Fractal Softworks Forum

Starsector => General Discussion => Blog Posts => Topic started by: Alex on January 20, 2017, 01:17:06 PM

Title: Ship Recovery
Post by: Alex on January 20, 2017, 01:17:06 PM
Blog post here (http://fractalsoftworks.com/2017/01/20/ship-recovery/).
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: arcibalde on January 20, 2017, 01:24:27 PM
Nice  ;D
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Schwartz on January 20, 2017, 01:39:08 PM
I held my breath until the you can “restore” a ship to peak condition bit.

What happens when a several times over rescued ship has all d-mods already on it? Is it just non-recoverable from then on? Does it just stay there?
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Cycerin on January 20, 2017, 01:48:05 PM
Autofit! Does that imply procedural variants on ships generated in the campaign as well?
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: NikolaiLev on January 20, 2017, 01:52:54 PM
I dunno if I want to make a suggestion about this proper as I've never been certain it was a great idea, but...

When I first started playing Starsector I thought I could increase the chances of recovering ships by destroying them "gently."  Basically, avoiding damage post-kill, as well as using a greater proportion of EMP damage to disable it before destruction.

So, have you ever considered giving players in-gameplay ways of increasing their ability to capture ships?  Using things like EMP weapons to disable it before/instead of killing it; it would be time-consuming and tactically not very viable (as other ships can come in to assist before you're done) but if you're clever enough or simply have the overwhelming firepower to do so it would allow you to more easily secure ships.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Alex on January 20, 2017, 01:57:22 PM
I held my breath until the you can “restore” a ship to peak condition bit.

Ha! Yeah, I can see that :)

What happens when a several times over rescued ship has all d-mods already on it? Is it just non-recoverable from then on? Does it just stay there?

Restoring a ship removes all d-mods, so at that point it's just new again.

A several-times-recovered ship will just have more d-mods, up to 4 total, and will cost more to recover - a base multiplier, and an extra multiplier for each d-mod.


Autofit! Does that imply procedural variants on ships generated in the campaign as well?

Not for this release, but there's definitely the potential for it. Performance-wise, it's probably not good enough to do for every ship being created, so would have to be a bit more clever (e.g. outfit enemy ships when you encounter them), etc.


So, have you ever considered giving players in-gameplay ways of increasing their ability to capture ships?  Using things like EMP weapons to disable it before/instead of killing it; it would be time-consuming and tactically not very viable (as other ships can come in to assist before you're done) but if you're clever enough or simply have the overwhelming firepower to do so it would allow you to more easily secure ships.

Yeah, I've thought about it and I think it's come up before. I'd just as soon stay away from it because of how much it would mess with the AI. Either they'd be overkilling something you didn't want overkilled, or they'd be getting taken out while trying to be too cautious. Plus it's not at all certain that this would be more fun, and might indeed feel required to do more often than the player would like.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Tartiflette on January 20, 2017, 01:59:08 PM
Very interesting, but I already maxed out my "looking forward to play this update" already... Oo

I have a couple of questions though:
Does construction rigs have any role regarding recovering ships during the battle? Or do they just stand back in a corner?

And how does the variant auto outfit manages mods? If weapons have to mention what they are upgrade or downgrade of, it could represent several hundreds of weapons to check with all the currently active mods. What kind of tags can we expect to have?
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: SafariJohn on January 20, 2017, 02:00:47 PM
Woot!  :D
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Wyvern on January 20, 2017, 02:07:05 PM
This is great - the risk of losing allied hulls is the main reason I've tended towards a solo playstyle, where if I lose a ship at least it's my own fault.  Having ways to mitigate that risk will make a tremendous difference here.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: borgrel on January 20, 2017, 02:10:55 PM
Yummy

Very nice!!

I have no ambiguity at all about this update.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: MesoTroniK on January 20, 2017, 02:24:52 PM
This is going to be... Interesting to do a D sprite version of every single ship in mods.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Nick XR on January 20, 2017, 02:25:05 PM
Well, there goes the desire to save scum.  Huzzah!  Great work Alex.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Techhead on January 20, 2017, 02:27:41 PM
If boarding is gone, are marines gonna just be another commodity for now (a few things current hint at ground/station based ops), or are they kaput entirely?
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Ranakastrasz on January 20, 2017, 02:28:29 PM
Glorious. Just glorious.

I am so looking forward to this update. As is everyone else no doubt.

What are the stats on the new D-mods anyhow? I mean, currently, its something like 30-50% reduction in whatever it effects. Guessing a 10-20%?
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Swarmbot on January 20, 2017, 02:41:50 PM
  Will you be able to remove the (D) hullmods from Luddic Path ships?  If so, I would be willing to spend the credits and turn them into front line ships to hold the enemy back before my main fleet makes it to the middle of the map.

 
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Midnight Kitsune on January 20, 2017, 02:46:00 PM
If boarding is gone, are marines gonna just be another commodity for now (a few things current hint at ground/station based ops), or are they kaput entirely?
I'm 99% sure that boarding is still in the game
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Alex on January 20, 2017, 02:51:28 PM
Very interesting, but I already maxed out my "looking forward to play this update" already... Oo

Fair :)

I have a couple of questions though:
Does construction rigs have any role regarding recovering ships during the battle? Or do they just stand back in a corner?

During battle, absolutely nothing. Post-battle, also nothing, but thinking through some possibilities (sort of as an on-demand Reinforced Bulkheads? but more to think through there).

And how does the variant auto outfit manages mods? If weapons have to mention what they are upgrade or downgrade of, it could represent several hundreds of weapons to check with all the currently active mods. What kind of tags can we expect to have?

It creates some halfway-sensible default tags if a weapon doesn't have any. Tags are stuff like "pd<number>" or "kinetic<number>" or "strike<number>". Higher <number> means "better at the role". There's also a "SR" tag that means something is short-range; what this does is make sure a long-range weapon doesn't get replaced with a short-range on unless it's PD.

Some weapons have multiple role tags, e.g. the Heavy MG has: "kinetic11, pd10, SR". Meaning it's considered primarily a kinetic weapon (so if one isn't available, the autofitter will look for a kinetic weapon to replace it first, *then* a PD weapon).


This is going to be... Interesting to do a D sprite version of every single ship in mods.

Ha - it's optional, btw. The game automatically creates a base (D) hull for everything using the normal sprite. This reminds me, there's a TODO item somewhere to allow for an optional alternate sprite for this auto-generation.

If boarding is gone, are marines gonna just be another commodity for now (a few things current hint at ground/station based ops), or are they kaput entirely?

For now, yeah, just a commodity.


What are the stats on the new D-mods anyhow? I mean, currently, its something like 30-50% reduction in whatever it effects. Guessing a 10-20%?

Glitched Sensor Array is -15% range; Compromised Structure is -25% armor and hull, Comromised Armor/Hull are -33%, it's all along these lines. Notably, the campaign sensor penalty of Degraded Engines is much less now, though it still has -1 burn.


  Will you be able to remove the (D) hullmods from Luddic Path ships?  If so, I would be willing to spend the credits and turn them into front line ships to hold the enemy back before my main fleet makes it to the middle of the map.

Hah, I was wondering if someone would ask that - yes! You can get a Luddic Path <whatever> with the built-in Safety Overrides and without the Ill-Advised Modifications. Can get a Mudskipper Mk.2 fixed up, too.


I'm 99% sure that boarding is still in the game

Pretty sure I mentioned explicitly that the ship recovery stuff replaces it, but if I didn't: it does :)
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Midnight Kitsune on January 20, 2017, 02:57:22 PM
Wow, no more boarding is a surprise!
Oh and does SS now only use the generated D sprites or does it use the old, already made sprites? If it uses already made sprites then what about the new ships? Do they have new D sprites?
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Alex on January 20, 2017, 03:03:17 PM
Wow, no more boarding is a surprise!

Weeell, I mean, "ship recovery" is basically just a different take on it.

Oh and does SS now only use the generated D sprites or does it use the old, already made sprites? If it uses already made sprites then what about the new ships? Do they have new D sprites?

It's a mix. It'll use (D) sprites for explicitly-defined (D) hulls, such as what the pirates use. But if you, say, recover a normal non-(D) Hound, it'll be a Hound (D) with the same sprite as a regular Hound. Might end up gradually adding custom (D) sprites for things, but it's not a super high priority and it comes with more loading time and video memory use etc.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Spoorthuzad on January 20, 2017, 03:07:53 PM
If you repair a (for example) pirate (d) hound would it keep the pirate sprite or would it change to a normal hound sprite.
I would love to make a pirate fleet that doesn't have all the (d)ownsides. ;)
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Midnight Kitsune on January 20, 2017, 03:15:56 PM
If you repair a (for example) pirate (d) hound would it keep the pirate sprite or would it change to a normal hound sprite.
I would love to make a pirate fleet that doesn't have all the (d)ownsides. ;)
Heh, I remember making a custom wolf ship that used the red pirate wolf sprite
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: ClosetGoth on January 20, 2017, 03:28:33 PM
This is quite possibly the best balance game-changer in Starsector's history! I am really excited to not be so nervous about deploying or losing ships, as I never let my fleets get to more than 2-4 ships in combat at once, because I just couldn't handle the attrition costs.

As for construction rig ideas, if you haven't already thought of this, you could have them reduce the chance of d-mods when recovering, or even allow you to remove them outside of port. Actually, I think an interesting mechanic is where construction rigs could consume supplies to remove d-mods over time, like how your ships repair automatically. Having more rigs supports "de-downgrading" more ships at the same time.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Wyvern on January 20, 2017, 03:40:41 PM
Hm.  So if you grab a D-class Sunder, the central energy slot is stuck at medium size, isn't it?
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Alex on January 20, 2017, 03:41:47 PM
If you repair a (for example) pirate (d) hound would it keep the pirate sprite or would it change to a normal hound sprite.
I would love to make a pirate fleet that doesn't have all the (d)ownsides. ;)

It keeps the pirate sprite. On a related note, if you restore the pirate Wolf, it does *not* get its two missing turrets back. The flipside of this is the restored Mudskipper Mk.2 gets to keep its large weapon mount.


As for construction rig ideas, if you haven't already thought of this, you could have them reduce the chance of d-mods when recovering, or even allow you to remove them outside of port. Actually, I think an interesting mechanic is where construction rigs could consume supplies to remove d-mods over time, like how your ships repair automatically. Having more rigs supports "de-downgrading" more ships at the same time.

Yeah, I've thought about stuff like that. This sounds neat in theory, but then details. How would you even keep track? Can you order them to focus on specific ships? How do you manage this extra supply consumption? It quickly becomes too much for what it adds.

As for just reducing the number of d-mods, again, similar questions - can you pick which ships are affected? (Maybe "no" is an ok answer here.) It also steps on the toes of the Recovery Operations skill; if its effect for the final level can be achieved without skill point investment, then that's a wasted skill point.

Everything I've thought about so far feels like shoehorning Salvage Rigs in there just because it makes some thematic sense, and I don't want to do that.


Hm.  So if you grab a D-class Sunder, the central energy slot is stuck at medium size, isn't it?

Only if it started out as a (D)-class Sunder using that custom skin. If the Sunder started the battle as a regular Sunder, you'll get a different (D)-class with a large weapon mount.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Dark.Revenant on January 20, 2017, 04:23:20 PM
Autofit! Does that imply procedural variants on ships generated in the campaign as well?

Not for this release, but there's definitely the potential for it. Performance-wise, it's probably not good enough to do for every ship being created, so would have to be a bit more clever (e.g. outfit enemy ships when you encounter them), etc.

Performance being an issue is strange to me.  Dynasector's variant creator is by no means particularly well-optimized and it can handle even the worst spawning habits in the 0.7 campaign.  A lot of the trick is that it does a bunch of legwork at init, storing coefficients for all sorts of things in memory based on the calculations made then.  The actual outfitter just uses these coefficients in the end as part of its random picker.  It's O(n*m) where n is the number of slots and m is the number of weapons that can fit into each slot for that faction.

It also works similarly to your outfitter; I've essentially got a set of tags and faction-dependent weights for each weapon, and efficacy is sorted by OP and tier.  It doesn't try to match a specific variant, but it does try to fit a general theme/archetype and uses existing variants as raw data for coefficients (namely which roles to use in which slots).

Beyond that, there are a lot of assumptions that can be made when spawning variants from scratch, since limited supply of objects is not a factor.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Alex on January 20, 2017, 04:54:08 PM
Performance being an issue is strange to me.  Dynasector's variant creator is by no means particularly well-optimized and it can handle even the worst spawning habits in the 0.7 campaign.  A lot of the trick is that it does a bunch of legwork at init, storing coefficients for all sorts of things in memory based on the calculations made then.  The actual outfitter just uses these coefficients in the end as part of its random picker.  It's O(n*m) where n is the number of slots and m is the number of weapons that can fit into each slot for that faction.

It also works similarly to your outfitter; I've essentially got a set of tags and faction-dependent weights for each weapon, and efficacy is sorted by OP and tier.  It doesn't try to match a specific variant, but it does try to fit a general theme/archetype and uses existing variants as raw data for coefficients (namely which roles to use in which slots).

Beyond that, there are a lot of assumptions that can be made when spawning variants from scratch, since limited supply of objects is not a factor.

Well, yeah, but the bolded stuff is kind of significant :) I'm sure it could be optimized or adjusted to make use of various said assumptions; my point is that it isn't because that's not what it currently does, and so I wouldn't want to use it en masse in its current form; that's all I was saying, really, not that it's a qualitative problem.

Btw: the autofitter code is a plugin and can be provided by a mod on a per-fleet-member basis.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: FooF on January 20, 2017, 05:02:08 PM
If I'm reading this correctly, there is still a significant RNG component to recovering ships: skewing much more favorably for the player if it's a.) for his/her own fleet ships being recovered and/or b.) if you invest in the specific Industry skills. I noticed that "base chance" is X (numbers may get tweaked) but is that across all ships or do certain hulls or classes of ships have modifiers to that base chance? I.e. a frigate is "easier" to recover than a destroyer (or vice versa) or a phase ship is harder to recover, etc.?

From the point-of-view of my own fleet, investing heavily in recovery skills means that roughly 2 out of 3 ships I lose will be recoverable and I can designate certain ships with hull mods or officers that guarantee their recovery. That's pretty awesome. I know that's been a common suggestion/complaint and it even though we'll have to spend money to get ships back to pristine condition, we're not losing high-value hulls left and right. I'm curious if during your play testing if "zerging" larger/better equipped fleets with tons of chaff ships is viable. Perhaps through attrition and re-deployments. It also begs the question if the 25 ship limit affects this kind of play style. I guess it also makes credits more valuable because recovering/fixing ships won't be cheap. This change has a lot of meta-gameplay implications!

Out of curiosity, does Reinforced Bulkheads continue to give +50% hull or has that been removed now that it's a "get out of jail free" card for ships?

Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Gothars on January 20, 2017, 05:45:50 PM
While I expected something like this, the implementation seems really very well rounded. I think this will be great for game flow. No more picking only easy fights, no more watching your AI comrades all the time, no more reloading after losing a single ship!

Couple comments:

Quote
d-mods reduce the amount of supplies it takes a ship to recover combat readiness lost from being deployed in battle

Oddly specific wording, does the game now differentiate between battle and environmental CR loss?


But if you, say, recover a normal non-(D) Hound, it'll be a Hound (D) with the same sprite as a regular Hound.

How about applying some of the visual damage layer to it permanently? You know, like the weapon impact craters and such. Maybe with some new textures that look more like rust, use and repairs. That would give (D) variants more individuality and would be nice for mod ships, too.


Spontaneous idea: Certain ships (e.g. passenger liner) can "cost" negative crew to recover, i.e. you gain crew from them. Of course all enthusiastic volunteers (after having had a chance to thoroughly inspect the airlocks).


Last but not least: Is 0.8a (big-) feature complete now? :)
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: icepick37 on January 20, 2017, 05:48:32 PM
So it's all or nothing on removing (d) mods? Any thought to making that a choice of from 1-4?

All this sounds awesome! Yay new stuff!
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Histidine on January 20, 2017, 06:12:39 PM
Wunderbar!

It's interesting to consider this in terms of comparison to Mount & Blade:
Spoiler
In M&B you have companions (named party members who can level up and gain aptitude/skill like you do) and generic soldiers (fixed stats and equipment, level up through a "tech tree" mechanic).

Generic soldiers are fairly straightforward to replace if you do lose them, just pick up some recruits from a nearby village and let them level up as they go along. Still annoying if you lose a top-level unit like a Swadian Knight or something, but eventually you'll get it replaced without having to do anything particular to that unit. You have plenty of other troops anyway.
Also, you can quickly get levelled units by: hiring mercs from taverns, freeing prisoners of enemy bands you beat, or (sometimes) persuading prisoners you capture to defect.

Companions just flat out don't have permadeath, although if they get knocked out in a fight they make take some time to recover. (They can also leave your party for other reasons, but they'll be available again eventually.)


Given the above, I wonder how viable it'd be to use SS's ship recovery as a source of semi-disposable cannon fodder, around a core of a few officered and well-maintained ships (the "companion" equivalent). If an individual ship ends up with too many D-hullmods after repeated deaths, just don't recover it, there's always more where it came from.
...I'd expect this'll use up crew at an unacceptable rate, and the player might also eventually run out of weapons to fit the cannon fodder ships. Oh well!
[close]

A couple of questions:
- Destroyed Weapon Mounts can't appear as a randomly added hullmod, right?
- For mods, does this mean we can attach arbitrary hullmods to FleetMembers that can't be removed from the refit screen? Can they be made so the restoration function won't remove them either?
- The "X ordnance points remaining" text kind of sticks out. It is something that should be drawn to the player's attention, but perhaps the font could be a bit smaller and the message moved to a corner of the ship's box?
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Voyager I on January 20, 2017, 06:21:35 PM
If you repair a (for example) pirate (d) hound would it keep the pirate sprite or would it change to a normal hound sprite.
I would love to make a pirate fleet that doesn't have all the (d)ownsides. ;)

It keeps the pirate sprite. On a related note, if you restore the pirate Wolf, it does *not* get its two missing turrets back. The flipside of this is the restored Mudskipper Mk.2 gets to keep its large weapon mount.


Hm.  So if you grab a D-class Sunder, the central energy slot is stuck at medium size, isn't it?

Only if it started out as a (D)-class Sunder using that custom skin. If the Sunder started the battle as a regular Sunder, you'll get a different (D)-class with a large weapon mount.


It might be time for Pirate variants to get their own designation a-la Luddic ships to differentiate them from generic D ships, since they're no longer the same base hull.  A Sunder (D) that I recovered from pirates isn't the same thing as a generic Sunder with battle damage, it never will be, and the game should make that distinction as clear to the player as possible before they spend a bunch of supplies and money refurbishing a ship only to find out it still doesn't have its main selling point.

For ships like the Pirate Sunder it could be worth creating a new defect like Compromised Hardpoint that say, picks one of the largest hardpoints on a ship and downgrades it to one size smaller*, and make it into a Sunder (D) with that defect so players have the option of restoring it to full working order.  Otherwise I fear that the Pirate Sunder will forever remain a garbage mook ship that players never willingly use, and it seems like part of this patch is moving away from that role for damaged ships, though maybe I'm being too pessimistic.


*actually having this as a regular battle damage outcome will probably be screwy since it can either completely cripple a ship or be largely negligible, but it could be something that specifically comes preinstalled on Pirate Sunders since they're already something of a unique case.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Alex on January 20, 2017, 06:33:23 PM
If I'm reading this correctly, there is still a significant RNG component to recovering ships: skewing much more favorably for the player if it's a.) for his/her own fleet ships being recovered and/or b.) if you invest in the specific Industry skills. I noticed that "base chance" is X (numbers may get tweaked) but is that across all ships or do certain hulls or classes of ships have modifiers to that base chance? I.e. a frigate is "easier" to recover than a destroyer (or vice versa) or a phase ship is harder to recover, etc.?

It's the same across the board. "How difficult is a ship to recover" doesn't seem like a great balancing lever, because it'd just lead to the current problems with boarding.

I'm curious if during your play testing if "zerging" larger/better equipped fleets with tons of chaff ships is viable. Perhaps through attrition and re-deployments. It also begs the question if the 25 ship limit affects this kind of play style. I guess it also makes credits more valuable because recovering/fixing ships won't be cheap. This change has a lot of meta-gameplay implications!

It's a good question; I'd imagine at that point you're "zerging" with larger ships, so it should still work. It's not like you'll be stuck on (D) frigates trying to take on battleships. (The limit is up to 30, btw.)


Out of curiosity, does Reinforced Bulkheads continue to give +50% hull or has that been removed now that it's a "get out of jail free" card for ships?

Yep, they still do.


Oddly specific wording, does the game now differentiate between battle and environmental CR loss?

Nope, just oddly specific wording :) On a semi-related note, d-mods do not reduce regular maintenance costs.


How about applying some of the visual damage layer to it permanently? You know, like the weapon impact craters and such. Maybe with some new textures that look more like rust, use and repairs. That would give (D) variants more individuality and would be nice for mod ships, too.

In theory, sure, but the damage decal rendering is probably the most performance-intensive rendering vanilla does, so I don't want to toss it around lightly. It also tends to obscure weapon mounts heavily, so it'd take a lot of tweaking. So, I don't know - if it came to that, I think I'd probably rather have separate (D) graphics for each ship. According to David, that wouldn't be super labor-intensive.


Spontaneous idea: Certain ships (e.g. passenger liner) can "cost" negative crew to recover, i.e. you gain crew from them. Of course all enthusiastic volunteers (after having had a chance to thoroughly inspect the airlocks).

Ha - if things were to go that way, might as well have the crew be available as part of salvage. But I don't know if I want to go there, a bit too grim, isn't it.


Last but not least: Is 0.8a (big-) feature complete now? :)

More or less, yeah. Still some wrapping up for the ship recovery stuff and skills, but after that, it should be all contenting and playtesting from here on out.


So it's all or nothing on removing (d) mods? Any thought to making that a choice of from 1-4?

Hmm. Not 100% sure, but I think it might get too fiddly if you allowed that. Right now, whether you want to restore a ship is one big decision, and you're not likely to decided to do that very often. If you could choose to remove individual d-mods, I'd be concerned that it would turn into a chore to figure out where it's worth removing and where it isn't, and could become something you do as a normal part of refitting.


Given the above, I wonder how viable it'd be to use SS's ship recovery as a source of semi-disposable cannon fodder, around a core of a few officered and well-maintained ships (the "companion" equivalent). If an individual ship ends up with too many D-hullmods after repeated deaths, just don't recover it, there's always more where it came from.
...I'd expect this'll use up crew at an unacceptable rate, and the player might also eventually run out of weapons to fit the cannon fodder ships. Oh well!

I think it'd work if you keep some liners in your fleet - not just for spare crew, but to reduce the casualties from ship losses, i.e. crew that's not required to keep the ship running but that the game assumes is on the ship anyway because there's no crew room elsewhere.

Also, if you install blast doors on everything and pick up safety procedures, that's crew losses down to 35% of normal. Depends on what you'd define as "unacceptable", but it'd probably be manageable.


- Destroyed Weapon Mounts can't appear as a randomly added hullmod, right?

Right.

- For mods, does this mean we can attach arbitrary hullmods to FleetMembers that can't be removed from the refit screen? Can they be made so the restoration function won't remove them either?

Yes, there's an "addPermaMod()" method or something similar. And a "permaMods" JSON array in the .variant file.

Restoration removes any hullmod with the "dmod" tag, so just not having that tag would be enough.

- The "X ordnance points remaining" text kind of sticks out. It is something that should be drawn to the player's attention, but perhaps the font could be a bit smaller and the message moved to a corner of the ship's box?

Hmm, maybe. I'll keep an eye on it. This really *is* something that should draw the player's attention and be taken care of quickly, though, so I don't imagine it would show up for a long time in actual play.



It might be time for Pirate variants to get their own designation a-la Luddic ships to differentiate them from generic D ships, since they're no longer the same base hull.  A Sunder (D) that I recovered from pirates isn't the same thing as a generic Sunder with battle damage, it never will be, and the game should make that distinction as clear to the player as possible before they spend a bunch of supplies and money refurbishing a ship only to find out it still doesn't have its main selling point.

The "do you want to restore this ship" dialog actually has a bit of text to make that clear, but yeah.

For ships like the Pirate Sunder it could be worth creating a new defect like Compromised Hardpoint that say, picks one of the largest hardpoints on a ship and downgrades it to one size smaller*, and make it into a Sunder (D) with that defect so players have the option of restoring it to full working order.  Otherwise I fear that the Pirate Sunder will forever remain a garbage mook ship that players never willingly use, and it seems like part of this patch is moving away from that role for damaged ships, though maybe I'm being too pessimistic.

*actually having this as a regular battle damage outcome will probably be screwy since it can either completely cripple a ship or be largely negligible, but it could be something that specifically comes preinstalled on Pirate Sunders since they're already something of a unique case.

Yeah, for regular battle damage, it's a bit too complex. Could probably be made to work but doesn't seem worth all the effort.

Re: (D) Sunder, I don't know - it might be reasonable to use without restoration, just due to the low deployment cost. In general, I'd imagine restoring most ships isn't going to be worth the cost, so it likely never being the case for the pirate (D) Sunder isn't actually a big deal; it's only supposed to be used in special cases.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Voyager I on January 20, 2017, 06:53:20 PM
The "do you want to restore this ship" dialog actually has a bit of text to make that clear, but yeah.

I think we're on the same page already, but to emphasize anyways, the player starts making decisions about whether they want to invest resources in a ship possibly as soon as they get a sensor read on it and decide it might be worth fighting its fleet for a chance at recovering it - probably not the case for the humble Sunder, but certainly so for more advanced ships, so the whole story needs to be made available as quickly and intuitively as possible.  I'd imagine the a Pirate Sunder already has a separate file from a regular Sunder, so it doesn't seem like much of a cost to make this change.

Thinking about this does raise the idea of adding D grade high-tech ships to pirate factions, perhaps either as rare spawns or members of higher-level bounty fleets.

Quote
Yeah, for regular battle damage, it's a bit too complex. Could probably be made to work but doesn't seem worth all the effort.

Re: (D) Sunder, I don't know - it might be reasonable to use without restoration, just due to the low deployment cost. In general, I'd imagine restoring most ships isn't going to be worth the cost, so it likely never being the case for the pirate (D) Sunder isn't actually a big deal; it's only supposed to be used in special cases.

I agree with you here.  It's a lot of added complexity to model this just for a ship that isn't particularly rare or exciting and thus will almost never be worth the credit cost of restoring, and on further reflection a Pirate Sunder can probably still be a credible member of a scrap fleet, since it's not trying to be a top-end tool of warfare commanded by an elite officer and loaded up with the finest hardware money and connections can buy.  It's just supposed to get all the holes patched over, loaded up with whatever you pulled off the unrecoverable wrecks, and sent back out until the day it breaks into enough pieces not to be worth putting together again.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Gennadios on January 20, 2017, 06:53:53 PM
So it's all or nothing on removing (d) mods? Any thought to making that a choice of from 1-4?

Hmm. Not 100% sure, but I think it might get too fiddly if you allowed that. Right now, whether you want to restore a ship is one big decision, and you're not likely to decided to do that very often. If you could choose to remove individual d-mods, I'd be concerned that it would turn into a chore to figure out where it's worth removing and where it isn't, and could become something you do as a normal part of refitting.

I logged in to ask the same question.

Individual Dmod repair would probably be a big thing in the early game while the fleet is small. If through some quirk of fate a new game drops a D Hammerhead on the player early on, the inclination would be to spent many times the cost of the ship to overhaul it in installments if the player doesn't have access to markets or the amount of money to buy a new one outright.

By mid to end game, yes, it'll be a wasted feature. D ships will be sold and the mythical Odyssey and Hypherions will be retrofitted with the large amounts of credits at the player's disposal without too much consideration.

I also think it may be a more helpful feature in Iron Man than standard games.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Dri on January 20, 2017, 07:46:28 PM
Aw snaps, things are in the home stretch now!

While I am very glad that Starsector is getting another well-supported playstyle, I do have to admit that it isn't one I can see myself playing often, heh. You did certainly mention your efforts to make the current Industry skills attractive to those who didn't intend to go down that combat route, but it does still seem like they are all heavily based around losing ships—as is needed for that playstyle. I guess what I'm getting at is that Industry combat seems a more polarizing playstyle than most, so I hope the Outpost related skills will also be added to Industry as currently those players who concentrate on not losing ships to begin with will find much of the Industry tree irrelevant to them.

I do really like that you've added several surefire ways to ensure your ships can be recoverable (in case of freak accidents) and that you can also remove d-mods, even it it is ridiculously expensive! Perhaps a large enough player Outpost will have the facilities necessary to remove d-mods for supplies rather than massive amounts of credits?
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Voyager I on January 20, 2017, 07:54:30 PM
Aw snaps, things are in the home stretch now!

While I am very glad that Starsector is getting another well-supported playstyle, I do have to admit that it isn't one I can see myself playing often, heh. You did certainly mention your efforts to make the current Industry skills attractive to those who didn't intend to go down that combat route, but it does still seem like they are all heavily based around losing ships—as is needed for that playstyle. I guess what I'm getting at is that Industry combat seems a more polarizing playstyle than most, so I hope the Outpost related skills will also be added to Industry as currently those players who concentrate on not losing ships to begin with will find much of the Industry tree irrelevant to them.

I do really like that you've added several surefire ways to ensure your ships can be recoverable (in case of freak accidents) and that you can also remove d-mods, even it it is ridiculously expensive! Perhaps a large enough player Outpost will have the facilities necessary to remove d-mods for supplies rather than massive amounts of credits?

Even if you aren't interested in the refurbished meatgrinder, these changes only support existing fleet designs that build around maximizing the value of each ship and minimizing losses.  The expanded options for salvaging make it much easier for you to get your hands on premium hulls (even if you're going to be paying quite handsomely to get them back up to top form) and now you are provided with the tools to make sure one of your officers getting a Scarab killed requires a repair fee instead of a quickload.

Losing top-end guns is still kind of an issue, but now we have options to mitigate that as well.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Dri on January 20, 2017, 08:08:57 PM
What with the new level cap and having to spend points on on aptitudes that no longer provide any immediate benefit, I feel that skill points will be more precious. So, while I'd like to snag the Industry skill that lets one salvage ships and weapons more often, I'm not sure that I'd be willing to spend one of my precious points on that if my playstyle favors avoiding losses to begin with, ya know?

Anyways, it's really not that major of a concern and of course there is no way for any skill tree to account for all the many corner cases out there. I'm just tossing in my two cents.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Voyager I on January 20, 2017, 08:15:11 PM
If you spend no points on it at all, it's a lot like the current game except rare ships can be salvaged and refitted more easily.  It's definitely not a step backwards or anything.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Dri on January 20, 2017, 08:23:43 PM
When did I say anything was a step back? I never did, and even said that a lot of the new additions to recover ships are great!

Nah, I was just saying that currently Industry doesn't seem very attractive to those who don't intend do go down that specific combat style. But again, really not that big of a deal at all and honestly that is probably to be expected.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Midnight Kitsune on January 20, 2017, 08:52:19 PM
Yeah I have to agree, with the new skill cap and no respec these skills sound nice but why not just quickload and try again, not getting your ship blown up and saving several skill points in the process. If respec was an option then I'd say they are great for newbies and early game!
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Alex on January 20, 2017, 08:59:16 PM
Individual Dmod repair would probably be a big thing in the early game while the fleet is small. If through some quirk of fate a new game drops a D Hammerhead on the player early on, the inclination would be to spent many times the cost of the ship to overhaul it in installments if the player doesn't have access to markets or the amount of money to buy a new one outright.

By mid to end game, yes, it'll be a wasted feature. D ships will be sold and the mythical Odyssey and Hypherions will be retrofitted with the large amounts of credits at the player's disposal without too much consideration.

I also think it may be a more helpful feature in Iron Man than standard games.

Yeah, I can see that, but it's really not the goal for this feature. If removing 2-3 d-mods cost as much as buying a new ship (which it probably would) then it'd be more of a newbie trap than anything, too.

(The goal is mainly to be able to restore rare, hard-to-find ships to pristine condition.)



While I am very glad that Starsector is getting another well-supported playstyle, I do have to admit that it isn't one I can see myself playing often, heh. You did certainly mention your efforts to make the current Industry skills attractive to those who didn't intend to go down that combat route, but it does still seem like they are all heavily based around losing ships—as is needed for that playstyle.

Hmm. I mean, if you're soloing things and avoiding damage, then yeah, sure - but there's still some attraction to something like safety procedures. The minute you deploy allied ships, though, even if you don't take casualties you're likely to take some damage, and the skills can help out there. How they stack up vs other choices in that situation is the question, though. Guess we'll have to see!

I guess what I'm getting at is that Industry combat seems a more polarizing playstyle than most, so I hope the Outpost related skills will also be added to Industry as currently those players who concentrate on not losing ships to begin with will find much of the Industry tree irrelevant to them.

I do really like that you've added several surefire ways to ensure your ships can be recoverable (in case of freak accidents) and that you can also remove d-mods, even it it is ridiculously expensive! Perhaps a large enough player Outpost will have the facilities necessary to remove d-mods for supplies rather than massive amounts of credits?

Really can't say right now; outposts could still take a number of forms.


Yeah I have to agree, with the new skill cap and no respec these skills sound nice but why not just quickload and try again, not getting your ship blown up and saving several skill points in the process. If respec was an option then I'd say they are great for newbies and early game!

A good general-purpose answer to that type of question (and not restricted to Starsector) is "because it's more real-time-efficient to just absorb the losses and keep going".

But in any case, the industry skills and the mechanics to mitigate ship losses are not the same thing. The main reason to spec into all of these skills would be because that's how you want to approach combat in the first place - with lots of expendable ships. If you don't, then their appeal naturally falls off some - though a few points here and there may still be worth it - but the "loss mitigation" mechanics still remain.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: TaLaR on January 20, 2017, 09:03:16 PM
I'm not quite sure individual Dmod repair is desirable.
I totally see myself intentionally keeping sensors or armor/hull(on shield based ships) debuff for better supply efficiency. At least in some cases.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Dri on January 20, 2017, 09:21:33 PM
So I've got an actual question: with these changes to salvaging and recovery is it possible that it'll be viable to go around salvaging ships and then simply selling them off? Or is the profit margin still going to be so small that it won't be worth the time? Like, will a max Industry skilled player be able to make some seriously nice dosh fixing up recovered ships from battle (and where ever else it might be possible) and then hauling them to a station and cashing in?

Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Morrokain on January 20, 2017, 09:39:05 PM
Oh wow! I can definitely say that I didn't see this coming, but it sounds pretty interesting! It will certainly changes things up and hopefully it will do as described and open up play options.

The hype is real for this update!

Couple concerns for modding though as usual   :) :

1) Do all AI fleets also recover and redeploy battle-captured ships? If so, can we have an option in the faction file to disable this behavior on a faction by faction basis? It prevents modders from trying to keep factions' doctrines centered around a certain tech or ship style. In game, it makes sense for factions like pirates and independents to do this, not so much luddic path or tri-tachyons.

2) I am a little confused as to the way the game differentiates between the current (D) class ships and "battle-made" ones. Am I correct when I say (D) ships are still normal ships to the game, and just have d-mods to start and a different sprite? Then if THOSE are destroyed, they become battle-made (D) ships and have the same sprite and more d-mods? I guess what I am getting at is +1 to custom (D) sprites since I made a bunch and want to use them haha
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Vind on January 20, 2017, 11:50:19 PM
Cool changes especially removal of D mods at spaceports. Kind of sad marines out of action now. Maybe in the future they can be used to explore some ruins or derelicts?
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: ChaseBears on January 21, 2017, 01:05:21 AM
overall i like it, although it still leaves you SOL if god forbid you actually lose a battle..
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Adraius on January 21, 2017, 01:44:08 AM
So, this blog post is kinda huge news for me.  My preferred way of playing Starsector is building mix-and-match fleets from whatever the game sends at me; I used to increase the boarding chance so that I would get a capture-able vessel more often than not, and slowly assemble my fleet out of captured ships armed with recovered weapons - with the occasional concession of buying a favorite ship or purchasing a few PD weapons so the PD types match.  I found it rewarding growing my frigate hodgepodge to the point that it could overtake a destroyer to claim as my flagship, then assembling enough destroyers to capture a cruiser, and so forth up the chain.  It made every run unique, featuring different ships and varying weapon loadouts based on what I recovered.

Boarding is going away, and I'm of two minds about what's replacing it.  Yes, the industry tree offers a lot of helpful perks, but it is still a hell of a downgrade going from recovering fully functional ships to vessels with 2-4 d-mods.  I can't say I like it at all... but given the world of Starsector, I must admit boarded ships NOT having d-mods has always been a bit strange.  Will the number of d-mods recovered ships get be moddable?  I would definitely like the option to mod it so that recoverable ships get 0-4 d-mods.  Frankly, I could see myself modding recovered ships getting d-mods out of the game entirely, until Starsector develops a cohesive campaign, "story mode", "career arcs", or whatever eventually develops, for much the same reasons officers dying isn't a thing - for what goal did I sacrifice my officer - or ship?  I'm used to replacing losses with ships that are as capable or more capable; getting d-variants instead sounds frustrating in comparison.

TL;DR, the new ship recovery system makes sense, but frankly I'd like to mod it to give me better ships - will that be possible?  Perhaps, if it isn't easy to expose to modding, make the "restore to pristine condition" price moddable.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Elijah on January 21, 2017, 04:35:15 AM
overall i like it, although it still leaves you SOL if god forbid you actually lose a battle..

Yeah, it would be nice to have a mechanic where not every fleet will want you hunt you down to the last ship. Like pirates would probably just like to kill some ships, get their scrap and cargo very quickly to evade possible faction guards coming to surprise them while they scavenge your derelicts. A surrender button, maybe, that doesn't make all of your ships go boom?
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Cyan Leader on January 21, 2017, 04:41:11 AM
This is by far the best implemented change so far. It fixes so many of the problems I have with the game and it opens up so many different playstyles.

Thank you for this Alex. I might still want an option in there somewhere to allow the player to have 100% retention of weapons as well, even if costly, but weapons are no ships. I'm perfectly happy with this.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Gothars on January 21, 2017, 05:16:30 AM
overall i like it, although it still leaves you SOL if god forbid you actually lose a battle..

Right, I feel that's now the only thing left nudging you toward the quickload key. If outright losing is possible without completely screwing you over, I feel that would make game flow perfect (and allow newbies to play the game without starting over so often).


A surrender button, maybe, that doesn't make all of your ships go boom?

Maybe some "I'll give myself up, but let my fleet go" kind of deal. Then your character is transported to a station and locked up (as judicial punishment or for ransom, depending on faction). Upon release or escape you have to find your way back to your fleet in a single ship (e.g. your old flagship or a stolen shuttle).

Now I kind of want to be defeated while that system applies, ha^^

Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Carabus on January 21, 2017, 05:32:53 AM
On skill balance:

* 50% of hull and armor damage taken is repaired immediately after combat ends
* 100% faster ship repairs


These two seem quite strong, they would be useful even with half of these bonuses. Just my two cents, I know the numbers may change.
By the way does "after combat ends" mean after one engagement or after whole battle?


Now:
* 50% combat readiness loss from being in star corona or similar terrain

This seems very minor. How often does one end in star corona?
On the other hand:

* 50% reduced combat readiness range in which malfunctions and other negative effects occur
* The "Emergency Burn" ability no longer reduces combat readiness


This has two good bonuses. Perhaps the emergency burn bonus could be moved to Level 2, so Level 2 actually becomes a solid boost to exploration?
(it also relates thematically: heat protection from both star corona and engine burn)
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: JohnDoe on January 21, 2017, 06:35:00 AM
> when docked at a port, you can “restore” a ship to peak condition, getting rid of all d-mods.

Thank you.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Johnny Cocas on January 21, 2017, 07:21:33 AM
Will I be able to salvage every disabled ship? It could be done with a bit of balancing... Instead of receiving the ship for "free" and paying for the repairs perhaps it would be logical to be able to recover every disabled ship in the battle but pay to actually rebuild it.

If a ship is severely damaged it may be more expensive to repair it than to buy a new one instead, so there would be some kind of balance while still allowing players to recover every ship they have disabled in battle.
There is too much dice rolling right now regarding this and it looks like the saga will continue with the new version, although less "dicy rolly" than it was before.

If this is too much trouble to put into the game or is not balanced or whatever perhaps someone could make a mod for it? :P Only time will tell...
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Sutopia on January 21, 2017, 07:23:03 AM
Recover ships ! Thanks Alex !!
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Histidine on January 21, 2017, 07:23:36 AM
Forgot to ask earlier: Could friendly ships recovered after a battle automatically attempt to autofit back to their previous state? Would be a nice QoL improvement.

Also, a mechanic tie-in idea: How about opportunities to recover derelict ships found during exploration, or from someone else's battle?


Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Cyan Leader on January 21, 2017, 07:34:23 AM
Now:
* 50% combat readiness loss from being in star corona or similar terrain

This seems very minor. How often does one end in star corona?

I agree. Perhaps it will make more sense when we feel the exploration but I think it might be more useful it it was something like "You're not effected for the first 3 seconds of being exposed by dangerous terrain" on a 10 second cooldown.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Andy H.K. on January 21, 2017, 08:18:41 AM
That's really innovative, can't wait to play it!
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Alex on January 21, 2017, 09:30:59 AM
I'm not quite sure individual Dmod repair is desirable.
I totally see myself intentionally keeping sensors or armor/hull(on shield based ships) debuff for better supply efficiency. At least in some cases.

Yeah, makes sense. Just don't want the player picking and choosing which dmods don't matter.


So I've got an actual question: with these changes to salvaging and recovery is it possible that it'll be viable to go around salvaging ships and then simply selling them off? Or is the profit margin still going to be so small that it won't be worth the time? Like, will a max Industry skilled player be able to make some seriously nice dosh fixing up recovered ships from battle (and where ever else it might be possible) and then hauling them to a station and cashing in?

Good question, glad you mentioned it. What happens is when you recover a ship is you get a lot less salvage from it, so you're going to be better off just salvaging it immediately rather than paying supplies to repair it, missing out on the salvage, and then getting a bad price at the market. However, at the time I'd tuned the numbers there, the "recovered ships start with 20-40% hull" wasn't in place, so it didn't account for that. Tweaked some numbers so that it does.

Still possible that a particularly expensive hull might be barely worth doing this for, but it's not going to be a lot in any case.


1) Do all AI fleets also recover and redeploy battle-captured ships? If so, can we have an option in the faction file to disable this behavior on a faction by faction basis? It prevents modders from trying to keep factions' doctrines centered around a certain tech or ship style. In game, it makes sense for factions like pirates and independents to do this, not so much luddic path or tri-tachyons.

They don't do this at all. Except for conceptually, off-screen :)

2) I am a little confused as to the way the game differentiates between the current (D) class ships and "battle-made" ones. Am I correct when I say (D) ships are still normal ships to the game, and just have d-mods to start and a different sprite? Then if THOSE are destroyed, they become battle-made (D) ships and have the same sprite and more d-mods? I guess what I am getting at is +1 to custom (D) sprites since I made a bunch and want to use them haha

Hah - yeah, I'll see if I can work that in.

Basically - every ship hull or skin whose name doesn't end in (D) gets an auto-generated (D) version. Then, during recovery, the hull of the ship gets changed to the (D) version, but for ships that are already (D) - either because they started that way, or because they got converted as a result of previous recovery - that doesn't happen.


Cool changes especially removal of D mods at spaceports. Kind of sad marines out of action now. Maybe in the future they can be used to explore some ruins or derelicts?

I'd like marines to be useful at some point, yeah. Just don't want to shoehorn them in somewhere unless it's actually a good fit.


overall i like it, although it still leaves you SOL if god forbid you actually lose a battle..
Right, I feel that's now the only thing left nudging you toward the quickload key. If outright losing is possible without completely screwing you over, I feel that would make game flow perfect (and allow newbies to play the game without starting over so often).
A surrender button, maybe, that doesn't make all of your ships go boom?
Maybe some "I'll give myself up, but let my fleet go" kind of deal. Then your character is transported to a station and locked up (as judicial punishment or for ransom, depending on faction). Upon release or escape you have to find your way back to your fleet in a single ship (e.g. your old flagship or a stolen shuttle).

Now I kind of want to be defeated while that system applies, ha^^

Hmm. Need to think about this; it' a good point. Well, one step at a time.


Boarding is going away, and I'm of two minds about what's replacing it.  Yes, the industry tree offers a lot of helpful perks, but it is still a hell of a downgrade going from recovering fully functional ships to vessels with 2-4 d-mods.

Two things to keep in mind - one, the d-mods aren't all quite as bad as they used to be, and two, they do reduce the deployment cost as well, so while they're a downgrade in terms of raw ship power, they're more of a sidegrade in terms of overall fleet power. If all works as it's meant to, for your playstyle, this would likely mean using more ships of lower quality, for about the same price.


I would definitely like the option to mod it so that recoverable ships get 0-4 d-mods.

That's modable, but would require compilation.

Perhaps, if it isn't easy to expose to modding, make the "restore to pristine condition" price moddable.

And that's just a value change in settings.json.



I might still want an option in there somewhere to allow the player to have 100% retention of weapons as well, even if costly, but weapons are no ships. I'm perfectly happy with this.

Yeah, need to think about that too. The thing about ship recovery is there are layers of what you can do, right, and so you're not forced to do any one thing. So I'd be concerned that a quick-and-dirty solution - such as, say, a "Secured Ordnance" hullmod to make all weapons on a ship recoverable - would just make it an OP tax on officer'd ships. And something more involved than that, I don't want to get into just now for dev-time reasons.

Hopefully if it came to that, a point in Recovery Operations would be enough to help with weapon scarcity even if one isn't going for industry in the first place.


* 50% of hull and armor damage taken is repaired immediately after combat ends
* 100% faster ship repairs


These two seem quite strong, they would be useful even with half of these bonuses. Just my two cents, I know the numbers may change.
By the way does "after combat ends" mean after one engagement or after whole battle?

After each engagement, but it's only the damage suffered during said engagement. So for example if you take a ship with 5% hull in and come out with 1% hull, you get 2% hull back.

This is probably a good place to mention that "cr reduction from hull damage taken" is now 0.

Regarding their strength - could be too strong, yeah. But it's also more likely to be used in a fleet where your own ship's power is less than it would otherwise be, so that might mitigate it.

Now:
* 50% combat readiness loss from being in star corona or similar terrain

This seems very minor. How often does one end in star corona?
On the other hand:

* 50% reduced combat readiness range in which malfunctions and other negative effects occur
* The "Emergency Burn" ability no longer reduces combat readiness


This has two good bonuses. Perhaps the emergency burn bonus could be moved to Level 2, so Level 2 actually becomes a solid boost to exploration?
(it also relates thematically: heat protection from both star corona and engine burn)

Hmm. This runs the risk of making the top-level skill feel like a waste if the combat readiness range doesn't come into play, so I'd almost rather err on the side of making sure the top point spent in a skill is solid.

Plus, the 2nd level bonus also applies to hyperspace storms, and could be quite a big deal especially if your fleet is bigger. And if you ever end up in a system with a neutron star, oh boy, have fun avoiding its "corona".


Will I be able to salvage every disabled ship? It could be done with a bit of balancing... Instead of receiving the ship for "free" and paying for the repairs perhaps it would be logical to be able to recover every disabled ship in the battle but pay to actually rebuild it.

If a ship is severely damaged it may be more expensive to repair it than to buy a new one instead, so there would be some kind of balance while still allowing players to recover every ship they have disabled in battle.
There is too much dice rolling right now regarding this and it looks like the saga will continue with the new version, although less "dicy rolly" than it was before.

Yeah, the tools to manage the randomness almost entirely apply to the player's ships. I don't know - some randomness is fine, and I'm not on a quest to eradicate it entirely. Also, being able to recover everything would probably make ramping up a d-fleet too easy, and if it was more expensive, then it could get *too* expensive for that and only serve as a tool from rare ship recovery.

Hmm. What I could see possibly doing is adding a cost - say, some heavy machinery - to the initial recovery, that would range from 0 (for ships currently rolled as "recoverable") to a lot (for ships that would currently not be recoverable at all). But it's just more complexity and I'm not sure it's necessary; would like to see how things play out first.

Forgot to ask earlier: Could friendly ships recovered after a battle automatically attempt to autofit back to their previous state? Would be a nice QoL improvement.

That could get weird - "hey, what happened to all these weapons?" Definitely falls in the "when software tries to be too smart" category for me.

Also, a mechanic tie-in idea: How about opportunities to recover derelict ships found during exploration, or from someone else's battle?

Yeah, I've got a todo item to look at that.

Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Megas on January 21, 2017, 10:32:27 AM
Only briefly scanned the blog, but... Level 3 Safety Procedures no longer costs CR to use Emergency Burn?!  Looks like the new Navigation 10 from 0.65, maybe.  Spam it as much as possible when you need to be somewhere in a hurry!  The main thing that discourages EB spam (for me) is supply cost.

EDIT:  Does it still chug fuel?  If so, that could be a limiter.  CR drain is a much bigger deal.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Alex on January 21, 2017, 10:38:19 AM
Only briefly scanned the blog, but... Level 3 Safety Procedures no longer costs CR to use Emergency Burn?!  Looks like the new Navigation 10 from 0.65, maybe.  Spam it as much as possible when you need to be somewhere in a hurry!  The main thing that discourages EB spam (for me) is supply cost.

EDIT:  Does it still chug fuel?  If so, that could be a limiter.  CR drain is a much bigger deal.

Yeah, it still costs fuel. And it's 5 burn slower than Sustained Burn.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: nomadic_leader on January 21, 2017, 10:54:26 AM
Ok, so I haven't read any of this thread, only the blog post.

These are good changes because starsector is about having a fleet of a bunch of ships, not just one ship (except as an outlier playstyle or at the very beginning of the game.

The boarding reforms address most of my long held problems with the boarding mechanic in the game because the game's focus, as I stated, is on the fleet, not the ship. So I don't anticipate personally whining endlessly about this anymore.

The D mod thing also incorporates what i think is a good approximation of  the gradual decay and wear and tear on ships; it's something I am glad to see; it will encourage me to try new ships out as the old decay.

Then finally the "restore everything to as good as new" option is for all the "bauble collector" type players who don't really understand what the game is about, but it will make them happy and reduce a lot of forum chatter. You do see people like this in yachting, who will spend ridiculous amounts to repair some boat they would be better off replacing entirely.

So it's all good. :)

My one suggestion/reservation:  The distribution of the various skills in the 4 aptitudes is thematically confusing. Like, the crew saving skill is in, industry, rather than leadership where it would be expected. And yet, for some reason the ship saving thing, called "Fleet logistics skill" is over there in leadership. (Also work a bit more on the explanation). That one seems like it could be in technology.

It is all a bit confusing. What I mean is; don't be afraid to totally rearrange or eliminate the aptitude categories for skills. Possibly you'll rebrand these in a way that makes sense; right now on paper it just seems a bit disorientating.



Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Deshara on January 21, 2017, 11:08:47 AM
Soo since you have ship-breaking worlds, any chance of adding in a new contract for bringing d-class ships to a ship-breaking world? Like, low-level content wise it could be one type is just "we have a quota to fill, if you bring us x d-class ships to scrap for machinery to make up for a industrial equipment shortage (or price spike) we will buy them from you ignoring the current hull condition" (allowing a crafty industry player ready to upgrade their fleet a handy way to purge old craft they no longer want but never have need to field to suicide)
And for high-level faction-facing content, "this war has landed us a military contract for detailed firing analytics on Hegemony ships, and we can't get our hands on a flight-functional capital ship. If you bring us a Onslaught-class ship we will buy it from you (at less than market value but higher than d-class value fully-repaired), bill our client and handily overlook it's condition since we're blowing it up anyway"
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Camael on January 21, 2017, 11:54:18 AM
Sorry, can not read through five pages now because I would explode in the meantime.

THANK YOU! (Yes. That is in caps. This is how excited I am...)

This is absolutely perfect. Less luck, more costs and decisions, more strategy. You got the carriers the way I wanted them, now You let me secure my prized possessions... I already loved the game as it was, but now this... awesome. (Just have to edit out the mandatory max level, but that's okay... as I can do it...)
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Mini S on January 21, 2017, 12:32:01 PM
Alex since you said some time ago that salvage was temporary.
Can you make the salvage permanent but there was other fleets that would salvage too. Some ting like all battles Player vs NPC or NPC vs NPC would create a salvage and and every faction would have salvage fleets that would roam their space. that would cause the salvage that were in highly frequented zones to disappear quickly and on more remotes zones would last a long time if not forever. And the not picked ships are in that salvage.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Johnny Cocas on January 21, 2017, 01:32:00 PM
Yeah, the tools to manage the randomness almost entirely apply to the player's ships. I don't know - some randomness is fine, and I'm not on a quest to eradicate it entirely. Also, being able to recover everything would probably make ramping up a d-fleet too easy, and if it was more expensive, then it could get *too* expensive for that and only serve as a tool from rare ship recovery.

Hmm. What I could see possibly doing is adding a cost - say, some heavy machinery - to the initial recovery, that would range from 0 (for ships currently rolled as "recoverable") to a lot (for ships that would currently not be recoverable at all). But it's just more complexity and I'm not sure it's necessary; would like to see how things play out first.

Well, it would not necessarily mean that the player would be able to create massive fleets nor that it would be too expensive... The cost could go up the more ships you recover in a battle so after a certain point you could only reliably get x ships before they become too expensive. The first dos.. ship is always free ::)  Well, not free but cheaper, and if in a battle there were 10 recoverable ships with the increasing costs unless you had a really big fleet already you wouldn't be able to afford all of them, but again, if you have a huge fleet how many more ships could one possibly get before starting to get supplies/money issues? Would adding 10 more ships be worth all of the resources to recover? By the 5th ship the cost to recover should be pretty heavy already, but at least if there were two of even three good ships among those 5 the player could have the chance to get them instead of just one. This is how I feel when fighting huge fleets... I get one ship and that's it, the super cruiser that would follow the first huge slow crappy cruiser is forever lost :/

But lets ignore this for the moment and see how the new version works out first :)
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Dri on January 21, 2017, 03:07:34 PM
I'm kinda curious if you've taken note of the average price of 1 unit of Supplies in your dev build (the one that has all the new economy changes). We talking like 40-50 credits per unit? Industry playstyle seems like it'll be hungry for Supplies even with its skills...
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Megas on January 21, 2017, 03:35:26 PM
If boarding has been replaced by field repairs, and outposts are not yet featured, then what good are marines for now?  If marines are no longer needed for boarding, then Black Markets do not need them, and that money loop can be closed.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Midnight Kitsune on January 21, 2017, 04:38:09 PM
I really think marking the current D class ships as something else would greatly reduce the confusion of new players as I can see someone grabbing a D class ship and thinking they can fix it up like the other "D" class
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Megas on January 21, 2017, 07:31:44 PM
After reading the blog one more time, I cannot help but think that any Tri-Tachyon aligned character I may build will likely resort to attacking and killing his commissioner's fleets (while transporter is off) to acquire the rare ships that cannot be found for sale enough, namely Hyperion, Scarab, and Tempest.  On the other hand, that is revenge for all of times I flushed millions into their markets and get Hammerhead and Hammerhead, among other low-tech and midline junk, for my trouble.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Histidine on January 21, 2017, 08:04:21 PM
In a battle involving allied fleets, how does it decide what the player gets to recover?
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Abradolf Lincler on January 21, 2017, 09:22:14 PM
I love the ideas that allow you to get crew during recovery, all ideas that allow you to stay away from stations and "civilized" space i like. It would be cool to be a space nomad, fighting battles, hiding in nebulae nursing ships with construction rigs, taking slaves to man the engines and such, scrounging supplies and using what you can get your hands on, with zombiefied ships with weird weapon layouts, sounds amazing to me.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Alex on January 21, 2017, 10:20:36 PM
My one suggestion/reservation:  The distribution of the various skills in the 4 aptitudes is thematically confusing. Like, the crew saving skill is in, industry, rather than leadership where it would be expected. And yet, for some reason the ship saving thing, called "Fleet logistics skill" is over there in leadership. (Also work a bit more on the explanation). That one seems like it could be in technology.

It is all a bit confusing. What I mean is; don't be afraid to totally rearrange or eliminate the aptitude categories for skills. Possibly you'll rebrand these in a way that makes sense; right now on paper it just seems a bit disorientating.

The placement of the effects is almost entirely for mechanical reasons; e.g. it makes sense for the crew loss reduction to be in industry because that's the playstyle most likely to suffer from crew losses without great access to more mitigation (such as from having more officers). Pretty much any effect anywhere is justifiable - there's a ton of conceptual overlap between categories.


Soo since you have ship-breaking worlds, any chance of adding in a new contract for bringing d-class ships to a ship-breaking world?

Neat idea, I like it! Wrote it down.


Alex since you said some time ago that salvage was temporary.
Can you make the salvage permanent but there was other fleets that would salvage too. Some ting like all battles Player vs NPC or NPC vs NPC would create a salvage and and every faction would have salvage fleets that would roam their space. that would cause the salvage that were in highly frequented zones to disappear quickly and on more remotes zones would last a long time if not forever. And the not picked ships are in that salvage.

(To clarify, when you say "salvage" here I'm assuming you mean "post battle debris fields", which is rather different than general salvage.)

Been thinking along similar lines here, but this doesn't seem essential - more of a nice-to-have for flavor/liveliness of the world. Will see how much I manage to get to that kind of stuff!


I'm kinda curious if you've taken note of the average price of 1 unit of Supplies in your dev build (the one that has all the new economy changes). We talking like 40-50 credits per unit? Industry playstyle seems like it'll be hungry for Supplies even with its skills...

It ought to be around 100 credits if the supply/demand for supplies is balanced in the economy.


If boarding has been replaced by field repairs, and outposts are not yet featured, then what good are marines for now?  If marines are no longer needed for boarding, then Black Markets do not need them, and that money loop can be closed.

None whatsoever at the moment. Pretty sure that money loop is already closed anyway, though - there were bugs with per-unit prices in that particular scenario.


I really think marking the current D class ships as something else would greatly reduce the confusion of new players as I can see someone grabbing a D class ship and thinking they can fix it up like the other "D" class

I do see what you're saying. However, 1) they can fix them up, to a degree and 2) I really doubt they're going to want to in most cases - most of those aren't worth it and brand-new, cheaper versions are readily available. And in some cases where you *would* want to fix one up, such as a Mule with shielded cargo holds, well, you get exactly what you wanted there.


In a battle involving allied fleets, how does it decide what the player gets to recover?

None of the allied ships, and chance for enemy ships is modified by player contribution to battle.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Solinarius on January 21, 2017, 11:19:37 PM
So, is a multiplier applied to restoration costs depending on x number of d-mods? (Hyperion with 4 d-mods. Ouch!)
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: HELMUT on January 22, 2017, 02:46:17 AM
I don't really have anything more to add, just posting to say this is all looking quite good.

I'm really happy about the ability to restore Pather ships, as well as the slightly increased fleet size limit. Also, given what we've recently seen in the ongoing fleet tournament, i expect those industry "zerg" fleets to be pretty damn strong. Hyper aggressive fleets that can "grow" the more they fight? I'm definitely going to try that for my first 0.8 campaign.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Jonlissla on January 22, 2017, 03:36:34 AM
Just when I thought I couldn't get any more wet, Alex keeps posting.

This is going to be a beast of a update.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: nomadic_leader on January 22, 2017, 05:16:09 AM
"Picking up a lot of radiation. They’re operating without core containment. That’s… That’s suicide."

How cool will it be to just play as a pirate and amass a rabble of really horrible expendable D ships to terrorize everyone with?

The only thing missing, so that I'd never have to land at all, is the ability to recover enemy crew from the captured ships, and use them as your own crew.

I have a vague memory that Fractalsoftworks has scruples about putting slavery in the game, but you must ask yourselves: what is happening to the crew of disabled vessels otherwise? They are just getting spaced, or all killed during the combat. Isn't it kinder to enslave them? Also I like to think it is a liberation. I mean, the sindrian diktat is not a nice place and freeing all their guys from the engine room to become pirates is better for them.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Johnny Cocas on January 22, 2017, 07:27:12 AM
"Picking up a lot of radiation. They’re operating without core containment. That’s… That’s suicide."

How cool will it be to just play as a pirate and amass a rabble of really horrible expendable D ships to terrorize everyone with?

The only thing missing, so that I'd never have to land at all, is the ability to recover enemy crew from the captured ships, and use them as your own crew.

I have a vague memory that Fractalsoftworks has scruples about putting slavery in the game, but you must ask yourselves: what is happening to the crew of disabled vessels otherwise? They are just getting spaced, or all killed during the combat. Isn't it kinder to enslave them? Also I like to think it is a liberation. I mean, the sindrian diktat is not a nice place and freeing all their guys from the engine room to become pirates is better for them.

That would actually be a cool idea.
Instead of killing everybody when capturing a ship perhaps there was a chance for the enemy to surrender when their numbers were getting low so you'd end up with some prisoners that eventually could be recruited to your own crew, specially if they were pirates (highest bidder right? :P), just like you can do in M&B Warband.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: ArkAngel on January 22, 2017, 08:21:59 AM
I poved the blog post, I think the new industry playstyle will be my favorite. Just have to wait for outposts!

I aam in agreeance with others, I think getting a new type of crew, "prisoners" which can be turned over to a faction or ransomed, would be a neat thing. You could egen offer them a place on your own ship.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: SafariJohn on January 22, 2017, 08:38:27 AM
If that were a thing, I think it would be more elegant just to offer some crew at the same time as when you pick up prisoners. No mucking about with prisoner-to-crew conversions.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: FooF on January 22, 2017, 08:46:03 AM
We're now debating the moral and ethical issues for slavery/indentured servitude in a video game so that we can justify getting cheap(er) crew. Ha!  ;)

When it comes to this Industry-style of play, it feels like it has a "momentum" to it: like you're fleet begins to snowball every time you engage. However, if I'm recovering a fair number of ships after battle, am I still going to have to return to port to refit these ships without taking huge penalties to CR? Repairing hull damage is one thing but adding hullmods or weapons in deep space has some pretty hefty costs attached. Is there anything that mitigates this? I guess the same could be said if you gain access to hullmods while out exploring and there isn't a port to be found.

Or is the intended style of play still pretty reliant on making routine trips to port?
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Johnny Cocas on January 22, 2017, 09:01:27 AM
It could be somewhat "logical" to have a system similar to this for prisoners:

- When caught some (very little) prisoners could volunteer to be crew;
- Some (pirates) could easily be invited if paid the right amount of money (their pirates after all...);
- Some (depending on nation, perhaps) would strongly refuse turning into crew and could only be used as prisoners that could later be ransomed directly to the enemy or sold to the other factions for a relation boost and some credits (similar to how they work with nexerelin);
- Some prisoners might even try to take a ship on their own and/or escape, but this would be trickier to implement :P

Just my two cents on this idea :D What do you think?
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: nomadic_leader on January 22, 2017, 09:18:05 AM
The game is about mass murder anyway, harvesting organs from people in cryosleep, callous corporations, and working for dictatorships with planetwide gulags.

This is why I'm sorry Alex took out crew types. There could be a 'prisoner' crew type that gives worse CR than other crew, and wouldn't level up like the other crew. But you could sell for more because of ransom. joaonunes' idea of having variables in the faction file modify how many prisoners and/or crew you salvage after battle is also interesting.  It would differentiate the factions more. Right now they kind of feel like chinese checkers (same, but different colours).

(Also I got some freakish, inexplicable endorphin thing from leveling up crew, i'll miss it).

Historical precedent:
Spoiler
This is actually what happened in the 18th century in the Med with the barbary corsairs and medieval/renaissance galleys in general. It was a godawful job even if you weren't a prisoner,  though many galleys were crewed by prisoners. They setup their whole lives as prisoners sometimes for many years if nobody ransomed them. Others actually did promote and become trusted officials in the North African courts.
[close]

But since the game design seems to be focused on not making itty bitty micromanagement too much of a thing (if this blog post is an indication), it would also be ok if you got a chance to get some normal crew while salvaging. (a leadership skill or marines could increase this). I recall this being in old versions of starsector, but maybe i imagined it then.

As for refitting in deep space, i thought having construction/salvage rigs in your fleet were supposed to reduce the cost of doing that?
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: nomadic_leader on January 22, 2017, 09:34:05 AM
ugh wait a minute. if there's a skill that lets you always recover a ship if it has an officer, does this mean that officers still won't be able to die?

That's very disappointing, since they should die. Some of us want a challenge, not pokemon. Sometimes having to lose/sacrifice something you prize makes a game more meaningful and fun.  It doesn't make any sense at all from an in-universe standpoint either.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Alex on January 22, 2017, 09:38:22 AM
Repairing hull damage is one thing but adding hullmods or weapons in deep space has some pretty hefty costs attached. Is there anything that mitigates this?access to hullmods while out exploring and there isn't a port to be found.

There is, actually - the way it works now is any additive changes to a loadout do not reduce CR. So if you're spending free OP on a recently recovered ship, that's not going to impact whatever starting CR it got from Field Repairs, for example. If you don't have Field Repairs, it wouldn't be much of an issue anyway, since CR would already be 0.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Gothars on January 22, 2017, 09:58:53 AM
I suggested something like this a few days ago:

Ha - if things were to go that way, might as well have the crew be available as part of salvage. But I don't know if I want to go there, a bit too grim, isn't it.


I don't really see the need to draw a line there, I feel the game is quite a bit more grim at other places already. The game just needs to acknowledge that working prisoners/slaves are a morally ..."ambiguous" thing. For a faction that sees itself as virtuous they should be a illegal "commodity".



BTW, two typos in the Recovery Operations text:

Quote
Base chance to for disbaled ships to be recovrable

I also feel the explanation is a bit roundabout, with first making a general statement and then contradicting it immediately ("Base chance for disabled ships to be recoverable is 25%, or 50% for your ships."). Since ships from allied fleets are not recoverable it is also incorrect.

Why not just say: "If disabled, the base chance to be recoverable is 25% for enemy ships, and 50% for your ships. Weapons have a 25% base chance to be recoverable from enemy ships, 50% from your ships."
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Alex on January 22, 2017, 10:21:48 AM
I don't really see the need to draw a line there, I feel the game is quite a bit more grim at other places already. The game just needs to acknowledge that working prisoners/slaves are a morally ..."ambiguous" thing. For a faction that sees itself as virtuous they should be a illegal "commodity".

There's being grim in backstory/text, and then there's tying that sort of stuff directly to mechanics. I'm less comfortable with the latter.

(Yeah, sure, you're also shooting lots of people, but you're shooting "ships" and the people are kind of swept under the rug. If you bring that front and center, it gets weird.)

Anyway, I'm certainly not opposed to mechanical things being grim or unpleasant. What I'm sure I don't want is for "run around enslaving people" to be part of a core playstyle. You'd have to really handle it well and make a game be about that. It's not something you just want to throw in casually.

Other stuff could work here, though. Some crew just shows up in the salvage screen? Sure, why not. You get a message from an escape pod and X crew offer to join? That works too. (... and then they steal one of your ships and run off. If you can't trust desperate crew you 've picked up from an escape pod after you've shot their ship out from under them, then who can you trust?)


BTW, two typos in the Recovery Operations text:

Quote
Base chance to for disbaled ships to be recovrable

I also feel the explanation is a bit roundabout, with first making a general statement and then contradicting it immediately ("Base chance for disabled ships to be recoverable is 25%, or 50% for your ships."). Since ships from allied fleets are not recoverable it is also incorrect.

Why not just say: "If disabled, the base chance to be recoverable is 25% for enemy ships, and 50% for your ships. Weapons have a 25% base chance to be recoverable from enemy ships, 50% from your ships."

Thanks! Updated to mostly match your suggestion, it was indeed pretty awkward.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: nomadic_leader on January 22, 2017, 10:46:38 AM
It's not something you just want to throw in casually.

Why? The game isn't about teaching morality or educating the youth. It's about space dystopia. Throwing it in casually totally fits with the rest of the game.

It's about mass murder, and cute ship graphics can't hide it. Starsector encourages the player to be totally immoral and minimizes any political differences between factions. It urges players to plunder and destroy for rich rewards. Unlike many other games of this style (escape velocity, etc) there is no story, plots, or quests in which you can fight for discrete political goals or ideals. The average starsector player acts like a 7 year old playing GTA crowbarring pedestrians for hours on end. Combat is even encouraged as a primary playstyle, with peaceful activities only intended as side gigs.

Like when you sell 2000 tonnes of illegal drugs and destabilize a planet to cause a famine. (A lot of them probably resort to prostitution just to get a bite to eat, you know.)

Given the context of starsector, it is entirely adequate make slaves illegal for some factions as a way of highlighting the immorality. Include a running tally of crew and slave losses/kills etc as a witness to the players misdeeds.

But as you say, maybe the way of handling it that most fits the true spirit of starsector is this:
Just show crew in the salvage screen with no explanation.

Let the more optimistic imagine them as grateful volunteers.

Let the more pessimistic imagine them as something else.

There should still be a skill about increasing the number of crew you "rescue" during salvage though. :)
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: jRivers on January 22, 2017, 10:51:38 AM
I don't really see the need to draw a line there, I feel the game is quite a bit more grim at other places already. The game just needs to acknowledge that working prisoners/slaves are a morally ..."ambiguous" thing. For a faction that sees itself as virtuous they should be a illegal "commodity".

There's being grim in backstory/text, and then there's tying that sort of stuff directly to mechanics. I'm less comfortable with the latter.

(Yeah, sure, you're also shooting lots of people, but you're shooting "ships" and the people are kind of swept under the rug. If you bring that front and center, it gets weird.)

Anyway, I'm certainly not opposed to mechanical things being grim or unpleasant. What I'm sure I don't want is for "run around enslaving people" to be part of a core playstyle. You'd have to really handle it well and make a game be about that. It's not something you just want to throw in casually.

Other stuff could work here, though. Some crew just shows up in the salvage screen? Sure, why not. You get a message from an escape pod and X crew offer to join? That works too. (... and then they steal one of your ships and run off. If you can't trust desperate crew you 've picked up from an escape pod after you've shot their ship out from under them, then who can you trust?)


BTW, two typos in the Recovery Operations text:

Quote
Base chance to for disbaled ships to be recovrable

I also feel the explanation is a bit roundabout, with first making a general statement and then contradicting it immediately ("Base chance for disabled ships to be recoverable is 25%, or 50% for your ships."). Since ships from allied fleets are not recoverable it is also incorrect.

Why not just say: "If disabled, the base chance to be recoverable is 25% for enemy ships, and 50% for your ships. Weapons have a 25% base chance to be recoverable from enemy ships, 50% from your ships."

Thanks! Updated to mostly match your suggestion, it was indeed pretty awkward.

I disagree, slavery and forced labour has been a part of the human experience as long as our species is old. It still happens today in the tens of millions, its just going on in the islamic part of the world.
In the west its essentially illegal commodity even though we dont really have a philosophical argument against it enforced on many levels of society. (Think certain forms of taxation, prison labour, propagandizing populace etc etc)

I do agree it shouldn't be done as a cheap throw in but that applies to most anything, it should be done with some thought put into it, essentially it needs to work but not so good that it becomes a near necessity.
Heavy faction relations penalty for example would be a rather strong penalty against neutrals doing that.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: SafariJohn on January 22, 2017, 11:32:05 AM
Trying to get slavery or the like added to Starsector is, deservedly IMO, a waste of energy.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Alex on January 22, 2017, 11:59:36 AM
Why? The game isn't about teaching morality or educating the youth. It's about space dystopia. Throwing it in casually totally fits with the rest of the game.

Because it's a serious and painful topic that should get more consideration than that, and because I'd like to make a game I can play without cringing.


(That said, there's some suuuper dark mechanical stuff that might make it in, but it wouldn't be systemic.)


Let the more optimistic imagine them as grateful volunteers.

Let the more pessimistic imagine them as something else.

Yeah, in general that's good - the more ways one can imagine something playing out, the better.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: DatonKallandor on January 22, 2017, 12:38:13 PM
Is faster repair going to cost less or does faster also include more supply use per time spent?
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Alex on January 22, 2017, 12:41:17 PM
Is faster repair going to cost less or does faster also include more supply use per time spent?

It's the same supply cost, so overall hull repair is cheaper. To make sure it's clear: it (both the increased rate and the lower cost) only applies to hull, not CR.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Mini S on January 22, 2017, 01:50:00 PM
Alex right now when you repair recover CR or BOTH it is only used the same amount of supplies could there be a repair cost and a CR recovery cost?
It feels weird when the costs to repair  a 1% hull and CR ship to 100% are the same to repair a 100% hull and 1% CR to 100%.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Alex on January 22, 2017, 02:23:53 PM
These used to be separate and it was just a whole lot of extra stuff to keep track of and show in the UI for no real benefit. I get what you're saying, but it's just not worth it.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Morrokain on January 22, 2017, 02:36:48 PM
1) Do all AI fleets also recover and redeploy battle-captured ships? If so, can we have an option in the faction file to disable this behavior on a faction by faction basis? It prevents modders from trying to keep factions' doctrines centered around a certain tech or ship style. In game, it makes sense for factions like pirates and independents to do this, not so much luddic path or tri-tachyons.

They don't do this at all. Except for conceptually, off-screen :)

2) I am a little confused as to the way the game differentiates between the current (D) class ships and "battle-made" ones. Am I correct when I say (D) ships are still normal ships to the game, and just have d-mods to start and a different sprite? Then if THOSE are destroyed, they become battle-made (D) ships and have the same sprite and more d-mods? I guess what I am getting at is +1 to custom (D) sprites since I made a bunch and want to use them haha

Hah - yeah, I'll see if I can work that in.

Basically - every ship hull or skin whose name doesn't end in (D) gets an auto-generated (D) version. Then, during recovery, the hull of the ship gets changed to the (D) version, but for ships that are already (D) - either because they started that way, or because they got converted as a result of previous recovery - that doesn't happen.

Hey great that's good news! regarding the first point and oh ok, that makes sense regarding the second point.

Thinking about it some more, how does it handle the case where the (D) version has the "Destroyed Weapon Mounts" d-mod? Will it ignore that one in particular (since its the only one that cannot be undone if I read that correctly) if a normal hull gets destroyed and converted to the (D) version through combat even though the sprite lacks the weapon mounts? If it doesn't though, then that would make it a permanent debuff to the ship. Seems likely its "between a rock and a hard place" territory without going to the trouble of making it reversible. Changing the weapon mounts to hidden/decorative instead of outright removing them might be a solution there.

Regarding the weapon role/strength hints for the new auto-outfitter: You said hints get auto-generated if they aren't there to begin with, am I correct in assuming we can set these ourselves in weapons.csv? Is that the only thing added to that file? I am actually pretty excited to see how that all works out.  
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Mini S on January 22, 2017, 03:14:06 PM
Alex right now when you repair recover CR or BOTH it is only used the same amount of supplies could there be a repair cost and a CR recovery cost?
It feels weird when the costs to repair  a 1% hull and CR ship to 100% are the same to repair a 100% hull and 1% CR to 100%.
These used to be separate and it was just a whole lot of extra stuff to keep track of and show in the UI for no real benefit. I get what you're saying, but it's just not worth it.

On the campaign overview you could show the number when we see the "full report of supplies consumption" instead of showing one number for all repairs it would show the two and in the fleet screen where we have the supplies consumption for each ship there would be a number that would be all the numbers together and that number would have a tooltip showing all the individuals consumptions and the suspend repairs would not get changed as recovering CR could be taken in account as a repair.

This is how i would implement and it wouldn't be for no real benefit. As it would reward/penalise (not)/taking hull damage.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Deshara on January 22, 2017, 03:47:50 PM
[
(Anyway, I'm certainly not opposed to mechanical things being grim or unpleasant. What I'm sure I don't want is for "run around enslaving people" to be part of a core playstyle. You'd have to really handle it well and make a game be about that

I appreciate that you see that that wouldnt fit the theme of your game. It suits SPAZ cause wanton waste of human life is kind of a theme of the game, but SS comes off more as being about the resilience of man, and how even a cataclysm of galactic empire-destroying magnitude isn't enough to stop people from clawing out a place for themselves in the world
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Dri on January 22, 2017, 04:55:04 PM
Maybe I missed it but are you just as likely to be able to recover a Paragon after battle as you are a Lasher? All just a roll of the same dice for everything?

Also, what is the chance again for a ship to break apart when disabled?
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Alex on January 22, 2017, 05:56:02 PM
Thinking about it some more, how does it handle the case where the (D) version has the "Destroyed Weapon Mounts" d-mod? Will it ignore that one in particular (since its the only one that cannot be undone if I read that correctly) if a normal hull gets destroyed and converted to the (D) version through combat even though the sprite lacks the weapon mounts? If it doesn't though, then that would make it a permanent debuff to the ship. Seems likely its "between a rock and a hard place" territory without going to the trouble of making it reversible. Changing the weapon mounts to hidden/decorative instead of outright removing them might be a solution there.

It won't restore missing or downsized (e.g: Sunder) weapon mounts.

Regarding the weapon role/strength hints for the new auto-outfitter: You said hints get auto-generated if they aren't there to begin with, am I correct in assuming we can set these ourselves in weapons.csv? Is that the only thing added to that file? I am actually pretty excited to see how that all works out.  

Correct. Don't remember if it's the only thing added :)


On the campaign overview you could show the number when we see the "full report of supplies consumption" instead of showing one number for all repairs it would show the two and in the fleet screen where we have the supplies consumption for each ship there would be a number that would be all the numbers together and that number would have a tooltip showing all the individuals consumptions and the suspend repairs would not get changed as recovering CR could be taken in account as a repair.

This is how i would implement and it wouldn't be for no real benefit. As it would reward/penalise (not)/taking hull damage.

Well, for one, I don't think that's a benefit :) Not penalizing a certain amount of hull damage is a positive because it prevents low-tech ships from always being more expensive to field than the stated deployment cost, and is a good way to balance the fact that they always take some damage, compared to more shield-reliant ships.

Again, it's a metric ton of complexity without a compelling reason, other than "more realism". And when that's the only reason for doing something, that's a huge red flag.

Maybe I missed it but are you just as likely to be able to recover a Paragon after battle as you are a Lasher? All just a roll of the same dice for everything?

Yep.

Also, what is the chance again for a ship to break apart when disabled?

Defined per ship hull, but somewhere around 50% on average.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Dri on January 22, 2017, 07:05:45 PM
Were any of these features for patch 0.8a extremely difficult for you as a programmer to get up and running? What system (or cluster of similar systems) took the lion's share of effort?
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: SafariJohn on January 22, 2017, 09:56:05 PM
Will the procedural D ships have the same description as current D ships? If so, might non-procedural D ships get more unique descriptions to differentiate them?
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Sy on January 23, 2017, 01:35:12 AM
OOOOH! ALL OF MY YES!! this is exactly what i was hoping for when you mentioned a new industry combat playstyle: building large fleets of disposable low-quality ships recovered from previous battles! and along the way it gets rid of the arbitrary boarding limit weirdness, alleviates the issue of ship availability in the late-game being too reliant on RNG and not enough on credit cost, and provides ways to make ship losses in general less frustrating... wow. :D

also, i think it will help a lot with making pirate campaign runs viable/fun! not only is the swarm of captured, half-broken ships thematically very fitting, it also means the lack of access to good ships through military markets becomes much less crippling.


a bunch of random thoughts:

1) since a few people mentioned that losing battles is still just as punishing as ever if you can recover ships only from won battles: you mentioned a while ago (http://fractalsoftworks.com/2016/07/17/exploration-salvage/) that you were thinking about making all battles produce a debris field that fleets can then pick through, rather than immediately giving loot. is that still a thing/possibility? with ship wrecks now becoming a pretty big deal, and the ability to keep specific ships in your fleet from ever being destroyed completely, debris fields could provide an opportunity to recover some of your losses even after a defeat or retreat.
depending on whether the enemy fleet who got you is sticking around to pick through the debris themselves (pirates probably would, patrols and traders probably wouldn't), you might have to hide somewhere nearby until they're gone, but could then return to see if there's anything left for you to salvage. even if the enemy took the most valuable wrecks and pieces for themselves, you might still be able to partially recover your losses through stuff they left behind, especially if you're already specialized in this industry combat playstyle.

2) i agree with what others have said regarding the (D)-ships in the current version, i think it would be a lot better (particularly for new players) to clearly label pirate-specific ship versions as such, in a way that will not be confused with the recovered d-mod ships.
and somewhat related to this, i would also really like to see some way to visualize the scrappiness of recovered d-mod ships, both because it would help with making this combat playstyle feel more distinct on more than just a mechanical level ("fly, my rust buckets, fly!" *maniacal cackling*) and because i feel restoring a ship to pristine visual quality along with mechanical quality would feel a lot more satisfying.

3) you could add increased weapon recovery chance to the Armored Weapon Mounts hullmod. i understand not wanting to put it together with the guaranteed ship recovery of Reinforced Bulkhead, to avoid making that one feel like a requirement (and i actually feel it might need a bit of a nerf, maybe to something like 30% increased hull, more in line with Blast Doors). but for some loadouts, the weapons are quite a bit more valuable than the ship they're on, so it would be nice to have some option to at least make recovery more likely, even if not guaranteed (for that specific loadout, in addition to the overall increased chance from the skill).

4) since autofit has an option to automatically apply Reinforced Bulkheads, could you add one for Blast Doors as well? seems like that would also be a good idea to have on many of the recovered disposables.

5) if all d-mods from ships like the pather skins can be removed while keeping their beneficial built-in ones, i think those ships could use some nerf to their base stats. i do like that capturing and restoring these ships can be a way to produce a more powerful version (since it takes a bit of luck, work, and more credits than just buying an unaltered version), but getting a 15 OP frigate hullmod for 0 OP instead does seem a little bit crazy. ^^

6) with these new features about making low-quality ships worth fielding as the player that are currently only really useful as low-difficulty enemies: can Buffalo MK.II get some love as well? :D like reduced cost and maybe even a bit beefed up durability? i believe lorewise, it's supposed to be a weak but cost-effective alternative to proper military ships, with above average armor to partially offset its poor mobility and lack of shield. but in reality it's not ever worth buying. it actually has significantly less durability than other, shielded destroyers (less than a Hound, even!), only 120 seconds PPT for some reason, and yet it costs almost as much as an Enforcer...
i just have a sweet spot for these ultra-low-tech combat conversions of civilian ships. Mudskipper MK.II is a deathtrap for anyone unlucky enough to crew it, but cheap enough to potentially be worth using as the player, especially if we have a guaranteed way to recover it when it inevitably gets blown up (albeit at the expense of some supplies and added d-mods). but Buffalo MK.II just isn't really worth using, and that makes me sad. :/

7) you could still keep marines for boarding, as part of the new system: make a portion (something like ~20%?) of recoverable ships cost marines to recover, with the benefit of adding no or less d-mods to the ship and maybe increasing weapon recovery chance. with how the new system works, it should probably just state a number of required/consumed marines rather than a probability of success based on the number of marines in your fleet, something like "boarding and capturing this ship will require a team of at least 50 marines, with expected losses between 5 and 20 marines". the average cost of 'consumed' marines would be lower than having to restore the ship at a port, but still high enough to only do it for ships the player wouldn't treat as just disposable cannon-fodder, and with the added requirement of shipping a large number of marines around.
this would probably be more about flavor that any significant gameplay impact, so i understand if it's just not worth figuring out the exact mechanics and numbers, but i still quite like the idea of keeping some troop transports filled with marines around for boarding opportunities.


anyway, i'm excited, in case you couldn't tell. or, well, i was excited already.. but now i have another thing to be excited about! \o/
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: nomadic_leader on January 23, 2017, 02:31:37 AM
Maybe I missed it but are you just as likely to be able to recover a Paragon after battle as you are a Lasher? All just a roll of the same dice for everything?

Yep.

Also, related question. Do we NEED to have the sufficient prize crew to capture the hsip, or is that just a suggestion and we can immediately 'mothball' it or accept malfunctions? If so what's to stop us from stuffing a hound with supplies and (somehow) disabling a capital ship and capturing it?
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Midnight Kitsune on January 23, 2017, 02:44:08 AM
Maybe I missed it but are you just as likely to be able to recover a Paragon after battle as you are a Lasher? All just a roll of the same dice for everything?

Yep.

Also, related question. Do we NEED to have the sufficient prize crew to capture the ship, or is that just a suggestion and we can immediately 'mothball' it or accept malfunctions? If so what's to stop us from stuffing a hound with supplies and (somehow) disabling a capital ship and capturing it?
You'd have to beat the rest of the fleet as you still only get to recover (enemy) ships on wins.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Gothars on January 23, 2017, 03:10:32 AM
A Hound won't do, but I can imagine a tactic were you take some missile boat (e.g. Kite) to assist an allied fleet, finish off damaged enemies and expand your fleet that way. Don't see anything wrong with that :)



add increased weapon recovery chance to the Armored Weapon Mounts hullmod.

Good idea.

 
you could still keep marines for boarding, as part of the new system

The new mechanic is more salvage than a boarding action, though.
I'd love boarding as a separate mechanic, not to get hulls, but as a less violent alternative to battle. E.g., a outgunned trader could agree to let you send marines over to confiscate some of their cargo. Also, as some one mentioned, exploration of derelicts.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Sy on January 23, 2017, 04:22:42 AM
You'd have to beat the rest of the fleet as you still only get to recover (enemy) ships on wins.
pretty much this. and the chance to recover enemy ships is still only 25% base without skill, 40% with skill (assuming the numbers stay as they are, which they might not), and further halfed if the ship broke apart, which happens to about half of the total killed ships... which makes 18.75% and 30%? so you'll usually have to fight several fleets with a Paragon in them until you're able to recover one, if you're after that specific ship.

i really don't see why rarer ships would need a lower recovery chance than common ones. their rarity itself already means you will get proportionally fewer opportunities to recover these ships, simply because you're encountering them more rarely in the first place.


The new mechanic is more salvage than a boarding action, though.
right, i worded it a bit poorly. i meant: since the removal of boarding means marines will (for now) not have any use besides being a trade commodity, boarding could still be kept (in different form) as part of the new ship salvage mechanics.

Quote
I'd love boarding as a separate mechanic, not to get hulls, but as a less violent alternative to battle. E.g., a outgunned trader could agree to let you send marines over to confiscate some of their cargo.
hmm, if the trader already surrendered to avoid being shot to pieces, why would you need marines to secure the cargo? ^^

Quote
Also, as some one mentioned, exploration of derelicts.
yeah, that sounds cool! :]
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: nomadic_leader on January 23, 2017, 04:53:39 AM
The new mechanic is both boarding or salvage. The focus outside combat is "zoomed out" so it avoids going into the details of how each particular ship is taken.

One thing that might fit is when you are recovering enemy ships, you have to front a number of marines in addition to the prize crew. A random portion of these, sadly, will succumb to foe or misadventure, but in every case you still end up taking the ship.

Unrelated Suggestion: It seems needlessly complex that when ships DON'T break up there is still a chance you WON'T to be able to recover them, and how if they DO break up, and there is a chance you WILL recover them.

Maybe just keep it real simple: If a ship breaks up, you can't salvage it. If it doesn't break up, you can salvage it. And adjust the frequency of breakups accordingly, plus throw in ways to modify the breakup frequency by using ion cannons or skills.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Histidine on January 23, 2017, 05:56:35 AM
Given the talk about pirate Sunders and such, I have to ask: If a regular ship becomes a (D) from damage, will it return to the non-D hull version (in terms of appearance and hull class name) if fully restored?
Otherwise it'd be a bit odd to have a (D) ship that's actually indistinguishable stats-wise from the pristine version. Though full consistency would also require that the handcrafted D skins (that don't have destroyed mounts) to have a "turn into this hull if fully restored" tag.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Gothars on January 23, 2017, 09:24:58 AM
Regarding the confusion about different types of (D)-hulls, I'd suggest to unify them all into fully reversible versions. Meaning, no damages that can't be fixed, even on pre-(D) hulls. Otherwise you have a discrepancy between gameplay and lore, like a (very mild) version of the "main character is much weaker/stronger in cut scenes than in game play" issue.


hmm, if the trader already surrendered to avoid being shot to pieces, why would you need marines to secure the cargo? ^^

That's how it works in real life, isn't it? :) Customs, units of military blockades and such have to physically board vessels to inspect them, and if there's danger of resistance they have to go armed.

Spoiler
(http://www.forces.gc.ca/assets/FORCES_Internet/images/operations-article/artemis/hs2-2012-223-004.jpg)
[close]

Currently the game describes inspection as being just remote scans, found contraband has to be ejected. (And for some reason that is not explained in the lore only AI patrols can do scans.)
Physical inspections seem more interesting to me. Maybe something could go wrong, and your inspection team is lead into a trap? Gameplay wise there should be a risk to boarding, so you can't just run around and collect free goods from all inferior fleets for no costs.

 
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Alex on January 23, 2017, 09:46:57 AM
Were any of these features for patch 0.8a extremely difficult for you as a programmer to get up and running? What system (or cluster of similar systems) took the lion's share of effort?

Hmm - I wouldn't say anything was extremely difficult implementation-wise. Most of the difficulty is usually in figuring out exactly how something should work, either just spending time thinking about design or iterating through implementations to get there eventually.

Still, to answer your question - probably procedurally generating star systems; there's a lot of data flying around (something like 5ish spreadsheets) and it took a lot of work figuring out how it should all come together.


Will the procedural D ships have the same description as current D ships? If so, might non-procedural D ships get more unique descriptions to differentiate them?

They have a different description prefix.


1) since a few people mentioned that losing battles is still just as punishing as ever if you can recover ships only from won battles: you mentioned a while ago (http://fractalsoftworks.com/2016/07/17/exploration-salvage/) that you were thinking about making all battles produce a debris field that fleets can then pick through, rather than immediately giving loot. is that still a thing/possibility? with ship wrecks now becoming a pretty big deal, and the ability to keep specific ships in your fleet from ever being destroyed completely, debris fields could provide an opportunity to recover some of your losses even after a defeat or retreat.
depending on whether the enemy fleet who got you is sticking around to pick through the debris themselves (pirates probably would, patrols and traders probably wouldn't), you might have to hide somewhere nearby until they're gone, but could then return to see if there's anything left for you to salvage. even if the enemy took the most valuable wrecks and pieces for themselves, you might still be able to partially recover your losses through stuff they left behind, especially if you're already specialized in this industry combat playstyle.

Debris fields post-battle are in the dev build. Currently considering ship recovery in relation to that - my feeling is it should be a more rare event than just being able to recover everything that got disabled. After all, chances are if it wasn't taken with the winning fleet, it was broken for salvage. So there'll probably be a small chance to find a recoverable ship.


3) you could add increased weapon recovery chance to the Armored Weapon Mounts hullmod. i understand not wanting to put it together with the guaranteed ship recovery of Reinforced Bulkhead, to avoid making that one feel like a requirement (and i actually feel it might need a bit of a nerf, maybe to something like 30% increased hull, more in line with Blast Doors). but for some loadouts, the weapons are quite a bit more valuable than the ship they're on, so it would be nice to have some option to at least make recovery more likely, even if not guaranteed (for that specific loadout, in addition to the overall increased chance from the skill).

I see what you mean, but the problem is, I think, that it would be the only layer of defense and would thus feel mandatory. If I were to do that, it'd probably be hullmod, officer skill, limited-global skill or some such - like it is for ships - so that nothing specific feels mandatory.


4) since autofit has an option to automatically apply Reinforced Bulkheads, could you add one for Blast Doors as well? seems like that would also be a good idea to have on many of the recovered disposables.

You can always put Blast Doors on the "goal" variant. But, hmm. Maybe that *is* worth it, since crew management is an important side of this - yeah, made a note to do that.


5) if all d-mods from ships like the pather skins can be removed while keeping their beneficial built-in ones, i think those ships could use some nerf to their base stats. i do like that capturing and restoring these ships can be a way to produce a more powerful version (since it takes a bit of luck, work, and more credits than just buying an unaltered version), but getting a 15 OP frigate hullmod for 0 OP instead does seem a little bit crazy. ^^

In theory, I get what you're saying, but at the end of the day we're just talking about a few frigates that aren't that good even with built-in SO - at least, not compared to the cost to restore them. If it was battleships that outclass everything else, yeah, it'd be a problem. As it is, it's more of a fun thing that shouldn't come into play where it would break the balance.

6) with these new features about making low-quality ships worth fielding as the player that are currently only really useful as low-difficulty enemies: can Buffalo MK.II get some love as well? :D like reduced cost and maybe even a bit beefed up durability? i believe lorewise, it's supposed to be a weak but cost-effective alternative to proper military ships, with above average armor to partially offset its poor mobility and lack of shield. but in reality it's not ever worth buying. it actually has significantly less durability than other, shielded destroyers (less than a Hound, even!), only 120 seconds PPT for some reason, and yet it costs almost as much as an Enforcer...

Good call; reduced its deployment/maintenance cost to 4 supplies. Hopefully that'll be enough.


7) you could still keep marines for boarding, as part of the new system: make a portion (something like ~20%?) of recoverable ships cost marines to recover, with the benefit of adding no or less d-mods to the ship and maybe increasing weapon recovery chance. with how the new system works, it should probably just state a number of required/consumed marines rather than a probability of success based on the number of marines in your fleet, something like "boarding and capturing this ship will require a team of at least 50 marines, with expected losses between 5 and 20 marines". the average cost of 'consumed' marines would be lower than having to restore the ship at a port, but still high enough to only do it for ships the player wouldn't treat as just disposable cannon-fodder, and with the added requirement of shipping a large number of marines around.
this would probably be more about flavor that any significant gameplay impact, so i understand if it's just not worth figuring out the exact mechanics and numbers, but i still quite like the idea of keeping some troop transports filled with marines around for boarding opportunities.

I don't want to shoehorn marines into this just because they used to be involved. There's no mechanical reason for this that I can see, and there are likely future things where they'll fit in much more naturally.

anyway, i'm excited, in case you couldn't tell. or, well, i was excited already.. but now i have another thing to be excited about! \o/

:D


Also, related question. Do we NEED to have the sufficient prize crew to capture the hsip, or is that just a suggestion and we can immediately 'mothball' it or accept malfunctions? If so what's to stop us from stuffing a hound with supplies and (somehow) disabling a capital ship and capturing it?

You can still recover and mothball. Nothing is top stop you, other than, you know the "somehow" part. If you can manage that, I figure you've earned it.


A Hound won't do, but I can imagine a tactic were you take some missile boat (e.g. Kite) to assist an allied fleet, finish off damaged enemies and expand your fleet that way. Don't see anything wrong with that :)

Just to note, kill-stealing won't help much as the salvage-sharing is based on overall hull damage dealt, compared to your allies.


The new mechanic is more salvage than a boarding action, though.
I'd love boarding as a separate mechanic, not to get hulls, but as a less violent alternative to battle. E.g., a outgunned trader could agree to let you send marines over to confiscate some of their cargo. Also, as some one mentioned, exploration of derelicts.

Hmm, that's a possibility (and, yes, I've been keeping an eye on the civilized combat thread).


Unrelated Suggestion: It seems needlessly complex that when ships DON'T break up there is still a chance you WON'T to be able to recover them, and how if they DO break up, and there is a chance you WILL recover them.

Maybe just keep it real simple: If a ship breaks up, you can't salvage it. If it doesn't break up, you can salvage it. And adjust the frequency of breakups accordingly, plus throw in ways to modify the breakup frequency by using ion cannons or skills.

I get what you're saying here, yeah. The reason it works the way it does is the breakup chance for hulls is partially set for "feel" reasons rather than purely mechanical ones. So, for example, lighter and flimsier hulls break into pieces more often. Having that be just a reduction of the chance to be recoverable rather than an outright negation of it helps mitigate that. Plus, it's nice that there's still a bit of suspense here, otherwise you'd blow up a Hyperion, see it drift apart, and know right away that you won't get it for recovery. PLUS plus, a 100% chance for non-broken ships to be recoverable would probably be a bit much. And, yes, could make ships break up more often to adjust for that, but it's back to ships-breaking-up having at least partially a cosmetic/feel-based nature.


Given the talk about pirate Sunders and such, I have to ask: If a regular ship becomes a (D) from damage, will it return to the non-D hull version (in terms of appearance and hull class name) if fully restored?
Otherwise it'd be a bit odd to have a (D) ship that's actually indistinguishable stats-wise from the pristine version. Though full consistency would also require that the handcrafted D skins (that don't have destroyed mounts) to have a "turn into this hull if fully restored" tag.
Regarding the confusion about different types of (D)-hulls, I'd suggest to unify them all into fully reversible versions. Meaning, no damages that can't be fixed, even on pre-(D) hulls. Otherwise you have a discrepancy between gameplay and lore, like a (very mild) version of the "main character is much weaker/stronger in cut scenes than in game play" issue.

It'll return to the base hull version, yes. A custom-skin-(D) hull will still stay a (D) hull even after restoration, though.

I think it's less an issue of consistency - restoration removes all d-mods except for the destroyed weapons ones, and that's *all* it does; pretty consistent, right? - but more of what someone might expect. But, again, what happens is explained, and the chances of wanting to restore these (D) ships are extremely slim anyway, so I'm not sure it's worth spending time worrying about. Not to say it's not worth adjusting, ever, but it's just super low priority and I don't see touching it before the release.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Adraius on January 23, 2017, 10:42:00 AM
I'm curious, how many people think they will make heavy use of Reinforced Bulkheads?  Maybe I'm an outlier, but I don't see myself burdening my ships with the hullmod when I'm already intending to make heavy use of the salvaging system.  The enemy will be serving up plenty of hulks, I'll just take one of theirs!  My ships generally do a good job of keeping themselves intact anyway, and I can only see them doing a better job with the nerfed officers - milder damage spikes for my officer-less ships to worry about.

Possible counterpoints... I don't recall how many OP Reinforced Bulkheads costs, if it's low enough it may well be worth the opportunity cost anyway.  Also, if I understood Alex's post right, enemy ships will get 2-4 d-mods, but your own ships only one?  If I'm reading that right, what's the reasoning behind that?

I can definitely see the value for especially prized or rare ships, I'm just curious if people are planning on throwing it on most of their fleet.

Side note, while I'm not super hot on Reinforced Bulkheads, Armored Turrets preserving weapons would make me very happy to throw it on a specific selection of ships.  Again, maybe due to a quirk of my playstyle, but when only using captured ships and weapons I always run shorter on weapons than hulls, and that seems like it'll only become more pronounced with 0.8.

Actually, any thoughts on weapon drop rate in relation to hull salvaging availability, Alex?  Was there ever an intention to make weapons available at a certain rate relative to hulls, or are they independent as far as you're concerned?
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: FooF on January 23, 2017, 11:47:13 AM
Why not call the degraded pirate version of hulls that can't be restored "(P)" versions of the ship? "P" for either "Pirate" and/or "Permanent." (D) versions retain their "degraded" status, though they may get restored, while the (P) versions are immediately recognized as unalterably damaged. Seems to me that would clear up a lot of confusion.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Schwartz on January 23, 2017, 11:55:38 AM
Since I've started picking good weapons off every market I visit, I haven't really run into weapon troubles... more like money troubles. I'd say looking at most markets, the chance of finding a handful of good weapons is greater than the chance of finding a ship you want to use.

Taking scavenging alone, yeah, it's probably going to not even out perfectly. But it shouldn't have to. Ship hulls are going to see a certain drop in player value. Why shouldn't good weapons be higher in demand?

And if you use reassembled ships a great deal, you probably don't want to waste your precious single Mjolnir Cannon on one of them anyway. We're going to see more use out of those 'bad picks' like Mortars, Chainguns and Autocannons.

Please, please don't gimp the pirates any more than they are already gimped. Pirates are a faction choice and just because they make for early game fodder, they should not have to be so remarkably dumb as to only use the worst gear they can find. I'd rather see them use sidegraded ships, i.e. (p) variants with a downside such as less armour, counterpointed by an upside such as more speed and agility.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Alex on January 23, 2017, 12:16:30 PM
Possible counterpoints... I don't recall how many OP Reinforced Bulkheads costs, if it's low enough it may well be worth the opportunity cost anyway.  Also, if I understood Alex's post right, enemy ships will get 2-4 d-mods, but your own ships only one?  If I'm reading that right, what's the reasoning behind that?

Your ships get one more each time they're recovered, yeah. That way there's a gradual drop-off in ship effectiveness if it's lost and recovered several times, instead of it becoming bottom-of-the-barrel right away. Recovered enemy ships, on the other hand, it's ok/desirable for those to be lower quality to start with so the playstyle is more distinct from having new ships.

In-fiction, something about recovery operations on your own ships being a lot easier than on enemy ones. You don't know how they were set up in the first place, whether they've been sabotaged before the crew abandoned ship, etc.

Side note, while I'm not super hot on Reinforced Bulkheads, Armored Turrets preserving weapons would make me very happy to throw it on a specific selection of ships.  Again, maybe due to a quirk of my playstyle, but when only using captured ships and weapons I always run shorter on weapons than hulls, and that seems like it'll only become more pronounced with 0.8.

Actually, any thoughts on weapon drop rate in relation to hull salvaging availability, Alex?  Was there ever an intention to make weapons available at a certain rate relative to hulls, or are they independent as far as you're concerned?

Well, the ship and weapon recovery chances match across the board (mostly), so that should make the amount of weapons recovered sufficient on average, and more than sufficient if you don't recover every ship you come across. Of course, once you get "guaranteed recovery" for some of your ship, that gets skewed, but as long as you don't recover every ship that comes up, should still be fine.

Bottom line is I think it'll be something to manage, but hopefully weapons will be plentiful enough that it *will* be manageable. Not the top-tier stuff, though, naturally.


Why not call the degraded pirate version of hulls that can't be restored "(P)" versions of the ship? "P" for either "Pirate" and/or "Permanent." (D) versions retain their "degraded" status, though they may get restored, while the (P) versions are immediately recognized as unalterably damaged. Seems to me that would clear up a lot of confusion.

It feels like adding an extra "type" of damaged ships could add to the confusion instead of helping clear things up. And, per what I said previously, it doesn't seem like this'll actually come into play, so the problem seems largely theoretical, no?
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Midnight Kitsune on January 23, 2017, 12:57:57 PM
Why not call the degraded pirate version of hulls that can't be restored "(P)" versions of the ship? "P" for either "Pirate" and/or "Permanent." (D) versions retain their "degraded" status, though they may get restored, while the (P) versions are immediately recognized as unalterably damaged. Seems to me that would clear up a lot of confusion.

It feels like adding an extra "type" of damaged ships could add to the confusion instead of helping clear things up. And, per what I said previously, it doesn't seem like this'll actually come into play, so the problem seems largely theoretical, no?
Another reason why I have wanted the the hand crafted D hulls to be seperate from the generated ones: Modder burn out. The reason why I say this is because several modders are now lamenting the fact that they will basically HAVE to make D skins for ALL of their ships because vanilla has some hand built D skins. And knowing how perfectionistic some of these guys get, I know that it will just lead to more and more stress for them
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Alex on January 23, 2017, 01:02:44 PM
Another reason why I have wanted the the hand crafted D hulls to be seperate from the generated ones: Modder burn out. The reason why I say this is because several modders are now lamenting the fact that they will basically HAVE to make D skins for ALL of their ships because vanilla has some hand built D skins. And knowing how perfectionistic some of these guys get, I know that it will just lead to more and more stress for them

... but vanilla mostly doesn't have custom D skins for everything. And for started-normal-but-became-(D)-from-being-recovered ships, all of them are currently using the basic default sprite.

So right now actually the hand-made D hulls are separate from the generated ones, in the way you're thinking. Unless I'm missing something?
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Psiyon on January 23, 2017, 02:03:51 PM
Another reason why I have wanted the the hand crafted D hulls to be seperate from the generated ones: Modder burn out. The reason why I say this is because several modders are now lamenting the fact that they will basically HAVE to make D skins for ALL of their ships because vanilla has some hand built D skins. And knowing how perfectionistic some of these guys get, I know that it will just lead to more and more stress for them

... but vanilla mostly doesn't have custom D skins for everything. And for started-normal-but-became-(D)-from-being-recovered ships, all of them are currently using the basic default sprite.

So right now actually the hand-made D hulls are separate from the generated ones, in the way you're thinking. Unless I'm missing something?
If I might offer a potential idea: Why not utilize a overlay to signify that a ship is a (D) variant? Something like the standard battle-damage overlay, but probably a lot more subtle. Seems like the (D) variants in general seem a bit desaturated, and have some basic wear and tear on them--at least in my mind, it doesn't seem too crazy to accomplish those visuals with an overlay on the ship sprite. Added benefit: (D) variants can be randomized a bit so they don't all share the same sprite (and will no longer lack visuals indicating degradation), and the intensity of the overlay could be ramped up based on how many (D) mods it has--could allow some interesting moments in combat where players can quickly take out hostiles that are clearly degraded.

Doing stuff like that is never going to produce as pretty results as hand-painting everything of course, but this would be the first way that I'd try to solve this problem.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Gothars on January 23, 2017, 02:23:06 PM
@ Psiyon:

How about applying some of the visual damage layer to it permanently? You know, like the weapon impact craters and such. Maybe with some new textures that look more like rust, use and repairs. That would give (D) variants more individuality and would be nice for mod ships, too.

In theory, sure, but the damage decal rendering is probably the most performance-intensive rendering vanilla does, so I don't want to toss it around lightly. It also tends to obscure weapon mounts heavily, so it'd take a lot of tweaking. So, I don't know - if it came to that, I think I'd probably rather have separate (D) graphics for each ship. According to David, that wouldn't be super labor-intensive.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Psiyon on January 23, 2017, 02:55:49 PM
@ Psiyon:
[overlay rendering stuff]
Derp somehow missed that.
Alex: Solid reasons, that stuff definitely takes a lot of tweaking to get right. Didn't know how performance intensive it was, though--that's a pretty good reason to not do it.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Sy on January 23, 2017, 06:39:15 PM
That's how it works in real life, isn't it? :) Customs, units of military blockades and such have to physically board vessels to inspect them, and if there's danger of resistance they have to go armed.
right, but IRL it's usually a bit more complicated than "give us your stuff or we will just obliterate your ship and everyone on it". at least i would think it is.

i'm not against the idea itself, just seems to me that if your target already surrendered under threat of immediate execution, you don't really need people with huge guns and power armor to secure the cargo. and because of said threat, the only real trap the enemy crew could set would be just triggering a self-destruction, sacrificing their own lives just to deal some damage. and if that happens, i don't think even the best power armor or the biggest gun is gonna keep you from getting blasted to bits. ^^


Debris fields post-battle are in the dev build. Currently considering ship recovery in relation to that - my feeling is it should be a more rare event than just being able to recover everything that got disabled. After all, chances are if it wasn't taken with the winning fleet, it was broken for salvage. So there'll probably be a small chance to find a recoverable ship.
hmm. maybe most fleets just wouldn't spend the required time to salvage? i think most mercantile and faction-military fleets wouldn't really bother with that, even assuming they'd have the necessary cargo space available to take a good amount of loot, as it would be a distraction more so than anything else from whatever they were doing. like getting to a resource-starved market in time to exploit a shortage of specific goods before everyone else does, or patrolling a system for threats to a nearby station, or continuing a carefully planned campaign into enemy territory to take advantage of a temporary weakness in hostile fleet movements.

Quote
I see what you mean, but the problem is, I think, that it would be the only layer of defense and would thus feel mandatory. If I were to do that, it'd probably be hullmod, officer skill, limited-global skill or some such - like it is for ships - so that nothing specific feels mandatory.
add more things, then!  ;D

but yeah, i can see how having only a single option might not be a good idea.

Quote
Good call; reduced its deployment/maintenance cost to 4 supplies. Hopefully that'll be enough.
i think that's the most important change, yes. 4 sounds good. :]

the strangely low PPT and disproportionally high credit cost (for those rare times someone might actually buy one) also seem quite out of place to me, although i doubt either of them is gonna make a real difference in whether it's worth using a few salvaged ones as industry player.

sidenote: i kinda stopped responding to all your individual responses to my points when i don't really have anything more to add than "thanks!" or "okay, fair enough", but i really appreciate you taking the time. :]


I'm curious, how many people think they will make heavy use of Reinforced Bulkheads?  Maybe I'm an outlier, but I don't see myself burdening my ships with the hullmod when I'm already intending to make heavy use of the salvaging system.  The enemy will be serving up plenty of hulks, I'll just take one of theirs!
i think i'm gonna be using it (or the other options that do the same thing) pretty often, but usually for rare ships and/or ones without a bunch of d-mods. keep in mind that the options for guaranteed ship recovery aren't actually tied to the industry combat playstyle or its skills, they just use the same ship recovery system. it's probably more useful for fleets that don't use a large number of disposable rust buckets.

i might also use it for some ships i just expect to die very quickly/often, even if they're low-quality and already riddled with d-mods. depends on how the final numbers work out, hard to say now where it would be cost effective.

Quote
Possible counterpoints... I don't recall how many OP Reinforced Bulkheads costs, if it's low enough it may well be worth the opportunity cost anyway.
5 OP on a frigate (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C24PtnaXEAEcBTE.jpg:large), assuming those numbers don't get adjusted before release.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Cosmitz on January 23, 2017, 07:07:05 PM
I really love this, it makes good sense and solves issues we've been having for a long time.

But i'm still unconvinced about the ship recovery itself. Using dmods is great, and there's something to be said between disabling/destroying/nuking even the dead hulk to manage a percentage chance, but it'd like to be more play there, with the world map as well.

What would be nice would be some risk/reward to it all. I assume as is we have a chance to recover on each and all of the enemy ships, if they don't make it, you can't pick it for salvaging. I'd consider the ability to salvage any enemy or friendly, ship. Nuked hull gets something low like 5%. Destroyed say 15%. Disabled 30%, modifiable with skills, and functioning on a 'band' for dmods. Either way, have each 'roll' consume crew/supplies scaling up per class. On a first-roll-success, you pay out the crew/supplies, then roll for the dmod. Say on the above 30%, rolling just under 60 gets you a dmod, rolling up from 60 gets you the ship in good condition (well, 'good', you still need to repair it to full from nothing).

Failing the initial recover roll, you lose the supplies/crew, the price increases for the new roll, and the ship gets a dmod (cap it out at all of them :P). Call it a failure to salvage. You can eventually, with enough supplies/crew get the ship you want, even if it'll require huge tuneups in station to get it to pristine condition. Either way, this puts forward a very straight path to getting the ship you want, if at a cost of time, dedicated procedure and huge cost. (The repair at a station should be per d-mod though in this case, and using LIFO methodology, not just a flat sum)

The mention of the world map, as to not abuse the ability to scavange all the ships, would be that for each ship you stay 'still' and do salvage ops for a period of time. Ideally per ship, in the order that you want them salvaged, cancellable permanently at any time, and with no repairs getting done to any of your existing fleet of ships during it.

You can salvage an entire enemy fleet, but the question remains if you can afford to sit still, not repairing any of your ships, and wasting supply/day upkeeping them, while you dilly-dally salvaging, after paying out your nose in crew/supply for them. I can imagine it'd make for some fun times 'waiting' for a ship to salvage while an enemy fleet homes in on you, then full burning away at the last moment. Or not, and get stuck in a battle you really didn't want to have at that moment.


Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: SafariJohn on January 23, 2017, 07:11:32 PM
i think most mercantile and faction-military fleets wouldn't really bother with that, even assuming they'd have the necessary cargo space available to take a good amount of loot, as it would be a distraction more so than anything else from whatever they were doing.

I think military fleets would at least try to salvage their own ships.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Sy on January 23, 2017, 08:53:10 PM
I think military fleets would at least try to salvage their own ships.
even if it means taking a bunch of mothballed or only barely combat ready ships with them, being either dead weight or consuming a large junk of their available supplies and crew for little immediate benefit, and still requiring expensive repairs at the nearest station just to get them back up to average performance -- and all of this without specialized industrial personal and equipment?

...maybe. i'm not saying it could never make sense for them to do so. but i do think that if the ability to recover (some, not all) ships from debris of lost battles is desirable from a gameplay perspective, it wouldn't require a huge stretch to explain from an in-universe perspective why you're able to do so.

keep in mind, even for the player, recovering a bunch of enemy ships is generally not supposed to be worth the cost of supplies, if you don't have the necessary industry skills. recovering your own disabled ships only adds a single d-mod, but recovering enemy ships adds 2-4. so even if enemy fleets would usually recover as many of their own ships as possible, recovering your lost ships would usually not be worthwhile for them.

and i imagine stripping all remaining wrecks of any useful hardware and materials, to the point where it can all be neatly stored in cargo holds (even assuming they have the necessary cargo capacity in the first place), could take quite a while. probably worthwhile for pirates who seek out other fleets specifically to blow them to pieces for some loot and salvage, or for specialized scavenger fleets that have the necessary know-how, equipment, cargo space, and crew capacity to do it more quickly and efficiently.
but for military fleets that are sent out with a specific, potentially time-sensitive mission or goal, or for trade convoys that rely on short-lived business opportunities to make a good profit, this might just not be worth it.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Voyager I on January 23, 2017, 10:18:28 PM
I don't want to shoehorn marines into this just because they used to be involved. There's no mechanical reason for this that I can see, and there are likely future things where they'll fit in much more naturally.

This style of thinking is why I and the rest of the Something Awful crew love you as a developer, just to say.  So many games get cluttered up with inane mechanics that don't add anything but more buttons to click and numbers to track because more = better and of course a game in Genre X needs to include Y!  It's truly refreshing to have a dev that can not only tell himself No, but is even willing to do the needful and cull mechanics that aren't pulling their weight anymore no matter how long they've been around (RIP and good riddance, ballistic weapon ammunition).
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Johnny Cocas on January 24, 2017, 02:55:47 AM
I don't want to shoehorn marines into this just because they used to be involved. There's no mechanical reason for this that I can see, and there are likely future things where they'll fit in much more naturally.

*cough* planet invasions *cough* "Starship Troopers" *cough*

Sorry this winter is really messing my throat ;)
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: jamplier on January 24, 2017, 05:04:43 AM
I'm not sure I've read about it anywhere, so how does this "industry" playstyle compare to the "tech-combat" playstyle from a financial standpoint? From what I understand, industry basically means you'll be burning through ships and replacing them with whatever you can salvage after successful battles, having a "safety-in-numbers" approach to combat, as opposed to the "few-but-strong-ships" playstyle we are all used to right now.

Is the cost of repairing burner ships/replacing crew losses offset by the industry skill set/other changes? The idea of having a fleet of disposable ships which you can "burn through" sounds really appealing to me, but I must confess, I really can't see myself choosing this style of play if it means less $$$ thanks to really expensive fleet maintenance.

Also, choosing industry from the really early game (1 to 3 ships) sounds like it might make an already difficult start even worse. I'm not sure if it actually does, but I think this is worth keeping in mind going forward through development.

<3 u Alex  :-*
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: nomadic_leader on January 24, 2017, 05:26:28 AM
I think military fleets would at least try to salvage their own ships.
even if it means taking a bunch of mothballed or only barely combat ready ships with them, being either dead weight or consuming a large junk of their available supplies and crew for little immediate benefit, and still requiring expensive repairs at the nearest station just to get them back up to average performance -- and all of this without specialized industrial personal and equipment?

Yes, in real life militaries and navies were/are extraordinarily likely to scuttle their own ships and materiel. If they are obviously outgunned, they'll just destroy the stuff and run off before the fight even starts. This happened in the American wars against the British a lot, for example.

When facing a superior enemy:
      If you don't scuttle:
            You fight
            Lose a lot of men
            Do minimal damage to the enemy.
            The enemy gets your stuff to use against you later
      If you do scuttle:
            You might escape
            The enemy doesn't get any of your stuff

It's a little different in space where there's nowhere to escape to, but there's still many good reasons for their to be space debris all over, even if most of it isn't that useful or valuable. Military Units are focused on a mission, not recovering or holding on to ships and materiel that will be liabilities to them.

Plus, space madness.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Megas on January 24, 2017, 06:01:31 AM
So far, I see Industry as the grind-less tree.  If capturing Hyperion and other stupidly rare ships (via field repairs) is the easiest way to acquire them, the skills that make that possible will probably be highly desirable.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: SafariJohn on January 24, 2017, 07:11:14 AM
I think military fleets would at least try to salvage their own ships.
even if it means taking a bunch of mothballed or only barely combat ready ships with them, being either dead weight or consuming a large junk of their available supplies and crew for little immediate benefit, and still requiring expensive repairs at the nearest station just to get them back up to average performance -- and all of this without specialized industrial personal and equipment?

Militaries operate on a completely different scale and philosophy than private firms. They would repair disabled ships simply because it is faster than building new ships, costs be damned.

Sure, there are plenty of situations where they wouldn't salvage, but I believe those are exceptions, not the rule.

Yes, in real life militaries and navies were/are extraordinarily likely to scuttle their own ships and materiel. If they are obviously outgunned, they'll just destroy the stuff and run off before the fight even starts.

We were talking about when a military fleet wins a battle and whether they would salvage or not.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Embolism on January 24, 2017, 07:22:42 AM
I think a military fleet will probably scuttle all derelicts after a victory to stop them falling into enemy hands, unless there's a base nearby they can notify to send out a salvage fleet.

Actually that might be a nice idea: while pirates and mercenaries might stay behind to salvage after a victory, organised militaries would send out salvage fleets instead; or scuttle everything if they're too far away.

After all military fleets often have tight constraints on when and where they need to be somewhere, they can't be spending days sifting through wreckage.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Voyager I on January 24, 2017, 09:06:32 AM
Keep in mind that Starsector takes place after an apocalyptic event that destroyed or disabled much of the infrastructure in an unfinished colony effort that hadn't even reached basic self-sufficiency yet.  The organized military forces might be above fielding D ships and pirate refits, but I doubt they're in a position to leave good salvage on the table.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Alex on January 24, 2017, 11:05:16 AM
@ Psiyon:
[overlay rendering stuff]
Derp somehow missed that.
Alex: Solid reasons, that stuff definitely takes a lot of tweaking to get right. Didn't know how performance intensive it was, though--that's a pretty good reason to not do it.

:) (And now, of course, I'm thinking about ways to do it in a different way, specifically suited for (D) hulls. Sigh.)


the strangely low PPT and disproportionally high credit cost (for those rare times someone might actually buy one) also seem quite out of place to me, although i doubt either of them is gonna make a real difference in whether it's worth using a few salvaged ones as industry player.

Reduced the credit cost a bit, another good point. The PPT is part of its rustbucket "charm", though.

sidenote: i kinda stopped responding to all your individual responses to my points when i don't really have anything more to add than "thanks!" or "okay, fair enough", but i really appreciate you taking the time. :]

Fair enough, I tend to do that too :)


Spoiler
I really love this, it makes good sense and solves issues we've been having for a long time.

But i'm still unconvinced about the ship recovery itself. Using dmods is great, and there's something to be said between disabling/destroying/nuking even the dead hulk to maanage a percentage chance, but it'd like to be more play there, with the world map as well.

What would be nice would be some risk/reward to it all. I assume as is we have a chance to recover on each and all of the enemy ships, if they don't make it, you can't pick it for salvaging. I'd consider the ability to salvage any enemy or friendly, ship. Nuked hull gets something low like 5%. Destroyed say 15%. Disabled 30%, modifiable with skills, and functioning on a 'band' for dmods. Either way, have each 'roll' consume crew/supplies scaling up per class. On a first-roll-success, you pay out the crew/supplies, then roll for the dmod. Say on the above 30%, rolling just under 60 gets you a dmod, rolling up from 60 gets you the ship in good condition (well, 'good', you still need to repair it to full from nothing).

Failing the initial recover roll, you lose the supplies/crew, the price increases for the new roll, and the ship gets a dmod (cap it out at all of them :P). Call it a failure to salvage. You can eventually, with enough supplies/crew get the ship you want, even if it'll require huge tuneups in station to get it to pristine condition. Either way, this puts forward a very straight path to getting the ship you want, if at a cost of time, dedicated procedure and huge cost. (The repair at a station should be per d-mod though in this case, and using LIFO methodology, not just a flat sum)

The mention of the world map, as to not abuse the ability to scavange all the ships, would be that for each ship you stay 'still' and do salvage ops for a period of time. Ideally per ship, in the order that you want them salvaged, cancellable permanently at any time, and with no repairs getting done to any of your existing fleet of ships during it.

You can salvage an entire enemy fleet, but the question remains if you can afford to sit still, not repairing any of your ships, and wasting supply/day upkeeping them, while you dilly-dally salvaging, after paying out your nose in crew/supply for them. I can imagine it'd make for some fun times 'waiting' for a ship to salvage while an enemy fleet homes in on you, then full burning away at the last moment. Or not, and get stuck in a battle you really didn't want to have at that moment.
[close]

Hmm. I guess the question to ask first is, "what are we trying to achieve with these mechanics"? I find it's useful to put that upfront so that the ideas can be considered in light of what they're trying to achieve.

Just looking at this as-is, it seems pretty complicated, potentially aggravating for the player (constant delays while you're standing still waiting through another delay), and in danger of undermining the "get lots of rustbuckets" playstyle by making it more expensive by putting more cost upfront. Finally, adding a lot of detail to invididual ship recovery feels like the wrong way to go here - this is potentially something you want to do a lot, and the decisions are "ok, which ships do I want to grab here"? Putting sub-decisions in for each ship you want to grab belabors that process and makes the cost harder to estimate; in my mind ideally it'd be something quick and clear.



This style of thinking is why I and the rest of the Something Awful crew love you as a developer, just to say.  So many games get cluttered up with inane mechanics that don't add anything but more buttons to click and numbers to track because more = better and of course a game in Genre X needs to include Y!  It's truly refreshing to have a dev that can not only tell himself No, but is even willing to do the needful and cull mechanics that aren't pulling their weight anymore no matter how long they've been around (RIP and good riddance, ballistic weapon ammunition).

I feel like it's definitely an area I can improve in, but thank you :)

(On a related note: thank you to everone that's made a positive comment that I haven't responded to! When there's a lot of posts, I tend to focus on answering questions, but I really appreciate all the positive comments.)


I'm not sure I've read about it anywhere, so how does this "industry" playstyle compare to the "tech-combat" playstyle from a financial standpoint? From what I understand, industry basically means you'll be burning through ships and replacing them with whatever you can salvage after successful battles, having a "safety-in-numbers" approach to combat, as opposed to the "few-but-strong-ships" playstyle we are all used to right now.

Is the cost of repairing burner ships/replacing crew losses offset by the industry skill set/other changes? The idea of having a fleet of disposable ships which you can "burn through" sounds really appealing to me, but I must confess, I really can't see myself choosing this style of play if it means less $$$ thanks to really expensive fleet maintenance.

Also, choosing industry from the really early game (1 to 3 ships) sounds like it might make an already difficult start even worse. I'm not sure if it actually does, but I think this is worth keeping in mind going forward through development.

All good questions. Ship recovery should be considerably cheaper than buying new hulls, even accounting for d-mods. Assuming the numbers make that work, there's still more expenses, but hopefully that's covered by 1) having the Salvage skill in the same aptitude and 2) being able to take on riskier fights more casually.

But, yeah, really need more playtesting here.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Thaago on January 24, 2017, 12:16:38 PM
Exciting!

Regarding the cost of the industry playstyle, it seems that a lot of that is going to revolve around the cost of supplies. Vanilla SS has done a good job at having that be a reasonable number, but I know that a lot of the mods struggle with imbalancing the economy and having supplies suddenly be hundreds of credits (and not always in a reproducible way when it comes to the procedurally generated stuff).

Any thoughts on having supplies have a more regulated price than other commodities? Some hidden damping factors that drive them back towards a value that balances the industry playstyle?
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Wyvern on January 24, 2017, 12:55:04 PM
A minor suggestion: add a chance for (D) hull mods on ships that turn up in the black market - and perhaps a slight increase to the number and variety of available hulls.  Finding, for example, a pristine XIV-Variant Dominator on the black market is (and should be!) a very rare occurrence.  Finding one that's been pounded to scrap and patched together often enough, and it makes more sense for some Hegemony logistics officer to be able to write it off as scrap (in exchange for a hefty finder's fee, of course...)
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Morrokain on January 24, 2017, 01:05:11 PM
I get what you're saying here, yeah. The reason it works the way it does is the breakup chance for hulls is partially set for "feel" reasons rather than purely mechanical ones. So, for example, lighter and flimsier hulls break into pieces more often.

Nice! I appreciate you taking that direction with the break-apart mechanic. Is overkill a factor there as well? For instance, will smaller ships (destroyers and such) unlucky enough to eat a Cyclone salvo rightly get evaporated? >:D

Regarding the cost of the industry playstyle, it seems that a lot of that is going to revolve around the cost of supplies. Vanilla SS has done a good job at having that be a reasonable number, but I know that a lot of the mods struggle with imbalancing the economy and having supplies suddenly be hundreds of credits (and not always in a reproducible way when it comes to the procedurally generated stuff).

Any thoughts on having supplies have a more regulated price than other commodities? Some hidden damping factors that drive them back towards a value that balances the industry playstyle?

Yes! +1 I've been meaning to suggest something like this as well. Its too important of a resource in the campaign and probably has been for a while, industy or no industry.

(Edit) I should probably be a little more specific here. :) What I mean is that even in Vanilla, sometimes I will get overconfident and take a bounty mission to another part of the sector. Even if I have prepared with a stockpile of additional supplies, if the destination, or even just a stop on the way (to browse new markets), has low stability markets everywhere and I take a couple fights or god forbid have to emergency burn my whole fleet, it adds up really quickly that I am forced to exodus because I am essentially bleeding credits with every CR drop... which is everything I do haha. In the meantime I am not making any money in these excursions, just gathering info at a ludicrous price.

Oh how I hate you, Sindrian Diktat. How I hate you.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Sy on January 24, 2017, 01:13:36 PM
So many games get cluttered up with inane mechanics that don't add anything but more buttons to click and numbers to track because more = better and of course a game in Genre X needs to include Y!
i'm the one who made the suggestion to shoehorn something in, in this case, but i still very much agree in general. ^^ the game is incredibly well thought-out and polished, particularly for a game still in alpha!


Militaries operate on a completely different scale and philosophy than private firms. They would repair disabled ships simply because it is faster than building new ships, costs be damned.
even if cost isn't really a factor irl, it very well could be in the dystopian setting of Starsector. plus, part of why i think many fleets might not do much salvaging is because i think it would not be fast, especially for fleets who aren't specialized in doing it. maybe major factions have their own scavenger fleets that seek out debris of recent battles to bolster their own forces, but that could still allow the player a window of opportunity between when the combat fleet leaves after only minimal salvaging and when the nearest scavenging fleet arrives to strip the debris of anything remotely useful.

again though, i'm not saying you are entirely wrong. i agree, it could be argued that military fleets should always salvage as much as possible. i just feel the possibility of allowing the player to recover some ships from a battle they lost (or weren't even involved in at all) isn't totally nonsensical to the point where it would feel completely out of place if there were gameplay mechanics in place to allow it.


Any thoughts on having supplies have a more regulated price than other commodities? Some hidden damping factors that drive them back towards a value that balances the industry playstyle?
hopefully the economy revamp should already take care of that, part of its goal is to make prices less fickle and volatile.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Thaago on January 24, 2017, 01:36:56 PM
I had completely forgotten about the economy revamp! My bad.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Sy on January 24, 2017, 09:57:15 PM
oh btw, since i don't think it has been mentioned yet, and someone in discord just reminded me: that improved Sunder is looking awesome, David!  ;D

finally it has the mid-tech style it deserves.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: David on January 25, 2017, 08:28:15 AM
oh btw, since i don't think it has been mentioned yet, and someone in discord just reminded me: that improved Sunder is looking awesome, David!  ;D

finally it has the mid-tech style it deserves.

Thanks! I've touched up lots of the old ships, just you wait and see.  ;)
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Sy on January 25, 2017, 08:42:55 AM
wait
...there it is again, the bane of our miserable existence. q_q
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Alex on January 25, 2017, 11:10:56 AM
Regarding the cost of the industry playstyle, it seems that a lot of that is going to revolve around the cost of supplies. Vanilla SS has done a good job at having that be a reasonable number, but I know that a lot of the mods struggle with imbalancing the economy and having supplies suddenly be hundreds of credits (and not always in a reproducible way when it comes to the procedurally generated stuff).

Any thoughts on having supplies have a more regulated price than other commodities? Some hidden damping factors that drive them back towards a value that balances the industry playstyle?

The new economy should be more robust in the case of over-supply of supplies (ha), so as long as mods are careful to err on the side of adding markets with more supply of ... supplies ... than demand, it should work out better.


A minor suggestion: add a chance for (D) hull mods on ships that turn up in the black market - and perhaps a slight increase to the number and variety of available hulls.  Finding, for example, a pristine XIV-Variant Dominator on the black market is (and should be!) a very rare occurrence.  Finding one that's been pounded to scrap and patched together often enough, and it makes more sense for some Hegemony logistics officer to be able to write it off as scrap (in exchange for a hefty finder's fee, of course...)

Hmm, yeah, that makes sense - will keep it in mind. Some potential trickiness there on the backend as it'd have to be a custom variant rather than a reference to a stock variant ID (unless there were some hardcoded (D) variants for this), so it's not actually super straightforward.


Nice! I appreciate you taking that direction with the break-apart mechanic. Is overkill a factor there as well? For instance, will smaller ships (destroyers and such) unlucky enough to eat a Cyclone salvo rightly get evaporated? >:D

It's entirely random, actually. But I'm sure confirmation bias will make it seem not so :)
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: nomadic_leader on January 25, 2017, 12:39:50 PM

Nice! I appreciate you taking that direction with the break-apart mechanic. Is overkill a factor there as well? For instance, will smaller ships (destroyers and such) unlucky enough to eat a Cyclone salvo rightly get evaporated? >:D

It's entirely random, actually. But I'm sure confirmation bias will make it seem not so :)

Hmm. Many games use a mechanic whereby the "exploding death" animation isn't used unless the damage the character sustained in the last moments of its life meets a certain threshold. It will look ridiculous when you see a fighter machine gunning a nearly dead capital ship that then does that ridiculous death flare and breaks into pieces when one last little bullet hits it.

I know the "odds" of salvage are a concern, which is tied to whether the ship broke up or not, but the breakup is about a cool visual effect -- so having a machine gun bullet potentially trigger it sort of undermines that effect.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Wyvern on January 25, 2017, 12:58:10 PM
the breakup is about a cool visual effect -- so having a machine gun bullet potentially trigger it sort of undermines that effect.
...The target area is a small thermal exhaust port...
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Dri on January 25, 2017, 01:12:15 PM
Haha, good one Wyvern! :D
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Alex on January 25, 2017, 01:25:36 PM
Hmm. Many games use a mechanic whereby the "exploding death" animation isn't used unless the damage the character sustained in the last moments of its life meets a certain threshold. It will look ridiculous when you see a fighter machine gunning a nearly dead capital ship that then does that ridiculous death flare and breaks into pieces when one last little bullet hits it.

I know the "odds" of salvage are a concern, which is tied to whether the ship broke up or not, but the breakup is about a cool visual effect -- so having a machine gun bullet potentially trigger it sort of undermines that effect.

Right, yeah, was thinking about that while working on it - but the breakup happens after the ship explosion, so it's tied to that rather than the last couple of hits the ship took, in terms of "why does it look like this happened".

(And personally, I think a fighter plinking a few last shots into a capital ship and causing a massive explosion is a very cool visual.)
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Deshara on January 25, 2017, 01:35:36 PM
Hmm. Many games use a mechanic whereby the "exploding death" animation isn't used unless the damage the character sustained in the last moments of its life meets a certain threshold. It will look ridiculous when you see a fighter machine gunning a nearly dead capital ship that then does that ridiculous death flare and breaks into pieces when one last little bullet hits it.

I know the "odds" of salvage are a concern, which is tied to whether the ship broke up or not, but the breakup is about a cool visual effect -- so having a machine gun bullet potentially trigger it sort of undermines that effect.

Right, yeah, was thinking about that while working on it - but the breakup happens after the ship explosion, so it's tied to that rather than the last couple of hits the ship took, in terms of "why does it look like this happened".

(And personally, I think a fighter plinking a few last shots into a capital ship and causing a massive explosion is a very cool visual.)

I interpret the "critical existence failure" of the ship blowing up at 0 health not as the shot damaging the structure of the hull until it breaks up (because the ship doesn't just break up) but that you've damaged the safety/failsafe systems of the ship to the point that the reactor goes critical, and THAT system that is imbedded into the structure of the hull exploding is why the structure breaks up.
So, a fighter plinking away the last of a ship's health isn't actually sawing the ship in half with its bullets but shooting out critical regulative systems, and keep in mind that these are ship-to-ship sized frag rounds so it's wiping out computer banks dozens at a time
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Sy on January 25, 2017, 01:40:23 PM
yep, what Desh said.

if the explosion would come from the force of the weapon impact/explosion itself, we'd get a screenwide whiteout anytime a torpedo hits anything. ^^
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: mitthrawnuruodo on February 01, 2017, 10:38:17 AM
Great stuff!! Looking forward to the release.

I especially love the fact that this dev makes an active effort towards reducing frustrating and tedious game mechanics, whereas many similar games would rather use them as "difficulty" gimmicks to rip off pretend-hardcore gamers.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Megas on February 06, 2017, 07:47:15 AM
I especially love the fact that this dev makes an active effort towards reducing frustrating and tedious game mechanics, whereas many similar games would rather use them as "difficulty" gimmicks to rip off pretend-hardcore gamers.
If a game requires people to spend as much time as possible playing (on a server) for the devs or company to make money, then forced grinding and other tedium can be useful to keep people playing who get hooked.

When people, who get conditioned to grind, then play a game that does not require grinding (or much less of it), they may complain the game does not last long enough.  Similarly, if a fighting game requires a simple button push or command motion to perform game-winner moves instead of complex motions and/or "just frame" timing, fans who can pull off such complicated moves may call such simplicity lame, unrealistic (you need to train... for a game), or some other mocking term.

I like games that eschew "frustrating and tedious game mechanics".
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: AxleMC131 on February 12, 2017, 03:45:44 PM
Absolutely adoring the concept of Autofit. :D Something I've wanted in some form or other for a long time, and you've absolutely cracked it.

I have a thought that stems from the ability to restore ships to their "factory condition", or however you want to describe the painstaking removal of D-mods from damaged ships. Will we ever see the ability to massively overhaul one ship class into another? Obviously I'm referring to ship classes that are described as being conversions from others (Tarsus to Condor, Buffalo to Buffalo MkII), and I think it could be really cool to upgrade/modify/convert a Tarsus freighter into a Condor carrier. I don't doubt that this would take massive quantities of resources, and I'm not sure of the practical uses in the campaign, but it could be worth thinking about what with all the other factors being added with ship recovery here.

Thoughts?

(Been playing Starsector for a few years, but I'm new to the forums)
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Morrokain on February 12, 2017, 04:30:36 PM
I have a thought that stems from the ability to restore ships to their "factory condition", or however you want to describe the painstaking removal of D-mods from damaged ships. Will we ever see the ability to massively overhaul one ship class into another? Obviously I'm referring to ship classes that are described as being conversions from others (Tarsus to Condor, Buffalo to Buffalo MkII), and I think it could be really cool to upgrade/modify/convert a Tarsus freighter into a Condor carrier. I don't doubt that this would take massive quantities of resources, and I'm not sure of the practical uses in the campaign, but it could be worth thinking about what with all the other factors being added with ship recovery here.

Thoughts?

(Been playing Starsector for a few years, but I'm new to the forums)

First off, welcome to the community!  :D

Idk what Alex has in mind for conversions like the condor currently, though correct me if I'm wrong here but I believe in the past the goal was to eventually have that be sort of an additional layer of tech unlocking in the future. I am talking like back in 2014-15 though, so I don't think its been mentioned in a bit, but I was under the impression that skin files were the first step towards something along those lines. Some campaign things like that have since been cut from immediate development for gameplay reasons though. A much smaller campaign feature, random patrol tolls, for instance, got cut (I think two updates ago?) because they didn't add much more than an random frustration element for the player despite making sense from a realism perspective.

Not saying conversions would definitely fall into that category or anything, just that the plan may have changed due to things not working out as intended once play tested.

Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Alex on February 12, 2017, 04:42:24 PM
Spoiler
Absolutely adoring the concept of Autofit. :D Something I've wanted in some form or other for a long time, and you've absolutely cracked it.

I have a thought that stems from the ability to restore ships to their "factory condition", or however you want to describe the painstaking removal of D-mods from damaged ships. Will we ever see the ability to massively overhaul one ship class into another? Obviously I'm referring to ship classes that are described as being conversions from others (Tarsus to Condor, Buffalo to Buffalo MkII), and I think it could be really cool to upgrade/modify/convert a Tarsus freighter into a Condor carrier. I don't doubt that this would take massive quantities of resources, and I'm not sure of the practical uses in the campaign, but it could be worth thinking about what with all the other factors being added with ship recovery here.

Thoughts?

(Been playing Starsector for a few years, but I'm new to the forums)
[close]

Hi and welcome to the forum :)

Re: autofit, whether it'll be good or not I think largely depends on the quality of variants produced by the algorithm. Hopefully it'll be good enough; early testing seems to be positive. At the very least, it's much easier to use than "manage variants" was.

As far as conversions, I don't think those will pan out - they'd be cool in those specific instances, yeah, but those are so minor that it really doesn't warrant a front-row place in the refit UI, or the effort/complexity of adding something for it that's just a one-off, more or less. It's just a couple of ships out of, at this point, what, a couple of dozen?
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Midnight Kitsune on February 12, 2017, 04:58:07 PM
Spoiler
Absolutely adoring the concept of Autofit. :D Something I've wanted in some form or other for a long time, and you've absolutely cracked it.

I have a thought that stems from the ability to restore ships to their "factory condition", or however you want to describe the painstaking removal of D-mods from damaged ships. Will we ever see the ability to massively overhaul one ship class into another? Obviously I'm referring to ship classes that are described as being conversions from others (Tarsus to Condor, Buffalo to Buffalo MkII), and I think it could be really cool to upgrade/modify/convert a Tarsus freighter into a Condor carrier. I don't doubt that this would take massive quantities of resources, and I'm not sure of the practical uses in the campaign, but it could be worth thinking about what with all the other factors being added with ship recovery here.

Thoughts?

(Been playing Starsector for a few years, but I'm new to the forums)
[close]

Hi and welcome to the forum :)

Re: autofit, whether it'll be good or not I think largely depends on the quality of variants produced by the algorithm. Hopefully it'll be good enough; early testing seems to be positive. At the very least, it's much easier to use than "manage variants" was.

As far as conversions, I don't think those will pan out - they'd be cool in those specific instances, yeah, but those are so minor that it really doesn't warrant a front-row place in the refit UI, or the effort/complexity of adding something for it that's just a one-off, more or less. It's just a couple of ships out of, at this point, what, a couple of dozen?
Sounds like the convert button will never get used then...
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Alex on February 12, 2017, 05:24:32 PM
What convert button? (http://fractalsoftworks.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/recovery_autofit.jpg) :)

Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Machine on February 12, 2017, 07:19:27 PM
Oh... that's surely a large hit on my expectations of ever having a vanilla system to transform a ship class into a different one, fully repair a (D) variant or even just exchange ship paintjobs. :-\

I guess I'll have to settle with mods for that.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Morrokain on February 12, 2017, 08:21:55 PM
As far as conversions, I don't think those will pan out - they'd be cool in those specific instances, yeah, but those are so minor that it really doesn't warrant a front-row place in the refit UI, or the effort/complexity of adding something for it that's just a one-off, more or less. It's just a couple of ships out of, at this point, what, a couple of dozen?

Yeaahh kind of suspected this to be honest, and concede that its a pretty minor niche right now as far as current ships go. I suspect the U.I element is the biggest part of it. Have to be choosy with what gets showcased without visual clutter and all that.

My devil's advocate statement (because well, why not? haha): the skin files are really convenient for this from a feature standpoint. All the things you would want to "convert" are already packed in a single file that can be called instead of the "base" hull. No real foundation work needed for it code wise right? Only a switch to change the scope of the call in the campaign. Replace "hound" with "hound_hegemony" for instance.

Then just convert existing hull Ids for "conversion" ships to skin files with built in stat modifier hullmods. In the case of the condor, there should already be function calls to support the addition of flight decks considering the new hullmod talked about in the fighter blog post, so that shouldn't be a huge issue.

Idk, is the effort worth the payout? I know I am probably not the only one who would find it to be a unique and cool feature for the game, and it could definitely spice up customization. But, thinking about it more it also definitely has the danger of breaking things on the campaign layer too. Faction rep for skins kind of becomes irrelevant when conversion is an easy alternative, so you can't make it easy, or even cheaper.. but then why would you even want to do it in the first place? On the fly? That just seems silly in cases except for the freighter conversions, which brings us back to the niche feature argument.

Yeah, I can see where it could become tricky.  :P
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Alex on February 12, 2017, 08:24:42 PM
Yeah, the main work here is "game system design", and since there's no real driver for it in terms of "solving other design problems" (and, as you point it, it could potentially conflict with other design goals), my feeling is it's not a good idea to go down that path.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Morrokain on February 12, 2017, 08:33:12 PM
Yeah, the main work here is "game system design", and since there's no real driver for it in terms of "solving other design problems" (and, as you point it, it could potentially conflict with other design goals), my feeling is it's not a good idea to go down that path.

Fair enough. :) Thanks for the dialogue/clarification on it!
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Gothars on February 13, 2017, 01:39:19 PM
This doesn't rule out that hull conversion might still be possible with dialog options, right? Like, at a station, for a fee. Or at one of you outposts, for resources.

It would slightly bug me if there is something in the game world that clearly should be possible for the player, but inexplicably isn't. I mean, how can the Sector be filled with converted ship if there's no way to convert them?

...not that I'd actually want to convert them all that often. I'd just consider it a nice touch for world building.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: AxleMC131 on February 13, 2017, 01:51:07 PM
Thanks for people's thoughts and welcomes! :)

I think I see the main problem with converting ships between classes - as Alex said, there are only really two ship pairings where this applies in the lore at present, and the last thing you want is a feature that is only accessible by a tiny proportion of the game. I do really appreciate how Fractal Softworks aims extremely hard to keep out superfluous mechanics and boring grinds, so I'll follow their judgement on that.

Morrokain, you bring up a good point about the ability to have different "skins" appear as variations on a ship class other than the loadout. It's a good point that, having different skins for spacecraft, it's somewhat unnecessary to also have the ability to change a ship class just a little more - when you think about it, a Wolf compared to a Wolf (D) isn't that far off from the difference between a Condor and a Tarsus, other than the method by which the ships have been altered.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: AxleMC131 on February 13, 2017, 01:55:39 PM
It would slightly bug me if there is something in the game world that clearly should be possible for the player, but inexplicably isn't. I mean, how can the Sector be filled with converted ship if there's no way to convert them?

...not that I'd actually want to convert them all that often. I'd just consider it a nice touch for world building.


To clarify, the point I was making was from a similar standpoint to Gothars, saying that there is something apparently in the game we are informed of from lore (namely ship descriptions), yet the player has no way to access it or even any evidence that this information is true in the world of Starsector. Again, I'm not pushing for the mechanic, but that's how I was initially thinking about it. As Gothar said, it's a nice touch for world building, and as an amateur author I do adore world building!
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Wyvern on February 13, 2017, 02:38:36 PM
While conversion doesn't make sense for the Hegemony's XIV skins*, it does make a lot of sense for special skins for other factions, not to mention being something that modders will inevitably want to play with (see, for example, Tiandong Heavy Industries (http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=9583.0)).

Now, obviously, you'd need an appropriate reputation & commission with a faction that can do the conversions.  And I don't think it deserves its own front-row button in the ship UI - a conversion is, much like refurbishing a (D)-class ship, something that would be expensive and not to be undertaken lightly.  But it should be at least possible, and as more factions get faction-specific skins, being able to do those conversions will become both more interesting and more important.

* Edit: Though, come to think of it, it could - while the current lore is that all the XIV ships were special hulls that arrived with the 14th fleet, there's no particular reason to assume that the conversion techniques are impossible to replicate in the current Sector, if you have enough cash and supplies to make it work...
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Thaago on February 13, 2017, 03:22:09 PM
I for one would love to be able to buy/find/steal the rare and necessary components, blueprints, and skilled personnel/contacts to retrofit a ship into an elite variant like the XIV's. If one of my outposts could do that conversion, no matter the cost, I would be glad to have my entire fleet blown out from under me to protect it. (Or the outpost's garrison, if I'm halfway across the sector ;p)
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: AxleMC131 on February 13, 2017, 05:49:25 PM
Oh man, I'd forgotten the XIV variants. XD They are super cool, although I have yet to enjoy the pleasure of properly piloting one.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Megas on February 13, 2017, 07:03:29 PM
From what I saw about XIV variants, the "...performed by pre-collapse industrial methods (or techniques)..." (caveat: may not be exact text, but close enough if not) could just mean Hegemony could build new XIV ships with pre-collapse industry tech.  Survivor of original XIV does imply the ship is likely pre-collapse.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: AxleMC131 on February 13, 2017, 11:57:52 PM
From what I saw about XIV variants, the "...performed by pre-collapse industrial methods (or techniques)..." (caveat: may not be exact text, but close enough if not) could just mean Hegemony could build new XIV ships with pre-collapse industry tech.  Survivor of original XIV does imply the ship is likely pre-collapse.

Very true. Personally I'm not very good at flying slow, heavily armoured ships and much prefer something quicker and lighter for jumping in and out of combat (although I've found I'm useless in command of any form of Phase ship!), and I see the XIV ships very much as collector's pieces.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Megas on February 14, 2017, 05:14:21 AM
The only XIV ship where the speed cut might make a difference (between being able to kite or not against the things that matter) is Dominator.  Otherwise, the main advantage of XIV is the extra OP and better flux stats.  More armor is better (though not as much as speed), but being able to cram more stuff and vent spam more easily makes the XIV ships better.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: DatonKallandor on February 14, 2017, 05:51:30 AM
Now, obviously, you'd need an appropriate reputation & commission with a faction that can do the conversions.  And I don't think it deserves its own front-row button in the ship UI - a conversion is, much like refurbishing a (D)-class ship, something that would be expensive and not to be undertaken lightly.

Since you mention it, there has to be UI for D-class refurbishment - that would be a great place for other types of conversions too.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: OzarMidrashim on February 16, 2017, 07:56:33 PM
"Thus, one more option:  when docked at a port, you can “restore” a ship to peak condition, getting rid of all d-mods. This is quite costly, up to several times the cost of buying a new hull – but is always an option for a ship that’s worth it..."
"For using ship recovery to acquire new ships that you’re not able to find for sale, then – compared to current boarding there’s a much higher chance to be able to recover one, but a higher cost to fully restore it once you do have it."


Why not mix credits, supplies and heavy machinery (and any other related commodity) as a "currency" used to remove D-mods?
D-mods would use diffirent elements depending on their nature/origin, and and ships would get theose more in line with their function, so civilian ship would more likley loose structural integrity, primitive military suffer from armour micro-damages, tugs and frigates engine failures and advanced prism/teleport craft get some electronic glitches.
There was an old saying about those "restorations" (as i worked in this branch for time) and even more common in recent times for everyone..."it might be more cost-effective to buy a new one"...mostly due to policy of mostly electronic-oriented companies and an extreme example for industry. For balance purposes costs need to be high, but "several times the cost of buying a new hull" is balance-breaker in other way around. Same as new one would work, as you already payed in supplies to drag it out of debrie field costs are higer, two times would give you a pause...but several times - i hope its a hyperbole.

As for boarding...i love boarding in almost every other game...lets say taking over is my little "fixation" from dungeon keeper to Homeworld (where in main storyline I captured all enemy ships above corvete, not destroyed even one exept bugged attack carrier of turanic raiders) ...so new system even if a large step forward brings mix of smile and sadness.
I still hope for good boarding system...but more oriented around EMP weaponry and specialized to this role craft, like we have a carrier for fighters maybe reffited salvage/mining rigs. Then use marines, who had easy time in their power armors killling those officers. Or infiltrator frigates.
We can't play pirates or get immersive feeling without it. Firefly and Serenity would not stand for it =P

Read today all blog updates, love your aproach expecially around rising Time-To-Kill on higer levels.
Its more fun when those large ships struggle and struggle rather than volatile exploding, what about making their chunks break off like in SCY Nation, as i see Orbital Stations/Platforms almost have it?

Regards!
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Alex on February 16, 2017, 09:13:37 PM
Hi! Sorry if this is a bit short; a bit busy but still wanted to reply.

Why not mix credits, supplies and heavy machinery (and any other related commodity) as a "currency" used to remove D-mods?
D-mods would use diffirent elements depending on their nature/origin, and and ships would get theose more in line with their function, so civilian ship would more likley loose structural integrity, primitive military suffer from armour micro-damages, tugs and frigates engine failures and advanced prism/teleport craft get some electronic glitches.

That feels like adding-detail-for-sake-of-"realism". As with adding complexity anywhere, the question is, what does it get us mechanically?

There was an old saying about those "restorations" (as i worked in this branch for time) and even more common in recent times for everyone..."it might be more cost-effective to buy a new one"...mostly due to policy of mostly electronic-oriented companies and an extreme example for industry. For balance purposes costs need to be high, but "several times the cost of buying a new hull" is balance-breaker in other way around. Same as new one would work, as you already payed in supplies to drag it out of debrie field costs are higer, two times would give you a pause...but several times - i hope its a hyperbole.

Ah, but the point is that it's only useful for ships you can't get otherwise, i.e. rare ships. For anything you're able to buy, it's absolutely not worth restoring a d-hull. It's not meant to be a cheaper way to get normal hulls.


As for boarding...i love boarding in almost every other game...lets say taking over is my little "fixation" from dungeon keeper to Homeworld (where in main storyline I captured all enemy ships above corvete, not destroyed even one exept bugged attack carrier of turanic raiders) ...so new system even if a large step forward brings mix of smile and sadness.

Fair enough :)

I still hope for good boarding system...but more oriented around EMP weaponry and specialized to this role craft, like we have a carrier for fighters maybe reffited salvage/mining rigs. Then use marines, who had easy time in their power armors killling those officers. Or infiltrator frigates.
We can't play pirates or get immersive feeling without it. Firefly and Serenity would not stand for it =P

This has come up a bunch, but the short answer is I don't like the idea of mixing boarding directly into combat. It's too much to try to cram in, I think - consider how it would affect the AI, and just in general how combat plays out. If it's an alternate way to defeat ships *and profit from it*, there's a high risk that the player would feel forced to do it even if they don't want to, too.


Its more fun when those large ships struggle and struggle rather than volatile exploding, what about making their chunks break off like in SCY Nation, as i see Orbital Stations/Platforms almost have it?

Stations are basically that, yeah. For regular ships, I don't want to do that for... various reasons :) (Complexity in various aspects, not necessarily mechanically desirable, etc.)
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Deshara on February 17, 2017, 12:37:12 AM
Its more fun when those large ships struggle and struggle rather than volatile exploding, what about making their chunks break off like in SCY Nation, as i see Orbital Stations/Platforms almost have it?

Stations are basically that, yeah. For regular ships, I don't want to do that for... various reasons :) (Complexity in various aspects, not necessarily mechanically desirable, etc.)

#1 of which is that it's actually not fun to play a ship that's already broken but isn't dead yet. There's a direct correlation between how long between having irrevocably lost an engagement and how long it takes to hit the 0 state and get to reset & the frustration of the player (see: moba's)
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Cyan Leader on February 17, 2017, 06:19:14 AM
That feels like adding-detail-for-sake-of-"realism". As with adding complexity anywhere, the question is, what does it get us mechanically?

I'd argue that giving meaning to commodities for players that aren't traders is a worthy addition. As a combat focused player I only look at them as money that I will soon trade for at the next station I dock with. However, if I need metals (or other specific materials) to repair D-mods I might consider not scuttling it for other more expensive commodities every single time, thus making the choice of what to keep post-battle more interesting. It'd also make players think if they should sell everything while docking or use their station storage.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Megas on February 17, 2017, 08:10:55 AM
In the end, there is not much difference between boarding a ship and killing the enemy crew versus blowing up the ship, killing everyone in the process, and put the pieces back together for a functional ship (then limp it back for full restoration).  The end result is you captured a valuable enemy ship.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Megas on February 17, 2017, 08:21:51 AM
This has come up a bunch, but the short answer is I don't like the idea of mixing boarding directly into combat. It's too much to try to cram in, I think - consider how it would affect the AI, and just in general how combat plays out. If it's an alternate way to defeat ships *and profit from it*, there's a high risk that the player would feel forced to do it even if they don't want to, too.
As an example, the game Endless Sky has this problem.  Until depreciation was introduced, looting and boarding were the most profitable activity by far (and may still be, though not as much as before), and since only the flagship (which you control) can loot and board, Bactrian was (and may still be) the no-brainer flagship choice for optimal play, despite stronger combat ships available later in the game.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: AxleMC131 on February 17, 2017, 02:00:45 PM
I'd argue that giving meaning to commodities for players that aren't traders is a worthy addition. As a combat focused player I only look at them as money that I will soon trade for at the next station I dock with. However, if I need metals (or other specific materials) to repair D-mods I might consider not scuttling it for other more expensive commodities every single time, thus making the choice of what to keep post-battle more interesting. It'd also make players think if they should sell everything while docking or use their station storage.

This is actually a really good point. I have never used any storage space at stations for the simple reason that I never keep any commodities, except for supplies and fuel. Even if it seems mechanically unfeasible, I feel lots of players like Cyan and myself currently see metals, heavy machinery, organics, volatiles etc. simply as "more cash". Personally I think you could do worse things than add context to those materials by making them actually usable by the player.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Alex on February 17, 2017, 02:40:44 PM
That's a bit circular, isn't it? Giving more meaning to something can be a nice bonus, but it shouldn't be the main reason. If that's the case, the right design move is probably to remove both things.

For commodities in particular, a lot of them don't have a point right now and mostly act as background flavor, so it's totally expected they're "just credits". That'll change gradually (the next release will give more meaning to a couple, etc), but stuff that gives them meaning will be stuff that's good to add for *other reasons*, i.e. commodities are a projected part of the implementation of that stuff, just added to the game early. Some commodities may change/be removed/etc during this process.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: AxleMC131 on February 17, 2017, 05:03:02 PM
That's a bit circular, isn't it? Giving more meaning to something can be a nice bonus, but it shouldn't be the main reason. If that's the case, the right design move is probably to remove both things.

I suppose that's true. When it comes down to it, "kinda nice" and "necessary" are two very different things.

For commodities in particular, a lot of them don't have a point right now and mostly act as background flavor, so it's totally expected they're "just credits". That'll change gradually (the next release will give more meaning to a couple, etc), but stuff that gives them meaning will be stuff that's good to add for *other reasons*, i.e. commodities are a projected part of the implementation of that stuff, just added to the game early. Some commodities may change/be removed/etc during this process.

Can't argue with that. Again it's a balance between two alternate points: "like the real world" and "just a game". Keeping a balance between them is important, and I'm no expert. I can settle for background flavour. I'm sure it's just my human nature being impossible to satisfy, haha!

Still, nice to know some commodities will have practical uses - or at least a little more meaning - in future. :)
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Voyager I on February 20, 2017, 03:22:38 PM
We're pushing up on the one-month mark again.  Wasn't this the last major feature to be blogged about?
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Alex on February 20, 2017, 03:25:27 PM
We're pushing up on the one-month mark again.  Wasn't this the last major feature to be blogged about?

Indeed. Currently working on exploration content (putting all those features to work!); after that, some end-to-end playtesting.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: AxleMC131 on February 20, 2017, 08:06:03 PM
Currently working on exploration content (putting all those features to work!); after that, some end-to-end playtesting.

:O Not too long until the update then. Can't wait!
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Voyager I on February 20, 2017, 08:16:05 PM
Currently working on exploration content (putting all those features to work!); after that, some end-to-end playtesting.

:O Not too long until the update then. Can't wait!

That's a very optimistic reading of what he said!
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Cik on February 20, 2017, 08:19:03 PM
you can't help but be optimistic, even if you're staring at a mirage, it still looks like the promised land
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: AxleMC131 on February 20, 2017, 10:39:39 PM
 ;) Well, I AM an optimist.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Megas on February 21, 2017, 09:02:58 AM
Just thought of something - the pirate Mule with the medium universal!

Currently, I do not use that ship because the (D)-mods compromise its already mediocre flux stats too much.  But, if the player can remove (D)-mods from that ship, then that restored pirate Mule could be even better than the stock Mule.

P.S.  ...or rather, better than current stock Mule because a restored pirate Mule would be like the stock Mule used to be before the universal was downgraded to energy.  Now if only there was a pirate Aurora with pre-0.72 (missile only) mounts.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: AxleMC131 on February 21, 2017, 02:07:37 PM
Haha, hadn't thought of that! That would be a cool idea. :D
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Sy on February 24, 2017, 11:53:57 AM
the energy mount on the Mule has always struck me as odd, since it doesn't fit with other low-tech ships. the only other two that have energy mounts are the Venture that was originally designed as a mining ship (and its standard variant uses a Mining Blaster in that mount) and the Buffalo MK.II that is a low-tech conversion of an originally mid-tech ship.

in terms of gameplay it works fine and provides some variety, particular for early game enemies. but i think a mid-tech look could fit the Mule better. or it could get some additional background lore similar to the Venture's, as beefed up mining ship, which would also fit better with its color scheme (assuming David didn't change that for 0.8).

...and now i kinda really want a Mule with built-in Borer drones. :D
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: AxleMC131 on February 24, 2017, 02:09:02 PM
...and now i kinda really want a Mule with built-in Borer drones. :D

I'll whip one up for you right now in a micro-mod! XD Just kidding, but in reality wouldn't be that hard.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Sy on February 24, 2017, 03:56:16 PM
I'll whip one up for you right now in a micro-mod! XD Just kidding, but in reality wouldn't be that hard.
yeah, i know. i imagine just adding a built-in wing will be as easy as adding a built-in hullmod. but it would be nice if the sprite also got a shiny flight deck similar to the Shepherd's, maybe replacing the rear turret. Borers are gonna be pretty good though, so it would likely need additional nerfs in other areas as well.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: AxleMC131 on February 24, 2017, 05:09:22 PM
i imagine just adding a built-in wing will be as easy as adding a built-in hullmod. but it would be nice if the sprite also got a shiny flight deck similar to the Shepherd's, maybe replacing the rear turret. Borers are gonna be pretty good though, so it would likely need additional nerfs in other areas as well.

If I'm honest I've never tried "Kitbashing" or "Frankenspriting" or whatever you call it, but I'd actually be down for making a bunch of mini-mods that do things like this. Just small changes and additions that some people might say, "You know what, I've always wanted this in the game," without creating a whole huge mod.

Hmm... This is sounding less and less silly.

Sy. Purely out of interest, if I went and made a tiny mod that added a new Mule variant accessible in the game, with borer drones and some other balancing changes, d'you reckon you'd use it?
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Sy on February 24, 2017, 05:17:16 PM
probably, yeah. ^^
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: AxleMC131 on February 24, 2017, 05:55:41 PM
probably, yeah. ^^

Right. Time to get to work. ;)
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: AxleMC131 on February 24, 2017, 06:47:16 PM
One and a half hours later...

Hey Sy. I done a thing for you. ;)

Spoiler

(http://imgur.com/whjTqbk.png)

[close]
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Sy on February 24, 2017, 07:09:38 PM
thanks, i'll give it a try (tomorrow)! :D

should be cooler come 0.8 though, so it can keep the Maneuvering Jets in addition to the drones.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: AxleMC131 on February 24, 2017, 08:03:23 PM
Haha, true true!

thanks, i'll give it a try (tomorrow)! :D

You might need this then:

Spoiler
http://www.mediafire.com/file/694y22dsy2iia3i/MiniMod_MinerMule.zip
[close]

;D
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Morrokain on February 28, 2017, 01:59:57 PM
If I'm honest I've never tried "Kitbashing" or "Frankenspriting" or whatever you call it, but I'd actually be down for making a bunch of mini-mods that do things like this. Just small changes and additions that some people might say, "You know what, I've always wanted this in the game," without creating a whole huge mod.

Hmm... This is sounding less and less silly.

Just fair warning, its a very, very slippery slope my friend.  ;D I said that EXACT thing back in 2013. "Oh I would love a couple more small mounts and a flight deck on that Eagle. It would really be like a SD then!"

...Now here I am 4 years later still working on a conversion mod that changes just about every ship in the game in some way, and adds a bunch more custom stuff I'm still working on. It just.. kind of happens. lol
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: AxleMC131 on February 28, 2017, 04:59:44 PM
Just fair warning, its a very, very slippery slope my friend.  ;D I said that EXACT thing back in 2013. "Oh I would love a couple more small mounts and a flight deck on that Eagle. It would really be like a SD then!"

...Now here I am 4 years later still working on a conversion mod that changes just about every ship in the game in some way, and adds a bunch more custom stuff I'm still working on. It just.. kind of happens. lol

:o Duly actively noted, but I'm fairly convinced my subconscious is gonna file this under "Meh". XD Not gonna lie, that Mule+Shepherd Hangar was hugely satisfying to make... But don't forget it wasn't my idea, it was Sy's! I actually have very few other thoughts on kitbashing.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: AxleMC131 on February 28, 2017, 05:01:59 PM
Also Morrokain, I'm guessing that converted Eagle you mentioned is the one currently set as your profile image? ;)
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Sy on March 01, 2017, 08:59:01 AM
Borer Mule works surprisingly well, even AI vs AI. the drones do a good job of flanking the target, slowly but surely drilling through armor, and quickly maneuver to take out most enemy Salamanders before they get in range of the Mule(M)'s ballistic PDs. they're not gonna last long enough to be useful in bigger engagements though, even with the large number of replacement drones. so now i have yet more reason to look forward to v0.8. :D

Spoiler
(http://i.imgur.com/EY9VEnO.jpg)

(the yellow beam color comes from Tarti's Lightshow (http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=11528.0), in case anyone's wondering.)
[close]
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: AxleMC131 on March 01, 2017, 02:42:31 PM
Awesome!  ;D Super-happy to hear it's working out for you.

By the way, might as well ask, what's the weapon attached to the rear end of the Mule (M) in that image? I'm guessing it's from a mod?
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Sy on March 01, 2017, 03:19:04 PM
yep, SCY Defense Autonailer, pretty good ballistic PD.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: AxleMC131 on March 01, 2017, 03:23:42 PM
Haha, fab. ;)
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Morrokain on March 03, 2017, 06:07:11 PM
Also Morrokain, I'm guessing that converted Eagle you mentioned is the one currently set as your profile image? ;)

Ha you noticed that eh? Thats actually a super out-dated sprite from years ago before I decided on a total-conversion combat overhaul format. The closest current equivalent to that in the mod would be this.

Spoiler
(http://i.imgur.com/ZiVz00m.png)
[close]
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: AxleMC131 on March 03, 2017, 07:09:31 PM
The closest current equivalent to that in the mod would be this.

Whoa. :o Fairly surprised you're still referring to that as a Heavy Cruiser, what with all those upgrades. I'd note it as a Battlecruiser at least.
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Midnight Kitsune on March 03, 2017, 07:21:59 PM
The closest current equivalent to that in the mod would be this.

Whoa. :o Fairly surprised you're still referring to that as a Heavy Cruiser, what with all those upgrades. I'd note it as a Battlecruiser at least.
It seems a bit OP and boring to me. .5 shields, 3 decks, no ship system, 4 medium missiles, and 14 small energies?! I mean, geez...
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: AxleMC131 on March 03, 2017, 07:25:13 PM
Aye... Hopefully it's super expensive. XD
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: Morrokain on March 04, 2017, 10:29:29 PM
Whoa. :o Fairly surprised you're still referring to that as a Heavy Cruiser, what with all those upgrades. I'd note it as a Battlecruiser at least.
It seems a bit OP and boring to me. .5 shields, 3 decks, no ship system, 4 medium missiles, and 14 small energies?! I mean, geez...

Its a total conversion:  ;)

Thats a standard "Heavy cruiser" loadout in the mod. All ships have more weapons but they are smaller and generally fire less often, creating a staggering "barrage" type feel to combat. An onslaught, for instance, has over 20 small weapons (24 off the top of my head), 9 medium weapons, 4 large weapons and 2 flight decks alongside an accelerated ammo feeder. Oh and 4000 armor and 40000 hull.

It can still be killed by swarming destroyers with frigate support pretty easily though  :) (verified in dev-mod simulation tests)

The ship system for this skin in particular isn't in yet, Still a W.I.P because that one may require custom scripting like the new fast missile racks did and I'm not sure if I will use one of the new systems instead to save the considerable headache that can potentially present. Plasma Jets in particular seems like a good fit if I want to make it a raider. But sci-corps are more exploration/defensive so maybe fortress shields to further cement the civilian-esque defensive siege style... I don't honestly know yet.

Fighters are smaller/weaker, way faster and far more numerous. Anything cruiser and above usually has a few flight decks. Its like they are extendable "weapons" to provide long range fire support and missile interdiction with a different resource bar than flux and with different mechanics involved. That's why the new update is required before release.

So its not really OP when positioned against the spectrum of the mod.. but if using Vanilla weapons and fighters ohh yes haha that would be crazy. Assault weapons don't even generate flux in my mod. Only strike weapons, fire support weapons and certain powerful ship systems.

Its all very different and won't be for everyone for sure, but its closer to what I personally enjoy in both visual and tactical styles. (would be too long to explain here and this is off topic enough as it is  :P )
Title: Re: Ship Recovery
Post by: angrytigerp on December 28, 2017, 02:45:44 AM
Well, just caught up to all the SS blogposts I've not kept track of over the month.

It's certainly invigorating to know that I called this 2 years ago :I (http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=9514.msg163392#msg163392)

Good stuff.