Semi-cheat to speed up your ships

[Jeb]

Lately I've been speeding up my exploration ships by putting emergency movement and emergency resupply pods on them. No big innovation so far--that's what the pods are supposed to do. However, if you add a repair bay to the pods, you get a ship that gets extra movement EVERY TURN, along with effectively unlimited range. True, you need ships larger than escorts to pull this off, but you get your scouting done pretty quickly. The main drawback is that it takes a lot of micromanagement. Also, I can't help but feeling that it's a bit of a cheat. Repairing movement pods makes sense, I guess--you overload the engines or something getting the extra juice out of them, and then Scotty has to work overtime to get them back to full capacity by next turn. With supply pod, though, it should really only be possible to "repair" (i.e., re-fill) them at starbases or resupply depots.

[Comar]

Yeah, you see this also later on with planet and warp building techs. It is kind of a cheat, but right now there isn't anything stopping it. BTW, this works on boarding parties also.

Another way of doing the same thing is build a fleet and have a dedicated repair ship as part of the fleet. That way your war vessels don't have space taken up with repair bays.

[Taqwus]

Erg. Maybe repairs should only be possible when both the repairer and the repairee have been stationary for a full turn (although that's a bit dodgy on a .1-year-turn basis methinks...).

If components had another field, say, "uses" or "charges", that could only be restored at a base or resupply depot...

(Incidentally, would one be able make one-shot missile racks and other disposable weapons with the destroyed-after-use flag? I'd prefer the above ability -- 'uses' to simulate rearming, etc, but hmm.)

------------------
-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[Jeb]

Good idea. As long as you're using a space yard rather than a mere repair bay, I'd be happier. Of course, you could then include space yard ships in the fleet... Space yard ships are expensive and take a long time to build, though, so you probably wouldn't wind up using them as scouts. Still, it seems wrong to have a single ship allowed to repair itself, and even worse to allow it to resupply itself. I just don't see how you could code it so that only a planet or starbase could recharge emergency pods, though.