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[Sutopia]

Because you have to filter through your produced ships in order to find the ones that have the random positive hull mods you want.

You HAD to filter your ships with d-mods too so there will be no additional time spent especially your product ships will be having d-mods, not to mention some logistic buffs player can generally ignore.

[Goumindong]

You had to filter nothing, because production isn’t in yet. I have a feeling that we’re getting fixed D-mod not random D-mod on producer ships.

If you’re talking about salvaging then yes you do indeed have to filter d-mods. But that is a different mechanic for different types of ships.

[Sutopia]

I have a feeling that we’re getting fixed D-mod not random D-mod on producer ships.

I have a feeling that we're getting random D-mod not fixed D-mod on producer ships.
You know little about how industries work in real life it seems, unless you're sure Alex is considering otherwise.

In a production line, the more delicate it is, the more it suffers from keeping "first pass yield" AKA quality and Alex used precisely this wording in ship production.
It's not that if you decide to make something they go all perfectly right and always produce identical results.
In high tech production line, there exists engineering tolerance since components cannot be made "perfectly" due to natural randomness of quantum physics and such. When these differential values add up to a degree it's going to have unpredictable malfunction, which leads to bad parts. You don't ALWAYS make a part bad otherwise it's a design flaw and nothing to do with quality.

I believe as Alex mentioned "quality" in ship builds, there will be randomness in d-mods generated and so I proposed how a contrary part can kick in.

If you’re talking about salvaging then yes you do indeed have to filter d-mods. But that is a different mechanic for different types of ships.

I don't see any significant difference between recovering and producing as you can target the ships you need generally and they all produce d-mod, if any, randomly.

[Goumindong]

Looting decisions are part of the core gameplay and production is not. Similarly you do not go loot for standard production ships. You go loot for trophy or specialty ships.

I sincerely hope we are not getting random D-Mod on production as that would negate the majority of the value (which is that you can standardize replacement ships and so use more disposable ships rather than having to hunt for replacements when you lose minor ships)to the core gameplay.

Alex may have used a production line term but he has been pretty good on not simulating for simulations sake.

[Megas]

Looting decisions are part of the core gameplay and production is not. Similarly you do not go loot for standard production ships. You go loot for trophy or specialty ships.

True only if you have commission.  If not, you loot any ship you want because commission requirements block purchase of every combat-worthy ship aside from common frigates.  (Independents are only an option at endgame after you built up rep after grinding enough bounties.)

I sincerely hope we are not getting random D-Mod on production as that would negate the majority of the value (which is that you can standardize replacement ships and so use more disposable ships rather than having to hunt for replacements when you lose minor ships)to the core gameplay.

From the hints given by the blogs, it seems player (and possibly more factions beyond pirates and Ludd) will crank out random clunkers until we get that special nanoforge and crank quality up.  It would be annoying if that is the case.

[Sutopia]

I do accept that as providing player controlled colony make player able to reduce randomness of ship acquiring to some acceptable degree.
For instance, you do see D-mods coming out randomly, but you can spend cash to completely restore them to full status.

So there can be a new concept kicking in: progressively removing randomness
As I mentioned in earlier replies, a common workaround to "fix" output randomness is allowing players to load their dice.

Let me tweak my proposal a bit:
When player produce ships in heavy industries and have not maxed their quality level, they can usually have d-mods and get a single buff mod randomly at a considerably low chance (for example 10%). (no ship is allowed to have multiple of these kind of random built-in buff mods)
After maxing "quality" so we almost never produce d-moded ships, now players are allowed build a battle lab (oh I borrowed this phrase from red alert 2) and it will significantly increase your product ships to have a buff mod by player's choice. You will need to throw in a significant amount of cash and time to upgrade the "buff" level, and if you change your target buff all levels reset without refunding so you need to make decisions carefully before starting any investment.
Don't forget to use exponential progression!

Example datasheet:
level 0: 10% random buff 90% no buff
V5 mil & 1 month
level 1: 20% desired buff 8% random buff 72% no buff
V10 mil & 2 months
level 2: 36% desired buff 6.4% random buff 57.6% no buff
V15 mil & 3 months
level 3: 48.8% desired buff 5.12% random buff 46.08% no buff
... and so on

[intrinsic_parity]

Honestly I like the idea of small buff from built in hull mods, but I think the randomness is bad. Just make the hull mods guaranteed. Having upgrades to the ship production facilities that install built in hull mods to all ships produced sounds like good end game content. You defeat a level 3 station and your reward is a special AI core that, when overseeing ship production, boosts the flux capabilities of all ships by 5-10%. That sounds like a solid reward for a difficult battle, and it provides end game progression that skill tree doesn't provide. In fact, you could maybe even think about replacing some of the fleet wide combat skills with stuff like this. Those skills tend to be must-picks (like extra OP and extra range). Letting the player obtain those in other ways would free up the player to take a more diverse set of skills and focus on campaign priorities like outposts and officers.

It would also give the player an incentive to take difficult fights in the mid game to obtain these powerful upgrades. Monetary rewards don't incentive risk taking since you risk losing money that directly offsets the money you are trying to gain. If there's a bounty with a 150000 credit reward, but I risk losing a couple destroyers, I would likely only be getting half or less of the money (after cr recovery and buying/restoring destroyers). This means I will only take a bounty fight if I am confident I can win with little to no loses. I want to take difficult fights because they are fun, but the rewards are not (by their nature) worth the risk. Rewards like hull mods and ship production bonuses are often worth big risks because the reward is not diminished by the difficulty of the battle. The hull mod buffs are still just as good if I lose a few destroyers and I can view that as part of the price I paid for that hull mod.

[Sutopia]

Honestly I like the idea of small buff from built in hull mods, but I think the randomness is bad. Just make the hull mods guaranteed. Having upgrades to the ship production facilities that install built in hull mods to all ships produced sounds like good end game content. You defeat a level 3 station and your reward is a special AI core that, when overseeing ship production, boosts the flux capabilities of all ships by 5-10%. That sounds like a solid reward for a difficult battle, and it provides end game progression that skill tree doesn't provide. In fact, you could maybe even think about replacing some of the fleet wide combat skills with stuff like this. Those skills tend to be must-picks (like extra OP and extra range). Letting the player obtain those in other ways would free up the player to take a more diverse set of skills and focus on campaign priorities like outposts and officers.

It would also give the player an incentive to take difficult fights in the mid game to obtain these powerful upgrades. Monetary rewards don't incentive risk taking since you risk losing money that directly offsets the money you are trying to gain. If there's a bounty with a 150000 credit reward, but I risk losing a couple destroyers, I would likely only be getting half or less of the money (after cr recovery and buying/restoring destroyers). This means I will only take a bounty fight if I am confident I can win with little to no loses. I want to take difficult fights because they are fun, but the rewards are not (by their nature) worth the risk. Rewards like hull mods and ship production bonuses are often worth big risks because the reward is not diminished by the difficulty of the battle. The hull mod buffs are still just as good if I lose a few destroyers and I can view that as part of the price I paid for that hull mod.

It would be no difference with a hull mod with 0 OP so I don't see it as something "new".

I don't see why everyone here trying to fight against ANY output randomness despite the fact that such randomness can get gradually reduce and even completely removed with campaign process, if mechanics are designed properly.
Making everything foreseeable is just boring, if I must say, it's no difference with laboring; Meanwhile a "single jackpot" slot machine is bad as well which may lead to frustrations, such as current ITU.

Players are taking too much everything good as granted which I think is the real bad part.
One of my favorite part of SS is at ship recovery. Randomly generated d-mods are just cool. This Atlas, got bad structure, but meh I don't care, I'd take it; That afflictor, hmmm a wrecked phase coil, no thanks; Oh this XIV Onslaught, I'll restore it despite it's carrying 4 d-mods. I can get "surprised" after every battle thanks to these d-mods.
I don't see the point to use and make everything "best" if it's not the requirement to success. It's just pure torture to pursuit for the last BUT UNNECESSARY mile.

[Megas]

The thing about randomness is depending how significant the bonuses are, it can encourage degenerate gameplay (grinding, excessive reloading, etc.)  Boarding in pre-0.8 is a perfect example.  Want a rare ship that shops refuse to sell?  Be prepared to spend more than an hour replaying and reloading a single bounty fight until you finally capture that Tempest (let alone Hyperion, Scarab, or Monitor).

I don't see the point to use and make everything "best" if it's not the requirement to success. It's just pure torture to pursuit for the last BUT UNNECESSARY mile.

From observation and experience, it is likely a compulsion, even if mostly irrational aside from the drive or desire of "must be the best at any cost", whether for personal satisfaction or gloating over other players who have... worse assets.

Maybe it is torture, but if you play online games with trading, you can find plenty of people who demand the very best.  Many are willing to overpay with likely dupes (while others will demand it for nothing, often with bad or misspelled English and/or overused slang or leet speak).

And if you are one of the lucky ones to score a really rare top-of-the-line drop (that guides state is the absolete best-in-game), expect people offering unwanted trade deals for it if you simply bring it up in casual conversation with random players, even if you are not interested in trading it away.  This is not terribly relevant to Starsector, except a glimpse of the mentality of those obsessed with perfect builds, items, and the like.

[intrinsic_parity]

It would be no difference with a hull mod with 0 OP so I don't see it as something "new".

Obviously the hull mod itself is not new, it is a stat buff for ships, which already exist in the game as skills. My point was that skills are obtained via xp which incentivizes safe/grindy play. Essentially you receive the reward regardless of how you obtain the xp, so you can play as safe as possible and still get the reward. I was suggesting to make those stat buffs a reward for doing something dangerous, like fighting a battlestation. Then they incentivize risky (and fun) gameplay. That's what was 'new'. My suggestion was mostly independent of yours, I really should have made a new thread. I actually like your suggestion, and wouldn't mind if it was in the game, I just was giving another suggestion. In my suggestion, the randomness was bad because the buff is now a reward for a big risk. It would be frustrating if that reward only worked 8% of the time or something. That would be output randomness: big risk leads to random reward. If the buffs were just universally available, the randomness would probably be fine.

One of my favorite part of SS is at ship recovery. Randomly generated d-mods are just cool.

I would say there is a strong argument that d-ship recovery is input randomness. You are presented with a randomized choice, and then you get to select which ships to take or not take. If you look at the ships as rewards for a battle, then you might argue they are output randomness (if you took the battle with the expectation of recovering ships), but I think most of the time, the ship recovery is the secondary reward, and even if I recovered no good ships, I would be happy with the monetary reward from a battle (I generally only fight if there are monetary rewards anyway). In short, I like d-mods in the recovery screen, but that is, to some extent, input randomness not output randomness.

[Megas]

The only thing I like about (D) mods is they make my ship cheaper to use.  I do not care much about them as long as none of the mods are too crippling.  (Those with really bad mods and not reserved for restoration are scuttled on the spot.)  I do not bother reloading games for (D) mods because they are common and if I want to go through the trouble of scumming or reloading, I would do it with undamaged ships with rare weapons.

[Sutopia]

In my suggestion, the randomness was bad because the buff is now a reward for a big risk. It would be frustrating if that reward only worked 8% of the time or something. That would be output randomness: big risk leads to random reward. If the buffs were just universally available, the randomness would probably be fine.

Whoa stop there, how can there be any risk if the buffs are applied at some perfectly periodic incident(ship building)?

I would say there is a strong argument that d-ship recovery is input randomness. You are presented with a randomized choice, and then you get to select which ships to take or not take. If you look at the ships as rewards for a battle, then you might argue they are output randomness (if you took the battle with the expectation of recovering ships), but I think most of the time, the ship recovery is the secondary reward, and even if I recovered no good ships, I would be happy with the monetary reward from a battle (I generally only fight if there are monetary rewards anyway). In short, I like d-mods in the recovery screen, but that is, to some extent, input randomness not output randomness.

Your argument also apply to ship manufacturing no matter my suggestion gets implemented or not. Noone is forcing you to use specific ships in battle: you can choose what you need. As Alex has already mentioned in the blog, product ships might have born d-mods, so I don't see there significant difference between these two situations as you're both obtaining ships with some random hull mods.

I also hate the idea of making big prizes for missions.
If the mission is RNGed, it's another output randomness, rolling mission generator for cycles until it pops out.
If not, it wouldn't fit in SS since it's obviously making player "VERY SPECIAL" to get such mission.

[Goumindong]

No. Those things are input randomness. You get to choose whether or not to do those missions and whether or  not to loot those ships. If you don’t want to you can do other missions or no missions, you can explore or scavenge or survey or pirate. If you aren’t going to use the ships you can take a higher reward of scrap.

But that is now how D-mod randomness and O-mod randomness would work.  You would already have the ship and would get negative reward for not wanting to use the ship. It would be the result of a player process (i want to use these ships to I built them) instead of the input to a gameplay decision.

[intrinsic_parity]

In my suggestion, the randomness was bad because the buff is now a reward for a big risk. It would be frustrating if that reward only worked 8% of the time or something. That would be output randomness: big risk leads to random reward. If the buffs were just universally available, the randomness would probably be fine.

Whoa stop there, how can there be any risk if the buffs are applied at some perfectly periodic incident(ship building)?

Did you read what I wrote?.... my suggestion was that you undergo a major risk (battle) to obtain access to something that provides guarenteed buffs to all ships produced, so the buff is a direct reward for the risk. I also pointed out that my suggestion was a separate suggestion and I was not trying to critique your suggestion.

I would say there is a strong argument that d-ship recovery is input randomness.... In short, I like d-mods in the recovery screen, but that is, to some extent, input randomness not output randomness.

Your argument also apply to ship manufacturing no matter my suggestion gets implemented or not. Noone is forcing you to use specific ships in battle: you can choose what you need. As Alex has already mentioned in the blog, product ships might have born d-mods, so I don't see there significant difference between these two situations as you're both obtaining ships with some random hull mods.

This would be true if you were talking about buying ships on the open market. However, if you have spent large amounts of time/resources to set up ship production facilities, that is an input and the outputs are the ships it produces so randomness in ship production that you have set up is output randomness. This could be neutral or bad. For instance, if hypothetically, there was randomness in what ships were produced, and you got a lot of frigates when you had paid for the capability to produce capital ships, you would likely be frustrated. I'm pretty sure that is not how the production will work though.

I also hate the idea of making big prizes for missions.
If the mission is RNGed, it's another output randomness, rolling mission generator for cycles until it pops out.
If not, it wouldn't fit in SS since it's obviously making player "VERY SPECIAL" to get such mission.

I don't see why it makes the player special. If I rob a bank, I will get a lot of money, but so would anyone else who robbed the bank. The fact that there is a major reward doesn't make me special. I was suggesting big rewards for non-rng mission because it guarantees a big reward for a difficult task. The current gameplay loop is grind easy tasks and then pray to rnjesus that big reward shows up so you can buy it with the accumulated small rewards. I prefer guaranteed rewards associated with consistently difficult tasks (like destroying a large battle station or something). There is minimal rng involved in the task and the reward.

[Dark.Revenant]

The way I see it, RNG is a compromise between development time and strategic depth.  The more RNG your game relies on, the shallower it is.  You want to avoid it if at all possible - but sometimes you just can't avoid it because it would take too long to use a deterministic system.

So, yes, you can have the dreaded output RNG, but it's really the last resort.  It's the thing you pick because you're out of time to do something better.

Note: the way Alex has implemented production line D-mods is Uniform Output Randomization, which is listed as "okay" on a sliding scale between "Bad - Okay - Great".  If the result of the randomization is extremely consistent and more-or-less under the control of the user, then it's not so bad.