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[Cyan Leader]

Another issue is while replacing ships is easier due to hull being recoverable, weapons are usually completely stripped bare. I usually have about two or three smalls and one or two mediums on a disabled ship of mine. This means that even a guaranteed recovery of the hull many times means a reset for me due to the loss of most of the weapons... This REALLY hurts high tech ships as well due to the relative scarcity of markets that even OFFER their guns...

Completely agree here. I mentioned this prior to the .7 update but I'd like to state again that a way to make the odds of recovering weapons 100% should be implemented. Moreover, I really dislike that the weapons themselves get dismounted and the groups erased, if you weren't using presets then configuring all your ships again is a huge hassle and another big motivator for me to reload instead.

[Reth]

Wouldn't a trivial solution be to (massively) decrease combat ship purchase costs but increase their maintenance costs (=higher supply usage)? Like this loosing a fleet wouldn't be as expensive while the overall money balance would stay the same.

Another option would be to have he possibility to buy "protection" when caught by a pirate fleet (and other fractions where this is in line with lore). It would temporarily make pirate fleets ignore you but aside from money also cost reputation with the other fractions. And if you don't have enough money, give the option to surrender some ships or some your inventory (or crew...) at a below-market price.

[TaLaR]

Why can't we just enjoy current design? Losing is punishing, but entirely avoidable by skillful play and/or reloading. I don't think that redesigning game-flow to point where losing is cheap enough that it does not matter is fun.

[Schwartz]

Why can't we just enjoy current design? Losing is punishing, but entirely avoidable by skillful play and/or reloading. I don't think that redesigning game-flow to point where losing is cheap enough that it does not matter is fun.

Agreed. There's other ways to make savescumming less necessary.

[Shrugger]

Completely agree here. I mentioned this prior to the .7 update but I'd like to state again that a way to make the odds of recovering weapons 100% should be implemented. Moreover, I really dislike that the weapons themselves get dismounted and the groups erased, if you weren't using presets then configuring all your ships again is a huge hassle and another big motivator for me to reload instead.

This. The micromanagement load imposed when replacing ships is pretty heavy.

[Megas]

Why can't we just enjoy current design? Losing is punishing, but entirely avoidable by skillful play and/or reloading. I don't think that redesigning game-flow to point where losing is cheap enough that it does not matter is fun.

Either we play with clunkers, reload the moment the player takes a casualty (due to his fleet having hard-to-replace rare stuff), or the player grinds for hours or days replacing what was lost.

This is why most of my fleet are clunkers that are mostly outfitted with stuff easily found in Open Market, Black Market, or loot from common enemies.  I much prefer to use undamaged ships with the best stuff, but I do not want to turn Starsector into a Diablo 2 style gambling-at-Gheed's or magic find item grind-fest.  There needs to be a better way.  Maybe colonies can do it, provided that getting the best stuff is not too hard or tedious.

Wouldn't a trivial solution be to (massively) decrease combat ship purchase costs but increase their maintenance costs (=higher supply usage)? Like this

Maintenance (or least CR recovery) is already taxing enough.  Enough that clunkers with minor (D) mods for maintenance discount is an attractive option.

I do not even buy most ships because almost everything bigger than frigates are locked behind commission (or high reputation with Independents, which you do not build up until endgame after much bounty hunting).  Nearly everything in my fleet is picked up off from the ground, and may be restored if needed.

Completely agree here. I mentioned this prior to the .7 update but I'd like to state again that a way to make the odds of recovering weapons 100% should be implemented. Moreover, I really dislike that the weapons themselves get dismounted and the groups erased, if you weren't using presets then configuring all your ships again is a huge hassle and another big motivator for me to reload instead.

This. The micromanagement load imposed when replacing ships is pretty heavy.

Not only that, it interferes with that one Industry perk that gives recovered ships CR.  I mount the weapons I want, and most of the bonus CR disappears.  What a ripoff!

[Sarissofoi]

the player grinds for hours or days replacing what was lost

Yes and?
What is exactly a problem here?

[Megas]

Simple, "grinds for hours or days replacing what was lost".  Game is not supposed to be a job.

[Sarissofoi]

Simple, "grinds for hours or days replacing what was lost".  Game is not supposed to be a job.

But I enjoy grinding.
And to be honest SS don't really have excessive one.

[Igncom1]

I reload a lot mostly because there isn't too much of a reason to be losing ships anyway.

Yeah sure I could trade a couple of frigates in order to win a tasty bounty, or I could just bring a destroyer and lose nothing at all.

Effectively comparing the cost of losing the frigates deployment supply cost, the cost of the ship, the fuel it carries, the weapons/fighters it carries and the crew it carries vs slightly more destroyer deployment supply cost and refilling the basic amount of CR it loses from being deployed.

Hell if battles are dragging on for long enough it's essentially never worth deploying frigates in battles if they are going to time our their CR which costs a lot of supplies to refill on top of the base amount you lose from deploying it at all.

Which is why I always over deploy if I can. A one time payment in supplies for deploying the whole fleet plus the base amount of CR lost afterwards vs the costs of fixing up exhausted, damaged or lost ships. It's a bad trade.

So sure I could just accept a mistake, or one of my AI's mistakes, and play on or I could just reset the game and lose literally nothing of note. Never deploy ships that are only going to die and never accept a fight that will cost you more then you gain.


And all that's before shenanigans of pirates or salvage fleets spawning in hyperspace to kill you. It just wastes my time quite honestly and there is no fun counter play to be had from a loss. No exciting castle escape or nothing. Just a reset of the fleet you had back to 20 hours ago, barring RNG rare ships and equipment. There is no incentive to accept a loss and not play on. What do I gain by not savescumming?

[TaLaR]

Having no special incentive to accept loss is normal. Getting too inventive with such incentives can ruin the game in it's own way. If lose badly enough, you reload - this paradigm worked fine enough for many games.

You also do not have to have absolute best ships and weapons (aside from player piloted ones at least) - if that's what you fight against, you'll be able to replenish losses by loot/restore. If enemies use weaker common stuff, they can be defeated by common ships and weapons too.

[SafariJohn]

I wish you could tell how much peak time remaining your ships have from the tactical map. Reliably being able to retreat frigates and destroyers before they run out of peak time would be nice.

[Megas]

You also do not have to have absolute best ships and weapons (aside from player piloted ones at least) - if that's what you fight against, you'll be able to replenish losses by loot/restore. If enemies use weaker common stuff, they can be defeated by common ships and weapons too.

That is the idea of the (mostly) clunker fleet, and it is kind of lame.  My flagship might be the best and tuned-up, but it gets tiring putting the same low-tech/midline ships with junk weapons.  Too many useful weapons are not common enough.  Commission helps a little, but not enough since no one faction has everything you want.

Guys like Xenoargh says he puts Railguns and the like in medium mounts of his ships.  Some (like light needlers) I do not find enough for all of my ships, others (like Railguns and few others) I do not have extra to replace losses in combat.  Instead, I put so-called crap like Arbalests instead of Railguns on my ships because they are easily replaceable.

I guess I could put whatever I want on ships, but I reload the game the moment I take a casualty because I do not want to spend hours farming for items like in Diablo 2.  Or most of my fleet is disposable junk I can easily replace and I do not care if they get lost or not, even if the junk makes the ship look goofy and silly like a clown.

Sometimes, there is no substitute for a rare weapon, like Tachyon Lance for Odyssey.  Ships that need rare weapons to work are hurt if player cannot find enough.

In previous versions, I would spend millions emptying markets of everything to force them to get more new stuff every month.  There was no such thing as too much money when cleaning out markets.

Which is why I always over deploy if I can. A one time payment in supplies for deploying the whole fleet plus the base amount of CR lost afterwards vs the costs of fixing up exhausted, damaged or lost ships. It's a bad trade.

Same here.  Overdeploying tends to save more resources in the long run by preventing the (cowardly) enemy from either killing your ships or (more likely) draining CR from all of your ships because you did not have enough power to pin down the cowardly Spathi and kill them fast.

It was even better during 0.65 when huge swarms could stand down after combat and recover half of their CR.  It was cheaper to overdeploy the whole fleet than just enough to kill the enemy.