Hang on, though. You aren’t intending to deploy for that long.
A mission duration of 2 years will cost much less than half as much MSP.
The expected cost per time at any point in time is multiplied by the maintenance clock (in years).
So the expected cost for 2 years is (nominally) 3x the cost of 1 year (1x for year 1 plus 2x for year 2).
The expected cost for the third year alone (nominally) is 3x the cost of 1 year.
Then you still have the 0.69 of the 4th year to think about. (That should cost, I think, 0.69 * 3.345 = ~2.3 times as much as 1 year, but that’s calculating via a more accurate method than the designer itself is using for the 1YR calculation. So we have 6 apples plus 2.3 oranges, but an orange is somewhat bigger than an apple.)
The estimated 1YR MSP cost reported by the designer is as follows:
Original (IFR 5%): 332
Study (IFR 9.5%): 632
Taking those numbers at face value (they are actually overestimates of the average expectation, but that’s a separate discussion), and understanding that a 2-year deployment costs 3x a 1-year deployment, we could expect the Study to use about 900 more MSP than the Original over a 2-year mission.
That’s certainly not worth saving 122BP in build cost and reducing tonnage by <1.5%.
Especially when you consider that the BP cost of the ship does not include the BP cost of the MSP needed to stock the newly-built ship.
Original: 2909
Study: 5527
That’s an additional upfront cost of ~650BP.
Which makes it more expensive to build and stock the Study than the Original.
Thanks for indulging me.
I hadn’t had an opportunity before to compare eng approaches for large, engineless, long-deployment military ships with thin armor. It looks like a very expensive way to shave just a smidge of tonnage. It also uses 13% less crew, but that’s literally never been an issue for me in any of my playthroughs.
And it also loses DCR in the bargain, although you can trade back the tonnage for DCR, and come out at roughly same tonnage, but gaining DCR. Not that DCR is of much import for this ship. It is not intended to be in combat, and the marginal reduction to repair time for damaged parasites is probably not going to make the difference in any single combat, or make a difference in long-term logistics of an ongoing campaign.
I just got finished rereading Weber’s “On Basilisk Station” and a recurring theme is devious veteran officers training the next generation.
I did enjoy getting in the shoes of an Ensign in the engineering department for this exercise.
Just because I am a nitpicker:
A relaxed peacetime deployment scheme with missions under 1 year, to avoid compounding maintenance costs, would not change the equation appreciably.
Study 01 and 02 can be quietly retired and filed under “good to know”.
Thanks for the feedback. Sorry I may have let out a part or over looked it. Yes one would want to stop the maintenance clock I would think.
Thus it seems one might want a tug commercial, an outer carrier station that is commercial and an inner carrier station/hanger that is military to stop the clock and the battle ship furthermost inside. But I have not tested it yet. At this point it is all theory to me.
Tugs as a separate component means one can we place the engine tech propelling the commercial carrier without redoing the carrier and also one can build the carrier station via construction factories if needed/desired.
If one is using missile as the offensive weapon one could also potentially park the stations and use the same tug to pull that battle platform meaning one could remove engine from the warship/platform. That could allow for lower repair costs and use of smaller military ship yards but would add the costs of missiles including workers and minerals. At least that is a theory of mine combat testing might prove it a sub-optimal but I think it could at least be an interesting attempt to reduce up keep.
9.35 years maint life / 1.1% IFR / 82% AFR - 9.8% eng space, 0.8 main eng, 1.5% maint space - 12.1% total for maint.
120 months deployment time - 68% CDE - 4.3% crew quarters
Total of 16.4% of the total tonnage, or 3280 tons, or an extra of 6 500T bombers lost capacity.
For 10 years of deployment time, and reduced management overhead, I consider this a worthwhile trade and a successful doctrine.
Unfortunately Skoormit (with a little help from me) just showed the inefficiency of that approach.
The problem is the ComCarrier shell, whether it comes with an external tug or as internal part of a ship - it adds too much tonnage on its own and requires maintenance modules on top of that.
The military hangar station with extended maintenance life is a far cheaper and far more flexible proposition.
Don’t let that assessment stop you though.
"Where would we end up if everyone said, ‘Where would we end up?’ and nobody went to see where we’d end up if we set off?"
Prepare to enjoy a hearty chuckle.
Here we are a couple-few days into pondering this concept, and only now it finally occurs to me: if you have a commercial hangar and maintenance modules, your battleship doesn’t need to park in a military hangar. It can park directly in the commercial hangar. The maintenance modules keep the maintenance clock zeroed. The only thing you lose is repair capability. For about the same cost as that military carrier, you could instead build a station with repair modules. It will be close to twice the size, but it will be a commercial ship.