The One-Ship Tender

[mike wightman]

Try playing FFW with three maps and a referee.

You can see your map and only know where your ships are and where enemy forces were at the start or when your fleets encounter them.

The referee combines both player's maps on his and so is the only one who can see the big picture.

 

[flykiller]

I'd love to run a game with a player per fleet, and keep the intelligence and reports and orders in "real time".

tried to run that here. over six months time couldn't get four players, the minimum.

 

[kilemall]

yeah, but you won't have the crews. a ship with a novice crew is just a turkey at a turkey shoot. and you won't have the repair/maintenance capability standing by.

That's what reserves are for- and why a lot of people get booted from their Navy careers, to make room for making more crew and reserves.

Re: repair/maintenance, that's what B starports are for.

in any case the shipyard capacity is quite limiting, especially when you factor in yard space for annual maintenance (not to mention repairs).

If you have a lethal enough war to go through a 50 year stockpile of warships, many of the ships won't last long enough to get back to be repaired, eliminating the problem.

TCS has you going to war with a 10 year build and 10% maintenance, meaning on average you will be built up to your full 'limit' on average.

But you could put 10% or one year's worth of that fleet in ordinary, reducing it to 1% ordinary maintenance, then as you build each year's new ships that would fill up the maintenance bucket, until you had another 10 years or double the fleet in reserve.

Ten times the build rate to place them in service plus using war emergency cash for speed, so that's doubling the fleet in ten months or less.

 

[flykiller]

If you have a lethal enough war to go through a 50 year stockpile of warships, many of the ships won't last long enough to get back to be repaired, eliminating the problem.

one may so decree, sure. but (realistic) reserve crews will notice that strategy. right off the bat. and they'll do somethin' 'bout it.

 

[Condottiere]

The reason it's not such a great option at the moment, is because technology not only becomes obsolescent in Moore generations, and the hull and equipment naturally decay.

Once you build one at the maximum tech level likely to be prevalent when you need them, it really does become like a saving bond.

Outside of which, annual maintenance costs for all spaceships, but especially warships, is probably off by a factor of ten to a hundred.