Oolite Bulletins

Not to mention those hyperjump engines need regular servicing to keep properly tuned, balanced and aligned.. let them get far enough out of whack, and you start getting mis-jumps..

maintenance costs would be a good factor to keep überships in check.

a fast ship with "bigger" engines would need more maintenance at higher costs than one with small engines. and 4 energy banks are more expensive to overhaul than 2. fairly balanced, an übership might be easy to come by, but too expensive to keep.

also, there could be a gradual degradation when the ship maintenance is lacking.
top speed might be reduced, lasers need longer to cool down and have less effect, shields need longer to recharge.

Wyvern Mommy wrote:

maintenance costs would be a good factor to keep überships in check.

a fast ship with "bigger" engines would need more maintenance at higher costs than one with small engines. and 4 energy banks are more expensive to overhaul than 2. fairly balanced, an übership might be easy to come by, but too expensive to keep.

also, there could be a gradual degradation when the ship maintenance is lacking.
top speed might be reduced, lasers need longer to cool down and have less effect, shields need longer to recharge.

I like the idea of tying maintenance costs (and also the results of lack of maintenance) more to the ship specs. Currently the costs is simply a certain percentage of the ship's original price.

However, I don't think that it would keep überships in check. You can't keep anything in check with costs, because after the initial steep career curve money is simply not an issue. Soon the player has more of it than they could ever spend. I'm shrugging off my current 10,000₢ maintenance bill, and I'd equally shrug off a 50,000₢ maintenance bill. I would protest if presented with a 100,000₢ bill, because that would also feel wildly out of balance, equalling 1/8 of the ship's resell value in mint condition.

it certainly has to be carefully balanced to be of use. however, i'm -not- opposed to maintenance costs being in the same neighborhood as purchase prizes, or even higher.

it all comes down to a fair ratio between maintenance costs and the profit a ship can make between overhauls on one side, and the specs on the other side.

it would have to be broken down in several categories:

basic maintenance: computer upgrades, nav arrays and the likes. increasing costs would prolly be in pennies rather than pounds.

engine maintenance: a factor of cargo capacity and speed capability. the latter maybe squared or even higher power. either by itself, or in the form of shorter overhaul intervals.

weapons: as a ballpark figure i would say half the purchase prize.

energy banks: something like number of banks * recharge rate.

add it all together, there's your maintenance costs.

I don't think it's possible to keep überships in check. If someone wants to fly an indestructible megaship armed with a Xeelee starbreaker and a history eraser button, I say let them ... it doesn't affect my game, or anyone else's.

It depends, ultimately, on the definition of "über": in the core game, a fully iron-assed Cobra III with a cloak is pretty darn über, by some measures. Of course, it's kind of the apogee of the core game, so it should be - and there's nothing wrong with reflecting that überness via the game mechanics. Maintenance costs are a way of doing that, and this could be enhanced if maintenance wasn't just a binary on/off, working/broken affair. If, as Wyvern Mommy suggests, the performance of an unmaintained ship gradually could be made to gradually degrade, that would add a lot to the sense that a player's ship is more than just a set of statistics.

Indeed, maybe this degrading of performance could happen all the time - each jump could have a small (5%?) chance of scraping off a few percentage points of performance here and there: a slight decrease in laser cooling; a slight reduction in acceleration, or top speed, or injector fuel consumption, or shield recharge, or pitch or roll ... and taking hits through the shield could have a chance for breaking items AND further degrading performance. This gradual decay could be accompanied by two other options: 1) self-maintenance, where the player has a chance (via e.g. some sort of mini-game) to make things slightly better (or - on failure - a bit worse); and 2) paid maintenance, on demand: take the ship to the shop and spend time and money getting all those little niggles ironed out of it again, by a professional. 2) could be linked to the tech level of the system (higher tech = better service: there's a greater overall boost to ship stats, and they can deal with more problem areas). This could in turn be linked to the price (higher tech = more expensive).

The gradual degradation idea could certainly be interesting. At the moment provided you don't mind the occasional extra misjump, and can avoid regularly taking hits through shields, there's basically no impact from ignoring the servicing costs entirely. (Also, the scale goes from 75 to 100, with overhauls available at below 85, so there's scope to keep the current part of the scale mostly the same, but use the 0 to 75 range for something more significant: though I think we might well then want to make the maintenance overhauls more expensive so that there's more of a temptation to keep flying a creaking ship)

I'd rather keep performance degradation tied to that number (which decays on jumps and hits), rather than having separate quality counters for various bits and pieces of equipment, just to keep things simple.

Commander McLane wrote:

You can't keep anything in check with costs, because after the initial steep career curve money is simply not an issue.

One thing I want to try OXPing at some point - though it would be a very unusual OXP not compatible with a lot of others - is changing the way maintenance costs work a bit:
- make the ship prices much smaller: have a basic ship cost a few hundred credits, with maybe a Cobra III costing thousands, and a freighter costing tens of thousands.
- make the maintenance cost a much higher proportion of the total ship value: at least 10%
In other words make the added equipment most of the value of the ship (which is true in gameplay terms), so it rises considerably more quickly than it currently does. You fit all this top-quality equipment, you need to raise money a lot faster to keep it well-serviced (which the equipment helps you do, of course), though it's only really when you start adding the military items - or flying a huge freighter - that the maintenance costs really start to add up.

With a bit of work it might be practical to have the player keeping a fairly low cash balance (though a rising net worth) for quite some time.

cim wrote:

I'd rather keep performance degradation tied to that number (which decays on jumps and hits), rather than having separate quality counters for various bits and pieces of equipment, just to keep things simple.

You're right, simpler would be better. It would be good if there was some analogue way of communicating the condition of the player's ship, too: a tendency for the exhaust trails to flutter, say. Then the player could literally "check on the engines" by looking out the rear view, assessing the flutteriness of their exhaust, and estimating how run-down the ship is. I think too that in those circumstances a maintenance overhaul should always be on offer as something you could buy, rather than just on offer when you need it - perhaps the urgency could be signalled by the colour of the text? Green for "there's nothing wrong, you're just wasting good money"; yellow for "she's seen better days, but she'll get you there"; orange for "isn't amazing what gaffer tape will hold together?"; and red for "there's only a 50% chance that this crate will make it the length of the docking bay".

cim wrote:

One thing I want to try OXPing at some point - though it would be a very unusual OXP not compatible with a lot of others - is changing the way maintenance costs work a bit:
- make the ship prices much smaller: have a basic ship cost a few hundred credits, with maybe a Cobra III costing thousands, and a freighter costing tens of thousands.
- make the maintenance cost a much higher proportion of the total ship value: at least 10%
In other words make the added equipment most of the value of the ship (which is true in gameplay terms), so it rises considerably more quickly than it currently does. You fit all this top-quality equipment, you need to raise money a lot faster to keep it well-serviced (which the equipment helps you do, of course), though it's only really when you start adding the military items - or flying a huge freighter - that the maintenance costs really start to add up.

With a bit of work it might be practical to have the player keeping a fairly low cash balance (though a rising net worth) for quite some time.

That sounds really interesting ... would it be possible (or desirable?) to have equipment prices vary from ship to ship? So e.g. an Extra Energy Unit for an Adder would cost a lot less than an Extra Energy Unit for a Cobra III?

Disembodied wrote:

I think too that in those circumstances a maintenance overhaul should always be on offer as something you could buy, rather than just on offer when you need it - perhaps the urgency could be signalled by the colour of the text? Green for "there's nothing wrong, you're just wasting good money"; yellow for "she's seen better days, but she'll get you there"; orange for "isn't amazing what gaffer tape will hold together?"; and red for "there's only a 50% chance that this crate will make it the length of the docking bay".

Possibly, yes. I think having it not disappear when purchased could end up quite confusing, though. Maybe rather than colours - since the F3 screen already uses some of those colours for a different meaning - have a "current maintenance status" show up in the purchase description for the item, and the item disappear from view temporarily once purchased until you next dock.

Disembodied wrote:

That sounds really interesting ... would it be possible (or desirable?) to have equipment prices vary from ship to ship? So e.g. an Extra Energy Unit for an Adder would cost a lot less than an Extra Energy Unit for a Cobra III?

Difficult without a few changes to the core game. Though I think the energy units are the only piece of equipment that significantly vary in effect from ship to ship anyway, aren't they?

then there could be the option for a partial overhaul. say, so many credits per percent improvement

cim wrote:

I think having it not disappear when purchased could end up quite confusing, though. Maybe rather than colours - since the F3 screen already uses some of those colours for a different meaning - have a "current maintenance status" show up in the purchase description for the item, and the item disappear from view temporarily once purchased until you next dock.

Sounds good ... if there was some way for players to get a non-numeric sense of their current maintenance status, then the F3 screen's "current maintenance status" could be more or less reliable, too, perhaps based on the TL and/or economy and/or government type.

cim wrote:

Disembodied wrote:

That sounds really interesting ... would it be possible (or desirable?) to have equipment prices vary from ship to ship? So e.g. an Extra Energy Unit for an Adder would cost a lot less than an Extra Energy Unit for a Cobra III?

Difficult without a few changes to the core game. Though I think the energy units are the only piece of equipment that significantly vary in effect from ship to ship anyway, aren't they?

Energy units and possibly shield boosters - and maybe injectors, too, if they boost the ship's top speed (as opposed to enabling a fixed "injector speed"). If there was a way of adding on a supplement to the price, based on a multiplier based on the ship price, might that make it possible without changes to the core? Fuel costs, too, could vary: it could be more expensive to fuel a Cobra III for a 7LY jump than it would to fuel an Adder to jump the same distance.

Disembodied wrote:

Energy units and possibly shield boosters - and maybe injectors, too, if they boost the ship's top speed (as opposed to enabling a fixed "injector speed"). If there was a way of adding on a supplement to the price, based on a multiplier based on the ship price, might that make it possible without changes to the core? Fuel costs, too, could vary: it could be more expensive to fuel a Cobra III for a 7LY jump than it would to fuel an Adder to jump the same distance.

Shield boosters are a fixed increment (because all player ships have the same shield strength)
Injectors, yes, although an Anaconda using injectors is still faster than anything not using injectors, so the difference isn't great.
Fuel ... there's some code in the core to do that already, though I don't think it's enabled, which varies fuel costs between a third and three times standard with the mass of your ship. Not sure what the history is there.

cim wrote:

Fuel ... there's some code in the core to do that already, though I don't think it's enabled, which varies fuel costs between a third and three times standard with the mass of your ship. Not sure what the history is there.

That's a change from 1.75 (see here). Discussion here. And this post explains why it wasn't enabled first (it's referenced here). Although I thought it currently were…

Phew. That was some searching…

In reading these posted notes, I think the KISS principle has by nitpickers who want more than what OOlite started out to be.
I applaude attempts to make it more interesting but comer on!!! the digression of this subject has boiled down to a point of who cares? a simple solutjion to a simple question: quality of maintenance: put an (x) variable to say: how much do you want to spend..x credits and then enter.. the more credits, the more repairs are made for that level of TL. the rapairs may be good or not.. let the buyer beware a reptiles thought.

Added equipment could quickly add to the maintenance costs at a greater rate than the base ship's maintenance cost -- then it would make sense that there's lots of poorly-equipped ships in-universe. (They're trying to keep their operational costs low as well as not being "rich".)
Currently, it's about 1k repair cost per 100k total cost of the ship as equipped.
Added equipment could be as much as 1k additional repair cost per 10k of equipment.

Similarly, the earning power of a ship should probably be considered for the non-military types. (Asps need not apply.) A Cobra 1 for instance has only 10 TC cargo capacity versus 35 TC for a Cobra 3 at max. But the maintenance costs are probably more than half as much. So just maintaining a Cobra 1 is harder than a Cobra 3 despite being a much smaller ship.

On the other hand, a big freighter like a Python,Boa,Anaconda can currently almost pay for their maintenance cost in a single haul of computers/luxuries/machinery/etc.

Wyvern Mommy wrote:

however, i'm -not- opposed to maintenance costs being in the same neighborhood as purchase prizes, or even higher.

Really? How would you feel if that was the case with your car?