Ship Repair and Ship Yards

[specialist]

In the history of wet navies in the 1900's ship yard capicity and dry dock size were of critical importance. Larger dry docks enabled larger ships to be built, but new dry docks cost money and had long lead times. Location of the docks was of critical importance. The allies in WWII spent men and money to make sure that battleship sized dry docks in France were unavaible to the Germans. (Saint-Nazaire, Operation Chariot)

If battle dammage is repaired by auto repair units then, repair docks are unimportant.
(exept maybe for upgrades)
However, if some damage must be repaired at dock, the having them in the right place and with enough capicity would be a major factor in war.

Some dammage might be feild repairable(some types or some amount), others might require space dock repair.

Alot depends on weather space battle is of the "space opera" type or "hard SF" type.
So Scotty might be able to repair the main drive engines in 5 minutes with a paper clip, or maybe the ship has to limp back to dock and have the main reactor pulled and replaced at considerable cost and time.

One of the more annoying features in MOO2 was the auto repair abilty, that was too easy to achive. And the free repairs at any base too.

If damage requires space dock, it might be a good idea to let an invading fleet bang their head against some fortress worlds, and soak up some damage, before taking them on in a space battle. (depends on reltive costs of words vs. fleets) Dry dock repair requirment would be advantage to defenders.

[RobHuntingdon]

I think to some degree repairs should be available outside of drydock. The onboard spares and crew should be able to effect some repairs, up to a certain level of damage. Beyond that point either a dedicated repair ship or an actual drydock would be necessary to get truly "major" damage fixed. Plus I would expect that a dedicated crew would be both more effective and faster than "on the spot" fixes.

I.E. Scotty might be able to get some critical ship component working "right now" for emergency use (like a combat situation perhaps?) with a paperclip but it's then literally running on borrowed time, if they can't stand down within a few hours and go into local maintenance mode -- or better yet get a dedicated repair ship to work on fixing the core problem -- they will incur even worse damage or outright destruction of the ship. And even if Scotty can get things working "sorta normal" after a few hours by plugging in replacement components and rebuilding a few components out of the necessary parts the component in question might be rated "damage: 10% efficiency: 74%" or something even at maximum "local" repair capacity.

I'd say the efficiency should drop faster than actual damage -- maybe on a 2:1 or 3:1 ratio -- so that the part become inoperable before its completely destroyed. And then repairs by ship crew should only be able to repair about 2/3rds of the damage/efficiency once you pass some threshold value (perhaps 10% damage). A repair ship might have a lower threshold (maybe 30%?) and a higher potential (maybe 4/5ths) and also a faster rate (maybe 1.5x) but still not quite perfect. And then a full-up spacedock would have a 2x rate and no thresholds or limits (except of course for the cost of repairs).

RH
_________________
Robert, the Earl of Huntingdon

Tarry here, my merry men, whilst I seek what adventure await in yonder greenwood; but look thou listen for my call, for I will blow my horn if I become hard-pressed.

Adapted from Sterling, pg. 45

[specialist]

I noticed that the ship design graphic has some "Auto-Repair Bots"

What would such a device do? Perhaps it has a mass converter that can build a new part from raw materials. Then it could find a shot-up part, build a new one, install it, and toss the old into the raw material bin.

Of course such a device would be pretty expensive, only a limited number of them.
And they may only be able to fix items up to X size.

Or perhaps they can only fix uncomplicated items- say armor. They just stick a patch of new stuff into a blasted hole, and everthing is good again. But a shot-up fusion focal magnet would be beyond their skills.

With transporter technology, what you have is a mass converter. Just have on file any parts you might need, and build them as required. Assembly could be done remotly too!
I wonder if there would be limits on what you could build? Missiles? Spare crew?

[Therlun]

I would like a system of yards and docks too.
Most of it depends on how few or how many ships are "normal" in Hoizon though.

If the normal ship count ingame is too high such a system will change from being atmospheric to a chore.

[RobHuntingdon]

[AerionIstari]

[specialist]

[Anguille]

[Sim-Mania]

How is ship damage handled in Horizon?

The battles are to be epic, possibly lasting for numerous turns, so do ships receive damage to specific areas? eg. engines, weapons, shields, senors, so during a battle can you make repairs, and better yet, can you prioritise what part of the ship is repaired first.

Normally detail such as this would be far to "micromanagement" to be handled in most games, however in horizon we know that there will be less ships, particularly far fewer capital ships, so if this was the case battle and general gameplay would be made more strategic.

In a battle shields and weapons would be a priority, however, in retreat or in a chase, engines and sensors would be a priority.

Then the level of damage, would determine if the crew could repair the damage or if a reapair ship or dry dock be necessary.

[OrionSol]

I was thinking this over and think that if a ship is going on a 1-5 YEAR voyage, they are going to be able to self repair, but never to 100%.

Maybe you can only gain back 75% of damage caused, until you go back for refit, retrofit in a space dock.

So if I had 10 hit points, lost 5 in a battle... I could repair say 3.5 out of 5 points bringing me back to 8.5 total. Never would I be able to get better than that unless I go to a spacedock for repairs.

If I am now at 8.5 and take 5 more damage I am down to 3.5, repair 3.5 again and get back to 7.

This way if I go out and fight fight fight... Im going to eventually be worthless and have to return to spaceport.

[Breniir]

I like that idea of diminishing returns for field repairs. While future space vessels will carry all sorts of replacement parts and /or tools to make parts, nothing is as perfect as the shipyard where the thing was built.

I was also thinking that repair systems could be optional if you so desire. Say for instance all ships by default have standard repair features. A 'special' that Zaimat speaks of could be the auto repair device, but there could also be a check box to remove any repair systems at all. This may help if you're making throw-away missile boats or the like, and need all the space you can get to load one more 'mega-death-kill 2000' missile. This relates somewhat to the discussion of trade-offs for designs others have talked about. in the real world, the soviets usually stuck more weapons on a ship and did little to improve repair ability or crew habitability. The Slava class cruisers come to mind, they were pretty much a platform for anti-ship missiles, and once they were gone... not much was left.


Edit: Oops, got my classes messed up. Kara class are an anti-air ship with some surface capability, the Slava class is a missile boat.

[Zaimat]

The auto-repair bots special is meant to assist repairs (speed them up). There are situations where it's difficult to work (outside the hull) or in tight spots or when there is some environmental hazard in a section of the ship. That sort of thing. Like Breniir's example it's an option and a design decision that you'll have to weigh-in.

It is assumed that ship crews have engineers/technicians that can repair damaged pieces. The auto-repair bots simply improve on this in Horizon.

As for repairs requiring dry-dock or not. Once a component is destroyed it can't be repaired and right now the only replacement method is by visiting a sector with shipyards. Everytime you visit one, all systems are upgraded/replaced to the latest version of the same tech.

And yes, nothing has changed in regards to size of taskforces being set to a max of 10. So it will be easy to manage your fleets, select a taskforce, order them back to a base.