Fractal Softworks Forum

Starsector => General Discussion => Blog Posts => Topic started by: Alex on September 06, 2018, 02:29:16 PM

Title: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Alex on September 06, 2018, 02:29:16 PM
Blog post here (http://fractalsoftworks.com/2018/09/06/salvaging-mechanics-update/).
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Eji1700 on September 06, 2018, 02:54:56 PM
Good changes. Making the system easier to understand at a glance is a big improvement.

While we're at it are there any plans to give more of a purpose to salvage rigs outside of what basically equates to a salvage skill bonus?  I like the fleet composition is a thing tactically, but it's really really shallow strategically.  You basically have your fuel/cargo passive modifier ships (now with marines) and your battle ships, and that's basically it.

Support ships are worthless to the point of not existing tactically unless they're one of the few combat variants ( Gemini comes to mind), and there's really not much thought to how much space they take up in your fleet either, so the only other consideration comes with a few of the hull mods that provide fleet bonuses.  For example I was hoping we'd see a hull mod that lets you turn a salvage rig into a mobile refitting bay, lowering the supply cost of refitting when not at a planet (maybe only for smaller size ships).  Just something to make me give more thought to the support/logistics half of my fleet composition besides numbers.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: SCC on September 06, 2018, 02:56:48 PM
Quote
Two, Salvage Rigs only affect the various commodities found during salvage  – such as fuel and supplies – and not the more rare items.
Was that stated somewhere in the game? I can't remember. I always assumed it affects both commodities as well as hullmods and weapons. Bloody hell. I learned the other day that salvage rigs work only in specific circumstances and now my (false) understanding of salvaging has been completely undone.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Goumindong on September 06, 2018, 02:59:36 PM
Seems pretty good.

One of the things i liked as an idea was that the more you salvaged the more time it took on the campaign map. (So a burn drive restriction and a speed penalty after salvaging). Salvage rigs could reduce the duration of the penalty which would make it easier to salvage out from under enemies. Something a combat captain might not really care about (because getting attacked is more loot) but a specialist salvager (especially one looking to nick some "owned" salvage without anyone noticing)  might enjoy.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Wyvern on September 06, 2018, 03:02:15 PM
Does that etcetera on things affected by salvage rigs include scuttling ships?

@Eji1700: I've wanted for some time to go through and (via mod) rebalance ships so that (aside from special cases like the rare pre-collapse Kite), every freighter is an at least vaguely-passable combat freighter, and the actual combat freighter designed ships (mule, apogee, wayfarer, etc.) are only marginally sub-optimal compared to straight-up combat ships.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Megas on September 06, 2018, 03:13:27 PM
At least no debris field means I do not need to spam Salvage three or four times to get everything worth taking.  When I salvage, all I care about are the rare or special items that I cannot buy.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Thaago on September 06, 2018, 03:18:58 PM
Looks good! I think having the bonus to the rare items being clear makes the choice much more impactful. I'm not sure if I would bring salvage rigs along at all, though stations do tend to give a lot of fuel/supplies, so it could keep the exploration trip going a long time... definitely something to think about.

How does scarcity vs repeat items factor into this? I get that there are a finite number of rare items in the game, but it doesn't actually benefit me to find 2 ITU's for example. I guess for everything thats not a hullmod, such as weapons and colony items, it would still be a long term benefit to have more of them.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Alex on September 06, 2018, 03:29:38 PM
While we're at it are there any plans to give more of a purpose to salvage rigs outside of what basically equates to a salvage skill bonus?  I like the fleet composition is a thing tactically, but it's really really shallow strategically.  You basically have your fuel/cargo passive modifier ships (now with marines) and your battle ships, and that's basically it.

Not really, though I could see them giving a smaller bonus to post-battle salvage, now that diminishing returns are coded in. Hmm - maybe a fraction of the salvage operation bonus, say a quarter of it. Let me think about that a bit.

It's definitely not a salvage skill bonus, though, since it applies without the skill.


Quote
Two, Salvage Rigs only affect the various commodities found during salvage  – such as fuel and supplies – and not the more rare items.
Was that stated somewhere in the game? I can't remember. I always assumed it affects both commodities as well as hullmods and weapons. Bloody hell. I learned the other day that salvage rigs work only in specific circumstances and now my (false) understanding of salvaging has been completely undone.

... maybe? I'm not actually 100% sure. But in any case, all that really drives home the point re: the previous system having some unnecessary complications.

One of the things i liked as an idea was that the more you salvaged the more time it took on the campaign map. (So a burn drive restriction and a speed penalty after salvaging). Salvage rigs could reduce the duration of the penalty which would make it easier to salvage out from under enemies. Something a combat captain might not really care about (because getting attacked is more loot) but a specialist salvager (especially one looking to nick some "owned" salvage without anyone noticing)  might enjoy.

I hear what you're saying, but this seems like too much of a situational thing to really start doubling down on as an important mechanical point.


Does that etcetera on things affected by salvage rigs include scuttling ships?

No - again, seems situational and not necessarily good. There's no much room for scuttling to be both not completely awful and still worse than selling the ship; any boosts to its output are trouble.

Support ships are worthless to the point of not existing tactically unless they're one of the few combat variants ( Gemini comes to mind), and there's really not much thought to how much space they take up in your fleet either, so the only other consideration comes with a few of the hull mods that provide fleet bonuses.  For example I was hoping we'd see a hull mod that lets you turn a salvage rig into a mobile refitting bay, lowering the supply cost of refitting when not at a planet (maybe only for smaller size ships).  Just something to make me give more thought to the support/logistics half of my fleet composition besides numbers.

@Eji1700: I've wanted for some time to go through and (via mod) rebalance ships so that (aside from special cases like the rare pre-collapse Kite), every freighter is an at least vaguely-passable combat freighter, and the actual combat freighter designed ships (mule, apogee, wayfarer, etc.) are only marginally sub-optimal compared to straight-up combat ships.

Funny; I'd made some other changes that factor in here, but I don't want to talk about them because that's possibly another blog post :)

In addition, the Mule got a significant buff, and the Hound/Cerberus got a bit of one, too. Wasn't thinking about the Wayfarer; that might be worth another look too.


At least no debris field means I do not need to spam Salvage three or four times to get everything worth taking.  When I salvage, all I care about are the rare or special items that I cannot buy.

The debris field is still there post-salvage, it's just considerably less worth going through, and offhand I'd imagine doing it more than once would almost always be net-negative.


Looks good! I think having the bonus to the rare items being clear makes the choice much more impactful. I'm not sure if I would bring salvage rigs along at all, though stations do tend to give a lot of fuel/supplies, so it could keep the exploration trip going a long time... definitely something to think about.

Cool! That you're thinking whether bringing them along is worth it or not seems like a good sign. Could always tweak the bonus value, too.

How does scarcity vs repeat items factor into this? I get that there are a finite number of rare items in the game, but it doesn't actually benefit me to find 2 ITU's for example. I guess for everything thats not a hullmod, such as weapons and colony items, it would still be a long term benefit to have more of them.

For hullmods specifically, I'd made it so that ones you already know don't drop. This doesn't make it more likely that you'd get specific hullmods that you don't know, just stuff you already do know that would get generated, doesn't.

For blueprints etc, they tend to 1) be quite valuable in credits, anyway and 2) potentially have some uses beyond learning/using them. And, right, some of the colony items could be handy to have more than one of.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Midnight Kitsune on September 06, 2018, 04:00:46 PM
Sucks that we can't get dupe hullmods anymore. They were nice little chunks of cash for 1 cargo space. Unless of course you are talking about how if the game chooses from like 4 mods and you have two, then the game would only choose to drop one of the two you have.

Also, what else is a "rare item"? Weapons? LPCs? Hullmods?
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Gothars on September 06, 2018, 04:02:05 PM
Quote
If they find a high-difficulty derelict and feel like they need to come back for it later, that’s also a problem, since coming back to a system that’s most likely been cleared of any dangers is often going to be a chore.

I wonder... isn't the real problem that a repeated system visit is, supposedly, a chore?
Maybe it would make more sense to equip systems with two (or more) tiers of challenges, the harder of which would not be accessible/visible/present until a certain development level is reached. For example, only past a certain level a *redacted* station takes notice of you, or pirates build an outpost in the system, or scavengers moved in to claim the debris. Then salvaging only a part of common and rare ressources first, and coming back for the rest later, would provide new challenges. Maybe not everytime, but often enough.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Wyvern on September 06, 2018, 04:36:06 PM
Does that etcetera on things affected by salvage rigs include scuttling ships?

No - again, seems situational and not necessarily good. There's no much room for scuttling to be both not completely awful and still worse than selling the ship; any boosts to its output are trouble.
Alright - I'd suggest explicitly calling that out in the tooltip, though, as otherwise it seems reasonable to conflate "salvaging a derelict" with "deliberately scrapping a ship".  In particular, consider a case I ran into once: A derelict Prometheus, far out in the fringe.  My options are salvage it, incorporate it into my fleet, or leave it alone.  Presumably if I salvage it, the salvage rigs come into play.  But hey, free Prometheus - who'd turn that down?  Especially since derelict tankers tend to come with lots of fuel.
...Turns out this one didn't.  I incorporated it into my fleet, and then had to immediately turn around and scrap it because there was no way I could get it back to civilization.  At which point the salvage rigs... don't come into play?

And that whole situation just... doesn't quite feel right, somehow.  Either I should have been able to tell that the ship's tanks were empty before I recovered it, or recovering and then immediately scrapping it should yield the same resources as scrapping it from the get-go.

Support ships are worthless to the point of not existing tactically unless they're one of the few combat variants ( Gemini comes to mind), and there's really not much thought to how much space they take up in your fleet either, so the only other consideration comes with a few of the hull mods that provide fleet bonuses.  For example I was hoping we'd see a hull mod that lets you turn a salvage rig into a mobile refitting bay, lowering the supply cost of refitting when not at a planet (maybe only for smaller size ships).  Just something to make me give more thought to the support/logistics half of my fleet composition besides numbers.

@Eji1700: I've wanted for some time to go through and (via mod) rebalance ships so that (aside from special cases like the rare pre-collapse Kite), every freighter is an at least vaguely-passable combat freighter, and the actual combat freighter designed ships (mule, apogee, wayfarer, etc.) are only marginally sub-optimal compared to straight-up combat ships.

Funny; I'd made some other changes that factor in here, but I don't want to talk about them because that's possibly another blog post :)

In addition, the Mule got a significant buff, and the Hound/Cerberus got a bit of one, too. Wasn't thinking about the Wayfarer; that might be worth another look too.
Interesting... looking forward to that blog post, then!
In the meantime, though, here's a list of ships that I'd count as combat freighters, sorted by category:
Ships that are already at least vaguely decent at both combat and freightering: Kite, Shepherd, Wayfarer, Mule, Apogee
Ships that, lore-wise, are supposed to be able to defend themselves, but aren't actually all that good at it: Hound*, Cerberus*, Prometheus
Ships whose stats suggest that they ought to be combat freighters, but have various flaws that make me not want to use them for either purpose: Gemini, Venture

Also, I'd suggest promoting the Condor to combat freighter status, by simply increasing its cargo and fuel capacity; lore-wise it's a converted freighter, so it feels strange for it to be less freighter-y than the Drover.  I'd probably look at cargo capacity in the 100-200 range (somewhere between 1/3 and 2/3 of the Tarsus' 300), and a fuel capacity of 80 (matching the Tarsus).

And it'd be a decent niche for the Odyssey, too, though that notion may have already been obsoleted by combat upgrades you've mentioned elsewhere.

The last comment I'd like to leave, re combat freighters: please adjust their CR stats!  A ship like the Apogee should be cheaper to send into battle than an Eagle or a Dominator - but should also lose a much larger portion of its CR, and be slower to recover that CR.  Cost to deploy should scale with the actual value in battle of the ship in question - but ships that aren't dedicated warships ought to fare poorly if forced into multiple back-to-back battles.

_____
* The Hound and Cerberus would be fine if the makeshift shield generator were a bit less makeshift; the current design of that hull mod fails to recognize that none of the ships it can be installed on have strong flux systems, to the point that it's generally a defensive downgrade rather than an upgrade.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Alex on September 06, 2018, 04:43:29 PM
Also, what else is a "rare item"? Weapons? LPCs? Hullmods?

It's a bit more involved behind the scenes, potentially, but basically: anything that's not a standard commodity. So, yes to all of these.

Maybe it would make more sense to equip systems with two (or more) tiers of challenges, the harder of which would not be accessible/visible/present until a certain development level is reached. For example, only past a certain level a *redacted* station takes notice of you, or pirates build an outpost in the system, or scavengers moved in to claim the debris. Then salvaging only a part of common and rare ressources first, and coming back for the rest later, would provide new challenges. Maybe not everytime, but often enough.

I mean, sure - but that's already how things work, isn't it? You might find a REDACTED of any variety whose defenses are too tough to crack, or perhaps a pirate base. But that doesn't change that finding an undefended salvageable entity and having to come back to it later for efficiency reasons is not great. So it's just two different things; things that have defenses and ones that don't. And having a ton of enemies everywhere so that everything is always defended by something is not, I think, the right feel.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Alex on September 06, 2018, 05:24:47 PM
Alright - I'd suggest explicitly calling that out in the tooltip, though, as otherwise it seems reasonable to conflate "salvaging a derelict" with "deliberately scrapping a ship".  In particular, consider a case I ran into once: A derelict Prometheus, far out in the fringe.  My options are salvage it, incorporate it into my fleet, or leave it alone.  Presumably if I salvage it, the salvage rigs come into play.  But hey, free Prometheus - who'd turn that down?  Especially since derelict tankers tend to come with lots of fuel.
...Turns out this one didn't.  I incorporated it into my fleet, and then had to immediately turn around and scrap it because there was no way I could get it back to civilization.  At which point the salvage rigs... don't come into play?

And that whole situation just... doesn't quite feel right, somehow.  Either I should have been able to tell that the ship's tanks were empty before I recovered it, or recovering and then immediately scrapping it should yield the same resources as scrapping it from the get-go.

Unless I'm misremembering, you only get more fuel if there's a "cargo manifest special" on that ship, which you should see a notification of when you explore. And it doesn't seem that unreasonable that recovering a ship uses up some of the stuff that might've been salvaged if the salvage operation was started right off...

All that is to say, I kind of see what you're saying, but it seems like a fringe enough case that, if we're being honest, I'm not sure is worth worrying about.


I've wanted for some time to go through and (via mod) rebalance ships so that (aside from special cases like the rare pre-collapse Kite), every freighter is an at least vaguely-passable combat freighter, and the actual combat freighter designed ships (mule, apogee, wayfarer, etc.) are only marginally sub-optimal compared to straight-up combat ships.

You know, I really like this idea. It'd be a bit of work - more than I want to try for 0.9 - but I'll definitely keep it in mind. And it aligns very nicely with some of the changes already made.

(Thank you for the freighter list and your thoughts, too!)
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: SafariJohn on September 06, 2018, 05:31:27 PM
All that is to say, I kind of see what you're saying, but it seems like a fringe enough case that, if we're being honest, I'm not sure is worth worrying about.

Perhaps derelict tankers should get a line for when they don't have extra fuel?
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: TauKinth on September 06, 2018, 05:47:28 PM
For example I was hoping we'd see a hull mod that lets you turn a salvage rig into a mobile refitting bay, lowering the supply cost of refitting when not at a planet (maybe only for smaller size ships).

This please!
It would add the ability to respond to specific types of fleets by changing ship loadouts before combat. I can see myself investing in a salvage rig(or whatever) early game so that I can change my wolf missile slots to reapers if I am fighting a pirate fleet with a destroyer, salamanders for distracting a few ships to overcome 2-1 odds, or even harpoons to get rid of that one ship that I am very worried about. :o
Not to mention in the late game having a "siege" fleet loadout for taking on a [REDACTED] rather than flying back to base to outfitting your entire fleet and flying back later(or eating the cr/supply penalty, which never occurred to me until now...)

PS:
Can I borrow a lock of hair? I am totally not going to make a clone army of you and infiltrate every game company with said clones in order to make video games less shite.

PPS:
I love how you fix things like this even though nobody would have consciously noticed it being slightly un-fun. This is the reason why Starsector(formerly Starfarer) is my all time favorite game!
...I sure am glad I was messing around with modding FTL one day and came across only Starsector(formerly Starfarer) ship sprites, otherwise I would have never found this hidden gem.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: FooF on September 06, 2018, 06:13:10 PM
+10. Would recommend again.

This does away, essentially, with the binary nature of salvaging (you either have the salvage rating or not) and skills boost success rate rather than ability to salvage at all. As an aside, I would hope surveying is getting roughly the same treatment (i.e. you can survey everything at the start but skills reduce the materiel cost to the point where it isn't prohibitively expensive early.)

In the screenshot, you've got a 184% recovery effectiveness value listed. Does that mean I can expect to get 84% more fuel/supplies/standard commodities in this scenario over "standard?" That seems...impressive but then again I don't know what was under the hood in the current implementation.  
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Alex on September 06, 2018, 06:44:58 PM
Perhaps derelict tankers should get a line for when they don't have extra fuel?

I'm not sure I want to add a special case just for that. It feels like, generally, "if this has something special the game will let you know" is reasonable.

For example I was hoping we'd see a hull mod that lets you turn a salvage rig into a mobile refitting bay, lowering the supply cost of refitting when not at a planet (maybe only for smaller size ships).

This please!
It would add the ability to respond to specific types of fleets by changing ship loadouts before combat. I can see myself investing in a salvage rig(or whatever) early game so that I can change my wolf missile slots to reapers if I am fighting a pirate fleet with a destroyer, salamanders for distracting a few ships to overcome 2-1 odds, or even harpoons to get rid of that one ship that I am very worried about. :o
Not to mention in the late game having a "siege" fleet loadout for taking on a [REDACTED] rather than flying back to base to outfitting your entire fleet and flying back later(or eating the cr/supply penalty, which never occurred to me until now...)

Ahh, that's totally the sort of thing that I want to prevent. Some minor tweaking is neat - like what you're talking about with the Wolf - but when it gets to larger fleets, re-doing loadouts for every fight to eke out minor advantages is where that sort of thing ends up if it's at all possible.

I love how you fix things like this even though nobody would have consciously noticed it being slightly un-fun. This is the reason why Starsector(formerly Starfarer) is my all time favorite game!
...I sure am glad I was messing around with modding FTL one day and came across only Starsector(formerly Starfarer) ship sprites, otherwise I would have never found this hidden gem.

Haha, thank you :D This did feel like a fairly big deal, though!


This does away, essentially, with the binary nature of salvaging (you either have the salvage rating or not) and skills boost success rate rather than ability to salvage at all. As an aside, I would hope surveying is getting roughly the same treatment (i.e. you can survey everything at the start but skills reduce the materiel cost to the point where it isn't prohibitively expensive early.)

I was thinking about that exact thing. What that does, though, is make surveying a skill you'd never take, since the benefit becomes entirely cost-based, so the further you get into a playthrough, the more skill-point-regret would set in. I could see merging surveying and salvaging into one skill to get around that - in fact that's probably the direction I want to take it - but that's getting into skill-revamp territory, which is its own thing.

In the screenshot, you've got a 184% recovery effectiveness value listed. Does that mean I can expect to get 84% more fuel/supplies/standard commodities in this scenario over "standard?" That seems...impressive but then again I don't know what was under the hood in the current implementation.  

Yeah, that's correct. Whether that's balanced and whether the base numbers will need to be adjusted, well. I don't know!
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Wyvern on September 06, 2018, 07:08:27 PM
I'll have to keep a closer eye on salvage dialogs, then - I don't recall seeing a cargo manifest listed when I've recovered derelict tankers and gotten fuel with them.  If no fuel is, indeed, the default state, then that particular issue is entirely on me.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Alex on September 06, 2018, 07:24:10 PM
... actually, checking into this, I'm wrong. Tanker/freighter wrecks have an additional chance to get some extra cargo or fuel without it being a "special", and this is not shown before the ship is either recovered or salvaged. Let me add a quick bit of text to indicate when that's the case - there, done.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Dal on September 07, 2018, 12:27:54 AM
I appreciate that you're trying to streamline the core gameplay, but this fiddling keeps bringing my thoughts back to one major thought - why are attribute points still around? The vanilla game has only so many skill points in total, encouraging specialization, but attribute caps function to turn that specialization into archetype. If we take the Tech category as a given, that's a total of three distinct character builds (tech + x, y z) without dropping a full skill. Is it really ideal that my combat pilots should never pick salvaging or any other industry?
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Shrugger on September 07, 2018, 01:34:52 AM
Boo on non-respecabble skills in general on Aptitudes in particular.

So, salvaging. What's the long-term benefits? Do I get something out of it that I could not ultimately get through some other means, or is it just a non-combat way of jump-starting early/mid game development?
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Steven Shi on September 07, 2018, 01:58:32 AM
So...2018 release?  ;D
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: SCC on September 07, 2018, 02:46:35 AM
(Thank you for the freighter list and your thoughts, too!)
I'm happy that Goumindong and Wyvern touched the subject of combat freighters, because that's something I'd really like to see changed (I have faint memory of complaining about this before, but I presume nothing came of it - otherwise I'd certainly remember it). Namely, combat freighters suck for three reasons.
One, they're spreadsheet ships that can't compete with dedicated ships on the grounds of efficiency. I'd rather have a freighter and a combat ship instead of two combat freighters.
Spoiler
(https://drive.google.com/uc?authuser=0&id=1hiyEIAq8y9FC8MdfPD6I56PPpY5f8Pmf&export=download)
[close]
Two, combat freighters aren't really all that good at fighting. Not to mention they're pretty much confined to being defensive ships, since they just don't have the capabilities (in weaponry and flux stats) to push offensive. I'd rather have a combat ship that can both defend and attack instead of a pair of combat ships that can only stall.
Three, they're freighters. They have cargo inside, lots of it. That, if happens to be supplies, you'd rather use to repair after combat, rather than lose it in combat, and use the now-free space to take loot. Not deploying combat freighters means less risk of losing both what you already have and the cargo space for more cargo.
The only situation where it's advantageous to have combat freighters is retreating, but even then they can ruin your day by not retreating quickly enough.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: mendonca on September 07, 2018, 03:10:40 AM
skill-point-regret

I'm due a mid-life crisis soon, I expect I'll get this in real life :)

I like the changes, definitely should be a positive thing.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Embercloud on September 07, 2018, 03:16:50 AM
So...2018 release?  ;D

I’m kind of curious about this as well.
Even though I wouldn’t want Alex to rush things or leave out intended content, a vague estiimate would be nice.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: steelwing on September 07, 2018, 05:14:23 AM
So...2018 release?  ;D

I’m kind of curious about this as well.
Even though I wouldn’t want Alex to rush things or leave out intended content, a vague estiimate would be nice.
One of the things I love about StarSector's development progress is that Alex has consistently refused to give time estimates of any kind.  Much as I'd love to have an idea of when to expect a new release, I am entirely too well aware that devs' estimated release dates have a bad habit of being taken as hard and fast, almost contractual, deadlines.  The instant one of those "deadlines" gets missed, the formerly adoring fans waiting eagerly for release are up in arms screaming "BUT YOU PROMISED!!"  I'd much rather Alex didn't make any estimates that he might later feel bound by, so that he could feel free to turn out a new release when he feels it is ready.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Embercloud on September 07, 2018, 05:37:30 AM
So...2018 release?  ;D

I’m kind of curious about this as well.
Even though I wouldn’t want Alex to rush things or leave out intended content, a vague estiimate would be nice.
One of the things I love about StarSector's development progress is that Alex has consistently refused to give time estimates of any kind.  Much as I'd love to have an idea of when to expect a new release, I am entirely too well aware that devs' estimated release dates have a bad habit of being taken as hard and fast, almost contractual, deadlines.  The instant one of those "deadlines" gets missed, the formerly adoring fans waiting eagerly for release are up in arms screaming "BUT YOU PROMISED!!"  I'd much rather Alex didn't make any estimates that he might later feel bound by, so that he could feel free to turn out a new release when he feels it is ready.

I guess that’s a valid point.
Speaking of the actual subject matter of this thread my two cents is that these changes are very beneficial for the early days of a game and will prove to make all the difference when trying to gain some vital income for fuel and supplies while bounty hunting and such is not an option.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: DatonKallandor on September 07, 2018, 05:52:17 AM
No - again, seems situational and not necessarily good. There's no much room for scuttling to be both not completely awful and still worse than selling the ship; any boosts to its output are trouble.

Wait, selling is supposed to be better than scuttling? I thought the idea was that if you don't want a ship you scuttle it for resources because boarding it would be an immediate money loss that only turns a profit if you actually get use out of the ship?
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: MajorTheRed on September 07, 2018, 05:56:37 AM
A little detail that really bothers me:
Salvage Gantry hull mod is still unbalanced between class. The salvage rig (25% bonus) looks too good in comparison with other classes. Too small difference for a cruiser class (30%) and definitely too much difference with frigate class (10%) especially if there is a diminishing return when spamming ships. The case is probably worse for capital, as the bonus will be clearly shot down by the huge amount of fuel and supply needed. According to you screenshot, with 2 rigs + 1 shepherd I will have the same bonus than a capital with salvage gantry.
I understand that the rig has no other usefulness than the salvage gantry, but still I think it has the advantage of being a destroyer with no huge cost related to it. I don't know if you plan sooner or later to add cruiser or capital ship with salvage gantry, but in this case I think these ships will need other benefits than just the salvage gantry (like the great cargo hold of the shepherd) and occupy another fleet role (tanker, cargo, fleet support, carrier, command ship...)
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Carabus on September 07, 2018, 06:27:57 AM
Good changes.

Are there any planned changes in how post-battle salvage works?

At the moment it is quite a grinding minigame. In my case it looks like this:
Salvage, Save game, Wait for cooldown, Salvage, Save game, Wait for cooldown, Salvage, etc.
and repeat this until you get net loss from two consecutive salvage operations,
after which I load the save from after last profitable operation and play from here.
Have to take into account two consecutive salvage operations because sometimes you get a small loss in one,
but in next one you don't lose any machinery at all so it turns into a profit.

I am sure it could be make less grindy.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Megas on September 07, 2018, 08:00:37 AM
The biggest problem with combat freighters as combat ships...
* Frigate-sized have terrible defenses, but at least they are disposable in a pinch.  That said, Hound and Cerberus are great as dedicated freighters due to speed advantage.
* Everything else lacks speed and shot range to force fights now that the AI cowers and turtles much.
* Everything that is not a dedicated combat ship (plus some combat ships too) lacks OP to outfit well without Loadout Design 3.

I appreciate that you're trying to streamline the core gameplay, but this fiddling keeps bringing my thoughts back to one major thought - why are attribute points still around? The vanilla game has only so many skill points in total, encouraging specialization, but attribute caps function to turn that specialization into archetype. If we take the Tech category as a given, that's a total of three distinct character builds (tech + x, y z) without dropping a full skill. Is it really ideal that my combat pilots should never pick salvaging or any other industry?
Technology and Leadership is required for every character that wants to be the best.  If you want to pilot a carrier, then Combat is mandatory for Helmsmanship 3 alone.  At least six points will be dedicated to aptitudes, but it will more likely be nine or more.

If nothing about Surveying is changed, aside from Decivilized adding to hazard rating, the Surveying 1 might become mandatory just so players can colonize the easiest planet with good resources, like that class V Terran planet that has ruins, lots of resources, and Decivilized.  Player cannot count on finding a wreck with free survey data at a convenient place.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Wyvern on September 07, 2018, 08:11:58 AM
(Thank you for the freighter list and your thoughts, too!)
I'm happy that Goumindong and Wyvern touched the subject of combat freighters, because that's something I'd really like to see changed (I have faint memory of complaining about this before, but I presume nothing came of it - otherwise I'd certainly remember it). Namely, combat freighters suck for three reasons.
One, they're spreadsheet ships that can't compete with dedicated ships on the grounds of efficiency. I'd rather have a freighter and a combat ship instead of two combat freighters.
In many cases, that's a correct assessment.  But not all cases - for example, early game, my choice tends to be "Do I buy a regular freighter or a combat freighter?" - and going for the latter option, while less efficient at hauling stuff, still provides a significant boost to both stuff-hauling and combat capability.  Second, defensive-focused AI ships are -good-; the purpose of deploying such allies is to keep a portion of the enemy fleet tied up so you can defeat them in detail, and if your mule never actually gets kills itself, that's just fine.  Your third point is reasonable enough, but strongly mitigated by the strongly-defensive nature of the actually-good combat freighters.  If you deploy a mule or an apogee and it gets killed, you were fighting something you shouldn't have been fighting.  (Edit: Or you made some sort of tactical error that let the enemy defeat you in detail instead of the other way around.)
A little detail that really bothers me:
Salvage Gantry hull mod is still unbalanced between class.
That's because it's not balanced by class - it's balanced for the individual ships that carry it.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Chaos Blade on September 07, 2018, 08:58:08 AM

Nice changes, seems like a reasonable streamlining.
I was thinking on the salvage Gantry, it would be interesting if the ships would have dual function both in salvage and in field repairs, in the latter case perhaps giving the fleet an efficiency on supplies for repair or maybe repair times? Honestly, I am sorta surprised we don't have a military Yardship, that is to say a moving repair yard. given the distances involved you'd think the factions would have dedicated support ships .
While this might be covered on the blog post Alex mentioned, I do like more support options and more specialzied ships.

Regarding the combat freighters, I agree up to a point, I mean they still need to be less optimal than a true combat ship, so some being mixed bags of under-performance and disappointment makes a degree of sense....
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Megas on September 07, 2018, 09:07:07 AM
Regarding the combat freighters, I agree up to a point, I mean they still need to be less optimal than a true combat ship, so some being mixed bags of under-performance and disappointment makes a degree of sense....
The problem with that is as someone else posted, is it is better to have one dedicated hauler and one dedicated combat ship, than two hybrids.  Early game, this is not a problem because the frigates with most capacity are hybrids or at least do not have Civilian Hull that blocks Safety Override.  This does not persist through heavier ship classes.  Later on, the player will have a strong enough fleet that support ships never need to be deployed.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: nathanebht on September 07, 2018, 09:24:18 AM
Thanks for the blog post. Always enjoy reading them.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Alex on September 07, 2018, 10:17:27 AM
Re: combat freighters: thanks all for your thoughts!

So, salvaging. What's the long-term benefits? Do I get something out of it that I could not ultimately get through some other means, or is it just a non-combat way of jump-starting early/mid game development?

I'm fairly sure I covered it in the blogpost, but, right: access to more ship/weapon/fighter blueprints and other colony-influencing items.


I'm due a mid-life crisis soon, I expect I'll get this in real life :)

(Haha!)



Wait, selling is supposed to be better than scuttling? I thought the idea was that if you don't want a ship you scuttle it for resources because boarding it would be an immediate money loss that only turns a profit if you actually get use out of the ship?

Well, selling d-hulls is definitely supposed to be worse. Hmm. I may have gotten things mixed up :)

In any case, scuttling is more of a last-resort move and doesn't seem like something that should be "a thing you can get good at".


A little detail that really bothers me:
Salvage Gantry hull mod is still unbalanced between class. The salvage rig (25% bonus) looks too good in comparison with other classes. Too small difference for a cruiser class (30%) and definitely too much difference with frigate class (10%) especially if there is a diminishing return when spamming ships. The case is probably worse for capital, as the bonus will be clearly shot down by the huge amount of fuel and supply needed. According to you screenshot, with 2 rigs + 1 shepherd I will have the same bonus than a capital with salvage gantry.

It's just set to what it's set to for the Shepherd and the Salvage Rig. If it were used on more ships, I'd probably have another look at it, and/or have another version of the hullmod as needed.

One point, though: a slightly higher bonus is better than it looks because the diminishing returns are based on the maximum bonus of a single ship in the fleet.



Good changes.

Are there any planned changes in how post-battle salvage works?

At the moment it is quite a grinding minigame. In my case it looks like this:
Salvage, Save game, Wait for cooldown, Salvage, Save game, Wait for cooldown, Salvage, etc.
and repeat this until you get net loss from two consecutive salvage operations,
after which I load the save from after last profitable operation and play from here.
Have to take into account two consecutive salvage operations because sometimes you get a small loss in one,
but in next one you don't lose any machinery at all so it turns into a profit.

I am sure it could be make less grindy.

Is it actually profitable to do more than once with a large fleet, considering the wait time and the supplies that drains? In any case, I'll keep an eye on it!



Nice changes, seems like a reasonable streamlining.
I was thinking on the salvage Gantry, it would be interesting if the ships would have dual function both in salvage and in field repairs, in the latter case perhaps giving the fleet an efficiency on supplies for repair or maybe repair times? Honestly, I am sorta surprised we don't have a military Yardship, that is to say a moving repair yard. given the distances involved you'd think the factions would have dedicated support ships .

Hmm - anything that mitigates supply/repair costs is a potential problem, since those costs are there for a reason, so it's just something to approach carefully. If it just becomes another "lug this around to reduce costs" ship, then that's not very interesting, right? And if it's just repair times, it's probably not worth it. But if it let you do something qualitative, it could be interesting.


Thanks for the blog post. Always enjoy reading them.

Thank you!
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Wyvern on September 07, 2018, 10:52:25 AM
I've wanted for some time to go through and (via mod) rebalance ships so that (aside from special cases like the rare pre-collapse Kite), every freighter is an at least vaguely-passable combat freighter, and the actual combat freighter designed ships (mule, apogee, wayfarer, etc.) are only marginally sub-optimal compared to straight-up combat ships.

You know, I really like this idea. It'd be a bit of work - more than I want to try for 0.9 - but I'll definitely keep it in mind. And it aligns very nicely with some of the changes already made.

(Thank you for the freighter list and your thoughts, too!)
Good to hear this!  And, yeah, it'd be a fair chunk of work to rebalance everything - and more work for you than it would be for me, since I wouldn't even consider making changes to available weapon mounts; I don't want to kitbash up new ship graphics, so I'd end up doing a bunch of stat changes (including hi-tech quality shields to allow ships like the Tarsus to use its few small ballistic mounts on, say, railguns instead of vulcans), and a lot of fighter bays (ranging from single built-in wings, to built-in Converted Hangar hull-mods, to adding a completely open third fighter wing to the Venture...).  Well. Okay, I'll admit, I am still tempted by the notion of upgrading the Atlas' three medium ballistic slots to large ballistic slots, but I can probably get away without changing the sprite for that...

Also, good to hear that the thoughts on combat freighters are appreciated; without those (repeated!) notes, I would've dropped this conversation thread as being too far off-topic.

Good changes.

Are there any planned changes in how post-battle salvage works?

At the moment it is quite a grinding minigame. In my case it looks like this:
Salvage, Save game, Wait for cooldown, Salvage, Save game, Wait for cooldown, Salvage, etc.
and repeat this until you get net loss from two consecutive salvage operations,
after which I load the save from after last profitable operation and play from here.
Have to take into account two consecutive salvage operations because sometimes you get a small loss in one,
but in next one you don't lose any machinery at all so it turns into a profit.

I am sure it could be make less grindy.

Is it actually profitable to do more than once with a large fleet, considering the wait time and the supplies that drains? In any case, I'll keep an eye on it!
At the moment?  Yes!  At least assuming that by "profitable" you mean "has a chance to give me rare weapons or the occasional super-rare extra chance at recovering a ship I want".  I don't do Carabus' save-and-reload thing, but I do currently salvage debris two or three times if there was anything in the opposing force that I want - railguns, needlers, XIV hulls or Auroras or Tempests... and if that salvaging doesn't break even on supplies, I don't really care.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: CitizenIosef on September 07, 2018, 10:54:59 AM
@Eji1700: I've wanted for some time to go through and (via mod) rebalance ships so that (aside from special cases like the rare pre-collapse Kite), every freighter is an at least vaguely-passable combat freighter, and the actual combat freighter designed ships (mule, apogee, wayfarer, etc.) are only marginally sub-optimal compared to straight-up combat ships.

I was thinking that it'd be neat if
1) there were user assignable fleet roles to ships(combat/support at minimum), and
2) if ship performance was altered by amount of cargo weight it is carrying.

How that'd work is that the game attempts to fill the ships flagged by the player as support ships first before combat ships, thus reducing or eliminating cargo lost when a combat ship dies.  This would allow a status quo where an empty combat freighter could be roughly near peers with dedicated combat ships, but suffer greatly once their cavernous holds are filled.  Maybe even a hotkey to dump cargo for performance?
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: FooF on September 07, 2018, 01:00:19 PM

I was thinking about that exact thing. What that does, though, is make surveying a skill you'd never take, since the benefit becomes entirely cost-based, so the further you get into a playthrough, the more skill-point-regret would set in. I could see merging surveying and salvaging into one skill to get around that - in fact that's probably the direction I want to take it - but that's getting into skill-revamp territory, which is its own thing.


Not to derail too much but surveying is a precursor to colony development so if you wanted to turn surveying into a cost-based mechanic, you could lump it in with some colony perk (which has whole-game ramifications). Heck, you might take the skill initially for the survey bonus but continue to invest because of the colony component.

@ CitizenIosef

I think that's getting into game-y territory. I don't want combat performance to be arbitrarily changed because I can't control which cargo is where and if I can control it, it becomes its own tedium every time I take on cargo. I get the realism angle but I don't think I'd like the implementation.

Whether freighters are combat-capable or not somewhat torn. Support ships left on their own should be easy pickings but I also get the idea that you really don't see them in action unless you're fleeing from a bad engagement. I look at a Buffalo and think "space minivan" not "space armored car." That's the Mule, to a certain degree.

Logistics ships have always needed defending. If you really wanted to incentivize bringing support ships into battle, you could tie CR into it. Combat ships would have their usual peak performance and CR (less than current) but bringing a freighter, fuel tanker, etc. into the field of battle boosts these values by certain percentages, depending on size and type. The more of these vulnerable ships you risk into the battle, the higher your CR bonus and ability to sustain battles gets. It also gives targets of opportunity for frigates in late-game scenarios because killing these ships has an immediate impact on the whole enemy fleet. You'd have to dedicate ships to escort and it would give the battlefield regions of space that are naturally more valuable.


Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Cyan Leader on September 07, 2018, 09:00:00 PM
Hmm - anything that mitigates supply/repair costs is a potential problem, since those costs are there for a reason, so it's just something to approach carefully. If it just becomes another "lug this around to reduce costs" ship, then that's not very interesting, right?

How about unlocking campaign abilities if you have a certain ship in your fleet? Something like "increase the repair speed of the ships in the fleet but can't move" skill, which would be more than just a number change, thus making it more interesting. I also like the idea of adding charges for those abilities, so you can't abuse them too much between shore leaves.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Shrugger on September 07, 2018, 11:47:37 PM
I'm fairly sure I covered it in the blogpost, but, right: access to more ship/weapon/fighter blueprints and other colony-influencing items.
You did say as much, calling it, IIRC, the main way to acquire them, but without stating whether there were others avenues to these things.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Chaos Blade on September 08, 2018, 04:25:15 AM


Nice changes, seems like a reasonable streamlining.
I was thinking on the salvage Gantry, it would be interesting if the ships would have dual function both in salvage and in field repairs, in the latter case perhaps giving the fleet an efficiency on supplies for repair or maybe repair times? Honestly, I am sorta surprised we don't have a military Yardship, that is to say a moving repair yard. given the distances involved you'd think the factions would have dedicated support ships .

Hmm - anything that mitigates supply/repair costs is a potential problem, since those costs are there for a reason, so it's just something to approach carefully. If it just becomes another "lug this around to reduce costs" ship, then that's not very interesting, right? And if it's just repair times, it's probably not worth it. But if it let you do something qualitative, it could be interesting.


I get what you mean, the suggestion (without care for the realities of coding), then, would be to differentiate field repairs from drydock repairs, either moveable (gantry?) or starbase or the player needing the gantries/yards for repairs beyond a certain point. I mean, patching some holes and the scorch marks on the paint job shouldn't be the same as  most of the prow is a twisted out ruin and still in flames!
I mean, ultimately a patch job on the go and a more detailed job in a drydock shouldn't be the same (perhaps have a modifier "field repairs" on hulls that suffered a lot of damage and were repaired on the go and would need more dedicated repairs to remove?)

As an alternative, the efficiency calculations on repair could be done, instead on a flat amount per ship, that is to say the gantry giving some repair efficiency modifier flat bonus, make the bonus related to the total tonnage of the fleet itself (so to keep X level of efficiency on repairs, you will need more and more ships of that class)

Hell, it could do both, though to be honest, I am throwing some ideas, and while it culd be a hassle, differentiating field repairs from drydock repairs (if possible) could be interesting
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Megas on September 08, 2018, 05:19:07 AM
Like Wyvern, if I can smell rare and/or highly desirable stuff, I spam Salvage at least three times.  Trading extra supplies I can find anywhere for rare stuff that I might not be able to find or buy enough of is a great trade.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: CitizenIosef on September 08, 2018, 12:21:49 PM

I think that's getting into game-y territory. I don't want combat performance to be arbitrarily changed because I can't control which cargo is where and if I can control it, it becomes its own tedium every time I take on cargo. I get the realism angle but I don't think I'd like the implementation.

Interesting.  I would consider CR being influenced by support ships in the battle(without docking or something similar) to be game-y.  It'd feel like an artificial reason to bring non-combat ships to the front line.

For me, the question isn't so much about warships vs. transports as it is about making sense of the hybrids that fit the setting so well but are generally questionable choices.

I'd be okay with a small efficiency penalty for using hybrid warship/freighter designs if their acceleration dropped off under load.

You're right in that manual management of cargo would be tedious micromanagement, and that not having the choice to keep a vessel light would be annoying.  I rather think user-set flagging of cargo loading priority would solve for both.  It's simple enough compared to manual cargo handling, and provides a user a choice: don't want your combat Mules to be sluggish?  Make sure you don't take too much cargo for your freighter-flagged ships and those jerkface cargomasters won't greedily eye the cargo holds of your combat ships.

I also rather like the idea of pirate play under such a system.  Cargo holds empty and crew hungry means meaner performance, while a fat pirate is easy to outfox.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: errorgance on September 09, 2018, 05:52:05 AM


Nice changes, seems like a reasonable streamlining.
I was thinking on the salvage Gantry, it would be interesting if the ships would have dual function both in salvage and in field repairs, in the latter case perhaps giving the fleet an efficiency on supplies for repair or maybe repair times? Honestly, I am sorta surprised we don't have a military Yardship, that is to say a moving repair yard. given the distances involved you'd think the factions would have dedicated support ships .

Hmm - anything that mitigates supply/repair costs is a potential problem, since those costs are there for a reason, so it's just something to approach carefully. If it just becomes another "lug this around to reduce costs" ship, then that's not very interesting, right? And if it's just repair times, it's probably not worth it. But if it let you do something qualitative, it could be interesting.

it could be a little bit of both, a tiny amount of one may not be enough to justify something, but a tiny or small amount of both may make it worth while.
you could also either make it non stackable, with low a maximum bonus limit, or a small stackable bonus with diminishing returns, I think it's worth experimenting.

on a side note in the lost fleet series by jack Campbell, had tenders and auxiliaries that were capable of taking scrap, mining asteroids etc and turning them into supplies for the fleet.
How about letting the salvage gantry, or other specialized ships have a small nano forge on board, (or allow you to mount one when you find it),  which would allow it to turn scrap metals and or raw ore into the equivalent cost of supplies, or more likely, at a little less efficient ratio, say 125% material cost into supplies. The production speed needs to be limited say enough so so salvage gantries and similar ships could noticeably help keep a small fleet supplied, but be practically unnoticeable in a large fleet.

 if you're worried that may break the supply mechanics a bit, keep in mind when you start a faction you can make a factory to produce supplies right? so it looks like you’re going to be finding a solution for that problem anyways.

another thing the salvage rig, (or a specialized mining rig) could do is quick & dirty mining on asteroids and planets. since you're not there to make a permanent mining station (could you? #faction gameplay?) but for the quick and dirty you'd just be scraping off the exposed deposits on the surface of the asteroid or planet and heading off.

Heck, that gives me a thought, why cant we salvage ruins on planets? it could also give you a use for marines if there is any de-civilized populations, dangerous animals, pirates, or other scavengers around.

also, one or more military fleet tenders would be nice, you could make it a little less efficient than the civilian rig, but generally speedier, more stealthy and capable of defending itself.

Finally, ships with mining/salvage drones, do they reduce casualties from salvaging accidents? if not, they should, I'd use them over a person in a risky operation any time, could give players a reason to keep a Shepard in their fleet for the bonus.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: J3R on September 09, 2018, 04:42:26 PM
Alex your logic is sound. Looking forward to your next blogpost.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Alex on September 09, 2018, 09:27:05 PM
Alex your logic is sound. Looking forward to your next blogpost.

Thank you!

At the moment?  Yes!  At least assuming that by "profitable" you mean "has a chance to give me rare weapons or the occasional super-rare extra chance at recovering a ship I want".  I don't do Carabus' save-and-reload thing, but I do currently salvage debris two or three times if there was anything in the opposing force that I want - railguns, needlers, XIV hulls or Auroras or Tempests... and if that salvaging doesn't break even on supplies, I don't really care.

Hmm, alright, thank you. I'm fairly sure you're not going to get more ships beyond the first scavenge, btw.

Not to derail too much but surveying is a precursor to colony development so if you wanted to turn surveying into a cost-based mechanic, you could lump it in with some colony perk (which has whole-game ramifications). Heck, you might take the skill initially for the survey bonus but continue to invest because of the colony component.

Mmmmaybe, yeah. It's in the same general vein of bundling it with something long-term-useful.


How about unlocking campaign abilities if you have a certain ship in your fleet? Something like "increase the repair speed of the ships in the fleet but can't move" skill, which would be more than just a number change, thus making it more interesting. I also like the idea of adding charges for those abilities, so you can't abuse them too much between shore leaves.
<and other similar kind of stuff>

Yep, that could work. Whether it would ultimately be interesting - and interesting enough to warrant doing - is a more complicated question. Repairs don't take that long to begin with, and there's already a skill to speed them up a lot. So it might just be adding detail where it's not really impactful. I think this sort of stuff has to come from a place of identifying a specific thing that happens in the campaign - and happens *often* - and then adding something that either interacts with that or (if it's a problem) fixes it. So I'm not sure that thinking it through in the abstract, "how would auxiliary ships work" kind of way is super useful, since it's missing that foundational ingredient.

("So, you've run out of supplies again" could well be such a starting point, though...)

Heck, that gives me a thought, why cant we salvage ruins on planets?

In the next release, that's called "colonizing and building a Tech-Mining industry there" :)

Finally, ships with mining/salvage drones, do they reduce casualties from salvaging accidents? if not, they should, I'd use them over a person in a risky operation any time, could give players a reason to keep a Shepard in their fleet for the bonus.

The casualties/loss of machinery are a limiter on how many times you want to spam scavenge on a debris field; anything reducing them seems troublesome since it'll make more spamming more appealing.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Sutopia on September 09, 2018, 10:20:08 PM
Although this replay may not be directly related to this topic, now I'm wondering what kind of skill system does 0.9 have?
Is there a planning blog post for it?
As the skill amount increases, are we still getting capped at 42 points max in vanilla?
Have the "piloted ship" perks separated from the campaign skill tree?

As I see there are a number of industrial skills getting introduced or revamped, I fell tech tree is offering quite too few in variety.
Also, industrial skills are almost guaranteed to be fleet-wise perks, gaining this tree ridiculous advantage over other skill trees.
I'm feeling everyone is gonna rush for full industrial style or semi-industry, few will pick the hard road w/o industry perks.
As you mentioned elsewhere, the aptitude and level cap were meant to make players make decisions between play styles, but now I'm only seeing industrial play style getting kind of OP.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Midnight Kitsune on September 09, 2018, 11:57:57 PM
Although this replay may not be directly related to this topic, now I'm wondering what kind of skill system does 0.9 have?
Is there a planning blog post for it?
As the skill amount increases, are we still getting capped at 42 points max in vanilla?
Have the "piloted ship" perks separated from the campaign skill tree?

As I see there are a number of industrial skills getting introduced or revamped, I fell tech tree is offering quite too few in variety.
Also, industrial skills are almost guaranteed to be fleet-wise perks, gaining this tree ridiculous advantage over other skill trees.
I'm feeling everyone is gonna rush for full industrial style or semi-industry, few will pick the hard road w/o industry perks.
As you mentioned elsewhere, the aptitude and level cap were meant to make players make decisions between play styles, but now I'm only seeing industrial play style getting kind of OP.
Alex has mentioned that there won't be a skill revamp until later. We MIGHT get a level cap boost but this is not confirmed as far as I know
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Gothars on September 10, 2018, 12:52:22 AM
I think this sort of stuff has to come from a place of identifying a specific thing that happens in the campaign - and happens *often* - and then adding something that either interacts with that or (if it's a problem) fixes it.

A ship-ability I can use when caught in a hyperspace storm would  be nice. Maybe something that outright dispels the storm. Or wait, a ship that can capture the storm and use its energy to create antimatter-fuel! That would change the gameplay from avoiding to chasing storms! Awesome.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Deshara on September 10, 2018, 01:14:48 AM
battleship sized salvage gantry confirmed
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Schwartz on September 10, 2018, 04:53:29 AM
This mostly removes variables for the player to see, right? So he'll always be able to salvage, but returns may still be very different.

Why not have it so that difficult salvages can be attempted by a novice, and he'll chip away some of the value therein without destroying the salvage object? So that he can come back later to "get through those difficult bulkheads" or "take apart that volatile reactor" when he has more skill? Essentially turning salvage objects into things that can be taken apart in one, two or three stages depending on their difficulty and the skill of the player. So a pro can bag the whole thing as usual, but a novice doesn't feel like he's wasting resources. May even work as an incentive to get that skill. Or to hang around and protect a half-salvaged tech goldmine.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Gothars on September 10, 2018, 05:04:58 AM
Why not have it so that difficult salvages can be attempted by a novice, and he'll chip away some of the value therein without destroying the salvage object? So that he can come back later to "get through those difficult bulkheads" or "take apart that volatile reactor" when he has more skill? Essentially turning salvage objects into things that can be taken apart in one, two or three stages depending on their difficulty and the skill of the player.

Because this "can come back" is actually a "has to come back", into a region that is otherwise explored, pacified and boring.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Megas on September 10, 2018, 06:52:01 AM
A ship-ability I can use when caught in a hyperspace storm would  be nice. Maybe something that outright dispels the storm. Or wait, a ship that can capture the storm and use its energy to create antimatter-fuel! That would change the gameplay from avoiding to chasing storms! Awesome.
Old Sustained Burn.  Made storms much less aggravating.  You passed through quickly and it ate a bunch of supplies just for clipping it.  Now, I just reload the game and try again if I cannot escape the storm quickly enough.  Emergency Burn is useless due to taking too much time transitioning from SB to EB, not to mention you wait too long before SB becomes usable after EB wears off.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Alex on September 10, 2018, 10:33:36 AM
Alex has mentioned that there won't be a skill revamp until later. We MIGHT get a level cap boost but this is not confirmed as far as I know

I did increase the level cap to 50 for the time being, btw.


A ship-ability I can use when caught in a hyperspace storm would  be nice. Maybe something that outright dispels the storm. Or wait, a ship that can capture the storm and use its energy to create antimatter-fuel! That would change the gameplay from avoiding to chasing storms! Awesome.

Hah! That's... almost awesome enough to want to add as a one-off in some way. Like, "spend X days in a row in a storm to finish some kind of storm-analysis mission", say. Then you'd have to find a large enough moving storm to be able to do it.

Speaking of storms, I'd changed how they work. Instead of being a constant CR drain for all ships, there's a chance to hit a single ship with a "storm strike" every couple of seconds. The strike does damage to CR, armor, and hull, and larger fleets attract stronger strikes. Overall, this means that:

1) Supplies/day consumption doesn't shoot up nearly as much, since it's not affecting all of your fleet
2) The overall supply consumption is considerably less, due to the specific numbers involved
3) It occasionally creates some tactical considerations, i.e. a ship you usually depend on is temporarily crippled, without being ruinously expensive

Also removed the sensor profile penalty when caught in one, just to clean it up a bit.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Megas on September 10, 2018, 10:42:38 AM
I did increase the level cap to 50 for the time being, btw.
Nice, for a temporary quick fix.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Cyan Leader on September 10, 2018, 11:03:08 AM
Speaking of storms, I'd changed how they work. Instead of being a constant CR drain for all ships, there's a chance to hit a single ship with a "storm strike" every couple of seconds. The strike does damage to CR, armor, and hull, and larger fleets attract stronger strikes.

Hum, is this displayed in the game in any way besides the fleet screen? As in when caught in a storm, is there some sort of sound when a strike occurs? What about a message? Is the player made aware when a ship has been crippled? Just a couple of thoughts, might be confusing without some of that.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Alex on September 10, 2018, 11:15:30 AM
There are the general storm strike sounds, so I think that part is covered. If you look at the CR tooltip, there's also an item there for the CR loss caused by the storm strike. There's also an angry red paragraph of text in the storm terrain tooltip.

I do see what you're saying about a message, though, since all the other stuff requires you to go looking. Hmm. Let me try that. Seems a bit too spammy, but if raising the per-strike damage and the delay between strikes takes care of that. Yep, I think this is good - thank you!
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: errorgance on September 10, 2018, 11:56:09 AM
Alex, regarding storms, one Issue I have is often I get caught skirting the edge during sustained burn and get the full effect, could we get more varying intensities of storm and/or decrease the storms effects further away from the center of the storm?

 also, if we're talking space weather, what about more visible storm fronts?
(https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/images/1/1b/Nexus2371.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20100516231112&path-prefix=en)(yes that's the ribbon from star trek generations)

of course as mentioned before, a skill to lie dogo in a storm, or to more safely transit through a storm might be useful too.

If you decide to go with the random ship being struck/buffeted/whatever in a storm, what about an individual commanders skill to avoid such strikes/turbulence?
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Sutopia on September 10, 2018, 11:56:58 AM
there's a chance to hit a single ship with a "storm strike" every couple of seconds. The strike does damage to CR, armor, and hull, and larger fleets attract stronger strikes.
Does it mean you only get 1 ship hit at a time max or you're getting every ship rolling the chance of getting hit in every storm strike check?
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Alex on September 10, 2018, 12:10:40 PM
Alex, regarding storms, one Issue I have is often I get caught skirting the edge during sustained burn and get the full effect, could we get more varying intensities of storm and/or decrease the storms effects further away from the center of the storm?

I'd just as soon not mess with that. I mean, if you try to skirt too close and don't leave enough error margin, you get what you get, you know?

also, if we're talking space weather, what about more visible storm fronts?
(https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/images/1/1b/Nexus2371.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20100516231112&path-prefix=en)(yes that's the ribbon from star trek generations)

Hmm - my feeling is that they're already plenty visible. I do seem to recall improving their visibility at some point since the last release, though.

If you decide to go with the random ship being struck/buffeted/whatever in a storm, what about an individual commanders skill to avoid such strikes/turbulence?

I don't think this a primary or important enough mechanic to start adding specific skill interactions for the sake of. That said, the Solar Shielding hullmod reduces the effect of storms, along with coronas.


Does it mean you only get 1 ship hit at a time max or you're getting every ship rolling the chance of getting hit in every storm strike check?

One ship at a time.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Sutopia on September 10, 2018, 05:49:17 PM
The strike does damage to CR, armor, and hull, and larger fleets attract stronger strikes. Overall, this means that:


A quick question, if you just battled in storm and got some ship almost dead (with no armor and little hull left), is there a chance storm strike killing it?
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Alex on September 10, 2018, 05:53:22 PM
Storm strikes can't actually destroy ships; that seemed a bit too mean, even for me :)
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Deshara on September 10, 2018, 08:25:25 PM
Alex has mentioned that there won't be a skill revamp until later. We MIGHT get a level cap boost but this is not confirmed as far as I know

I did increase the level cap to 50 for the time being, btw.


A ship-ability I can use when caught in a hyperspace storm would  be nice. Maybe something that outright dispels the storm. Or wait, a ship that can capture the storm and use its energy to create antimatter-fuel! That would change the gameplay from avoiding to chasing storms! Awesome.

Hah! That's... almost awesome enough to want to add as a one-off in some way. Like, "spend X days in a row in a storm to finish some kind of storm-analysis mission", say. Then you'd have to find a large enough moving storm to be able to do it.

Speaking of storms, I'd changed how they work. Instead of being a constant CR drain for all ships, there's a chance to hit a single ship with a "storm strike" every couple of seconds. The strike does damage to CR, armor, and hull, and larger fleets attract stronger strikes. Overall, this means that:

1) Supplies/day consumption doesn't shoot up nearly as much, since it's not affecting all of your fleet
2) The overall supply consumption is considerably less, due to the specific numbers involved
3) It occasionally creates some tactical considerations, i.e. a ship you usually depend on is temporarily crippled, without being ruinously expensive

Also removed the sensor profile penalty when caught in one, just to clean it up a bit.

ooh! If the storm strike were a straight % of max CR lost, rather than a flat redux, it'd punish high-tech, late-game fleets more than rugged/cheap early game fleets
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Noomsy on September 11, 2018, 09:33:29 AM
Anything that encourages salvage as a method to build up your fleet is great.

I've been routinely playing with huge multipliers on ship cost (Like 5x).

And it feels very much like you have to build or fleet up piecemeal. It actually gives you a reason to use those 3-4 Dmod wolfs and such. The one issue is if you don't put points into D mod reducing skills it takes forever to actually buy a decent ship.

Still it makes the game alot more interesting in my opinion. In vanilla if I can find a wolf or tempest and scrap together 15k-30k...it's pretty much easy street from there. (Just pick your battles as you build up)
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Midnight Kitsune on September 11, 2018, 09:44:47 AM
Anything that encourages salvage as a method to build up your fleet is great.

I've been routinely playing with huge multipliers on ship cost (Like 5x).

And it feels very much like you have to build or fleet up piecemeal. It actually gives you a reason to use those 3-4 Dmod wolfs and such. The one issue is if you don't put points into D mod reducing skills it takes forever to actually buy a decent ship.

Still it makes the game alot more interesting in my opinion. In vanilla if I can find a wolf or tempest and scrap together 15k-30k...it's pretty much easy street from there. (Just pick your battles as you build up)
Does that also make restore costs even more expensive?
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Megas on September 11, 2018, 10:04:15 AM
I play with clunkers all the time, but I will be so glad why I can play with undamaged ships without reloading the game every time I take a casualty because they are too rare and/or expensive.  Same thing with weapons that are not commonly found at open market or pirates' black market.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Noomsy on September 11, 2018, 03:15:45 PM
Quote
Does that also make restore costs even more expensive?

Not that I can tell, since those take supplies.

Alex also wisely separated cost for non trade good, weapons, mods, LPCs, so you can jack the cost of those up as well, practically forcing the user to advance via salvage and using damaged ships.

There is an independent variable for ship value used in selling to shipyards as well, so you could up that if you want to make the player focus more on the weapons, mods, etc.

In settings.json:
   # ship weapons and anything else that's not in the economy
   "nonEconItemBuyPriceMult":3.2, # added 2 for all but ship purchase, those are 4
   "nonEconItemSellPriceMult":.25,
   "shipBuyPriceMult":5.2,
   "shipSellPriceMult":0.4,
   "hullWithDModsSellPriceMult":0.2,

Totally changes the feel of the game....
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Retry on September 11, 2018, 05:22:31 PM
Quote
Does that also make restore costs even more expensive?

Not that I can tell, since those take supplies.
Restoring a ship to spec at a dockyard by removing its D-Mods uses money, not supplies.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: errorgance on September 11, 2018, 06:26:38 PM
Alex, had a shower thought this morning,  ship construction will consume ship hulls/parts/whatever right? Can these parts be salvaged from wrecks?

If so, then could wreckage fields near planets give temporary bonus to ship component supplies/production due to ongoing salvage/scrapping efforts? Could your planet spawn salvage fleets to take care of farther debris fields?

Speaking of which, could we produce our own ship graveyards for similar but longer lasting bonuses? You probably will have to feed it with unwanted ships to keep the bonuses, or have it auto purchase wrecks from the verse like any junkyard would.

Oh and one random thought, if I had two eagle cruisers, with non matching D mods, could I splice the two together to make one whole ship with a bunch of left over scrap and ship components?
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Alex on September 11, 2018, 06:39:41 PM
ooh! If the storm strike were a straight % of max CR lost, rather than a flat redux, it'd punish high-tech, late-game fleets more than rugged/cheap early game fleets

It's sort of like that; at least, high-tech ships tend to lose more CR since their CR/deployment is higher, and earyl game fleets don't suffer as much because the strike is based on the fleet's deployment cost.


Alex, had a shower thought this morning,  ship construction will consume ship hulls/parts/whatever right? Can these parts be salvaged from wrecks?

It totally doesn't. It just costs credits and requires Heavy Industry; the details are left to your subordinates to work out. "Credits" are the general, high-level, "I'm not getting personally involved with this, you work it out" resource.

Oh and one random thought, if I had two eagle cruisers, with non matching D mods, could I splice the two together to make one whole ship with a bunch of left over scrap and ship components?

Haha, my guess is the actual more likely outcome would be one ship with all of the d-mods from both, and a few new ones thrown in :)

But in any case, that seems... pretty random. I mean, there's a ton of stuff you *could* add to the game. right? The question is, why is a particular thing worth the effort and the increase in complexity, both player-facing and dev-wise? A suggestion without that aspect of it talked about explicitly is kind of tough to evaluate, since I don't know what you've got in mind.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Gothars on September 12, 2018, 12:45:39 PM
Hah! That's... almost awesome enough to want to add as a one-off in some way. Like, "spend X days in a row in a storm to finish some kind of storm-analysis mission", say. Then you'd have to find a large enough moving storm to be able to do it.
:thumbsup.jpeg:


Speaking of storms, I'd changed how they work. Instead of being a constant CR drain for all ships, there's a chance to hit a single ship with a "storm strike" every couple of seconds. The strike does damage to CR, armor, and hull, and larger fleets attract stronger strikes. Overall, this means that:

1) Supplies/day consumption doesn't shoot up nearly as much, since it's not affecting all of your fleet
2) The overall supply consumption is considerably less, due to the specific numbers involved
3) It occasionally creates some tactical considerations, i.e. a ship you usually depend on is temporarily crippled, without being ruinously expensive

Also removed the sensor profile penalty when caught in one, just to clean it up a bit.


You know, if you're changing things in hyperspace, how about a different kind of "storm" that helps you travel faster and cheaper? Say, you could traverse it at 25 speed and without fuel costs.

I think it would just be great to have something positive to look out for during long travels, and since the hyperspace tidal wave idea didn't come through, this could be an easy replacement (/placeholder?).



Alex, had a shower thought this morning,  ship construction will consume ship hulls/parts/whatever right? Can these parts be salvaged from wrecks?

It totally doesn't. It just costs credits and requires Heavy Industry; the details are left to your subordinates to work out. "Credits" are the general, high-level, "I'm not getting personally involved with this, you work it out" resource.

Buuut Heavy Industry will increase demand of metals, which can be found during salvaging, right? Don't know if you can inject them in significant amounts into your industry, though. Waaah, I can't wait for this to not be so damn theoretical anymore ;D
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Alex on September 12, 2018, 03:20:16 PM
You know, if you're changing things in hyperspace, how about a different kind of "storm" that helps you travel faster and cheaper? Say, you could traverse it at 25 speed and without fuel costs.

I think it would just be great to have something positive to look out for during long travels, and since the hyperspace tidal wave idea didn't come through, this could be an easy replacement (/placeholder?).

Hmm - makes me almost want to do this to existing storms. Wonder if it'd be weird to have a slowdown in normal deep hyper terrain and a speedup in storms, though. But, yeah, that could be quite fun. Storm-riding! Especially if you could then put on a bunch of solar shielding to minimize the impact.

Buuut Heavy Industry will increase demand of metals, which can be found during salvaging, right? Don't know if you can inject them in significant amounts into your industry, though. Waaah, I can't wait for this to not be so damn theoretical anymore ;D

Right, that's true! I guess I'm just assuming that supply lines of this nature wouldn't be too difficult to establish, but I'm not quite sure about that.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Bribe Guntails on September 12, 2018, 04:03:18 PM
You know, if you're changing things in hyperspace, how about a different kind of "storm" that helps you travel faster and cheaper? Say, you could traverse it at 25 speed and without fuel costs.

I think it would just be great to have something positive to look out for during long travels, and since the hyperspace tidal wave idea didn't come through, this could be an easy replacement (/placeholder?).

Hmm - makes me almost want to do this to existing storms. Wonder if it'd be weird to have a slowdown in normal deep hyper terrain and a speedup in storms, though. But, yeah, that could be quite fun. Storm-riding! Especially if you could then put on a bunch of solar shielding to minimize the impact.

Buuut Heavy Industry will increase demand of metals, which can be found during salvaging, right? Don't know if you can inject them in significant amounts into your industry, though. Waaah, I can't wait for this to not be so damn theoretical anymore ;D

Right, that's true! I guess I'm just assuming that supply lines of this nature wouldn't be too difficult to establish, but I'm not quite sure about that.

This makes me think of Shallow/Thin Hyperspace: the opposite of Deep Hyperspace. Of course many other fleets would prefer it, and potential pirates would set up ambushes along it?

As for Resource ReclamationTM maybe you could establish a Ship Graveyard/Breaking Facility at a Colony? It would convert ship hulls and derelicts into resources for the Colony, but would need to be supplied by debris fields in and around the system, and also any ships you feed into it. It would be a way to supplement ship production if you're in a lot of fighting, and it parallels the Industry aptitude a bit.
Though it does sound like it'll conflict with Scuttling; it'd give you the choice of scuttling for meager gains, or hold onto ships until you get to the graveyard?
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: intrinsic_parity on September 12, 2018, 05:01:47 PM
This could really make solar shielding a viable hullmod. Currently you kinda have to use it on all or most of your ships, and the benefits are just too small to sacrifice that many ordinance points. This could add a lot of utility to the hullmod. I also think having some positive interaction in hyperspace where you are trying to achieve a positive outcome rather than trying to avoid a negative outcome is much more interesting and rewarding.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: errorgance on September 13, 2018, 01:58:45 PM
Positive hyperspace, thin spots, an interesting idea! could you reduce fuel usage in those spots instead of a speed boost? It would be a nice way of economizing fuel and possibly a way to limp back to civilization if you’re low on fuel since technically it’d be trading supplies for fuel.

Also riding out a storm sounds like fun, reminds me of the American clipper ships running sail through them just for the extra speed, no matter the cost to the canvas. Could be a fun hull mod, solar sail/hyperspace sail, extra speed/reduced fuel usage in storms. If you make it useful enough, you could literally trade supplies for fuel if your short on fuel.

  
Alex, another thought on the storms striking random vessels, if you do that,  you could then animate a lightning strike or some other to visual show the player that somethings bad has actually happened.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Cosmitz on September 19, 2018, 07:02:47 AM
I never know what to realistically comment to these blogposts since they all make so much good game-sense. Really, great stuff here and that was needed. One of these days i'll log in and see 0.9a released and lose another few weeks with it. :)
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Regis_CZ on September 19, 2018, 09:26:39 AM
Hello,
Thanks for the blog post, it is always nice to read those. Is salvaging entire ships/hulls still a thing in 0.9? I noticed a problem with the current system which I would like to mention but obviously not if it is no longer applicable.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Gothars on September 19, 2018, 09:34:46 AM
Hello Regis_CZ, welcome to the forum!

Yes, salvaging will still be there. What is the issue you noticed?
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Regis_CZ on September 19, 2018, 10:26:54 AM
Thank you. I should have probably said concern, not issue. It is about salvaging ships vs max fleet size.

Normally after combat you are offered all ships that fulfill certain requirements for salvage. However the number of ships you are offered on the salvage screen only goes up to the fleet limit. So if you have 28 ships in the fleet, 2 ships will be picked at random (I assume) from all the salvageable ships. This means couple of things:

In my latest campaign I ended up at max level without any decent ships - the best hulls I had were two Eagles. In order to beat any of the bounty fleets (difficulty of which I think is based on your level) I basically had to bring everything I had, 28-29 ships. This with the mechanics mentioned above precluded me from gaining better ships. I thing I won some 20 bounty battles, each with 1-3 capital ships before being able to salvage one of them. I think I disabled (as opposed to destroyed) somewhere around 75% of the capital ships but with maxed out salvage skills I think even those can make it into the salvage pool. It took me about 3 hours of gameplay to realize I will get NO salvage at max fleet size and then afterwards some 10 hours at 28 fleet size to get the first capital ship. Extremely frustrating 10 hours.

This all eventually led to some very gamey and desperate tactics like me flying around the battlefield deliberately destroying disabled ships in attempt to push them out of the salvage pool, etc.

I would vote for player getting list of all salvageable ships regardless of the fleet size with the choices on the salvage screen being: salvage (up to the fleet limit), break up and leave be. Perhaps similar to the deploy/deploy left/deploy right on the deployment screen.

Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Alex on September 19, 2018, 10:48:15 AM
Solid points all around. It's sort of been on my TODO list for a while (offer all ships, limit number of picks to X) but just haven't been able to get to it. Thank you for sharing your experience; I wasn't thinking of this as an issue that would come up all that much.

(Welcome to the forum, btw!)
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Regis_CZ on September 19, 2018, 10:58:46 AM
Thanks Alex and thank you for a wonderful game, which I am sure will become even better with time. ;)
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Megas on September 19, 2018, 10:58:58 AM
Normally after combat you are offered all ships that fulfill certain requirements for salvage. However the number of ships you are offered on the salvage screen only goes up to the fleet limit. So if you have 28 ships in the fleet, 2 ships will be picked at random (I assume) from all the salvageable ships.
This is why that one perk that increases chance of enemy hull recovery is useless, because after you have a big enough fleet, you have more than enough enemy wrecks left after a fight to fill or exceed the fleet cap.

Quote
In my latest campaign I ended up at max level without any decent ships - the best hulls I had were two Eagles. In order to beat any of the bounty fleets (difficulty of which I think is based on your level) I basically had to bring everything I had, 28-29 ships.
That was much like my first 0.8 playthrough, although that release had no level scaling.  I really dislike level scaling in the later 0.8 releases because the enemy upgrades faster than you can.

Solid points all around. It's sort of been on my TODO list for a while (offer all ships, limit number of picks to X) but just haven't been able to get to it. Thank you for sharing your experience; I wasn't thinking of this as an issue that would come up all that much.
Nice that it will be addressed.  When I went bounty hunting, I brought no more than twenty ships just so I have room to grab enemy hulls.  Hulls exceeding the limit happens all of the time at endgame.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Deshara on September 19, 2018, 11:00:36 AM
Solid points all around. It's sort of been on my TODO list for a while (offer all ships, limit number of picks to X) but just haven't been able to get to it. Thank you for sharing your experience; I wasn't thinking of this as an issue that would come up all that much.

(Welcome to the forum, btw!)

I was thinking about this yesterday WRT Total Warhammer 2's autoresolve design being borked (the game gives you the option to quicksave before a battle, so its design is actually forcing players to quicksave, autoresolve, and if the results aren't favorable load that quicksave and then actually fight the fight, which largely just punishes players with 10 minute load times (Hi! It me!) who have to do 3 loads (a half hour of loading for every battle) for every attempt at a battle, and 3 more for every retry) and how the game really just needs to tell you what the autoresolve result will be (since it is deterministic) up front and offer you the option of personally leading your troops into battle to force a better result
and while I was thinking about that I remembered SS tangentially bumping up against a similar problem and that another game I'd been following had too but I can't for the life of me remember what it was
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Megas on September 19, 2018, 11:19:02 AM
@ Deshara: Pre 0.6 Starfarer/Starsector allowed the player to autoresolve every fight.  For the last 0.5 version with skills, the best build was the autoresolve build.  Get max Leadership and Technology, cram as many big ships in your fight, and autoresolve everything in Corvus.  If you wipe, reload.  If not, save and do it to the next fleet.  Autoresolving took seconds instead of minutes, and it was the only way to grind up to 50 in a reasonable amount of time for the 10-10-10 character.  Any other build was effectively a 10-10 character.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Regis_CZ on September 19, 2018, 11:49:57 AM
That was much like my first 0.8 playthrough, although that release had no level scaling.  I really dislike level scaling in the later 0.8 releases because the enemy upgrades faster than you can.

I see I am not the only one who has problems with the scaling (in principle, not with the rate). I'm going to start a topic about this in General discussion in order not to clutter this thread.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Megas on September 19, 2018, 11:51:59 AM
I see I am not the only one who has problems with the scaling (in principle, not with the rate). I'm going to start a topic about this in General discussion in order not to clutter this thread.
Alex has toned it down for the 0.9, so whatever problems we have in 0.8 will not last.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Alex on September 19, 2018, 11:58:42 AM
(... it's also fairly minor to begin with; I think much of it has to do with running into a higher-level bounty (of which there's usually one posted, and it brings in more credits) and feeling like it has to do with scaling when it doesn't ...)
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: SCC on September 19, 2018, 12:09:50 PM
The issue with limited salvage based on fleet size has been known for a long time, it's a part of the reason why I changed maxShipsInFleet to 100.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Megas on September 20, 2018, 07:07:59 AM
(... it's also fairly minor to begin with; I think much of it has to do with running into a higher-level bounty (of which there's usually one posted, and it brings in more credits) and feeling like it has to do with scaling when it doesn't ...)
That is hard to swallow when all of the bounties have the same elevated difficulty and reward (which is useless when they are too strong).  The only logical explanation is level scaling upgraded every bounty.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Midnight Kitsune on September 20, 2018, 09:23:20 PM
(... it's also fairly minor to begin with; I think much of it has to do with running into a higher-level bounty (of which there's usually one posted, and it brings in more credits) and feeling like it has to do with scaling when it doesn't ...)
That is hard to swallow when all of the bounties have the same elevated difficulty and reward (which is useless when they are too strong).  The only logical explanation is level scaling upgraded every bounty.
But then you get stuck with boring ass weak bounties that barely pay
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Thaago on September 20, 2018, 10:44:23 PM
I hope that some of the bounties still scale very quickly even if others are weaker - a wider variety should be viable as now all bounties will pay even if the faction is hostile. It sucks when all of the bounties that will pay are very easy and the optimal strategy is to shelve half the fleet.
Title: Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
Post by: Megas on September 21, 2018, 05:12:45 AM
I have no problem with varying bounties.  It is a problem when all of the bounties have a elevated threat level because I level up faster than I can upgrade my fleet.  When I have one or two destroyers and twice as many frigates, and all bounties have two or three cruisers and more destroyers and frigates than my entire fleet, and better quality than my ships on top of that, that is a problem.

It sucks when all of the bounties that will pay are very easy and the optimal strategy is to shelve half the fleet.
It hurts more when I need to shelve my whole fleet except a Dram and my starter Wolf (for contact missions) because all of the bounties are too powerful.