the post I just made (without seeing all the replies like this one   )

It also sounds like Kurt and I are on the same page, with the exception of the suggestion (like Andrew's here) of simply putting in a requirement that fighters be based in hangers.

John

I don't have a problem with requiring fighters to be based in hangers, and this would certainly resolve the original reason why this situation began bothering me.

[Steve Walmsley]

It sounds like the consensus opinion is moving toward the simple change that maintenance facilities don't work for fighters?

Steve

[Kurt (OP)]

It sounds like the consensus opinion is moving toward the simple change that maintenance facilities don't work for fighters?

Steve

That would certainly resolve the original problem that led me to ponder the dual orbital/ground nature of the maintenance facilities in the first place.  It just feels wrong to have large numbers of fighters floating in orbit over inhabited planets with no obvious support networks.  Especially when it would be fairly easy to make large PDC's with hangers for the fighters.  

I still don't like the "undefined" nature of the maintenance facilities.  To make them work you have to assume that they either include invisible and invulnerable shuttles and equally invisible and invulnerable orbital components, or that ships are landing on the planet even though they aren't and don't currently act like they are within the game mechanics.  I admit that this is a fairly minor issue, though, and possibly not worth changing things over, as long as the fighter issue is resolved.  

Kurt

[welchbloke]

It sounds like the consensus opinion is moving toward the simple change that maintenance facilities don't work for fighters?

Steve

It would work for me.

[Caplin]

Works for me too.

[IanD]

My tuppence worth is that maintenance for ships works well enough wouldn’t like to see it more complicated. I would like to see fighters on a planet as ground based since without evidence to the contrary and the fact they are made by ground based fighter factories I have always assumed they were atmospheric capable. I guess you could have purely space based fighters perhaps with a weight advantage, but would definitely need to have an orbital hanger to go, may be have them delivered as parts that need putting together as PDCs? Otherwise you must assume that significant parts of your industry are in orbit – fighter factories for a start.

I have no problem with the current reloading of VLS launchers, since for my current fighter it takes 22.5 minutes in a hanger and 3.7 hours using a maintenance facility, that time can be critical if you are trying to get a second strike off before the foe hits your planet or carrier.  I put the difference at the need for shuttles and EVA to reload in orbit. Does anyone know how long it takes to reload a VLS launcher in the real world?

If fighters are no longer supported by maintenance facilities and need a hanger, then it should be much cheaper for planet based fighters, all they have to do is lay down a few thousand tons of concrete and erect a large tin shed!

Regards

[UnLimiTeD]

Well, maybe Maintenance modules should be civilian.
Always bugged my they aren't.
This would allow players to build space based maintenance facilities if they don't like the ones on the ground.

[sloanjh]

It sounds like the consensus opinion is moving toward the simple change that maintenance facilities don't work for fighters?

Steve

That would certainly resolve the original problem that led me to ponder the dual orbital/ground nature of the maintenance facilities in the first place.  It just feels wrong to have large numbers of fighters floating in orbit over inhabited planets with no obvious support networks.  Especially when it would be fairly easy to make large PDC's with hangers for the fighters.  

Ditto.

John