Were any of these features for patch 0.8a extremely difficult for you as a programmer to get up and running? What system (or cluster of similar systems) took the lion's share of effort?
Hmm - I wouldn't say anything was
extremely difficult implementation-wise. Most of the difficulty is usually in figuring out exactly how something should work, either just spending time thinking about design or iterating through implementations to get there eventually.
Still, to answer your question - probably procedurally generating star systems; there's a lot of data flying around (something like 5ish spreadsheets) and it took a lot of work figuring out how it should all come together.
Will the procedural D ships have the same description as current D ships? If so, might non-procedural D ships get more unique descriptions to differentiate them?
They have a different description prefix.
1) since a few people mentioned that losing battles is still just as punishing as ever if you can recover ships only from won battles: you mentioned a while ago that you were thinking about making all battles produce a debris field that fleets can then pick through, rather than immediately giving loot. is that still a thing/possibility? with ship wrecks now becoming a pretty big deal, and the ability to keep specific ships in your fleet from ever being destroyed completely, debris fields could provide an opportunity to recover some of your losses even after a defeat or retreat.
depending on whether the enemy fleet who got you is sticking around to pick through the debris themselves (pirates probably would, patrols and traders probably wouldn't), you might have to hide somewhere nearby until they're gone, but could then return to see if there's anything left for you to salvage. even if the enemy took the most valuable wrecks and pieces for themselves, you might still be able to partially recover your losses through stuff they left behind, especially if you're already specialized in this industry combat playstyle.
Debris fields post-battle are in the dev build. Currently considering ship recovery in relation to that - my feeling is it should be a more rare event than just being able to recover everything that got disabled. After all, chances are if it wasn't taken with the winning fleet, it was broken for salvage. So there'll
probably be a small chance to find a recoverable ship.
3) you could add increased weapon recovery chance to the Armored Weapon Mounts hullmod. i understand not wanting to put it together with the guaranteed ship recovery of Reinforced Bulkhead, to avoid making that one feel like a requirement (and i actually feel it might need a bit of a nerf, maybe to something like 30% increased hull, more in line with Blast Doors). but for some loadouts, the weapons are quite a bit more valuable than the ship they're on, so it would be nice to have some option to at least make recovery more likely, even if not guaranteed (for that specific loadout, in addition to the overall increased chance from the skill).
I see what you mean, but the problem is, I think, that it would be the only layer of defense and would thus feel mandatory. If I were to do that, it'd probably be hullmod, officer skill, limited-global skill or some such - like it is for ships - so that nothing specific feels mandatory.
4) since autofit has an option to automatically apply Reinforced Bulkheads, could you add one for Blast Doors as well? seems like that would also be a good idea to have on many of the recovered disposables.
You can always put Blast Doors on the "goal" variant. But, hmm. Maybe that *is* worth it, since crew management is an important side of this - yeah, made a note to do that.
5) if all d-mods from ships like the pather skins can be removed while keeping their beneficial built-in ones, i think those ships could use some nerf to their base stats. i do like that capturing and restoring these ships can be a way to produce a more powerful version (since it takes a bit of luck, work, and more credits than just buying an unaltered version), but getting a 15 OP frigate hullmod for 0 OP instead does seem a little bit crazy. ^^
In theory, I get what you're saying, but at the end of the day we're just talking about a few frigates that aren't that good even with built-in SO - at least, not compared to the cost to restore them. If it was battleships that outclass everything else, yeah, it'd be a problem. As it is, it's more of a fun thing that shouldn't come into play where it would break the balance.
6) with these new features about making low-quality ships worth fielding as the player that are currently only really useful as low-difficulty enemies: can Buffalo MK.II get some love as well? like reduced cost and maybe even a bit beefed up durability? i believe lorewise, it's supposed to be a weak but cost-effective alternative to proper military ships, with above average armor to partially offset its poor mobility and lack of shield. but in reality it's not ever worth buying. it actually has significantly less durability than other, shielded destroyers (less than a Hound, even!), only 120 seconds PPT for some reason, and yet it costs almost as much as an Enforcer...
Good call; reduced its deployment/maintenance cost to 4 supplies. Hopefully that'll be enough.
7) you could still keep marines for boarding, as part of the new system: make a portion (something like ~20%?) of recoverable ships cost marines to recover, with the benefit of adding no or less d-mods to the ship and maybe increasing weapon recovery chance. with how the new system works, it should probably just state a number of required/consumed marines rather than a probability of success based on the number of marines in your fleet, something like "boarding and capturing this ship will require a team of at least 50 marines, with expected losses between 5 and 20 marines". the average cost of 'consumed' marines would be lower than having to restore the ship at a port, but still high enough to only do it for ships the player wouldn't treat as just disposable cannon-fodder, and with the added requirement of shipping a large number of marines around.
this would probably be more about flavor that any significant gameplay impact, so i understand if it's just not worth figuring out the exact mechanics and numbers, but i still quite like the idea of keeping some troop transports filled with marines around for boarding opportunities.
I don't want to shoehorn marines into this just because they used to be involved. There's no mechanical reason for this that I can see, and there are likely future things where they'll fit in much more naturally.
anyway, i'm excited, in case you couldn't tell. or, well, i was excited already.. but now i have another thing to be excited about! \o/
Also, related question. Do we NEED to have the sufficient prize crew to capture the hsip, or is that just a suggestion and we can immediately 'mothball' it or accept malfunctions? If so what's to stop us from stuffing a hound with supplies and (somehow) disabling a capital ship and capturing it?
You can still recover and mothball. Nothing is top stop you, other than, you know the "somehow" part. If you can manage that, I figure you've earned it.
A Hound won't do, but I can imagine a tactic were you take some missile boat (e.g. Kite) to assist an allied fleet, finish off damaged enemies and expand your fleet that way. Don't see anything wrong with that
Just to note, kill-stealing won't help much as the salvage-sharing is based on overall hull damage dealt, compared to your allies.
The new mechanic is more salvage than a boarding action, though.
I'd love boarding as a separate mechanic, not to get hulls, but as a less violent alternative to battle. E.g., a outgunned trader could agree to let you send marines over to confiscate some of their cargo. Also, as some one mentioned, exploration of derelicts.
Hmm, that's a possibility (and, yes, I've been keeping an eye on the civilized combat thread).
Unrelated Suggestion: It seems needlessly complex that when ships DON'T break up there is still a chance you WON'T to be able to recover them, and how if they DO break up, and there is a chance you WILL recover them.
Maybe just keep it real simple: If a ship breaks up, you can't salvage it. If it doesn't break up, you can salvage it. And adjust the frequency of breakups accordingly, plus throw in ways to modify the breakup frequency by using ion cannons or skills.
I get what you're saying here, yeah. The reason it works the way it does is the breakup chance for hulls is partially set for "feel" reasons rather than purely mechanical ones. So, for example, lighter and flimsier hulls break into pieces more often. Having that be just a reduction of the chance to be recoverable rather than an outright negation of it helps mitigate that. Plus, it's nice that there's still a bit of suspense here, otherwise you'd blow up a Hyperion, see it drift apart, and know right away that you won't get it for recovery. PLUS plus, a 100% chance for non-broken ships to be recoverable would probably be a bit much. And, yes, could make ships break up more often to adjust for that, but it's back to ships-breaking-up having at least partially a cosmetic/feel-based nature.
Given the talk about pirate Sunders and such, I have to ask: If a regular ship becomes a (D) from damage, will it return to the non-D hull version (in terms of appearance and hull class name) if fully restored?
Otherwise it'd be a bit odd to have a (D) ship that's actually indistinguishable stats-wise from the pristine version. Though full consistency would also require that the handcrafted D skins (that don't have destroyed mounts) to have a "turn into this hull if fully restored" tag.
Regarding the confusion about different types of (D)-hulls, I'd suggest to unify them all into fully reversible versions. Meaning, no damages that can't be fixed, even on pre-(D) hulls. Otherwise you have a discrepancy between gameplay and lore, like a (very mild) version of the "main character is much weaker/stronger in cut scenes than in game play" issue.
It'll return to the base hull version, yes. A custom-skin-(D) hull will still stay a (D) hull even after restoration, though.
I think it's less an issue of consistency - restoration removes all d-mods except for the destroyed weapons ones, and that's *all* it does; pretty consistent, right? - but more of what someone might expect. But, again, what happens is explained, and the chances of wanting to restore these (D) ships are extremely slim anyway, so I'm not sure it's worth spending time worrying about. Not to say it's not worth adjusting, ever, but it's just super low priority and I don't see touching it before the release.