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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Author Topic: Ship Recovery  (Read 97690 times)

ChaseBears

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #45 on: January 21, 2017, 01:05:21 AM »

overall i like it, although it still leaves you SOL if god forbid you actually lose a battle..
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Adraius

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #46 on: January 21, 2017, 01:44:08 AM »

So, this blog post is kinda huge news for me.  My preferred way of playing Starsector is building mix-and-match fleets from whatever the game sends at me; I used to increase the boarding chance so that I would get a capture-able vessel more often than not, and slowly assemble my fleet out of captured ships armed with recovered weapons - with the occasional concession of buying a favorite ship or purchasing a few PD weapons so the PD types match.  I found it rewarding growing my frigate hodgepodge to the point that it could overtake a destroyer to claim as my flagship, then assembling enough destroyers to capture a cruiser, and so forth up the chain.  It made every run unique, featuring different ships and varying weapon loadouts based on what I recovered.

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

TL;DR, the new ship recovery system makes sense, but frankly I'd like to mod it to give me better ships - will that be possible?  Perhaps, if it isn't easy to expose to modding, make the "restore to pristine condition" price moddable.
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Elijah

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #47 on: January 21, 2017, 04:35:15 AM »

overall i like it, although it still leaves you SOL if god forbid you actually lose a battle..

Yeah, it would be nice to have a mechanic where not every fleet will want you hunt you down to the last ship. Like pirates would probably just like to kill some ships, get their scrap and cargo very quickly to evade possible faction guards coming to surprise them while they scavenge your derelicts. A surrender button, maybe, that doesn't make all of your ships go boom?
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Cyan Leader

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #48 on: January 21, 2017, 04:41:11 AM »

This is by far the best implemented change so far. It fixes so many of the problems I have with the game and it opens up so many different playstyles.

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

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #49 on: January 21, 2017, 05:16:30 AM »

overall i like it, although it still leaves you SOL if god forbid you actually lose a battle..

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


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

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

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

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Carabus

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #50 on: January 21, 2017, 05:32:53 AM »

On skill balance:

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


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


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

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

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


This has two good bonuses. Perhaps the emergency burn bonus could be moved to Level 2, so Level 2 actually becomes a solid boost to exploration?
(it also relates thematically: heat protection from both star corona and engine burn)
« Last Edit: January 21, 2017, 05:36:15 AM by Carabus »
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JohnDoe

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #51 on: January 21, 2017, 06:35:00 AM »

> when docked at a port, you can “restore” a ship to peak condition, getting rid of all d-mods.

Thank you.
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Johnny Cocas

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #52 on: January 21, 2017, 07:21:33 AM »

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

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

If this is too much trouble to put into the game or is not balanced or whatever perhaps someone could make a mod for it? :P Only time will tell...
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Sutopia

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #53 on: January 21, 2017, 07:23:03 AM »

Recover ships ! Thanks Alex !!
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Histidine

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #54 on: January 21, 2017, 07:23:36 AM »

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

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


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Cyan Leader

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #55 on: January 21, 2017, 07:34:23 AM »

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

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

I agree. Perhaps it will make more sense when we feel the exploration but I think it might be more useful it it was something like "You're not effected for the first 3 seconds of being exposed by dangerous terrain" on a 10 second cooldown.
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Andy H.K.

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #56 on: January 21, 2017, 08:18:41 AM »

That's really innovative, can't wait to play it!
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Alex

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #57 on: January 21, 2017, 09:30:59 AM »

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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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


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

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


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

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

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


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

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


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

That's modable, but would require compilation.

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

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



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

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

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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Megas

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #58 on: January 21, 2017, 10:32:27 AM »

Only briefly scanned the blog, but... Level 3 Safety Procedures no longer costs CR to use Emergency Burn?!  Looks like the new Navigation 10 from 0.65, maybe.  Spam it as much as possible when you need to be somewhere in a hurry!  The main thing that discourages EB spam (for me) is supply cost.

EDIT:  Does it still chug fuel?  If so, that could be a limiter.  CR drain is a much bigger deal.
« Last Edit: January 21, 2017, 10:35:45 AM by Megas »
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Alex

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #59 on: January 21, 2017, 10:38:19 AM »

Only briefly scanned the blog, but... Level 3 Safety Procedures no longer costs CR to use Emergency Burn?!  Looks like the new Navigation 10 from 0.65, maybe.  Spam it as much as possible when you need to be somewhere in a hurry!  The main thing that discourages EB spam (for me) is supply cost.

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

Yeah, it still costs fuel. And it's 5 burn slower than Sustained Burn.
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