Proposal for 1.82: updates to service level / maintenance

[Norby]

I like the current SL scale including the fact that can't reach 0, so I suggest to keep the current degradation rate and allow to fall down to 50. In this way we can introduce the <75 levels as a new feature with new drawbacks and keep the current feeling which suggest that a ship can not run below a certain service level.

I like the "tune up" idea, my Small Fix in ShipVersion serve the same goal to make a fast maintenance.

I think a degraded max. speed with a marker in the speed bar as the required fuel in the fuel bar is a very good feedback of the necessary maintenance so I like it. For compatibility I suggest to keep the maxSpeed value, the effective injector speed (7*maxSpeed) and torus speed (32*maxSpeed) unchanged, just the player can't increase the normal speed over the mark.

Energy degradation can happen in large steps adjusted to full banks, for example a Cobra Mark III can lose a bank at 75% and another if hit the minimal 50%. If a ship has a single bank only then can lose 1/4 and 1/2 of the maximum for similar feeling like if the banks of small ships are built from four smaller one and one or two need maintenance.

I like the equipment disruption idea and I suggest to introduce it as a relief, which can happen instead of a damage sometimes (50%?). This can balance the increased maintenance problems.

[cim]

Some interesting ideas here.

suddenly the 6.8 Ly jump may not be obtainable.

Doing variable jump ranges properly would require some quite significant rewrites, especially around the route-planning code. It also opens the possibility that you could end up stuck in a system which doesn't offer servicing and perhaps in the worst case (no wormhole scanner either) have to spend hours of game time waiting for then blindly following wormholes until you got back to a system, all the time your ship deteriorating further. Probably better left to OXPs to implement by removing fuel on launch from station, if people want that possibility.

Personally, I'd like to see some variation in maintenance costs based on a planet's economy, too

In Oolite there's already quite a strong correlation between the various parameters - government, economy, TL, productivity - from the original galaxy generation algorithm, so I think this would end up being very difficult to notice.

It should be possible to add enough scripting support to maintenance work that OXPs could adjust stations more significantly - or add OXP mechanics shops who are based in dodgy looking asteroids way off the lane, but happen to have one of the best specialists in Moray maintenance in the chart.

Especially if {performance drain} also affects NPC ships.

Unless the performance drain is extremely severe I don't think it would be particularly noticeable on an NPC ship. You rarely see them for long enough to tell the difference between a 3 and a 5 recharge rate, for instance, though that's a major difference on a player ship. That sort of thing would be easier to OXP - produce some scuffed textures and reduce the shipdata performance as a hard-coded thing.

(NPCs don't currently even have a service level property and it feels overly simulationist to add one)

A high SL ship gets better paying passengers for instance.

I like this idea. Probably should be most significant on passenger contracts, and least on cargo contracts.

Now I accept that a spaceship is a bit different in that a sudden failure could have far worse consequences than just a flat battery in the car, so I think we can assume therfore that in our ships much more equipment has a service schedule than that fitted to cars, and that this would be included in the servicing.

My thought would be that unlike a car, the ships probably have a lot of redundancy in the systems, to stop you getting a long list of catastrophic failures the first time you take hull damage. You buy an ASC, it comes with three or four receivers for the transponder signals. In this case:
- disruption = one receiver fails, brief pause in service while the system recalibrates; primary processing unit fails, pause while the backup processing unit powers up
- damage = all receivers have failed, but the processing units are intact (or vice versa), so it's cheaper to repair than buying a whole new one, but it's still not working right now.

Servicing would then include restoring failed redundant components to full order (which is why it gets noticeably more expensive the more equipment you pile onto your ship)

Then, as you have, parts like the "ship's alternator" might fail - initially, only until the backup alternator can take over, but if you continue to go without proper servicing, you'll eventually to get two disruptions hitting the same component before it recovers, and then it actually fails.

I'd imagine the most fun use of a 'tune up' in game would be a scenario where the player can't afford the time and/or credits for full maintainance and so gets a quick and dirty patch up instead.

This is the kind of thing I was going for with the idea. You get a mechanic in to fix the most obvious problems and plug in all the cables which have fallen out on sharp turns, but they don't have time to find or fix underlying problems, so while your ship now works to spec in theory it's only a matter of time before those cables fall out again. A dedicated courier (or other time-critical job, though courier is the only core game one) might well repeatedly patch-up their ship as time is money ... and then on the seventh long distance run the cables not only fall out but pull a significant chunk of processing card with them because no-one had time to properly sort out the overtension on them, and you have to either do a proper service at the nearest decent shipyard you can find, or try to complete the run with your ship very rapidly deteriorating around you.

If S/L is getting lower, you should be given a warning. It would be nice to know, if you are close to perfect or if you reach a level, where system failure is almost inevitable.

The idea is roughly:

• 70-100%: ship works perfectly, or so close you can't really tell
• 60-70%: minor degradation and cosmetic effects, also a big clue in that servicing starts being offered as an option
• 50-60%: more significant degradation and cosmetic effects, but you'll have been ignoring the servicing warnings for at least a few jumps and possibly more like ten or twenty by this point.
• 0-50%: severe degradation that shouldn't be possible to ignore; even the cosmetic effects start to have gameplay effects (e.g. flickering HUD items)

Adding an arrival report notice "your ship is now due for servicing" the first time you dock after reaching 70% should be straightforward too, and gives a hint even to those who are hanging out in systems too low tech to offer it on F3.

[Cody]

OXP mechanics shops who are based in dodgy looking asteroids way off the lane, but happen to have one of the best specialists in Moray maintenance in the chart.

I was thinking exactly that - more use could be made of rock hermits. As for the rest - sounds good.

[Diziet Sma]

If S/L is getting lower, you should be given a warning. It would be nice to know, if you are close to perfect or if you reach a level, where system failure is almost inevitable. The idea of this display from the OXP is nice Gives you a chance to determine if you should fix it now or if it can wait two more jumps when you get to a TL14 system anyway.

I agree, the player needs some sort of cue as to the SL of the ship, but I'd prefer to avoid a straight numerical display. Cim's engine flicker below 75% is a good example of a bit of analogue feedback to allow the player to estimate the state of the ship ... are there other cosmetic effects which could be used as clues that a service is about due? Any possibility of engine noise stutter, say?

Slowly the ship starts to steer left/right so that you have to constantly make corrections .

Too easy to mistake this for a glitchy joystick, I suspect..

[Tricky]

If enough of the backend is exposed to Javascript then I can see somebody writing a Service Log Book. Would be really handy to check out if would be worth doing the tune-up now, leave it til the next system or just wait for a full service. You could also just leaf through the history to see how well you look after your ship. Maybe you could get a Log Book with history when you buy a ship.

Also you could show it off at the next Ship Owners Club meeting.

[spud42]

[Disembodied]

Personally, I'd like to see some variation in maintenance costs based on a planet's economy, too

In Oolite there's already quite a strong correlation between the various parameters - government, economy, TL, productivity - from the original galaxy generation algorithm, so I think this would end up being very difficult to notice.

I was thinking along the lines of taking the planet's production value, knocking the "M" off, and adding 10% of the value to the service price - so a service on Qudira would cost (service level of your ship) + (cost of your ship + equipment) + 77Cr.; the same service on Ceesxe would cost (service level of your ship) + (cost of your ship + equipment) + 5632Cr. It's admittedly a pretty crude mechanism, though, and might well have knock-on effects elsewhere ... but at the moment, running costs are barely noticeable after the first couple of dozen trips.

My thought would be that unlike a car, the ships probably have a lot of redundancy in the systems, to stop you getting a long list of catastrophic failures the first time you take hull damage. You buy an ASC, it comes with three or four receivers for the transponder signals. In this case:
- disruption = one receiver fails, brief pause in service while the system recalibrates; primary processing unit fails, pause while the backup processing unit powers up
- damage = all receivers have failed, but the processing units are intact (or vice versa), so it's cheaper to repair than buying a whole new one, but it's still not working right now.

Servicing would then include restoring failed redundant components to full order (which is why it gets noticeably more expensive the more equipment you pile onto your ship)

Then, as you have, parts like the "ship's alternator" might fail - initially, only until the backup alternator can take over, but if you continue to go without proper servicing, you'll eventually to get two disruptions hitting the same component before it recovers, and then it actually fails.

Do you plan to add a list of "components" to the game, that can be disrupted or fail outright? Alternators and power couplings and so on? Not as separate pieces of equipment, but as largely notional sub-pieces? That's got a lot of potential, I think, for fleshing out the ship. Especially if it could be somehow linked to something the player can fiddle with in flight - try to jury-rig running repairs and so on.

[Venator Dha]

I was thinking along the lines of taking the planet's production value, knocking the "M" off, and adding 10% of the value to the service price - so a service on Qudira would cost (service level of your ship) + (cost of your ship + equipment) + 77Cr.; the same service on Ceesxe would cost (service level of your ship) + (cost of your ship + equipment) + 5632Cr. It's admittedly a pretty crude mechanism, though, and might well have knock-on effects elsewhere ... but at the moment, running costs are barely noticeable after the first couple of dozen trips.

Now that's an idea I like a lot Might require some fine tuning so as not to cripple a new start, but would add another choice to the game.

[Diziet Sma]

Do you plan to add a list of "components" to the game, that can be disrupted or fail outright? Alternators and power couplings and so on? Not as separate pieces of equipment, but as largely notional sub-pieces? That's got a lot of potential, I think, for fleshing out the ship. Especially if it could be somehow linked to something the player can fiddle with in flight - try to jury-rig running repairs and so on.

That has a lot of potential, all right.. I like it!

[spud42]

I was thinking along the lines of taking the planet's production value, knocking the "M" off, and adding 10% of the value to the service price - so a service on Qudira would cost (service level of your ship) + (cost of your ship + equipment) + 77Cr.; the same service on Ceesxe would cost (service level of your ship) + (cost of your ship + equipment) + 5632Cr. It's admittedly a pretty crude mechanism, though, and might well have knock-on effects elsewhere ... but at the moment, running costs are barely noticeable after the first couple of dozen trips.

wow that extra 5632Cr would kill me right now.... thats almost another Military laser for my coby...... could retire the rear beam...

[Disembodied]

wow that extra 5632Cr would kill me right now.... thats almost another Military laser for my coby...... could retire the rear beam...

Well, you'd be better off shopping around ... you could get a TL 12 service on Gerete (Rich Industrial, Multi-government) with only a 2256Cr surcharge, or a TL 9 service on Retila (Poor Industrial, Anarchy) for just a 896Cr surcharge. Like I say, it's crude, but the basic fixed charges could be knocked back a little if necessary. The point wouldn't be to make servicing more expensive across the board: it would be to make it noticeably cheap in some places (but maybe not that good, or at least dangerous to get to) and noticeably expensive in others (top-end, secure systems).

I don't think there should be a direct one-to-one relationship between how good something is, and how much it costs. The very cheapest things in a market tend to be terrible: they're sold to the desperate, who can't afford anything better. Then you get a middle range where you more-or-less get what you pay for. Then there's the very top end, where a major surcharge is applied for luxury. It's like the old "buy the second cheapest" trick, which I generally use when buying anything I have no idea about: wine, for example. Clearly, the cheapest wine is really only good for cleaning work surfaces. The most expensive wine is ludicrously overpriced, and aimed at people who want to show off how much money they have. I'm sure it's very pleasant, but it's not 400 times more pleasant than the low-end stuff. The second-cheapest will probably be tolerable, and I won't feel like a mug for paying over the odds for something I won't appreciate ...

If you really want the very best service, then go to Ceesxe and pay through the nose for it. If you're absolutely desperate, get some barely literate peasant on Qudira to patch the holes with straw and bubblegum.

[Lone_Wolf]

A high SL ship gets better paying passengers for instance.

I like this idea. Probably should be most significant on passenger contracts, and least on cargo contracts.

I think this would also make sense for parcel contract offerings.

say we have 2 pilots :
A has a rep of 60 , kill count of 100, SL >75
B has a rep of 60, kill count of 130, SL below 50

Which pilot would have a better chance to deliver the package on time ?

[ralph_hh]

I have to look for fast routes for trading, anarchy planets for random hits contracts, the contract targets system, the nearest TL14 system to fix my broken mil. shields, the best way to include some rich ind. / poor agr. combination on the way to be able to pay for that fix of my shields. Enough already. I do not want to worry, which of the next 100 planets might offer the best maintenance.

It not at all a boring game, so that you have to invent another task of occupying the players mind with looking for the best and cheapest and longest lasting maintenenance. If this service interval has to interrupt gamplay, so be it. Lets fix the ship and that's it!

[spara]

If this service interval has to interrupt gamplay, so be it. Lets fix the ship and that's it!

I agree. Let's not over complicate this.

[Wildeblood]

Enough already. I do not want to worry, which of the next 100 planets might offer the best maintenance.

Spreadsheets in SPAAAACE!