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[FooF]

+10. Would recommend again.

This does away, essentially, with the binary nature of salvaging (you either have the salvage rating or not) and skills boost success rate rather than ability to salvage at all. As an aside, I would hope surveying is getting roughly the same treatment (i.e. you can survey everything at the start but skills reduce the materiel cost to the point where it isn't prohibitively expensive early.)

In the screenshot, you've got a 184% recovery effectiveness value listed. Does that mean I can expect to get 84% more fuel/supplies/standard commodities in this scenario over "standard?" That seems...impressive but then again I don't know what was under the hood in the current implementation.  

[Alex]

Perhaps derelict tankers should get a line for when they don't have extra fuel?

I'm not sure I want to add a special case just for that. It feels like, generally, "if this has something special the game will let you know" is reasonable.

For example I was hoping we'd see a hull mod that lets you turn a salvage rig into a mobile refitting bay, lowering the supply cost of refitting when not at a planet (maybe only for smaller size ships).

This please!
It would add the ability to respond to specific types of fleets by changing ship loadouts before combat. I can see myself investing in a salvage rig(or whatever) early game so that I can change my wolf missile slots to reapers if I am fighting a pirate fleet with a destroyer, salamanders for distracting a few ships to overcome 2-1 odds, or even harpoons to get rid of that one ship that I am very worried about.
Not to mention in the late game having a "siege" fleet loadout for taking on a [REDACTED] rather than flying back to base to outfitting your entire fleet and flying back later(or eating the cr/supply penalty, which never occurred to me until now...)

Ahh, that's totally the sort of thing that I want to prevent. Some minor tweaking is neat - like what you're talking about with the Wolf - but when it gets to larger fleets, re-doing loadouts for every fight to eke out minor advantages is where that sort of thing ends up if it's at all possible.

I love how you fix things like this even though nobody would have consciously noticed it being slightly un-fun. This is the reason why Starsector(formerly Starfarer) is my all time favorite game!
...I sure am glad I was messing around with modding FTL one day and came across only Starsector(formerly Starfarer) ship sprites, otherwise I would have never found this hidden gem.

Haha, thank you This did feel like a fairly big deal, though!

This does away, essentially, with the binary nature of salvaging (you either have the salvage rating or not) and skills boost success rate rather than ability to salvage at all. As an aside, I would hope surveying is getting roughly the same treatment (i.e. you can survey everything at the start but skills reduce the materiel cost to the point where it isn't prohibitively expensive early.)

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.

In the screenshot, you've got a 184% recovery effectiveness value listed. Does that mean I can expect to get 84% more fuel/supplies/standard commodities in this scenario over "standard?" That seems...impressive but then again I don't know what was under the hood in the current implementation.  

Yeah, that's correct. Whether that's balanced and whether the base numbers will need to be adjusted, well. I don't know!

[Wyvern]

I'll have to keep a closer eye on salvage dialogs, then - I don't recall seeing a cargo manifest listed when I've recovered derelict tankers and gotten fuel with them.  If no fuel is, indeed, the default state, then that particular issue is entirely on me.

[Alex]

... actually, checking into this, I'm wrong. Tanker/freighter wrecks have an additional chance to get some extra cargo or fuel without it being a "special", and this is not shown before the ship is either recovered or salvaged. Let me add a quick bit of text to indicate when that's the case - there, done.

[Dal]

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?

[Shrugger]

Boo on non-respecabble skills in general on Aptitudes in particular.

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?

[Steven Shi]

So...2018 release? 

[SCC]

(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.

Spoiler

[close]

Two, combat freighters aren't really all that good at fighting. Not to mention they're pretty much confined to being defensive ships, since they just don't have the capabilities (in weaponry and flux stats) to push offensive. I'd rather have a combat ship that can both defend and attack instead of a pair of combat ships that can only stall.
Three, they're freighters. They have cargo inside, lots of it. That, if happens to be supplies, you'd rather use to repair after combat, rather than lose it in combat, and use the now-free space to take loot. Not deploying combat freighters means less risk of losing both what you already have and the cargo space for more cargo.
The only situation where it's advantageous to have combat freighters is retreating, but even then they can ruin your day by not retreating quickly enough.

[mendonca]

skill-point-regret

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

I like the changes, definitely should be a positive thing.

[Embercloud]

So...2018 release? 

I’m kind of curious about this as well.
Even though I wouldn’t want Alex to rush things or leave out intended content, a vague estiimate would be nice.

[steelwing]

So...2018 release? 

I’m kind of curious about this as well.
Even though I wouldn’t want Alex to rush things or leave out intended content, a vague estiimate would be nice.

One of the things I love about StarSector's development progress is that Alex has consistently refused to give time estimates of any kind.  Much as I'd love to have an idea of when to expect a new release, I am entirely too well aware that devs' estimated release dates have a bad habit of being taken as hard and fast, almost contractual, deadlines.  The instant one of those "deadlines" gets missed, the formerly adoring fans waiting eagerly for release are up in arms screaming "BUT YOU PROMISED!!"  I'd much rather Alex didn't make any estimates that he might later feel bound by, so that he could feel free to turn out a new release when he feels it is ready.

[Embercloud]

So...2018 release? 

I’m kind of curious about this as well.
Even though I wouldn’t want Alex to rush things or leave out intended content, a vague estiimate would be nice.

One of the things I love about StarSector's development progress is that Alex has consistently refused to give time estimates of any kind.  Much as I'd love to have an idea of when to expect a new release, I am entirely too well aware that devs' estimated release dates have a bad habit of being taken as hard and fast, almost contractual, deadlines.  The instant one of those "deadlines" gets missed, the formerly adoring fans waiting eagerly for release are up in arms screaming "BUT YOU PROMISED!!"  I'd much rather Alex didn't make any estimates that he might later feel bound by, so that he could feel free to turn out a new release when he feels it is ready.

I guess that’s a valid point.
Speaking of the actual subject matter of this thread my two cents is that these changes are very beneficial for the early days of a game and will prove to make all the difference when trying to gain some vital income for fuel and supplies while bounty hunting and such is not an option.

[DatonKallandor]

No - again, seems situational and not necessarily good. There's no much room for scuttling to be both not completely awful and still worse than selling the ship; any boosts to its output are trouble.

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?

[MajorTheRed]

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.
I understand that the rig has no other usefulness than the salvage gantry, but still I think it has the advantage of being a destroyer with no huge cost related to it. I don't know if you plan sooner or later to add cruiser or capital ship with salvage gantry, but in this case I think these ships will need other benefits than just the salvage gantry (like the great cargo hold of the shepherd) and occupy another fleet role (tanker, cargo, fleet support, carrier, command ship...)

[Carabus]

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.