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Author Topic: Ship Recovery  (Read 97675 times)

Voyager I

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #30 on: January 20, 2017, 06:21:35 PM »

If you repair a (for example) pirate (d) hound would it keep the pirate sprite or would it change to a normal hound sprite.
I would love to make a pirate fleet that doesn't have all the (d)ownsides. ;)

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


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

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


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

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


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

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #31 on: January 20, 2017, 06:33:23 PM »

If I'm reading this correctly, there is still a significant RNG component to recovering ships: skewing much more favorably for the player if it's a.) for his/her own fleet ships being recovered and/or b.) if you invest in the specific Industry skills. I noticed that "base chance" is X (numbers may get tweaked) but is that across all ships or do certain hulls or classes of ships have modifiers to that base chance? I.e. a frigate is "easier" to recover than a destroyer (or vice versa) or a phase ship is harder to recover, etc.?

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

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

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


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

Yep, they still do.


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

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


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

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


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

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


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

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


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

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


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

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

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


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

Right.

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

Re: (D) Sunder, I don't know - it might be reasonable to use without restoration, just due to the low deployment cost. In general, I'd imagine restoring most ships isn't going to be worth the cost, so it likely never being the case for the pirate (D) Sunder isn't actually a big deal; it's only supposed to be used in special cases.
« Last Edit: January 20, 2017, 06:35:55 PM by Alex »
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Voyager I

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #32 on: January 20, 2017, 06:53:20 PM »

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

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

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

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

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

I agree with you here.  It's a lot of added complexity to model this just for a ship that isn't particularly rare or exciting and thus will almost never be worth the credit cost of restoring, and on further reflection a Pirate Sunder can probably still be a credible member of a scrap fleet, since it's not trying to be a top-end tool of warfare commanded by an elite officer and loaded up with the finest hardware money and connections can buy.  It's just supposed to get all the holes patched over, loaded up with whatever you pulled off the unrecoverable wrecks, and sent back out until the day it breaks into enough pieces not to be worth putting together again.
« Last Edit: January 20, 2017, 07:10:50 PM by Voyager I »
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Gennadios

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #33 on: January 20, 2017, 06:53:53 PM »

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

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

I logged in to ask the same question.

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

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

I also think it may be a more helpful feature in Iron Man than standard games.
« Last Edit: January 20, 2017, 06:55:40 PM by Gennadios »
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Dri

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #34 on: January 20, 2017, 07:46:28 PM »

Aw snaps, things are in the home stretch now!

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

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

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #35 on: January 20, 2017, 07:54:30 PM »

Aw snaps, things are in the home stretch now!

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

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

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

Losing top-end guns is still kind of an issue, but now we have options to mitigate that as well.
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Dri

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #36 on: January 20, 2017, 08:08:57 PM »

What with the new level cap and having to spend points on on aptitudes that no longer provide any immediate benefit, I feel that skill points will be more precious. So, while I'd like to snag the Industry skill that lets one salvage ships and weapons more often, I'm not sure that I'd be willing to spend one of my precious points on that if my playstyle favors avoiding losses to begin with, ya know?

Anyways, it's really not that major of a concern and of course there is no way for any skill tree to account for all the many corner cases out there. I'm just tossing in my two cents.
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Voyager I

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #37 on: January 20, 2017, 08:15:11 PM »

If you spend no points on it at all, it's a lot like the current game except rare ships can be salvaged and refitted more easily.  It's definitely not a step backwards or anything.
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Dri

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #38 on: January 20, 2017, 08:23:43 PM »

When did I say anything was a step back? I never did, and even said that a lot of the new additions to recover ships are great!

Nah, I was just saying that currently Industry doesn't seem very attractive to those who don't intend do go down that specific combat style. But again, really not that big of a deal at all and honestly that is probably to be expected.
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Midnight Kitsune

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #39 on: January 20, 2017, 08:52:19 PM »

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

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #40 on: January 20, 2017, 08:59:16 PM »

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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


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

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

But in any case, the industry skills and the mechanics to mitigate ship losses are not the same thing. The main reason to spec into all of these skills would be because that's how you want to approach combat in the first place - with lots of expendable ships. If you don't, then their appeal naturally falls off some - though a few points here and there may still be worth it - but the "loss mitigation" mechanics still remain.
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TaLaR

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #41 on: January 20, 2017, 09:03:16 PM »

I'm not quite sure individual Dmod repair is desirable.
I totally see myself intentionally keeping sensors or armor/hull(on shield based ships) debuff for better supply efficiency. At least in some cases.
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Dri

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #42 on: January 20, 2017, 09:21:33 PM »

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

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Morrokain

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #43 on: January 20, 2017, 09:39:05 PM »

Oh wow! I can definitely say that I didn't see this coming, but it sounds pretty interesting! It will certainly changes things up and hopefully it will do as described and open up play options.

The hype is real for this update!

Couple concerns for modding though as usual   :) :

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

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

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #44 on: January 20, 2017, 11:50:19 PM »

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