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Author Topic: Swap hull bonus from Reinforced Bulkheads and Blast Doors  (Read 4694 times)

AxleMC131

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Swap hull bonus from Reinforced Bulkheads and Blast Doors
« on: December 11, 2018, 12:41:08 AM »

Disclaimer: I am, of course, ignoring semantics and any lore-related shizz about the names of hullmods. Please don't argue that "the names make more sense with what they do right now don't change it", because A) that's been pointed out to me already and if a name needs to be changed I'm not going to stop it, and B) that's not what's being discussed here.



This just cropped up in a discussion on the usage of the Reinforced Bulkheads hullmod in the Unofficial Starsector Discord, and I raised (what I thought was) an interesting argument on why it's so preferred over it's not-so-sidegrade hullmod Blast Doors.

Reinforced Bulkheads, as we should all be familiar with, does two things. First, it "almost" guarantees the ship will be recoverable if destroyed in battle (and, y'know, stops it breaking into bits if it does). Then, it gives the ship +40% hull integrity. Pretty damn good all-round.

Blast Doors, from what I can tell much less commonly used, also does two things. First, it reduces the amount of crew losses taken due to hull damage in combat, and likewise when the ship is destroyed. Then, it gives the ship +20% hull integrity.

The problem I'm seeing is that Reinforced Bulkheads is quite often a no-brainer. Having a ship be "almost" guaranteed to be recoverable after a battle is great, whether you're a new player or not. Ships die a lot, and it's very nice to be a little more relaxed about ships dying. Then there's that 40% extra hull (that's a damn lot on some ships!) which is always just as welcome.

Blast Doors, in contrast, seems a less obvious choice in many situations. I'm aware it's designed for the same role as Bulkheads: in a fleet of expendable "junkers" that are regularly destroyed and recovered, Bulkheads does the recovery while Blast Doors ensures you don't run out of willing sacrifices I mean, ah, crew members in the process. However, crew losses from combat never seem very high to me. Perhaps they should be more punishing, but that's a different Suggestion post. Regardless, it seems that the benefit of Blast Doors' crew loss reduction is quite minor. On top of that, crew are easy to find and aren't very expensive to buy. Relative to the base losses perhaps, the benefit is very appreciable I'm sure, but those base losses always seem so low anyway that I struggle to justify it.

Bear in mind that the two hullmods cost the same amount of Ordnance Points, and that both coexist as available options (they're both available to install from the start of a new game). If I ignore the hull integrity bonus, Reinforced Bulkheads seems the better value option for general loadouts - saving the ship is usually more valuable to me than saving the crew (... uh oh). When you account for the extra hull, Blast Doors is left in the dust - in fact I've gotten to the point that I will only put Blast Doors on with Reinforced Bulkheads to make a ship super hull-tanky.



... Wow. Quite the setup. I suppose this bit is the TLDR. The suggestion that comes from all that babble is this:

Swap the hull integrity bonuses of Reinforced Bulkheads and Blast Doors, so RB gives the +20% and BD gives the +40%. I feel this would make them much more like sidegrades of each other, as they should surely be, and give me a more pressing decision over which is more valuable to me when designing a ship's loadout.
« Last Edit: December 11, 2018, 12:56:57 AM by AxleMC131 »
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Deshara

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Re: Swap hull bonus from Reinforced Bulkheads and Blast Doors
« Reply #1 on: December 11, 2018, 01:14:19 AM »

I think the point is that because blast doors is a straight downgrade of bulkheads it gives players who don't need to maximize their ship's health no reason to take the OP-inefficient blast doors unless they want to.

It's the same decision that leads to there being two different range-giving hullmods, one only working for capitals and giving less range than the other; it removes a kind of unnecessary decision that doesn't.
Or how the hullmods that upgrade your reactor do so at less-OP efficiency than just adding vents and capacitors.

Blast doors is there to make the last +20% hull integrity you're capable of getting cost extra (and the crew lost redux is just a bonus; I don't think anybody cares about it)
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Megas

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Re: Swap hull bonus from Reinforced Bulkheads and Blast Doors
« Reply #2 on: December 11, 2018, 05:04:53 AM »

Back in 0.8 when Reinforced Bulkheads did not save weapons and guaranteed ship recovery was useless, I preferred Blast Doors over Reinforced Bulkheads due to less crew loss.

Today, I take Reinforced Bulkheads over Blast Doors, and the only reason I take Reinforced Bulkheads is guaranteed ship recovery and loadout preservation (and perhaps cargo preservation - I have not lost cargo due to losing ships).  The extra hull is nice, but I could not care less about that.  If Reinforced Bulkheads lost the hull bonus and cost less OP, I would like it even more it because guaranteed ship recovery is a huge, HUGE anti-frustration feature... to the point I consider it an OP tax, and the less OP it costs the better, because I have other hullmods I want to use, but cannot because I do not want to permanently lose a ship.  This is a reason why I consider Officer Management great not because of more level 20 officers, but because I do not need to pay the OP tax for Reinforced Bulkheads for their ships.

I would rather have Reinforced Bulkheads lose the hull bonus (or have much less of it) and cost less OP.
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SCC

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Re: Swap hull bonus from Reinforced Bulkheads and Blast Doors
« Reply #3 on: December 11, 2018, 08:27:18 AM »

The issue is that if you don't lose a ship, you don't lose crew, and if you lose a ship, you lose crew as well...  For convenience, I'd rather have both hullmods be rolled into one, so that if I lose ships, I don't immediately run out of crew for them.

Grievous69

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Re: Swap hull bonus from Reinforced Bulkheads and Blast Doors
« Reply #4 on: December 11, 2018, 08:48:48 AM »

You actually lose a part of the crew a ship can hold depending on how much hull it has lost in combat.
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Histidine

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Re: Swap hull bonus from Reinforced Bulkheads and Blast Doors
« Reply #5 on: December 12, 2018, 12:47:23 AM »

Just make Blast Doors cheaper

(I never use BD at present and almost never use Reinforced Bulkheads. Fleet Logistics 1 + only rarely deploying unofficered ships takes care of my recovery guarantee needs.)
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Nts

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Re: Swap hull bonus from Reinforced Bulkheads and Blast Doors
« Reply #6 on: December 12, 2018, 03:19:34 AM »

As someone who likes to pretend that I care about my crew, I wouldn't mind seeing the OP cost of blast doors come down. You could also argue that installing really tough doors on a ship is a smaller investment than reinforcing its entire structure. A cost similar to insulated engines or resistant flux conduits would make sense. And if it seemed to be too much HP for too little cost, you could also balance the hull bonus to be slightly smaller, such as 15% or 10%.
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Drone_Fragger

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Re: Swap hull bonus from Reinforced Bulkheads and Blast Doors
« Reply #7 on: December 12, 2018, 01:01:58 PM »

I mean, maybe make blast doors double hull armour or something as well (as in, the minimum value that armour can be reduced to while dealing hull damage)? That'd make it actually pretty solid on a lot of smaller ships that otherwise get torn up by stuff like talon fighters.
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XazoTak

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Re: Swap hull bonus from Reinforced Bulkheads and Blast Doors
« Reply #8 on: December 12, 2018, 08:55:49 PM »

If crew loss is based on % of hull lost, then Reinforced Bulkheads reduces crew loss by a factor of 1.4, meaning it's a 29% crew loss reduction.
Using the same logic, Blast Doors reduces crew loss by 58%.

Reinforced Bulkheads offers half of the same effect Blast Doors offers, and much more.
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