Recognized Fleet Maintenance (Repair and Resupply)

[StormWing0]

We need something that builds stations like shipyards build ships. Say a Constructionyard block and modules than fire a build beam of some kind. The more ships you have circling the area the larger the build area and the faster it builds. So these could be placed on turrets or the main ship, than have a main computer relaying commands to the secondary entities be they turrets on other ships nearby. This way you could expand or contract your build area at will and just have the ships orbit a center point.

I've had ideas for explaining away some types of spawning and this is one of them, using shipyards, warpgates, and jump drives are the others. In any event that's another topic all by itself.


As for this topic I say we should need an AI module on a station and NPCs to automate things. This helps give the needed overhead to pay attention to and also it means some considerable planning in advance for it to work. We'd also need a way to auto dock ships to other ships and stations without binding them to a ship or station like the current carrier mechanics do for the flagship of fleets. This could be solved by some kind of signal blocks and some additional AI settings in the AI modules and NPCs.

 

[Madman198237]

You do realize that in a realistic situation, a spacestation is built like the ISS, right? The station itself is the scaffold. Materials are transported by ship, yes, but the ships themselves most likely do not have a part in actual construction, unless you consider a module dropped off by a ship part of the ship. Stations would be constructed from a module that provides a base for work. Scaffold/manipulator arms/whatever would be attached to the station itself, especially deep-space stations that don't need to worry about gravity.

 

[Jojomo]

I think I've probably said all I have to say here, and I feel like the thread is starting to go in circles a little, so I'm just going to summarise what I've written and step away from the thread:

1. There's no problem that can't be solved without turning astrotech into block-placers
2. If you want a convenient way to build and repair ships: yards (debugged) will do that
3. If you want a convenient way to build and repair stations: capital ships are coming, so you'll have mobile yards - just request that yards can build stations also
4. If you want a way to avoid ever building or enlarging a yard by hand: I don't think that's a problem, and it doesn't need to be solved. You should have to build your first one (at least) by hand
   
5. If you want nomads to be able to repair as easily ans non-nomads: I don't think that's a problem, and it doesn't need to be solved. It should be easier for non-nomads than it is for nomads.
   
6. If you want to get rid of insta-blueprint-spawn: Easy, just see points 2, 3 ,and 4 above

"More convenient" is not always the same as "better".

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

I think I've probably said all I have to say here, and I feel like the thread is starting to go in circles a little, so I'm just going to summarise what I've written and step away from the thread:

1. There's no problem that can't be solved without turning astrotech into block-placers
2. If you want a convenient way to build and repair ships: yards (debugged) will do that
3. If you want a convenient way to build and repair stations: capital ships are coming, so you'll have mobile yards - just request that yards can build stations also
4. If you want a way to avoid ever building or enlarging a yard by hand: I don't think that's a problem, and it doesn't need to be solved. You should have to build your first one (at least) by hand
   
5. If you want nomads to be able to repair as easily ans non-nomads: I don't think that's a problem, and it doesn't need to be solved. It should be easier for non-nomads than it is for nomads.
   
6. If you want to get rid of insta-blueprint-spawn: Easy, just see points 2, 3 ,and 4 above

"More convenient" is not always the same as "better".

Shipyards on ships has never been officially confirmed as a "capital ship system" so I don't know why you keep mentioning that as a certainty.

1: Shipyards on ships not confirmed, building a station with a ship based shipyard is not a good solution anyway.
2: Yes fixing the shipyard issues will make repairing ships easier but I still firmly believe we should not have to always have a big enough shipyard for every large ship out there. While I will never fly massive ships myself I know people out there do and want to live as a nomad and their particular play style should not be dismissed so easily.
3: Not confirmed, and requiring absolutely massive shipyard ships to build massive stations isn't always viable. The shipyard to build the shipyard ship would have to be bigger than the shipyard ship which would need a shipyard bigger than itself which in turn would need a bigger shipyard.
4: The game needs to be able to be played with blueprints only. Not everybody playing the game is going to be a master builder or have desire to build so there will people who will only play the game with blueprints. If you absolutely have to build something by hand you are cutting the game off from a potential player base.
5: Why dictate how everybody has to play the game? There are people who just want to have a massive ship and fly around the galaxy. Ships that size needing repairs are actually quite unlikely but they still need to be built. We should not be trying to force every player into a single play style where you absolutely have to have a station.

If done right the two systems can easily co-exist where one is better in some situations and the other is better for others. Shipyards should be fast and more efficient, and possibly capable of automation. If you want it done easy and fast you use a shipyard. Construction ships would likely take either a massive single purpose ship or a fleet, which would take much more dedicated resources than a simple shipyard stuck to the side of a station somewhere but they have the benefit of being mobile. Sure a big enough repair fleet could build ships as fast but you would need a ton of dedicated resources, millions of astrotech modules and of course power to run them.

 

[Madman198237]

1. Shipyards on stations definitely confirmed---we have them. If you mean building a station with a shipyard, well, no, no, and no. And no again. We're almost certainly not going to need a ship to build a station---that's utterly ridiculous.
2. Yes, technically you would need a shipyard to make any and every ship. It depends on how the game develops. I agree on the fact that is better for the sandbox nature of the game to avoid focusing on one single playstyle. Shipyards should not be the only way to construct/reconstruct and repair ships. The blueprint mechanic could be adapted somehow so that it was slow yet not too restrictive (Being a nomad, with no vulnerable infrastructure, should have some cost), and a slow mechanism for repairing ships with no shipyard should also be possible. Which leads into the many ideas floating around for making astrotech beams replace damaged blocks slowly. I like that idea.
3. So much right in this statement. See my previous post about how space stations are actually/would most likely be built.
4. Yeah----there's no need to force certain things, but all things should be balanced.
5. Pretty much.

No reason why the systems can't work together, yet plenty of reasons why they can and should work together.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

1. Shipyards on stations definitely confirmed

Typo, I meant that shipyards as a capital ship system hasn't been officially confirmed as far as I am aware.

 

[Nickizzy]

This thread is so old that it seems so long ago that I made this post it's self, but:

Ooh! Ooh! This was from my first post and first thread ever. Seems so long ago...

Anyway, this is what I had though of(I copy pasted because it's my own work, it's from my: ... ): ...

Hmm...

I lost it somehow. AI ideas thread. Whatever.

My idea was that astrotech would place blocks(only place in empty spaces) according to the design of the ship in the shipcore. Blueprints would only require a core and you would "repair" them up to make them. Stations would work the same way.
Astrotech beams would find the ship blueprint as a hologram(like in the shipyard), set that as the ship(in it's aim/hit hitbox. This wouldn't be seen by the player at all)'s hitbox, and any blocks already placed on the ship it would count as not there in it's aiming hitbox. Yes, this would mean a lot of times you would see them seemingly firing through blocks, but it would work so well with it's peircing ability and how it could work ok with AI.
The catch would be, the astrotech would place blocks from it's storage(think a reverse salvager) at one hp. Full armor, because that's not repairable, but the hitpoints would be one. Once all blocks of the design were placed(in that row with logic or manual fire, in the design in AI's hands), the astrotech would start healing blocks back up to full health.

Risk and reward for mobile repair system, but it can take time and leaves a ton of really weak blocks sitting around until done. Bonus because it looks awsome as a "scab" or "scar" on the ship.

My 20 so lines. Take what you want out of it.

Take what you want out of it.
Along with a nerf on how fast they repair blocks.

I think astrotechs should be for jobs to big or to small for shipyards.
I don't need a big setup to repair my little drones that only return with scratches. I can have little astrotech turrets(think nice antiboarder turrets) on the roof of my hanger. I can send little helper drones(or HW2 RU collectors, you geeks) out to my fleet without needing a big lineup of shipyards to help them all.

I can actually build my station from scratch, FtD style, by using refuted cargo drones and the little side repair turrets on my frigates.

I also don't want to have to make a massive, planetsized station just to make my exclusive mothership look shiny and new again. Or I can spend weeks slowly making it Death Star style out in some top secret sector.


If we really need to, you can make them with 10-1 p-h ratio and 1-1 block to hps ratio. Sheesh.

 

[vindicator]

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.

YES!!! Why do I need to take 13 minutes to repair light damage to my capital ship? It doesn't make sense that the whole ship is deconstructed and rebuilt from the ground up just to fix a few scratches. Please fix this!

 

[Kaamio]

I really agree with this idea, although if shipyards dismantle and rebuild ships, then it's fairly likely that there is no ready infrastructure within game code to support actual block replacement repair system.

Gameplay would be only improved from having a mobile repair option that can handle light damage just fine and deal with the armor hp damage. Maybe it could take some resources such as alloy mesh to fix armor hp? I suppose it still leaves rebuild option if deconstruction doesn't consider armor hp when getting blocks back, but again... mobility has it's price, maybe. Perhaps, when deconstructing we could have the game check hp values and deduct blocks based on the percentage? I don't much like that, but it's an idea anyway.

Anyway, I see absolutely no reason for the astrobeams to NOT replace blocks should they have inventory access to replacements, as well as handling the hp issues and repairing blocks they can't actually directly hit. Current system is almost completely unusable due to all piercing effects, punch throughs and explosions going about. Of course it has to be balanced that you can't just outperform a proper shipyard with a repair drone, but then again if you want to spend resources to build an actual fleet of constructors, be my guest. Spending time, resources and/or effort to gain something is perfectly fine for me. I mean, factories are perfectly good but if you hire a few thousand people to do the stuff in their homes you will eventually end up with higher capacity than a single factory, while staying much more mobile. It's just not worth the effort usually.

If you're worried about in combat repairs, might as well treat them like shields... if you get shot, can't function properly. As for making the comparison between ship and loaded blueprint, maybe you could activate it manually or by entering a shipyard and then it does the comparison with a few delays avoid significant lag spices? Basically add the assessing damage part in repair process, not a huge deal for the guy doing maintenance but something to keep it from spamming calculations and comparisons in the already laggy combat situation. Or make it start automatically once ship has 100% shields to handle ai fleets?

 

[SkyHawk024]

I personally dont have much experience with astrotech beams but I do however know that they do benefit in great ways in a way they can be used like salvage beams to fix a wide area. I still support the idea that a ship could be made as a per say mobile drydock to fix other vessles while utilizing the astrotech beam like a shipyard to repair our battle worn vessles.
Just food for thought.

 

[MacThule]

Shipyards

Automation...​

I agree with all of this, especially the streamlining of repairs, and would like to add:

• Fleet management interface needs to show each fleet's total SHP/AHP/HP, and any players currently on board a ship in that fleet also.

• Fleet control needs to be linked to logic so that logic circuits can receive status updates regarding fleets and issue automated orders (for patrolling, maintaining orders while owner is offline, and multi-point pathing, among other things). So every fleet might have a dedicated logic array in your HQ determining when shipyards should resupply it with new fighters/frigates, etc, whether it should retreat to a nearby battlestation if it begins taking armor damage. This would be especially helpful because then stations with sensors on their shields could summon a designated patrol fleet to their location if they began taking shield damage or what have you.

• Shipyards - especially if automated - need the ability to set a "rally fleet" to which newly built ships automatically join, move to the fleet's location, and assume that fleet's disposition and current orders immediately with no interaction from the owner.

The later two would allow proper fleet control so garrison and patrol fleets could be established to guard planets and stations and asteroid fields, keeping their ships renewed over time so long as they continue to receive resources and have the time to complete new ship construction. It would also allow fleets to maintain orders while their commander is offline. It would essentially allow each player a high degree of control over individual fleet AIs, instead of forcing the devs to do it all and it still never being good enough.
[doublepost=1480524815,1480524270][/doublepost]I think the easiest solution to repairing ships would be to have any ship spawned from a BP simply retain a static pointer to that BP in its code instance. Then when a damaged BP-spawned ship is docked to a shipyard it can be quickly and easily repaired by simply comparing its blocks plus blocks in storage to the original BP it references, removing blocks needed to make up the difference, re-spawning it in the shipyard with the same name and permissions and call it fixed. This wouldn't help astrotech much, but custom ships could also retain a pointer to the last BP they were saved as. Which means that some modification could be lost during repair if not saved, but at least repairs could be done in an easy fashion.