Hey Alex! Excellent blog as always. I'm really liking this new system, as well as the tangential improvements to trading -- I always want to play as a (relatively) straight-laced trader & occasional salvager, rather than trader/bounty hunter/salvage/explorer/etc. However, I always have difficulty making enough of a profit to fulfill the ever-growing & linked need to increase cargo capacity & escort capability, as well as having some sort of cushion for when things invariably go wrong. It sounds like the changes you've made there are going to help with that!
Anyway, I've read the blog & this thread in full, but I still found these two statements contradictory:
Hmm... well I'm not sure what problem you're referring to, but I don't think it would hurt if crew and marines sold for zero credits. It doesn't make sense that you would get paid when you cancel their contracts / terminate them, and I can't remember the last time I sold crew, marines, fuel, or supplies. Those things invariably go in storage.
What I meant was if you have 100 elite marines, and want to ship 1000 marines somewhere to sell their contracts, you'll 1) buy 1000 marines and have 1100 "regular" marines with a bit of XP, then 2) sell 1000 marines and 3) be left with 100 regular marines with a bit of XP. The only way to avoid this currently is to put your marines into storage first.
If you're selling experienced marines to a planets pool of marines, does the planets marine exp level increase too?
Nope! Marine XP is really presented as - mainly - being a factor of a well-established command structure, procedures, familiarity with your style of command, etc - rather than being an intrinsic property of the marines.
(Bolded emphasis is my own in both places)
The two bolded statements feel contradictory. If the elite-level XP of the 100 marines in the former statement is
not intrinsic to the marines, how does putting said 100 marines in storage preserve their XP?
Also, if Marine XP is more about well-established command structure, et al, then I would expect it to be much lower after adding 1k additional marines, but then bounce back to the original level when removing the 1k. In other words, it makes sense that your experience commanding 100 marines would be much less valuable when suddenly commanding 1100 -- but you wouldn't suddenly be worse at commanding 100 marines once you've dropped off the 1k than you were prior to gaining them.
To boil this down to specific questions, assuming the following is true:
- Marine XP is not intrinsic to marines themselves AND
- Marine XP is ("Mainly" -- That may be the key to why my post is actually all wrong!) a factor of a well-established command structure, procedures & familiarity with your style of command
Then:
- Is 'Marine XP' the appropriate name? It feels more like a 'Marine Command Ability/Capacity;' that is to say, a fleet-side representation of lessons learned from previous combat.
- Why would marines losses effect Marine XP? Losing some marines in combat wouldn't impact your overall ability to command marines.
- Why would transferring marines to storage would suddenly rob your fleet of its establish command structure & procedures? And, further, why would transferring them back at suddenly restore the same?
I hope these questions make sense & I haven't overlooked their answers.
Separately, a suggestion: A Marine Commander/Officer 'slot' that is filled by a character:
- The 'Marine Commander' is already mentioned in the raiding screen. This gives them a face & a name, which seems consistent with having fleet commanders, station masters, et al.
- This Officer's traits & abilities would impact the raid effectiveness. Traits could modify overall effectiveness (ie brave, cowardly, bloodthirsty, etc), or effectiveness of specific operations/targets (Farmer -- Better at raiding farms, but perhaps worse at raiding industry; Looter -- better at raiding than disrupting, increased loot but slightly higher losses raiding?; etc).
- The Officer could also effect Marine XP, perhaps providing a flat bonus, or a higher retention of XP when losses occur. The specifics here are very much determined by the correct interpretation of what Marine XP is & how it works.
- Potentially a use for story points? Promote a promising marine NCO after a successful raid, where the current Marine XP could potentially influence their initial traits & abilities? Etc.
- It's an interesting choice, especially early game: Do you use one of your Officers for this post, rather than another ship commander?
This wouldn't have made much sense with the previous system, but I feel a designated officer slot for Marine commander would mesh nicely with the new one, while also staying consistent with having assignable characters. It could also be very interesting for AI planets/stations to have a Marine/Garrison commander whose traits affect the defense in various ways -- or who could potentially be bribed to increase your chances. That may be a step too far due to the complexities of how it would affect raid effectiveness calculations, and the player's understanding of them.
Writing this also brought to mind the idea of a fleet-wide CAG (Commander, Air Group) to impart maluses & bonuses upon your strikecraft (and carriers?). I'm not sure there's as much viability to that idea in the current system, though a separate 'pilots' crew type would certainly make it relevant. Personally, that concept & a Pilot XP of some sort to compliment it would be very interesting, both in terms of RP & in terms of actual gameplay decisions: now you actually care about your pilots & choices to minimize their losses matter beyond "Do I have enough generic crew lying around to shove into cockpits?" However, this is also outside of this thread's purview, so I'll leave it there.
Anyway, thank you as always! Apologies for any errors I may have made in my arguments here.