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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); In-development patch notes for Starsector 0.98a (2/8/25)

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Author Topic: Low Tech ship worst logistics  (Read 6745 times)

Vind

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Re: Low Tech ship worst logistics
« Reply #30 on: May 24, 2021, 02:50:58 AM »

Low tech spend less CR per battle but this means little game-wise as long battles drain CR to zero anyway and you rarely fight more than 2 battles in a row. Maybe integrated subsystem mirroring delicate machinery so ships drain CR less after peak time can help low-tech a little.
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Arcagnello

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Re: Low Tech ship worst logistics
« Reply #31 on: May 24, 2021, 03:06:31 AM »

That's the point. Powder is better than bow and arrows. High tech best tech.

Logistically? No.
High-tech equipment is more expensive to maintain.
Take a look at the maintainance costs of the high-tech airplanes and manhours required, the flight time/maintiance time ratio and compare it to older planes. The F35 needs something like 2 hours of maintainance for every flight hour.

Compare it to more robust and reliable oldies like the F-14, F-15 and F-16.. or the A-10. No comparison.

The general rule is: high-tech = expensive, demanding.

The F-35 is the peak of the iceberg, ever heard about the Boeing V-22 Osprey?
Spoiler

70 Milion dollarinos each, overhaul of just three of these was just about another 70 million, the fun thing being pretty much every single Osprey in service has a unique configuration down to the mechanical level too.
It's said that for every hour of actual mission flight, the Osprey sits another 12 hours in the maintenance bay.
It's been in service for more than a dozen years and the US still has not figured out how to keep sand and dirt from clogging its tilting engines. Wikipedia also states that some officials got fired because they falsified the maintenance costs of the tilt-rotor helicopter to make it seem more viable. Hilarious stuff.
[close]

...Anyway. I just wanted to add that the core concept of this thread is sound. Low Tech should not be as expensive to maintain or even repair compared to either Midline or High Tech.

That said, reducing Low Tech maintenance is but the first step to making low tech viable. Straying from what's already been said in a suggestion (discussion, really) thread I made, the game hands out way too much free money even in early game for either midline or High tech to be bothered much, if at all.

Vanilla could take a sizeable page off of the modiverse and do one nifty change to maintenance costs, Combat readiness recovery and combat-related repairs. Keep in mind I'm more or less spitballing and the numbers may not be optimal.
Midline would see no changes, since the components required for overall maintenace are neither rare or overly abdundant
Low Tech has an overabdundance of components making both combat damage repairs and routine maintenance significantly less resource intensive than other design philosophies, therefore reducing monthly maintenance costs by 50%, Combat Readiness Recovery costs and repair costs by 30%
High Tech uses bleeding edge equipment making long term maintenance without specialized hangars very costly. The base monthly maintenance of these ships is significantly higher than their peers, but it will get even worse the longer the fleet does not have access to a planet-based bay, up to +50% in monthly maintenance. Combat readiness recovery and combat-related repairs not only take 30% longer due to the need of specialized personell and delicate machinery, but they also will become more expensive as time away from a colony passes just as monthly maintenance.

These suggestions do not take in account the fact High tech and Midline already lose more Combat Readiness per deployment than Low tech in general, a more carefully crafted suggestion that this one may have to take those into account.
« Last Edit: May 24, 2021, 03:08:56 AM by Arcagnello »
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Drazan

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Re: Low Tech ship worst logistics
« Reply #32 on: May 24, 2021, 03:12:35 AM »

This suggestion makes sense, but i think it is too convoluted. I thik low tech just should have faster and cheaper repairs and lower fuel usage.
Lowering maintenance is perhaps also a good idea, but should be done separately from DP (like the high maintenance hullmod).
« Last Edit: May 24, 2021, 03:17:06 AM by Drazan »
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Drazan

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Re: Low Tech ship worst logistics
« Reply #33 on: May 24, 2021, 03:20:31 AM »

The other thing that needs to be adressed is the higher crew requierment. This makes sense thematically at least, but actually makes lowtech ships more expensive to maintain. And even more than one would think at first, beacuse lowtech ships get damaged during combat more often than high or midtech, and thus more crew dies per engagement. So the skeleton crew may be "just" 300 but you actually need to bring along another 300 for an expedition, and pay wages for them as well, just to maintain your fighting capability after numerous engagements.
« Last Edit: May 24, 2021, 03:22:23 AM by Drazan »
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Arcagnello

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Re: Low Tech ship worst logistics
« Reply #34 on: May 24, 2021, 03:25:44 AM »

This suggestion makes sense, but i think it is too convoluted. I thik low tech just should have faster and cheaper repairs and lower fuel usage.
Lowering maintenance is perhaps also a good idea, but should be done separately from DP (like the high maintenance hullmod)

Yesn't.
Making Low Tech more attractive when seen under the scope of logistics is a good thing, but leaving the combat prowess of (especially) High Tech unchanged would still relegate the former design philosophy into irrelevancy most of the time anyway. It needs to gain significant combat advantages that it currently does not have too, significantly lower CR loss per deployment would be a start.
Having High tech bashed by its own sophisticated equipment breaking down after battle (and generally requiring a lot of "care") would keep it in its place a lot more than the current state of the game.
Introducing a mechanic further reducing Combat Readiness after battle based on the ship damage sustained in that engagement could be interesting, especially if Midline/High tech lose a lot more Combat readiness due to ship damage when compared to Low Tech, which could lsoe very little by comparison.

I can hear people vouching for the Industry Tree as the "Low Tech skill tree" and that it makes everything peachy and smell good, but no. The only thing in common Low tech and the Industry Skill Tree have is that they're both disappointing for their own reasons.

You could say two crutches keep eachother standing, but a crutch on its own is only useful if you have a broken leg.
« Last Edit: May 24, 2021, 03:29:08 AM by Arcagnello »
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Burvjradzite

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Re: Low Tech ship worst logistics
« Reply #35 on: May 24, 2021, 05:07:36 AM »

That's the point. Powder is better than bow and arrows. High tech best tech.

Logistically? No.
High-tech equipment is more expensive to maintain.
Take a look at the maintainance costs of the high-tech airplanes and manhours required, the flight time/maintiance time ratio and compare it to older planes. The F35 needs something like 2 hours of maintainance for every flight hour.

Compare it to more robust and reliable oldies like the F-14, F-15 and F-16.. or the A-10. No comparison.

The general rule is: high-tech = expensive, demanding.

The F-35 is the peak of the iceberg, ever heard about the Boeing V-22 Osprey?

The Boeing V-22 Osprey? Ever heard about the Thermonuclear Bombs? This bad boy can destroy whole countries and also cheap to maintain.

Drazan

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Re: Low Tech ship worst logistics
« Reply #36 on: May 24, 2021, 05:59:58 AM »

That's the point. Powder is better than bow and arrows. High tech best tech.

Logistically? No.
High-tech equipment is more expensive to maintain.
Take a look at the maintainance costs of the high-tech airplanes and manhours required, the flight time/maintiance time ratio and compare it to older planes. The F35 needs something like 2 hours of maintainance for every flight hour.

Compare it to more robust and reliable oldies like the F-14, F-15 and F-16.. or the A-10. No comparison.

The general rule is: high-tech = expensive, demanding.

The F-35 is the peak of the iceberg, ever heard about the Boeing V-22 Osprey?

The Boeing V-22 Osprey? Ever heard about the Thermonuclear Bombs? This bad boy can destroy whole countries and also cheap to maintain.

It is not tho. The infrastructure needed to make one nuclear bomb is not cheap. Maintainance may be cheap if you just pput it in a warehouse, and dont check it regularly, but then dont expect it to work as you want it when you do. A nuclear bomb is a single use weapon, and producing one is really hard and expensive, so i would not say that it has a good logistical profile.
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AcaMetis

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Re: Low Tech ship worst logistics
« Reply #37 on: May 24, 2021, 06:10:59 AM »

Is Persean Sector low tech really all that "low tech" these days? I mean obviously two Lashers should not be as expensive to maintain as one Scarab, that's just silly, but the Onslaught was designed a long time ago and later retrofitted with shields, better FTL drives, and probably more. Maybe that's why it's not that cheap to maintain, because it's been modified far beyond it's original specs?
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Burvjradzite

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Re: Low Tech ship worst logistics
« Reply #38 on: May 24, 2021, 06:14:00 AM »

That's the point. Powder is better than bow and arrows. High tech best tech.

Logistically? No.
High-tech equipment is more expensive to maintain.
Take a look at the maintainance costs of the high-tech airplanes and manhours required, the flight time/maintiance time ratio and compare it to older planes. The F35 needs something like 2 hours of maintainance for every flight hour.

Compare it to more robust and reliable oldies like the F-14, F-15 and F-16.. or the A-10. No comparison.

The general rule is: high-tech = expensive, demanding.

The F-35 is the peak of the iceberg, ever heard about the Boeing V-22 Osprey?

The Boeing V-22 Osprey? Ever heard about the Thermonuclear Bombs? This bad boy can destroy whole countries and also cheap to maintain.

It is not tho. The infrastructure needed to make one nuclear bomb is not cheap. Maintainance may be cheap if you just pput it in a warehouse, and dont check it regularly, but then dont expect it to work as you want it when you do. A nuclear bomb is a single use weapon, and producing one is really hard and expensive, so i would not say that it has a good logistical profile.
It is. The amount of helicopters and manpower to ground the country and do same damage is immeasurable. Even considered no retaliation. I have a strong feeling constructing a nuclear device is a lot cheaper than building an army, nuclear weaponry just regulated a lot more.

Badger

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Re: Low Tech ship worst logistics
« Reply #39 on: May 24, 2021, 08:44:32 AM »

The whole 'low/high tech' idea in Starsector is wonky in and of itself. Everything is 'high-tech' and flying around in space shooting at things. Some of the technobabble for 'low-tech' guns sounds more high-tech than 'high-tech' lasers and the like which we could conceivably produce, inefficiently, now. You can imagine some advanced armor tech being more involved than simple (at the time) energy shields, the engines are all high-tech, they all have jump drives and whatever.

Meanwhile you have some 'high-tech' ships that are common and operate largely as bricks, and 'mid-line' is not actually midline but some kind of specialist philosophy. And so on and so forth. At some point it just breaks down.
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Ad Astra

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Re: Low Tech ship worst logistics
« Reply #40 on: May 24, 2021, 09:16:20 AM »

...Anyway. I just wanted to add that the core concept of this thread is sound. Low Tech should not be as expensive to maintain or even repair compared to either Midline or High Tech.

I agree with all that, yesterday I was suggesting the same thing, repair and recovery costs should have modifiers based on the tech level, that way we can level the underperforming low tech with high tech on the economic aspect.
This could be extended to how severe the effect of D-mods is and how much restoration costs, High tech should reasonably perform better, since those ships are the bleeding edge of ship design, however they should have a poor cost efficiency.
High tech pushing you to have a pristine fleet and low tech allowing you to have a bunch of clunky half blown up messes would help level them too. You'd have a stimulus to keep a high tech fleet as free of losses as you can, while a low tech fleet would be like "lol ships go bewm boom"

This way you'd have an equal notion of what ships mean in combat also show on the campaign level, low tech being "eh, it'll do" and high tech  being "high risk high reward mfrs!".

While balancing every hull or doctrine to be equal in power is impossible, using economic aspects to make a choice less clear cut is very much possible.
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Locklave

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Re: Low Tech ship worst logistics
« Reply #41 on: May 24, 2021, 04:41:29 PM »

Low tech spend less CR per battle but this means little game-wise as long battles drain CR to zero anyway and you rarely fight more than 2 battles in a row. Maybe integrated subsystem mirroring delicate machinery so ships drain CR less after peak time can help low-tech a little.

Low tech takes far more damage in actual combat, there in destroying said savings with repairs and costing more in the end.

Low tech needs steep repair cost and speed reductions to reflect how simple it is and how easy it is to repair. Instead of this bizarro world where the fragile ultra tech is somehow costs less everything. CR should also be an advantage, but that won't solve the logistics problem overall since deployments costs come in the form of actual damage they take in said fight.

This .95 patch only highlighted the disparity in logistics by gutting the industry tree I used to lean into to manage the problem.

...Anyway. I just wanted to add that the core concept of this thread is sound. Low Tech should not be as expensive to maintain or even repair compared to either Midline or High Tech.

I agree with all that, yesterday I was suggesting the same thing, repair and recovery costs should have modifiers based on the tech level, that way we can level the underperforming low tech with high tech on the economic aspect.
This could be extended to how severe the effect of D-mods is and how much restoration costs, High tech should reasonably perform better, since those ships are the bleeding edge of ship design, however they should have a poor cost efficiency.
High tech pushing you to have a pristine fleet and low tech allowing you to have a bunch of clunky half blown up messes would help level them too. You'd have a stimulus to keep a high tech fleet as free of losses as you can, while a low tech fleet would be like "lol ships go bewm boom"

This way you'd have an equal notion of what ships mean in combat also show on the campaign level, low tech being "eh, it'll do" and high tech  being "high risk high reward mfrs!".

While balancing every hull or doctrine to be equal in power is impossible, using economic aspects to make a choice less clear cut is very much possible.

I couldn't agree more with this. It feels like that is how it should be, but the game just doesn't do it. Instead high tech is bleeding edge, cheapest to maintain in all ways, least likely to run out of CR because they kill faster and initial cost don't even feel relative to power.

I'd even be okay with Low tech being the poor mans ships, a way to project power that is cost effective both in initial cost and maintenance. I mean this is how the game presents them too us. They'd have a solid role if this were the case.
« Last Edit: May 24, 2021, 04:57:08 PM by Locklave »
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Locklave

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Re: Low Tech ship worst logistics
« Reply #42 on: May 24, 2021, 06:03:58 PM »

Alex just posted this in another thread so I feel the general issue will be addressed at some point, in some manner or another. Clearly he's not promising anything but this is very good news for people that like the low tech ships and want them more viable.

I'll just say, Low Tech will *definitely* be getting some improvements in various ways, ranging from new ships to changes to some existing ships/skills/mechanics. A "low maintenance" hullmod for some ships isn't off the table, either, but I'm not sure it'll be necessary.

Thematically, I could easily also see low-tech being just messier overall - fuel guzzlers that need more crew and a decent amount of supplies, but that perform well. It's the last part that there's a bit - not *too* much; they're already viable, just not as good! - of a problem with. So, improve low tech, rein some of the high-end frigates in a bit, and I think it'll be good. And whether this involves lower maintenance for Low Tech ships, well, we'll see.
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ElPresidente

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Re: Low Tech ship worst logistics
« Reply #43 on: May 24, 2021, 11:47:10 PM »

The other thing that needs to be adressed is the higher crew requierment. This makes sense thematically at least, but actually makes lowtech ships more expensive to maintain. And even more than one would think at first, beacuse lowtech ships get damaged during combat more often than high or midtech, and thus more crew dies per engagement. So the skeleton crew may be "just" 300 but you actually need to bring along another 300 for an expedition, and pay wages for them as well, just to maintain your fighting capability after numerous engagements.

You can have low-tech ships have extra strong internals/crew quarters, which reduces crew casualties?
Armored crew quaters / Robust Engineering / Unyielding hull hullmod on all low tech?
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Locklave

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Re: Low Tech ship worst logistics
« Reply #44 on: May 25, 2021, 02:32:26 AM »

The other thing that needs to be adressed is the higher crew requierment. This makes sense thematically at least, but actually makes lowtech ships more expensive to maintain. And even more than one would think at first, beacuse lowtech ships get damaged during combat more often than high or midtech, and thus more crew dies per engagement. So the skeleton crew may be "just" 300 but you actually need to bring along another 300 for an expedition, and pay wages for them as well, just to maintain your fighting capability after numerous engagements.

You can have low-tech ships have extra strong internals/crew quarters, which reduces crew casualties?
Armored crew quaters / Robust Engineering / Unyielding hull hullmod on all low tech?

So waste OP the ship needs to survive a fight to lower the costs of damage a high tech ship wouldn't take in the first place. No, thanks.
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