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

Author Topic: Salvaging  (Read 1593 times)

intrinsic_parity

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Salvaging
« on: February 26, 2020, 06:51:06 PM »

I think one of the big goals of salvaging is to let the player recover particular ships that they really want later in the game, but the problem is that with random drops, in order for the player to reliably get a particular ship, they must be seeing lots of ships every fight. It's also problematic if the player gets big ships too early, both by scaling the player up too quickly and by creating logistics and fleet speed problems for new players. This was (I think) addressed with d-mods so that the player sees lots of ships but they all suck to keep the player from getting strong too quickly, but the player can over-pay to restore the ones they really want which is more valuable in late game.

IMO this has contributed a lot the ship access bloat that I made another thread about. The player just sees so many ships that they naturally progress very quickly towards bigger ships leaving the smaller ones behind. I also think seeing such a large number of bad ships can inadvertently trick the player into bloating their fleet with bad ships and running into logistics problems (since the ships are presented as rewards but are often a net negative to take). It also is just unsatisfying to get offered garbage all the time, getting good ships is fun.

My idea is a new salvaging system:
The player has some salvaging resource which they can use to target specific ships. One implementation idea is that the player can assemble some number of salvaging teams based on their crew size and resources like heavy machinery. The player can choose to assign any number of their salvage teams to any recoverable (i.e. not destroyed) ship after the battle. The chance of recovering the ship and the quality of the recovered ship is based on the the number of salvage teams assigned  as well as the size of the ship (and maybe some player skills or something). Also, all the ships they don't target for salvaging give some supplies and fuel, so they can choose to not salvage anything if they just want that.

The idea is that early on, the player will not have enough salvage teams to reliably get cruisers or capitals unless they get super lucky, but they can semi-regularly get one or two frigates of decent quality or maybe a weaker destroyers. As the player gets stronger, they will be able to reliably get more mediocre (in terms of d-mod quality) frigates and destroyers by distributing their salvage teams around, or go for one or two very high quality small ships, or go all in on a single bigger ship with a decent chance of success and lower quality. By late game, they will have enough salvaging capability to reliably get the one really rare ship they want.

I like this idea because it naturally pushes the player towards ships that fit in with their current fleet size and slows down progression a bit (hopefully it could be balanced that way), but still lets the player have a good chance at getting that odyssey they've been hunting for in the late game. It also gives the player more control over what they get, and reduces the number of uninteresting/useless ships the player has to see. It would depend a lot on the balance of the drop rates just like the current system though. It could definitely let the player scale up quickly if they were too high.
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Plantissue

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Re: Salvaging
« Reply #1 on: February 27, 2020, 07:24:11 AM »

Ships not recovered already contribute to supplies and fuel gained.

Whatever the problem you think is, being able to recover a capital ship seems a reasonable reward for defeating a capital ship. If you can defeat a capital ship and its fleet, you would realistically expect to have enough crew to recover one. You can mothball ships anyways, so you don't even need to crew them.
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: Salvaging
« Reply #2 on: February 27, 2020, 08:40:13 AM »

You can easily find big ships floating around by waiting for AI fleets to kill each other, regardless of how big your fleet is.

I also don't agree that a capital ship is a good reward for beating a capital ship. It's really not that hard to beat a capital ship early. You can do it with just afflictors if you want to cheese it, and a decent fleet of destroyers with maybe one cruiser will kill and enemy fleet with a single lightly escorted capital without too much trouble. Is a cruiser also a good reward for beating a cruiser? By that logic, you should receive every ship you defeat as a reward. I hope it's not hard to see how unbalanced that would be. I think ships should be much more rare rewards.
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Terethall

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Re: Salvaging
« Reply #3 on: March 03, 2020, 10:21:16 AM »

I generally agree with this. Sitting on the sidelines of big AI fleet action catapults you to midgame instantly. Industry skills mean that the D-mods are practically a plus. The game is more fun at the small to medium fleet stages, and the way colonies, commissions, markets and salvage propel you out of frigates and into cruisers is a little strong right now. Limiting the number of ships you can recover to make them feel a bit more special would be nice. What's the purpose of being able to name our ships if we're not supposed to build a connection with them?
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Serenitis

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Re: Salvaging
« Reply #4 on: March 07, 2020, 03:43:31 AM »

I can dig the general idea of tapping the brakes on the salvage train a little.
But can it done without introducing another tedious thing to micromanage?
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: Salvaging
« Reply #5 on: March 07, 2020, 07:53:50 AM »

I can dig the general idea of tapping the brakes on the salvage train a little.
But can it done without introducing another tedious thing to micromanage?
My idea was that it would mostly play out as 'click on the things you would like to recover and then roll the dice'. Maybe you have to click a few times on one ship instead or just once, but that doesn't seem all that different than how it is now. What seems tedious to you?
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Grievous69

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Re: Salvaging
« Reply #6 on: March 07, 2020, 08:11:50 AM »

What seems tedious to you?
Yet another resource for the player to keep track of? But I don't understand the whole thought process behind this, you seem to want to put yet another RNG layer behind the one we have now. To have a CHANCE at recovering ships when already they only sometimes show up. I get the whole ''speedrun problem'' most people seem to have but gating away big ships unless you have a big fleet yourself is really limiting. I mean if I have a big fleet in the first place then I don't give a flying *** about some d-modded ships, unless it's something super hard to obtain. I'd rather see more enjoyable content for early game and proper mechanics for small ships than all these gamey suggestions where people just say ''you can't have this thing unless you do that thing''.
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Mondaymonkey

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Re: Salvaging
« Reply #7 on: March 07, 2020, 08:15:51 AM »

Alternative suggestion: Why not just tie a recovery potential to player's level and salvaging skills?

What the hell is "recovery potential"? Value, that determine how many ships player can recover after a battle, based on their DP cost. Example: if your recovery potential is 120, you can recover a three onslaughts, 24 wolfs or 2 paragons. Obviously, 120 is a hight value, gained on a high level. Formulae should be like: "C+L*S*R", where C is the minimal constant, L - player's level, S and R- based on a "salvaging" and "recovery operation"(S=1, R=1 if none leaned). Low level player will not be able to recover too large object in that case. Recovering your own disabled vessels should be cheaper, than enemy's.
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Grievous69

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Re: Salvaging
« Reply #8 on: March 07, 2020, 08:29:03 AM »

Tying it to player's level is actually a decent idea, especially since I think the leveling will be slower now that we'll have only 15. But again the randomness will screw you up, what if you want to recover some rare frigates and just so happens that a single capital ship eats up all of the ''recovery potential'' points leaving you with basically no choice.
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Mondaymonkey

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Re: Salvaging
« Reply #9 on: March 07, 2020, 08:40:53 AM »

Quote
But again the randomness will screw you up

In a game, where "recovery potential" exist, there are no need in randomizing that factor. Player just choose among all disabling vessels, based on their price.

Quote
what if you want to recover some rare frigates and just so happens that a single capital ship eats up all of the ''recovery potential'' points leaving you with basically no choice.

That is the reason to have bigger recovery potential. Where you say "no choice" all I can hear is "FUN!!!".
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: Salvaging
« Reply #10 on: March 07, 2020, 09:10:26 AM »

I think the randomness is a very important part of the balance. Being able to pick whatever ships you want is making salvaging stronger not weaker, even with a DP cap, which is the opposite of what I was going for with this suggestion.
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