Crossroad Yardships [AU: Vela Corridor]

[Retry]

Crossroad Yardships

The Crossroad Republic's Whittle Network consists of hundreds of Jumpships and thousands of varieties of Space Stations, Dropships, and other space-based infrastructure.  All these assets, one may reasonably assume, require a similarly robust repair and maintenance system in place.

By far the most common civillian Yardship in the Republic's hangars are the Starlifter Yardship (CR: Crossroad Variant).  The 500 MTon vessel possesses a 100 MTon-capacity pressurized repair bay, which is capable of swift and thorough repairs of all Dropship elements, some smaller Space Station based terminals, and the ubiquitous Whittle-class Jumpship.  Its signature feature is a Lithium-fusion battery, which effectively doubles the effective range of the Starlifter.  This reduces the number of Starlifter Yardships required to adequately cover the Crossroad Republic's jumpship network by roughly a factor of 4, more than making up for the slight increase in overal capital cost.  As with most other Whittle network Jumpship designs, the Starlifter lacks the amenities required for long-term habitation, and is thus not feasible to operate outside such Whittle networks.

Though it shares its name with the Starlifter Jumpship, few components are actually shared between the two designs; as a result of the upscaling and K-F core modification with the L-F battery means that the core ships are sufficiently different such that it's less expensive to construct new Starlifter Yardships than it is to convert a Starlifter Jumpship to a Yardship configuration.

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Starlifter Yardship (CR)
Mass: 500,000 tons
Technology Base: Inner Sphere (Advanced)
Introduced: 3000
Mass: 500,000
Battle Value: 2,096
Tech Rating/Availability: D/X-E-D-F
Cost: 2,422,153,625 C-bills
Fuel: 100 tons (250)
Safe Thrust: 0
Maximum Thrust: 0
Sail Integrity: 6
KF Drive Integrity: 10
Heat Sinks: 154
Structural Integrity: 1
Armor
     Nose: 26
     Fore Sides: 20/20
     Aft Sides: 17/17
     Aft: 11
Cargo
Bay 1: Standard Repair Facility (Pressurized) (100,000) 1 Door
Bay 2: Small Craft (2) 2 Doors
Bay 3: Cargo (Liquid) (10.0 tons) 1 Door
Bay 4: Cargo (Refrigerated) (10.0 tons) 1 Door
Bay 5: Cargo (437.017 tons) 10 Doors
Dropship Capacity: 0
Grav Decks: 0
Escape Pods: 0
Life Boats: 10
Crew: 7 officers, 24 enlisted/non-rated, 10 bay personnel, 20 passengers (61 First Class Quarters)
Ammunition: None
Notes: Equipped with lithium-fusion battery system and 277.5 tons of standard aerospace armor.
None
Weapons: Capital Attack Values (Standard)
Arc (Heat) Heat SRV MRV LRV ERV Class
As vital as Crossroadian Yardships are to their home nation, their export variants are even more numerous in the Inner Sphere.

Intrepid Aerospace's Sloop & Starlifter Yardships are export Jumpship variants designed to appeal to an Inner Sphere audience.  They sport a more traditional design, equipped with light defensive weaponry and gravity decks.  In both cases, the front of the ship houses the expandable repair bay, while the rear houses a Dropship docking hardpoint which is used to ferry any extra heavy maintenance equipment and spare parts into the primary maintenance area.  The Sloop is optimized for the repair of the vast majority of Inner Sphere dropships with a 20,000 ton pressurized repair bay, and the Starlifter is optimized to repair most other Jumpships with a 430,000 ton unpressurized bay.

Due to the relatively low cost of Starlifters and especially Sloops compared to their larger and dramatically more expensive competitors (Faslanes and Newgranges), both types are massively popular in the Inner Sphere.  Intrepid Aerospace carved out a substantial market share due to holding a de-facto monopoly on the low-end Yardship market for decades, with their export markets only dropping significantly once several Jumpship manufacturers in the Great Houses began producing suspiciously similar designs.

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Sloop Yardship
Mass: 160,000 tons
Technology Base: Inner Sphere (Advanced)
Introduced: 2975
Mass: 160,000
Battle Value: 2,807
Tech Rating/Availability: D/X-E-D-F
Cost: 752,570,583 C-bills
Fuel: 200 tons (1,000)
Safe Thrust: 0
Maximum Thrust: 0
Sail Integrity: 4
KF Drive Integrity: 4
Heat Sinks: 156
Structural Integrity: 1
Armor
     Nose: 12
     Fore Sides: 10/10
     Aft Sides: 8/8
     Aft: 5
Cargo
Bay 1: Standard Repair Facility (Pressurized) (20,000) 5 Doors
Bay 2: Cargo (678.5 tons) 6 Doors
Dropship Capacity: 1
Grav Decks: 1 (250 m)
Escape Pods: 0
Life Boats: 10
Crew: 5 officers, 9 enlisted/non-rated, 12 gunners, 34 passengers
Ammunition: None
Notes: Mounts 88.5 tons of standard aerospace armor.
Weapons: Capital Attack Values (Standard)
Arc (Heat) Heat SRV MRV LRV ERV Class
Nose (66 Heat)
6 PPC 60 6(60) 6(60) 0(0) 0(0) PPC
6 Small Laser 6 2(18) 0(0) 0(0) 0(0) Point Defense
FRS/FLS (66 Heat)
6 PPC 60 6(60) 6(60) 0(0) 0(0) PPC
6 Small Laser 6 2(18) 0(0) 0(0) 0(0) Point Defense
ARS/ALS (66 Heat)
6 PPC 60 6(60) 6(60) 0(0) 0(0) PPC
6 Small Laser 6 2(18) 0(0) 0(0) 0(0) Point Defense
Aft (66 Heat)
6 PPC 60 6(60) 6(60) 0(0) 0(0) PPC
6 Small Laser 6 2(18) 0(0) 0(0) 0(0) Point Defense

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Starlifter Yardship
Mass: 500,000 tons
Technology Base: Inner Sphere (Advanced)
Introduced: 3010
Mass: 500,000
Battle Value: 3,379
Tech Rating/Availability: D/X-E-D-F
Cost: 3,625,797,917 C-bills
Fuel: 250 tons (625)
Safe Thrust: 0
Maximum Thrust: 0
Sail Integrity: 6
KF Drive Integrity: 10
Heat Sinks: 154
Structural Integrity: 1
Armor
     Nose: 26
     Fore Sides: 20/20
     Aft Sides: 17/17
     Aft: 11
Cargo
Bay 1: Standard Repair Facility (Unpressurized) (430,000) 5 Doors
Bay 2: Cargo (620.0 tons) 10 Doors
Dropship Capacity: 1
Grav Decks: 1 (250 m)
Escape Pods: 0
Life Boats: 17
Crew: 8 officers, 23 enlisted/non-rated, 12 gunners, 57 passengers
Ammunition: None
Notes: Mounts 277.5 tons of standard aerospace armor.
Weapons: Capital Attack Values (Standard)
Arc (Heat) Heat SRV MRV LRV ERV Class
Nose (54 Heat)
6 Large Laser 48 5(48) 5(48) 0(0) 0(0) Laser
6 Small Laser 6 2(18) 0(0) 0(0) 0(0) Point Defense
FRS/FLS (54 Heat)
6 Large Laser 48 5(48) 5(48) 0(0) 0(0) Laser
6 Small Laser 6 2(18) 0(0) 0(0) 0(0) Point Defense
ARS/ALS (54 Heat)
6 Large Laser 48 5(48) 5(48) 0(0) 0(0) Laser
6 Small Laser 6 2(18) 0(0) 0(0) 0(0) Point Defense
Aft (54 Heat)
6 Small Laser 6 2(18) 0(0) 0(0) 0(0) Point Defense
6 Large Laser 48 5(48) 5(48) 0(0) 0(0) Laser
In terms of military-grade Yardships, the most interesting one in the Crossroadian arsenal is the Prarie-class Warship Tender.

In what became known as the Yamara Incident after the system it occurred in, a small fleet of rogue elements from Clan Ghost Bear jumped into Crossroadian territory led by a Leviathan II flagship, quickly destroying 2 of 3 Frigates stationed at the world (the third escaped).  The fleet dispatched land elements to raid the planet.  However, through a series of fortunate events, about a company of Crossroadian Commando-Marines, stranded planetside after the destruction of their assigned Frigates, managed to clandestinely capture a raiding Overlord-C with the assistance of the resisting planetary garrison, trick the Leviathan captain into letting them dock, and burst into the Leviathan proper guns blazing, taking the crew completely by surprise.  Several panic-fueled attempts to liquidate the invaders escalated until culminating the ill-advised attempt to purge them by venting most of the ship; which was only successful at killing their own crew as the Commando-Marine suits were equipped with magnetic clamps and other space-suited modifications as standard.

The Commando-Marines took effective control of the Leviathan II shortly thereafter.  The remaining hostile warships were unsuccessful in attempting to blast away the Leviathan II (whose Commando-Marine crew lacked both the manpower and training to man the guns) before ground-based Aerospace assets were able to wrest control of the situation now that the invader's greatest asset was inoperable.  The capture of this Leviathan II (now in service with the Republican Armed Forces as the RNS Eminent Domain) makes the Battle of Yamara possibly the only documented engagement where one side actually ended up with a greater tonnage of Warships than they had before the fight.

Despite being a massive achievement and nearly as great of a morale victory, the servicing of the newly-captured RNS Eminent Domain was the bane of the Crossroad Republic's naval logisticians.  While the invaders did not manage to destroy the ship, it had undoubtedly been damaged by the quick scuttling attempt.  That, and the fact that the Republic did not field many ships larger than the Texas-class Battleship at the time, meant Crossroads simply did not have the infrastructure to support and repair Leviathan II sized vessels, dooming the ship to become something of a hangar queen over its first decade of service.

It would have undoubtedly been the right move to scrap the RNS Eminent Domain, and indeed High Command wanted this done, but the Crossroad Republican Navy's stubborn resistance to scrapping their newly acquired status symbol and the RNS Eminent Domain's newfound role as a famous Crossroad Republic culture icon (which, unusually, helped make the Eminent Domain herself a debate topic in Congress) combined to make scrapping the vessel politically untenable.  Thus, the search began for a ship design that could actually service the Eminent Domain, which concluded with the construction of the Prairie-class Warship Tender.

The Prairie-class Warship Tender was for about half a century the only Yardship in the Crossroadian arsenal with the capacity to properly repair and service massive warships such as the Leviathan II Class RNS Eminent Domain.  As a ship with this capacity is inherently expensive to produce (More than the Leviathan II Class of ships, in fact), many useful auxiliary features were also included on the ship: A Naval Comms Scanner enables the ship to locate potential threats well before they're in range and maneuver to avoid them, a mobile HPG enables independent communication and potentially allows for calling reinforcements in a pinch, the crew themselves are housed in relatively leisurely conditions with 1st class quarters, spacious Grav Decks, and an expanded cafeteria wing.  Not intended to engage targets on the front lines, armament is limited to point-defense systems and a smattering of Capital and sub-capital lasers about the vessel to dissuade fighter groups and pocket warships from taking any pot shots.

With the operation of the first Prairie-class Warship Tender in 3090, the RNS Eminent Domain finally received a proper refurbishment and finally became an actual, useful asset for the Navy.  It was shortly thereafter formed into the 7th Fleet as one of two leading Capital Ships, the other being Supercarrier RNS Serenity.

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Prairie Tender (3090)
Mass: 1,000,000 tons
Technology Base: Mixed (Advanced)
Introduced: 3090
Mass: 1,000,000
Battle Value: 50,670
Tech Rating/Availability: F/X-X-F-F
Cost: 68,328,088,000 C-bills
Fuel: 15,000 tons (37,500)
Safe Thrust: 3
Maximum Thrust: 5
Sail Integrity: 5
KF Drive Integrity: 21
Heat Sinks: 2000 (4000)
Structural Integrity: 40
Armor
     Nose: 198
     Fore Sides: 163/163
     Aft Sides: 144/144
     Aft: 92
Cargo
Bay 1: Standard Repair Facility (Pressurized) (2,500,000) 6 Doors
Bay 2: Small Craft (8) 2 Doors
Bay 3: Fighter (18) 6 Doors
Bay 4: Cargo (60670.0 tons) 4 Doors
Dropship Capacity: 2
Grav Decks: 4 (250 m, 250 m, 250 m, 250 m)
Escape Pods: 0
Life Boats: 100
Crew: 80 officers, 196 enlisted/non-rated, 84 gunners, 76 bay personnel, 151 passengers, 30 BA marines
Ammunition: None
Notes: Equipped with lithium-fusion battery system, 1 Mobile Hyperpulse Generators (Mobile HPG), 3 Field Kitchen, 1 Naval Comm-Scanner Suite (Large), and 800 tons of lamellor ferro-carbide armor.
Weapons: Capital Attack Values (Standard)
Arc (Heat) Heat SRV MRV LRV ERV Class
Nose (740 Heat)
8 Naval Laser 55 680 44(440) 44(440) 44(440) 44(440) Capital Laser
12 Laser AMS 60 4(36) 0(0) 0(0) 0(0) AMS
FRS/FLS (740 Heat)
8 Naval Laser 55 680 44(440) 44(440) 44(440) 44(440) Capital Laser
12 Laser AMS 60 4(36) 0(0) 0(0) 0(0) AMS
RBS/LBS (328 Heat)
12 Sub-Capital Laser /1 288 12(120) 12(120) 12(120) 0(0) Sub-Capital Laser
8 Laser AMS 40 2(24) 0(0) 0(0) 0(0) AMS
ARS/ALS (328 Heat)
12 Sub-Capital Laser /1 288 12(120) 12(120) 12(120) 0(0) Sub-Capital Laser
8 Laser AMS 40 2(24) 0(0) 0(0) 0(0) AMS
Aft (328 Heat)
8 Laser AMS 40 2(24) 0(0) 0(0) 0(0) AMS
12 Sub-Capital Laser /1 288 12(120) 12(120) 12(120) 0(0) Sub-Capital Laser

[Lagrange]

Thanks for this.

Comparing Starlifter Yardship to the Voyager Yardship, it is a more complete design, so it can operate without further jump-capable unit support.  Due to the LF battery, with adequate jump station support the time spent in transit can be reduced by a factor of 2 and it can immediately jump to assist units within x4 (or x8 if we are going 3d) territory.  It also offers a -5 bonus to repair/replacement instead of -3.

On the negative, the x2.5 cost seems to be primarily driven by the use of a pressurized bay (which costs x2 and requires x3 tonnage).  In addition, a Starlifter Yardship cannot repair another Starlifter Yardship. 

For the Starlifter approach, maybe you want to add a grav deck?  That would finish the otherwise-complete ability to operate independently?

There are some interesting tradeoffs here.  One observation though: if you want your jumpyard to be able to repair an equivalent jumpyard (I do) an unpressurized repair bay is inevitable.  Given that, what about the relative downsides?

• Design completeness. With common use of jump circuit you'll typically be operating on a circuit where sending an extra dropship down the circuit to assist repairs is quite viable.  For the off-circuit use case, you'll need to invest an extra jumpship.
• Yard speed.  Jumpyards can both transport stuff and get to places where repairs are needed.  The lower price means you can transport more stuff, so getting to the place where repairs are needed seems like the interesting question.  The time cost of getting to a place amortizes with the time cost of repairs here, so the immediate double jump capability seems rarely useful as repairs typically take at least weeks.
• Repair bonus.  You can take extra time twice (x4 time) for a -2 bonus to make an unpressurized yard comparable to a pressurized one.  This still leaves the advantage plausibly with the pressurized yard though.

Overall, it seems viable to stick with unpressurized, but for very difficult repairs (KF drive damage is the exemplar) the pressurized approach is a real advantage.

[Retry]

Unpressurized bays are viable, but Crossroad's economy greatly benefits from thorough, timely repairs & maintenance of their aerospace fleet.  Longer-than-anticipated repairs and - worse - accidental damage from repair mishaps can easily results in millions or even billions of C-Bills in damages from freight disruption, per incident.  As such, premium accommodations like pressurized repair bays and expanded tech crews (4x larger than normal for a bonus of +3) are the norm for Crossroadian civillian vessels.

Alas, a Jumpship can't really get enough pressurized repair facility tonnage to repair itself.  It's pretty much unavoidable, so a much more expensive compact-drive warship would be required to service the big Jumpships.  Fortunately, you don't need nearly as many of them as you need Starlifter Yardship CRs, since there's not as many of the big ships as the smaller Dropships & Whittle Jumpships (plus the big ones are concentrated near the core, so one could feasibly make repair Space Stations for that instead).

I guess it could use something like a 95-meter Gravdeck.  It's not intended to operate outside of Whittle Networks, but it could be useful if the ship has to operate away from jump points where Space Station depots are that the crews are expected to live on between repairs.

Many of the regular repairs seem to be surprisingly quick for Space-based ships:  Only 24 hrs for Gravity Decks or 6 hrs for a K-F boom, for instance.  Non-repair preventative maintenance is only 3 hrs for Dropships, 6 hrs for Jumpships, and 24 hrs for Warships.  Time shoots up dramatically for total replacements, though.

[Lagrange]

I looked into repair/replacement rules a little bit.

Costwise, the only thing which matters is KF-drive damage.  If you can repair KF-drive damage, you save ~300M over a replacement.  So, the question is: how low can you make the odds of failure to repair? Using an unpressurized repair bay and x4 extra time, you pick up a -6 modifier implying a regular tech crew fails 1-in-6, a veteran crew 1-in-12, and an elite crew 1-in-36.  If these are used in succession on failure of the previous crew, then the odds of failure are 3.9e-4.  To do this, you need one veteran crew for every 6 regular tech crews, and one elite crew for every 3 veteran crews, which sounds fairly reasonable as an expertise distribution.  3.9e-4 is low enough that the expected cost of replacement is reduced to ~116K which seems much more acceptable.

If instead, we have a pressurized repair bay, the odds of failure are 1-in-36, then 1-in-36 for a veteran crew, then 1-in-36 for an elite crew which works out to an expected ~6.4K.  That's much lower in a relative sense, but it matters less in an absolute sense.  I think the question is: at what point does the 110K difference pay for the x2 price of a pressurized repair bay?  The answer seems to be ~900 years (=900M/.110M * 40 days/repair). 

Alternatively, you could use the pressurized repair bay to double the speed of repairs by taking x2 time instead of x4.  However, this yields no significant advantage in a commercial context since you can just have 2 unpressurized repair bays instead for the same throughput. 

Another alternative is not spending any extra time on repairs.  Then, with a pressurized repair bay, you are at 10-in-36, 1-in-6, then 1-in-12 which works out to an expected cost of 1.157M.   A half-price unpressurized repair bay needs to take x3 time to achieve the same expected cost. implying the pressurized repair bay is about 50% more efficient in terms of KF drive repairs over system cost. 

The above makes me think that you could generally go either way in terms of pressurized vs. unpressurized repair bay.  With unpressurized, you'll have about twice as many (plus the ability for a yard to repair a yard), but you'll tend to be slower in the repairs.  This works out to as much as 50% better throughput for the pressurized repair bay to 100% better throughput with a pair of unpressurized yards depending on risk tolerance and repair problem.  In terms of the repair latency, pressurized wins by 0% to 300% which may tip the balance.