Fractal Softworks Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

News:

Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

Pages: 1 2 [3] 4 5 ... 7

Author Topic: Salvaging Mechanics Update  (Read 35670 times)

Megas

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 12118
    • View Profile
Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
« Reply #30 on: September 07, 2018, 08:00:37 AM »

The biggest problem with combat freighters as combat ships...
* Frigate-sized have terrible defenses, but at least they are disposable in a pinch.  That said, Hound and Cerberus are great as dedicated freighters due to speed advantage.
* Everything else lacks speed and shot range to force fights now that the AI cowers and turtles much.
* Everything that is not a dedicated combat ship (plus some combat ships too) lacks OP to outfit well without Loadout Design 3.

I appreciate that you're trying to streamline the core gameplay, but this fiddling keeps bringing my thoughts back to one major thought - why are attribute points still around? The vanilla game has only so many skill points in total, encouraging specialization, but attribute caps function to turn that specialization into archetype. If we take the Tech category as a given, that's a total of three distinct character builds (tech + x, y z) without dropping a full skill. Is it really ideal that my combat pilots should never pick salvaging or any other industry?
Technology and Leadership is required for every character that wants to be the best.  If you want to pilot a carrier, then Combat is mandatory for Helmsmanship 3 alone.  At least six points will be dedicated to aptitudes, but it will more likely be nine or more.

If nothing about Surveying is changed, aside from Decivilized adding to hazard rating, the Surveying 1 might become mandatory just so players can colonize the easiest planet with good resources, like that class V Terran planet that has ruins, lots of resources, and Decivilized.  Player cannot count on finding a wreck with free survey data at a convenient place.
Logged

Wyvern

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 3786
    • View Profile
Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
« Reply #31 on: September 07, 2018, 08:11:58 AM »

(Thank you for the freighter list and your thoughts, too!)
I'm happy that Goumindong and Wyvern touched the subject of combat freighters, because that's something I'd really like to see changed (I have faint memory of complaining about this before, but I presume nothing came of it - otherwise I'd certainly remember it). Namely, combat freighters suck for three reasons.
One, they're spreadsheet ships that can't compete with dedicated ships on the grounds of efficiency. I'd rather have a freighter and a combat ship instead of two combat freighters.
In many cases, that's a correct assessment.  But not all cases - for example, early game, my choice tends to be "Do I buy a regular freighter or a combat freighter?" - and going for the latter option, while less efficient at hauling stuff, still provides a significant boost to both stuff-hauling and combat capability.  Second, defensive-focused AI ships are -good-; the purpose of deploying such allies is to keep a portion of the enemy fleet tied up so you can defeat them in detail, and if your mule never actually gets kills itself, that's just fine.  Your third point is reasonable enough, but strongly mitigated by the strongly-defensive nature of the actually-good combat freighters.  If you deploy a mule or an apogee and it gets killed, you were fighting something you shouldn't have been fighting.  (Edit: Or you made some sort of tactical error that let the enemy defeat you in detail instead of the other way around.)
A little detail that really bothers me:
Salvage Gantry hull mod is still unbalanced between class.
That's because it's not balanced by class - it's balanced for the individual ships that carry it.
« Last Edit: September 07, 2018, 08:16:08 AM by Wyvern »
Logged
Wyvern is 100% correct about the math.

Chaos Blade

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 74
    • View Profile
Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
« Reply #32 on: September 07, 2018, 08:58:08 AM »


Nice changes, seems like a reasonable streamlining.
I was thinking on the salvage Gantry, it would be interesting if the ships would have dual function both in salvage and in field repairs, in the latter case perhaps giving the fleet an efficiency on supplies for repair or maybe repair times? Honestly, I am sorta surprised we don't have a military Yardship, that is to say a moving repair yard. given the distances involved you'd think the factions would have dedicated support ships .
While this might be covered on the blog post Alex mentioned, I do like more support options and more specialzied ships.

Regarding the combat freighters, I agree up to a point, I mean they still need to be less optimal than a true combat ship, so some being mixed bags of under-performance and disappointment makes a degree of sense....
Logged

Megas

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 12118
    • View Profile
Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
« Reply #33 on: September 07, 2018, 09:07:07 AM »

Regarding the combat freighters, I agree up to a point, I mean they still need to be less optimal than a true combat ship, so some being mixed bags of under-performance and disappointment makes a degree of sense....
The problem with that is as someone else posted, is it is better to have one dedicated hauler and one dedicated combat ship, than two hybrids.  Early game, this is not a problem because the frigates with most capacity are hybrids or at least do not have Civilian Hull that blocks Safety Override.  This does not persist through heavier ship classes.  Later on, the player will have a strong enough fleet that support ships never need to be deployed.
Logged

nathanebht

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 93
    • View Profile
Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
« Reply #34 on: September 07, 2018, 09:24:18 AM »

Thanks for the blog post. Always enjoy reading them.
Logged

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 23988
    • View Profile
Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
« Reply #35 on: September 07, 2018, 10:17:27 AM »

Re: combat freighters: thanks all for your thoughts!

So, salvaging. What's the long-term benefits? Do I get something out of it that I could not ultimately get through some other means, or is it just a non-combat way of jump-starting early/mid game development?

I'm fairly sure I covered it in the blogpost, but, right: access to more ship/weapon/fighter blueprints and other colony-influencing items.


I'm due a mid-life crisis soon, I expect I'll get this in real life :)

(Haha!)



Wait, selling is supposed to be better than scuttling? I thought the idea was that if you don't want a ship you scuttle it for resources because boarding it would be an immediate money loss that only turns a profit if you actually get use out of the ship?

Well, selling d-hulls is definitely supposed to be worse. Hmm. I may have gotten things mixed up :)

In any case, scuttling is more of a last-resort move and doesn't seem like something that should be "a thing you can get good at".


A little detail that really bothers me:
Salvage Gantry hull mod is still unbalanced between class. The salvage rig (25% bonus) looks too good in comparison with other classes. Too small difference for a cruiser class (30%) and definitely too much difference with frigate class (10%) especially if there is a diminishing return when spamming ships. The case is probably worse for capital, as the bonus will be clearly shot down by the huge amount of fuel and supply needed. According to you screenshot, with 2 rigs + 1 shepherd I will have the same bonus than a capital with salvage gantry.

It's just set to what it's set to for the Shepherd and the Salvage Rig. If it were used on more ships, I'd probably have another look at it, and/or have another version of the hullmod as needed.

One point, though: a slightly higher bonus is better than it looks because the diminishing returns are based on the maximum bonus of a single ship in the fleet.



Good changes.

Are there any planned changes in how post-battle salvage works?

At the moment it is quite a grinding minigame. In my case it looks like this:
Salvage, Save game, Wait for cooldown, Salvage, Save game, Wait for cooldown, Salvage, etc.
and repeat this until you get net loss from two consecutive salvage operations,
after which I load the save from after last profitable operation and play from here.
Have to take into account two consecutive salvage operations because sometimes you get a small loss in one,
but in next one you don't lose any machinery at all so it turns into a profit.

I am sure it could be make less grindy.

Is it actually profitable to do more than once with a large fleet, considering the wait time and the supplies that drains? In any case, I'll keep an eye on it!



Nice changes, seems like a reasonable streamlining.
I was thinking on the salvage Gantry, it would be interesting if the ships would have dual function both in salvage and in field repairs, in the latter case perhaps giving the fleet an efficiency on supplies for repair or maybe repair times? Honestly, I am sorta surprised we don't have a military Yardship, that is to say a moving repair yard. given the distances involved you'd think the factions would have dedicated support ships .

Hmm - anything that mitigates supply/repair costs is a potential problem, since those costs are there for a reason, so it's just something to approach carefully. If it just becomes another "lug this around to reduce costs" ship, then that's not very interesting, right? And if it's just repair times, it's probably not worth it. But if it let you do something qualitative, it could be interesting.


Thanks for the blog post. Always enjoy reading them.

Thank you!
Logged

Wyvern

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 3786
    • View Profile
Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
« Reply #36 on: September 07, 2018, 10:52:25 AM »

I've wanted for some time to go through and (via mod) rebalance ships so that (aside from special cases like the rare pre-collapse Kite), every freighter is an at least vaguely-passable combat freighter, and the actual combat freighter designed ships (mule, apogee, wayfarer, etc.) are only marginally sub-optimal compared to straight-up combat ships.

You know, I really like this idea. It'd be a bit of work - more than I want to try for 0.9 - but I'll definitely keep it in mind. And it aligns very nicely with some of the changes already made.

(Thank you for the freighter list and your thoughts, too!)
Good to hear this!  And, yeah, it'd be a fair chunk of work to rebalance everything - and more work for you than it would be for me, since I wouldn't even consider making changes to available weapon mounts; I don't want to kitbash up new ship graphics, so I'd end up doing a bunch of stat changes (including hi-tech quality shields to allow ships like the Tarsus to use its few small ballistic mounts on, say, railguns instead of vulcans), and a lot of fighter bays (ranging from single built-in wings, to built-in Converted Hangar hull-mods, to adding a completely open third fighter wing to the Venture...).  Well. Okay, I'll admit, I am still tempted by the notion of upgrading the Atlas' three medium ballistic slots to large ballistic slots, but I can probably get away without changing the sprite for that...

Also, good to hear that the thoughts on combat freighters are appreciated; without those (repeated!) notes, I would've dropped this conversation thread as being too far off-topic.

Good changes.

Are there any planned changes in how post-battle salvage works?

At the moment it is quite a grinding minigame. In my case it looks like this:
Salvage, Save game, Wait for cooldown, Salvage, Save game, Wait for cooldown, Salvage, etc.
and repeat this until you get net loss from two consecutive salvage operations,
after which I load the save from after last profitable operation and play from here.
Have to take into account two consecutive salvage operations because sometimes you get a small loss in one,
but in next one you don't lose any machinery at all so it turns into a profit.

I am sure it could be make less grindy.

Is it actually profitable to do more than once with a large fleet, considering the wait time and the supplies that drains? In any case, I'll keep an eye on it!
At the moment?  Yes!  At least assuming that by "profitable" you mean "has a chance to give me rare weapons or the occasional super-rare extra chance at recovering a ship I want".  I don't do Carabus' save-and-reload thing, but I do currently salvage debris two or three times if there was anything in the opposing force that I want - railguns, needlers, XIV hulls or Auroras or Tempests... and if that salvaging doesn't break even on supplies, I don't really care.
Logged
Wyvern is 100% correct about the math.

CitizenIosef

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 2
    • View Profile
Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
« Reply #37 on: September 07, 2018, 10:54:59 AM »

@Eji1700: I've wanted for some time to go through and (via mod) rebalance ships so that (aside from special cases like the rare pre-collapse Kite), every freighter is an at least vaguely-passable combat freighter, and the actual combat freighter designed ships (mule, apogee, wayfarer, etc.) are only marginally sub-optimal compared to straight-up combat ships.

I was thinking that it'd be neat if
1) there were user assignable fleet roles to ships(combat/support at minimum), and
2) if ship performance was altered by amount of cargo weight it is carrying.

How that'd work is that the game attempts to fill the ships flagged by the player as support ships first before combat ships, thus reducing or eliminating cargo lost when a combat ship dies.  This would allow a status quo where an empty combat freighter could be roughly near peers with dedicated combat ships, but suffer greatly once their cavernous holds are filled.  Maybe even a hotkey to dump cargo for performance?
Logged

FooF

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1378
    • View Profile
Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
« Reply #38 on: September 07, 2018, 01:00:19 PM »


I was thinking about that exact thing. What that does, though, is make surveying a skill you'd never take, since the benefit becomes entirely cost-based, so the further you get into a playthrough, the more skill-point-regret would set in. I could see merging surveying and salvaging into one skill to get around that - in fact that's probably the direction I want to take it - but that's getting into skill-revamp territory, which is its own thing.


Not to derail too much but surveying is a precursor to colony development so if you wanted to turn surveying into a cost-based mechanic, you could lump it in with some colony perk (which has whole-game ramifications). Heck, you might take the skill initially for the survey bonus but continue to invest because of the colony component.

@ CitizenIosef

I think that's getting into game-y territory. I don't want combat performance to be arbitrarily changed because I can't control which cargo is where and if I can control it, it becomes its own tedium every time I take on cargo. I get the realism angle but I don't think I'd like the implementation.

Whether freighters are combat-capable or not somewhat torn. Support ships left on their own should be easy pickings but I also get the idea that you really don't see them in action unless you're fleeing from a bad engagement. I look at a Buffalo and think "space minivan" not "space armored car." That's the Mule, to a certain degree.

Logistics ships have always needed defending. If you really wanted to incentivize bringing support ships into battle, you could tie CR into it. Combat ships would have their usual peak performance and CR (less than current) but bringing a freighter, fuel tanker, etc. into the field of battle boosts these values by certain percentages, depending on size and type. The more of these vulnerable ships you risk into the battle, the higher your CR bonus and ability to sustain battles gets. It also gives targets of opportunity for frigates in late-game scenarios because killing these ships has an immediate impact on the whole enemy fleet. You'd have to dedicate ships to escort and it would give the battlefield regions of space that are naturally more valuable.


Logged

Cyan Leader

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 718
    • View Profile
Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
« Reply #39 on: September 07, 2018, 09:00:00 PM »

Hmm - anything that mitigates supply/repair costs is a potential problem, since those costs are there for a reason, so it's just something to approach carefully. If it just becomes another "lug this around to reduce costs" ship, then that's not very interesting, right?

How about unlocking campaign abilities if you have a certain ship in your fleet? Something like "increase the repair speed of the ships in the fleet but can't move" skill, which would be more than just a number change, thus making it more interesting. I also like the idea of adding charges for those abilities, so you can't abuse them too much between shore leaves.
Logged

Shrugger

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 61
    • View Profile
Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
« Reply #40 on: September 07, 2018, 11:47:37 PM »

I'm fairly sure I covered it in the blogpost, but, right: access to more ship/weapon/fighter blueprints and other colony-influencing items.
You did say as much, calling it, IIRC, the main way to acquire them, but without stating whether there were others avenues to these things.
Logged

Chaos Blade

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 74
    • View Profile
Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
« Reply #41 on: September 08, 2018, 04:25:15 AM »



Nice changes, seems like a reasonable streamlining.
I was thinking on the salvage Gantry, it would be interesting if the ships would have dual function both in salvage and in field repairs, in the latter case perhaps giving the fleet an efficiency on supplies for repair or maybe repair times? Honestly, I am sorta surprised we don't have a military Yardship, that is to say a moving repair yard. given the distances involved you'd think the factions would have dedicated support ships .

Hmm - anything that mitigates supply/repair costs is a potential problem, since those costs are there for a reason, so it's just something to approach carefully. If it just becomes another "lug this around to reduce costs" ship, then that's not very interesting, right? And if it's just repair times, it's probably not worth it. But if it let you do something qualitative, it could be interesting.


I get what you mean, the suggestion (without care for the realities of coding), then, would be to differentiate field repairs from drydock repairs, either moveable (gantry?) or starbase or the player needing the gantries/yards for repairs beyond a certain point. I mean, patching some holes and the scorch marks on the paint job shouldn't be the same as  most of the prow is a twisted out ruin and still in flames!
I mean, ultimately a patch job on the go and a more detailed job in a drydock shouldn't be the same (perhaps have a modifier "field repairs" on hulls that suffered a lot of damage and were repaired on the go and would need more dedicated repairs to remove?)

As an alternative, the efficiency calculations on repair could be done, instead on a flat amount per ship, that is to say the gantry giving some repair efficiency modifier flat bonus, make the bonus related to the total tonnage of the fleet itself (so to keep X level of efficiency on repairs, you will need more and more ships of that class)

Hell, it could do both, though to be honest, I am throwing some ideas, and while it culd be a hassle, differentiating field repairs from drydock repairs (if possible) could be interesting
Logged

Megas

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 12118
    • View Profile
Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
« Reply #42 on: September 08, 2018, 05:19:07 AM »

Like Wyvern, if I can smell rare and/or highly desirable stuff, I spam Salvage at least three times.  Trading extra supplies I can find anywhere for rare stuff that I might not be able to find or buy enough of is a great trade.
Logged

CitizenIosef

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 2
    • View Profile
Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
« Reply #43 on: September 08, 2018, 12:21:49 PM »


I think that's getting into game-y territory. I don't want combat performance to be arbitrarily changed because I can't control which cargo is where and if I can control it, it becomes its own tedium every time I take on cargo. I get the realism angle but I don't think I'd like the implementation.

Interesting.  I would consider CR being influenced by support ships in the battle(without docking or something similar) to be game-y.  It'd feel like an artificial reason to bring non-combat ships to the front line.

For me, the question isn't so much about warships vs. transports as it is about making sense of the hybrids that fit the setting so well but are generally questionable choices.

I'd be okay with a small efficiency penalty for using hybrid warship/freighter designs if their acceleration dropped off under load.

You're right in that manual management of cargo would be tedious micromanagement, and that not having the choice to keep a vessel light would be annoying.  I rather think user-set flagging of cargo loading priority would solve for both.  It's simple enough compared to manual cargo handling, and provides a user a choice: don't want your combat Mules to be sluggish?  Make sure you don't take too much cargo for your freighter-flagged ships and those jerkface cargomasters won't greedily eye the cargo holds of your combat ships.

I also rather like the idea of pirate play under such a system.  Cargo holds empty and crew hungry means meaner performance, while a fat pirate is easy to outfox.
Logged

errorgance

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 26
    • View Profile
Re: Salvaging Mechanics Update
« Reply #44 on: September 09, 2018, 05:52:05 AM »



Nice changes, seems like a reasonable streamlining.
I was thinking on the salvage Gantry, it would be interesting if the ships would have dual function both in salvage and in field repairs, in the latter case perhaps giving the fleet an efficiency on supplies for repair or maybe repair times? Honestly, I am sorta surprised we don't have a military Yardship, that is to say a moving repair yard. given the distances involved you'd think the factions would have dedicated support ships .

Hmm - anything that mitigates supply/repair costs is a potential problem, since those costs are there for a reason, so it's just something to approach carefully. If it just becomes another "lug this around to reduce costs" ship, then that's not very interesting, right? And if it's just repair times, it's probably not worth it. But if it let you do something qualitative, it could be interesting.

it could be a little bit of both, a tiny amount of one may not be enough to justify something, but a tiny or small amount of both may make it worth while.
you could also either make it non stackable, with low a maximum bonus limit, or a small stackable bonus with diminishing returns, I think it's worth experimenting.

on a side note in the lost fleet series by jack Campbell, had tenders and auxiliaries that were capable of taking scrap, mining asteroids etc and turning them into supplies for the fleet.
How about letting the salvage gantry, or other specialized ships have a small nano forge on board, (or allow you to mount one when you find it),  which would allow it to turn scrap metals and or raw ore into the equivalent cost of supplies, or more likely, at a little less efficient ratio, say 125% material cost into supplies. The production speed needs to be limited say enough so so salvage gantries and similar ships could noticeably help keep a small fleet supplied, but be practically unnoticeable in a large fleet.

 if you're worried that may break the supply mechanics a bit, keep in mind when you start a faction you can make a factory to produce supplies right? so it looks like you’re going to be finding a solution for that problem anyways.

another thing the salvage rig, (or a specialized mining rig) could do is quick & dirty mining on asteroids and planets. since you're not there to make a permanent mining station (could you? #faction gameplay?) but for the quick and dirty you'd just be scraping off the exposed deposits on the surface of the asteroid or planet and heading off.

Heck, that gives me a thought, why cant we salvage ruins on planets? it could also give you a use for marines if there is any de-civilized populations, dangerous animals, pirates, or other scavengers around.

also, one or more military fleet tenders would be nice, you could make it a little less efficient than the civilian rig, but generally speedier, more stealthy and capable of defending itself.

Finally, ships with mining/salvage drones, do they reduce casualties from salvaging accidents? if not, they should, I'd use them over a person in a risky operation any time, could give players a reason to keep a Shepard in their fleet for the bonus.
« Last Edit: September 09, 2018, 09:57:17 AM by errorgance »
Logged
Pages: 1 2 [3] 4 5 ... 7