Discovery Factories and shipyards

[Agmen of Eladesor]

I'm going to start this discussion due to a comment made in another thread.

I find it difficult to understand or comprehend that people don't quite understand modern (as in, what we have today in real life) factory and assembly line technology, and seem to be unwilling to extend that into our disco future, which is based effectively 1,000 T-years from now.

I use for a modern, real world example, a local auto assembly plant. Note that I call it an assembly plant, because the only component that is actually made on site is the steel body of the vehicle itself.

On an average day, 20 tractor trailers will bring in coils of steel. 6 stamping presses take those coils and convert them into fenders, hoods, doors, and assorted internal structural components. These components then go to the body shop, where they are welded together almost entirely by robots, with only minor human interactions - primarily in the quality control area. They then go into a paint shop, where they are painted, again mostly by robots. The painted bodies then go into the trim shop, where all of the parts are put onto and into the steel body which make it a car.

You'll typically have 100 tractor trailers per day bringing in trim parts, but a lot of those are the seats which are made in a factory about 20 miles away, so those are continually shuttling back and forth. The engines are assembled on site as well.

Now, from the time a painted body hits the trim shop, it's normally about 5 hours until it's a fully completed car. But they don't make one car at a time - that's why it's called an asembly line. What THAT means is that about every 2 minutes, a new car rolls off the end of the line. Running two shifts per day means that they're producing, on average, 450 cars per day.

That's one auto assembly plant, with 3,000 employees. Granted, there are about 15 OTHER factories running to support this one factory (not including the tire company), so that's another 7,000 or so workers. But those OTHER factories are also making parts for OTHER auto assembly plants as well. After all, a wire harness is a wire harness is a wire harness - the only difference is the ends and where they need to go. That's why you see a Subaru or Toyota with a Delphi wire harness in it. So those 7,000 other people may be making parts that supply 5 auto assembly plants. (And yes, that does happen. That's why we have here in Indiana alone 4 different vehicle assembly plants for four different car companies - yet some of their internal parts ARE the same.)

So we're talking about 2,000 cars per day - 10,000 per week - made here in Indiana, right now.

My point with this being - that's today, real world, 2012.

Why would we assume that in Discovery people are making spaceships over open forges with chunks of steel like you forge armor in Skyrim, pounding them out with a hammer?

That seems to be the rationale put forth by those people who argue that our organizations in Discovery can't build ships.

There are (according the planet info card) more than 4 billion people on Manhattan alone. That's nearly as many as we have on Earth today. We have in-space smelters to refine ores from asteroids so you don't have to dig up the planetary surface, in-space shipyards and factories to assemble things, and the level of robots - including effectively autonomous robots (all those bartenders, right?). Robots that don't need air - or gravity - to do their thing.

So what you'd have is an orbital factory that does nothing but make space-ship seats. There'd be transports hauling those seats to all the shipyards in space. Most hull components are going to be fairly standardized. Again, a wiring run and harness is a wiring run and harness is wiring run and harness. So you'd have a factory in Liberty supplying components for not only the ships that Liberty builds but also to those ships that are sub-contracted through some company for Liberty. It's entirely possible that you might find that same company supplying parts through a re-shipper to every ship in Bretonia, Kusari, and maybe even Rheinland.

So the Zoners want to build a series of ships. They're not going to build everything from scratch, over an open firepit. They'll bring in x amount of electronic components from a Liberty factory, y amount of components from a Bretonian factory, z amount of hull components from a Rheinland factory.

Think about it - first you have one robot, capable of making other robots, presuming you give him enough raw or other materials. Say it takes him one day to make another robot. Anyone ever seen the checkerboard geometric progression? Day two you have two robots that make two more so you have four robots. Day three you have four robots that make eight. Day four you have eight robots that sixteen. Day 5, 32. Day 6, 64. Day 7, 128. Day 8, 256. Day 9, 512. Day 10, 1024. Day 11, 2056. Day 12, 4112. Now you pull half of those robots out to start making space ships. You know have 2056 robots - each making another 2056 robots per day - and 2056 robots making spaceships the first day. 4112 the second day. 6078 the third day. How long do you think it's going to take 10,000 robots that don't need air to make a spaceship? Really?

I'd be amazed if it took them more than 2 weeks to knock out any battleship in the game. That's what you have when you get a shipyard - thousands of robots that simply need components to put together a ship or a series of ships. The actual limiting factor would be in the raw materials you can get. Do you make 300 Titans this week, or 1/2 an Ossie?

Now - again, with what we can make today, now, in 2012 - tens of thousands of autos and their equivalent per day - and that's IN ADDITION to all of the consumer goods we also make now - why would you consider in the least that we cannot assemble and make all of the spaceships that we role-play that we have made 1,000 years in the future? (Seriously - could something as basic as a StarFlea be any more complex than a semi tractor? One of those rolls off the Peterbilt assembly line about every 10 minutes - which doesn't include the Volvo, Mack, Freightliner, or OTHER assembly lines...)

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Oh god... The end of days... Agmen agreed with me.

[cmfalconer]

Not to be a stickler, and knowing how well real-life comparisons are received by the "community", I have to nit-pick a bit.

The analogy of large-scale ship building in Sirius to assembly-line factory production of automobiles is a bit off.

To cut it to the quick, I'd be more inclined to agree with your arguments if the real-life comparison was instead to large-ship building, specifically military aircraft carriers.

These would make a much more palpable argument, but would in essence kill your argument as well, as one carrier can take 2-3 years to build (comparable to battleships).

Merchant ships, however, are cranked out much more quickly. During the height of WWII, merchant ships were being launched at the rate of 3-5 a day...from close to 25 shipyards. That's roughly one per week per shipyard (~6 days).

Sadly, I can't 100% agree with your argument in this case. Sorry.

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[rewritable]

I've always operated out out assumption that majority of ships, including the largest of capitals, are actually dirt cheap and made mostly of tinfoil. That would explain why everyone and their dog can build some.

Actually, making a half-decent battleship for a somewhat resource-limited faction would be easier than making a half-decent snubcraft. Once you don't have to deal with miniaturization, constructions gets quite a lot easier.

Making top-of-the-line warships is another story, though.

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[Fletcher]

A problem for space contruction I can see for capital ships is the actual size of the plant, or dry dock. You can get automated systems to operate on the ship, but the main bottleneck is applying the refined materials to the ship itself, I currently don't see the full automated system working since I am assuming this is the current workload for the dry dock.

1. Construct the chassis/superstructure of the ship.
   
2. Apply internal 'deck' structure
   
3. Install reactor, engine, and basic sensor systems for diagnostics
   
4. Begin applying external armour units
   
5. Install life support modules, gravity module, weapons power units
   
6. Finish armour
   
7. Full installation of electronics systems
   
8. Install basic weaponry
   
9. Commence testing of vessel on a semi-operational level
   
10. Finalize installation of all optronics, weapons and sensor units
    
11. Test again for any malfunctions, and continue diagnostics.
    
12. Apply final external 'decals'.
    
13. Finish weapon testing, load up supplies.
    
14. Commission the ship.
    

A lot of the above is at the moment automated, except for the internal systems I believe, you can get robotic units to do it, but eventually, you need actual engineers on hand.

The only way I can see it being fully automated is if we build 'complete-dry-docks' where the entire internal superstructure of the shipyard can construct the ship without moving it at all. Meaning you can install 'slices' of the ship one at a time. In theory, it'll be faster, if each slice or piece is installed correctly. The main problem is the engines, reactor and optronic systems. They still need manual work.

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"Oh chuffing blimey, another day, another person being whiney!"
Fletcher's Feedback and Stories Thread

[RmJ]

Slap fuel requirements and I say yeah. Makes this game more than just a noobfest.

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[eleyos]

TLDR: Battleships in Disco are as easy to build as modern mass manufactured cars.

It's wrong.

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Sorry, this whole post sounds like a blatant attempt to provide an excuse to PvP without any real role-play to back it up.

[Sarawr!?]

I've always been of the opinion that shipbuilding in Discovery, at least for the Houses is similar, though maybe faster and more efficient than Military shipbuilding now.

i.e. instead of having people building the hulls they're being built by large industrial machines with people contributing to installation of components and such.

I still hold that say Battleships and Carriers at least take close to a year to build in Discovery, but smaller capital ships like Cruisers Destroyers and Gunboats are being mass produced and churned out several at a time every couple months.

And even though in my mind a Carrier takes close to a year, they're not building them one at a time. So say, every year they roll a bunch of new carriers out of the shipyards.

At least in the Houses.

As for pirate factions (Other than Outcasts and Corsairs, who have their own de facto Houses), I'm still not sure how they'd ever have the industrial capability to compete with House military ship production.

All in my mind.

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[LN] Recruitment | Rachel Baker Bio

[Dab]

@Agmen;

I can't believe you just compared a spaceship to a car.

Calling NASA now.

Also, it takes more than 2 minutes for every car to come out of the factory. I believe it's more like every 10-15, which significantly changes the statistics.

Also (2), building spaceships would be far more comparable to aircraft than cars. And we don't make a new plane every few minutes, nor do we make so many every day. They are hugely expensive, complex, and time-consuming to design and create, not to mention quality checks (which would have to be far more strict with a spaceship).

Lastly, I don't know who you're targeting your argument at, as I don't know of anyone who roleplays what you're ranting against.


Now change your comparison to take into account the fact that a freighter, transport, and capships are more likely huge tankers and military warships, and it kind of kills your theory in how fast we should be producing them.

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[Sarawr!?]

Whoops, I forgot to mention in my first post here that say, snubcraft (Fighters, Bombers) are similar to Aircraft. In the Houses snubcraft are probably being produced at a rate of "X number of craft produced every couple weeks"

Refer back to initial post for Caps.

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[LN] Recruitment | Rachel Baker Bio

[Reaver Company Inc.]

(Kaze here, cba to switch accounts in the phone)

I can respect and accept the fact that the level of construction and building in the Freelancer time would be extremely advanced and fast.

But we are talking about space-ships.

If people want to imagine the level of dificulty of that, let's just say about security procedures, tests of integrity, double and triple runs of checks and maintanceb of each sector while the ship per se is being built.

Without adding that several new models and improvements that are crancked out of a House Military or a shipbuilding faction.

Let's add to the equation, that each ship is or will be big. There are size constraints with that regarding the capability that a shipyard can produce.

Etc. Do your best imagining possible problems that can occurr while building a capital vessel, and you can bet they will happen if no protocols to prevent it are in place.

TL,DR: Capital shipbuilding isn't just grab the materials and slap it on a body. No wonder small factions have 0 to no chance to build or maintain just one without outside support.

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