Add more stats to the ship actor

[jonepatr]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
There are several ship stats that are useful to track that currently are not part of the ship actor.

Describe the solution you'd like
Add fields to track:

• armor
• thrust
• spent thrust
• j-drive value
• traits?
• fuel operation time
• sensor type
• Cargo space
• hull size
• state rooms

Probably in a new tab for most of these, however some of them like thrust/spent thrust and armor would be good too have on the main page (since they are being changed or referred to during combat often)

Describe alternatives you've considered
Keep it in the notes section

Additional context

[kkirss]

(This is from MgT2e perspective, some details might differ for Cepheus)

There is the component tab and there are various types of components.

I created components for Hull, M-Drive, J-Drive, Power Plant etc. There are rating, total quantity and available quantity fields. I used rating for fixed stats (e.g. J-Drive) and available/total quantity for e.g. cargo space, thrust points, staterooms etc.
I used WeighT for tracking the tonnage of the components. There are power draw and damage/critical hits fields too.

I like the component-based approach a bit more than having separate fields for various stats (especially for rarely changing stats like total tonnage etc.). It allows you to go into more granularity, if you want. It's more generic so easier to fit into different rulesets, house rules etc. In general, it more closely resembles how the ships are actually constructed.

There are multiple problems with the components though. (And proposed solutions for them):

1. As the component list grows long, it can be quite hard to find everything. I improved it a bit by adding prefixes to components. For example 'Accom:' for staterooms, 'Turrets:' for turrets, 'SW:' for software etc. This at least keeps similar things grouped together.
   1. If the components were grouped, it would make it easier to follow.
   2. Some components could be split into different tabs too. Turrets and software seem like the best candidates.
2. It's very cumbersome to set all of the components up. Most ships will have a hull, M-Drive, J-Drive, Power Plant, Fuel Tanks, Bridge etc. Creating all of them takes time.
   1. Would be nice to have them as pre-created components.
3. Using quantity for power, stateroom count, cargo space etc feels like a work-around.
   1. If the component type was used to change the available fields, it would make it more explicit. Each component type could then specify 2 fields as 'the main tracker' (e.g. power- and thrust rating available/total). And show that in the summary row. Could make the first of those fields editable in the summary row for easier changing.
4. There is duplication between these fields and the existing hull size, armor, power management etc. Adding more stats would increase this duplication.
   1. The various types and fields could be used for most of these stats. For example, you could take the bandwidth of all software and add it up for used bandwidth. And compare that to the computer total bandwidth. You could calculate the running costs.
5. There are some 'meta-fields' (fields for all component types) that could be useful:
   • A simple enabled/disabled for power, software, etc. management.
   • Tonnage.

I think all of the above would essentially solve the original issue.

What do you think?

All of this could be implemented incrementally, roughly in the listed order.
I'm no stranger to HTML, CSS & Typescript so I'd be happy to help with this. I don't have any experience with Foundry system development though.

[jonepatr]

I think you raise some good points, and these would be welcome changes! Components was recently introduced and we are currently giving the ships a quite large overhaul, so it would be great if you would like to help us on this journey! If you are not already on discord please join the discord channel to take part of the latest discussions.

[kkirss]

Great, sounds good.

I tried joining the Discord channel but it seems that the invite link is expired/invalid. Could you update it or ask someone who can? (in the README so others can also join)

[jonepatr]

It's updated now. Posting it here just in case as well: https://discord.gg/7GFVvVRQDZ