Recognized Fleet Maintenance (Repair and Resupply)

[Sven_The_Slayer]

With fleets being the primary focus of Starmade right now I think some time needs to be set aside to look into other aspects that directly affect fleets. This being shipyards and repair mechanics. Currently the shipyard has a lot of bugs that plague it which prevents a good number of players from even using them. A good storage system and blueprints is the far superior option so fixing these bugs should take high priority as well.

Repair mechanics: It's reasonable to assume fleet combat will result in heavy loses and damaged ships, we need to be able to conveniently repair ships that are not destroyed and replace those that were. Shipyards should be the primary option for replacing ships and the astrotechno beam should be overhauled as a full repair mechanic. Astro beams should also be capable of building ships as well as an alternative to shipyards. Ships themselves will have to be able to store a copy of either the blueprint or the design for both systems to operate smoothly.

Shipyards

Automation: Shipyards can automatically build ships assuming supplies are available. A logic signal to the computer with no ship docked will tell the ship to build, if a damaged ship is docked (doesn't match stored design) it will repair that ship. Once a ship is completed a logic signal to the shipyard computer will un-dock it.

Core Anchor: The core anchor should be removed or capable of automatically moving to accommodate ships of different sizes. Perhaps rail dockers could be linked to shipyards providing a path in and out of the shipyard.

Repair: The current repair mechanic is a little lacking as it is little more than deconstruct and rebuild. This subjects built ships to the shipyard bugs as well as having the side effect of emptying storage. This should be fixed so it only repairs damaged blocks, replaces lost ones and refills Armor HP.

On ships: Shipyards should be allowed on ships. The mass of cargo is already a good balancing factor as storing a lot of resources needed to build ships will take up a lot of room and add a lot of mass. The ship should not be able to move while using the shipyard and the shipyard should stop all actions if the ship is under attack as two more balancing factors. This would allow carries to rebuild and repair their own fighters as well as allowing full mobile shipyards. Additional balancing factors should be discussed.
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Astrotechno Beam

Repair: Astrotechno beams should be able to not only repair any damage done to a ship but replace blocks using on board storage. Required material storage space and added mass is a good balance factor. Speed of blocks placed could keep shipyards as a preferable repair option. These should also slowly refill Armor HP

Building: Using construction ships as an alternative method to building ships. I'm not a fan of the *poof* *giant ship/station* nature of blueprint items so having astrotechs being able to build ships and stations would be the final nail in the blueprint coffin needed. Of course there would have to be some downsides such as being less efficient to keep shipyards the primary method for building ships.​

 

[TheWurm]

On ships: Shipyards should be allowed on ships. The mass of cargo is already a good balancing factor as storing a lot of resources needed to build ships will take up a lot of room and add a lot of mass. The ship should not be able to move while using the shipyard and the shipyard should stop all actions if the ship is under attack as two more balancing factors. This would allow carries to rebuild and repair their own fighters as well as allowing full mobile shipyards. Additional balancing factors should be discussed.
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I wonder if they could set it up so you could switch a ship to "stationary mode" so things like shipyards and factories (or even gates) could work. It would be one way to run a "capitol ship" as it's been described by the developers.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

I wonder if they could set it up so you could switch a ship to "stationary mode" so things like shipyards and factories (or even gates) could work. It would be one way to run a "capitol ship" as it's been described by the developers.

I just figured it would essentially putting your thrust power to 0%. I guess that's essentially the same thing.

 

[whooplaah]

I don't know exactly how the code works, but I'd assume that the OP suggestion of shipyard repair could be done with minimal changes to code. The shipyards read blueprints and make a list of all blocks and locations in a ship and place them one at a time, removing them from the list as they go. So why not check location, if location has block check block data to see if it matches the blueprint, if it does then skip placement, if not remove and replace. This would let the repair skip over chests with items in them and keep docked items on the rails.

I don't know how it would handle a docked item blocking a ship wall that is being built...perhaps that's the reason for delayed implementation?

Anyway, I'd really like for astrotech beams to be more functional. Of course, having repair bobby's target their mothership would also be nice.

 

[Madman198237]

I agree with the whole suggestion, although perhaps no movement penalty necessary on the mobile shipyards.

Instead, make a VERY hefty power requirement for a mobile shipyard. That'll prevent you from building titans on a moving mothership, while allowing a fleet carrier (large ship with lots of power) to rebuild its fighter (Very small ship, needs a very small shipyard) complement while on the run.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

I agree with the whole suggestion, although perhaps no movement penalty necessary on the mobile shipyards.

Instead, make a VERY hefty power requirement for a mobile shipyard. That'll prevent you from building titans on a moving mothership, while allowing a fleet carrier (large ship with lots of power) to rebuild its fighter (Very small ship, needs a very small shipyard) complement while on the run.

Considering how hard it is to already to power larger ships just powering any large mobile shipyard may be an issue. Maybe movement penalty could be linked directly to a ratio of ship vs shipyard size. If your ship is mostly shipyard you cannot move at all but if it's just a couple small fighter bays you suffer next to no movement penalty

 

[Madman198237]

That's the idea---the power requirement enforces that without making arbitrary judgements on how a ship can move when building another ship.

Realistically, in space, if you're moving, you can build a ship with no problem. From a physics standpoint, moving is the same as if you're standing still, unless there's unequal forces from something acting on different parts of the system you're looking at.

 

[StarWars1981]

For a comparison, look at the UNSC Infinity. That thing carries full-size heavy frigates. If you surround such a docking bay in a shipyard, you should be able to rebuild those same ships, or whatever else you want. However, it should have a massive power requirement, plus the storage requirement, plus the fact that.... dun dun dun... you have to have a large empty space in your ship to hold anything being built. And it needs to be covered because if your shipyard starts taking punishment, you've got a problem.

For a scale: Power requirements for a small fighter bay can be at around 100,000. This being a fighter no larger than, say, 10x10x30 blocks long. For additional balance, it could work slower than a planetary or station based shipyard.
The power requirement for a ship, say, the size of a heavy frigate of perhaps 90x30x150 (going off the size of my Republic Frigate make, which is actually closer to an ultralight cruiser) blocks would reach into the 1,000,000 or 1.5 million range for power/second to run it. Any power failure could incur a computer reset time penalty - as happens if you brownout modern computers. These are just arbitrary values, but I think they're a pretty good start point for any mobile shipyard system.

As for astrotechno beams building ships..... absolutely not. That's just ridiculous. However, they could get some kind of area-effect or ship penetration effect, so as to hit blocks hidden because they were caused by explosives or piercing cannon damage.

 

[Hidden Porpoise]

Treat yards as having a mass of .5 per usable space. That's a huge penalty that can be overcome in "reasonable" or specially builds. It would discourage oversized yards spamming heavy ships just out of gun range. A drone carrier having one or two lines running loses next to nothing; a skeleton building frigates can barely move and takes forever to jump, but still has its uses.

Give shipboard factories a 500% tick time penalty.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

As for astrotechno beams building ships..... absolutely not. That's just ridiculous. However, they could get some kind of area-effect or ship penetration effect, so as to hit blocks hidden because they were caused by explosives or piercing cannon damage.

Can you give a little more reason as to why it's ridiculous? To function properly as a repair mechanic it must be able to replace missing blocks. If it can only repair damage it still useless as with piercing weapons and missiles you are going to loose a lot of blocks. Even battles on smaller scales once those shields go down weapons rip right through ships and explosive effect cannons cause damage deep inside ships that will never be able to be repaired no mater how big you give the area of effect unless it covers the entire ship.

Being able to build is more or less a side effect of being able to replace lost blocks. One could easily load a core with a blueprint and "Repair" it to a full ship. Also my goal is to remove the ability to spawn ships and stations using blueprints so we will need an alternative method. Stations cannot be spawned out of shipyards and some ships will just be too large to practically use shipyards but they still need to be built and maintained. Also what about nomadic players? Their ships may not be too big for a shipyard but they still need a way to build and maintain ships not tied to a single point.

 

[Madman198237]

Great points, Sven, and I agree, especially with removing the blueprint spawning. Why take the time and power for a shipyard if you can just instantaneously spawn a huge ship without the time/resource requirement.

 

[kiraen]

Repairing and replacing blocks on an existing ship I understand and agree with.
But actually building a new ship, no. That is just as bad as blueprints, there would be no reason for shipyards.
The way I see it is that the shipyard interface injects the design into the core. Without that, the astrotech beams don't know what to fix.
An unfortunate side affect is that 'hand-made' ships are not repairable with astrotech. Until / unless you find a shipyard.

$0.02

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Repairing and replacing blocks on an existing ship I understand and agree with.
But actually building a new ship, no. That is just as bad as blueprints, there would be no reason for shipyards.
The way I see it is that the shipyard interface injects the design into the core. Without that, the astrotech beams don't know what to fix.
An unfortunate side affect is that 'hand-made' ships are not repairable with astrotech. Until / unless you find a shipyard.

$0.02

They would build over time so how are they just as bad as blueprints? Currently pocket battleships is a thing. With astrotechs building ships it would take significant time and if you had drones building they would be vulnerable to attacks and not capable of storing a lot of materials before they start getting heavy and slow. Larger construction ships would also have to hold a lot of materials to build large structures, which makes them slow, and vulnerable to attack.

There would be differences that makes them useful in different situations. Shipyards are faster and can be automated easily. Astrotechs would be slower and not inherently automated. Astrotechs also could be balanced to use more power (they already do use a lot of power). While you could probably rig up some automation they cannot be fully automated as the cores would have to already be spawned in and a blueprint/design assigned to that core. Shipyards can be told to just keep building ships until they run out of materials.

 

[StarWars1981]

Can you give a little more reason as to why it's ridiculous? To function properly as a repair mechanic it must be able to replace missing blocks. If it can only repair damage it still useless as with piercing weapons and missiles you are going to loose a lot of blocks. Even battles on smaller scales once those shields go down weapons rip right through ships and explosive effect cannons cause damage deep inside ships that will never be able to be repaired no mater how big you give the area of effect unless it covers the entire ship.

Being able to build is more or less a side effect of being able to replace lost blocks. One could easily load a core with a blueprint and "Repair" it to a full ship. Also my goal is to remove the ability to spawn ships and stations using blueprints so we will need an alternative method. Stations cannot be spawned out of shipyards and some ships will just be too large to practically use shipyards but they still need to be built and maintained. Also what about nomadic players? Their ships may not be too big for a shipyard but they still need a way to build and maintain ships not tied to a single point.

Given where you're going, it's not unreasonable. I meant taking an astrotech beam and building a whole new ship was ridiculous. My understanding was that this magic beam would be able to place a core and blocks on it, basically doing a shipyard's job.
I think the way to do this would be that the astrotechno beam, if resources are available to replace DESTROYED blocks, should be able to repair a ship according to a blueprint. However, the only way to "imprint" this blueprint on the ship core is to have it either
A. originally built in a shipyard according to schematics or
B. found in some other way to fit the schematics applied to the core.
Replacing blocks would be great for the astrotech beam, but at the same time I'm not sure it's possible to keep it from becoming an OP superweapon of ship "repair" (AKA rebuilding that really nice cruiser you let the Titan get too close to).

 

[Madman198237]

Area-based repair is something I really want---or even just "Point at ship and watch blocks SLOWLY regenerate all over" because you can't aim inside a ship.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Given where you're going, it's not unreasonable. I meant taking an astrotech beam and building a whole new ship was ridiculous. My understanding was that this magic beam would be able to place a core and blocks on it, basically doing a shipyard's job.
I think the way to do this would be that the astrotechno beam, if resources are available to replace DESTROYED blocks, should be able to repair a ship according to a blueprint. However, the only way to "imprint" this blueprint on the ship core is to have it either
A. originally built in a shipyard according to schematics or
B. found in some other way to fit the schematics applied to the core.
Replacing blocks would be great for the astrotech beam, but at the same time I'm not sure it's possible to keep it from becoming an OP superweapon of ship "repair" (AKA rebuilding that really nice cruiser you let the Titan get too close to).

The biggest reason I want astrotechs as an alternative is I really want to see the instant spawning of ships and stations VIA blueprint items removed. I guess it would be reasonable to limit them to building stations and only repairing ships. They would not be able to spawn the core or assign designs, that must be done manually, the core would have to already exist. I also know some people will not want to be tied to shipyards so it does help with nomadic play styles.

 

[SkyHawk024]

I agree whole heartily with this post and support the idea of fleet maintenance as a support feature and function as I think a repair ship or mobile shipyard would be a great asset to have in fleets.

 

[Master_Artificer]

While we are at it, I would like to bring up the Armor HP and repairing it...

I understand in real life it totally costs more to fix something that was significantly broke than it is to roll a new one off the assembly line, but this is starmade, not real life, and it doesn't fairly represent those various factors in-game. Besides, this was just a scratch on the armor, and costed 1.5x the ship cost. according to math, it would cost 4-5x the total cost of the ship to repair the armor.

Or I could chuck it in the shipyard and fill a new blueprint for free. Yeah. Something is broke with the system, can pay billions or not a penny. I would like to fly around a ship with battle scars, but this is ridiculous.

It would only get worse when you try to scale it up to tens of crafts, I think this should be addressed first, maybe make astrotech useful or something.

 

[serge1944]

I would say it cost more (that what I keep saying to my dad when buying cheap cars and then repair it) but it takes more time to build a new ship and less time to repair it.

 

[Madman198237]

This all depends on the manner of damage for the RL examples, but really, who doesn't want an astromech astrotech droid to go around fixing your ENTIRE SHIP, slowly, as opposed to waiting until you reach a shop to instantly and logic-defyingly repair your ship.