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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 97720 times)

Sy

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #135 on: January 24, 2017, 01:13:36 PM »

So many games get cluttered up with inane mechanics that don't add anything but more buttons to click and numbers to track because more = better and of course a game in Genre X needs to include Y!
i'm the one who made the suggestion to shoehorn something in, in this case, but i still very much agree in general. ^^ the game is incredibly well thought-out and polished, particularly for a game still in alpha!


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

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


Any thoughts on having supplies have a more regulated price than other commodities? Some hidden damping factors that drive them back towards a value that balances the industry playstyle?
hopefully the economy revamp should already take care of that, part of its goal is to make prices less fickle and volatile.
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Thaago

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #136 on: January 24, 2017, 01:36:56 PM »

I had completely forgotten about the economy revamp! My bad.
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Sy

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #137 on: January 24, 2017, 09:57:15 PM »

oh btw, since i don't think it has been mentioned yet, and someone in discord just reminded me: that improved Sunder is looking awesome, David!  ;D

finally it has the mid-tech style it deserves.
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David

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #138 on: January 25, 2017, 08:28:15 AM »

oh btw, since i don't think it has been mentioned yet, and someone in discord just reminded me: that improved Sunder is looking awesome, David!  ;D

finally it has the mid-tech style it deserves.

Thanks! I've touched up lots of the old ships, just you wait and see.  ;)
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Sy

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #139 on: January 25, 2017, 08:42:55 AM »

wait
...there it is again, the bane of our miserable existence. q_q
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Alex

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #140 on: January 25, 2017, 11:10:56 AM »

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

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

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


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

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


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

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

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #141 on: January 25, 2017, 12:39:50 PM »


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

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

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

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

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #142 on: January 25, 2017, 12:58:10 PM »

the breakup is about a cool visual effect -- so having a machine gun bullet potentially trigger it sort of undermines that effect.
...The target area is a small thermal exhaust port...
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Wyvern is 100% correct about the math.

Dri

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #143 on: January 25, 2017, 01:12:15 PM »

Haha, good one Wyvern! :D
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Alex

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #144 on: January 25, 2017, 01:25:36 PM »

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

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

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

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

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #145 on: January 25, 2017, 01:35:36 PM »

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

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

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

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

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

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #146 on: January 25, 2017, 01:40:23 PM »

yep, what Desh said.

if the explosion would come from the force of the weapon impact/explosion itself, we'd get a screenwide whiteout anytime a torpedo hits anything. ^^
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mitthrawnuruodo

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #147 on: February 01, 2017, 10:38:17 AM »

Great stuff!! Looking forward to the release.

I especially love the fact that this dev makes an active effort towards reducing frustrating and tedious game mechanics, whereas many similar games would rather use them as "difficulty" gimmicks to rip off pretend-hardcore gamers.
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Megas

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #148 on: February 06, 2017, 07:47:15 AM »

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

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

I like games that eschew "frustrating and tedious game mechanics".
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AxleMC131

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Re: Ship Recovery
« Reply #149 on: February 12, 2017, 03:45:44 PM »

Absolutely adoring the concept of Autofit. :D Something I've wanted in some form or other for a long time, and you've absolutely cracked it.

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

Thoughts?

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