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Author Topic: Supply Alternatives  (Read 1931 times)

Deshara

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Supply Alternatives
« on: April 24, 2017, 10:56:22 AM »

Been hording machinery for salvaging & surveys, ran low on money in the core and stumbled upon a contract for machinery, and it felt really good to go sell off (at a high profit) stuff I've been hording for gameplay reasons without having to go trade for the needed good, which made me think of how other resources could have some token use so you could justify ever having on you enough of a thing to fulfill a contract that comes your way without having to buy it, and I realized there's a really simple way; supply alternatives, OR, emergency logistics!
Run out of supplies and your crew eventually dies off, repairs stop and your ships break down. If you run out and you're hauling a planet's supply of food, instead of an accident killing crew (ever) it takes your food, at an increased rate so it's not cost-effective long-term as an alternative to supplies but in an emergency is better than losing crew. If your fleet is badly damaged and you run out of supplies, metal can be used to continue to repair hulls and slow CR decay without recovering combat readiness, requiring that you have at least a single machinery as a catalyst (so if you run out from accidents eventually then all the metal in the world will do you no good), and if you're running critical, like stranded on the outter rim, you can run rare metals and machinery as a catalyst to consume food, organics and metal at the same rate as you would supplies (3x the cost-per-day, not factoring in dollar worth) to halt all fleet degradation from supply shortages at the expense of suffering accidents as if you were low on supplies, so that eventually the emergency supply-manufacture you're running onboard your fleet, which explodes periodically because it's incredibly unsafe to do in space, eventually consumes in an accident the last of your rare metals.

None of these would even come close to replacing supplies, or make an expedition fielded without supplies feasible, but would give you reason to stock up on cheap food if your supplies-fund doesn't quite get you far enough to make your expedition safely, and if you run short along the way you could take the garbage-cheap scrap metal you've been picking up along the way and if you carry some rare metals you can stretch your fleet out on the way home, and maybe find after you've gotten back that you had an in-game reason to horde these otherwise worthless (in gameplay) resources, happen upon a procurement contract and get rewarded for your cautious hording without having to go ply the stock markets to do procurements, giving combat-only or war-only or salvage-only players a chance to do procurements.
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OzOnyx

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Re: Supply Alternatives
« Reply #1 on: April 24, 2017, 01:39:02 PM »

Interesting idea but why would I carry a bunch of Food, Metal etc... when I could just as easily take the more efficient supplies in their place?
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Deshara

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Re: Supply Alternatives
« Reply #2 on: April 24, 2017, 01:51:35 PM »

Interesting idea but why would I carry a bunch of Food, Metal etc... when I could just as easily take the more efficient supplies in their place?

Can't always find enough supplies, can't always afford enough. Food is cheap, doesn't get used up save for an emergency. It's not a "I'm gonna pick up 50 food for this trip" sort of thing, it's intended to be a thing you hold onto over the course of multiple deep excursions, just in case because your excursions aren't leaving you enough breathing room to be able to afford comfortable amounts of supplies
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DeltaV_11.2

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Re: Supply Alternatives
« Reply #3 on: April 24, 2017, 02:29:40 PM »

Interesting idea but why would I carry a bunch of Food, Metal etc... when I could just as easily take the more efficient supplies in their place?
Salvage expeditions tend to run into a lot of metal and sometimes food(orbital habitats give food, along with goods of both types).
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OzOnyx

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Re: Supply Alternatives
« Reply #4 on: April 24, 2017, 02:52:54 PM »

Interesting idea but why would I carry a bunch of Food, Metal etc... when I could just as easily take the more efficient supplies in their place?

Can't always find enough supplies, can't always afford enough. Food is cheap, doesn't get used up save for an emergency. It's not a "I'm gonna pick up 50 food for this trip" sort of thing, it's intended to be a thing you hold onto over the course of multiple deep excursions, just in case because your excursions aren't leaving you enough breathing room to be able to afford comfortable amounts of supplies

And now I realise this would probably make more sense to me if I didn't run such small fleets, 50 cargo would be a big chunk of my usual space ;)
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Deshara

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Re: Supply Alternatives
« Reply #5 on: April 24, 2017, 03:01:59 PM »

Interesting idea but why would I carry a bunch of Food, Metal etc... when I could just as easily take the more efficient supplies in their place?

Can't always find enough supplies, can't always afford enough. Food is cheap, doesn't get used up save for an emergency. It's not a "I'm gonna pick up 50 food for this trip" sort of thing, it's intended to be a thing you hold onto over the course of multiple deep excursions, just in case because your excursions aren't leaving you enough breathing room to be able to afford comfortable amounts of supplies

And now I realise this would probably make more sense to me if I didn't run such small fleets, 50 cargo would be a big chunk of my usual space ;)

And if you started out with 50 supplies, have basically ran out but come across a derelict full of food... there's no sense in your crew starving, even if you don't have what you would need to patch your hulls or replace broken parts :)
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Quote from: Deshara
I cant be blamed for what I said 5 minutes ago. I was a different person back then