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[xenoargh]

If you buy a used tank that's taken battle damage... replacing parts is nothing like the cost of a new tank. The same is true of pretty much anything else that's like a SS starship, IRL, military or civilian. Used machines like this, unless they are truly exotic / nobody-makes-those-anymore, are inherently cheaper to fix up, as anybody who's saved money keeping a car running with a little elbow-grease knows. There are exceptions, but they tend to be things like electronic devices that have been purposefully designed, by consumer-unfriendly engineers, to be difficult to repair.

Even in a far-future universe where somebody figured out Ultimate DRM, that wouldn't be the case with something like a starship; it's a durable good and, like all investments, it has to be maintained (which is already simulated via Supplies and the cost of Crew).  Sure, you'd have to buy DRM'd parts, but frankly, marking them up that much wouldn't work; competition would drive the prices down.

What's the justification for it being 120% above base cost and an additional 120% more for each D-Mod?  Given that ships sell for fractions of their value, none of this makes sense.  It should be something like 50% and 105% or so; repairing a clunker should cost a considerable sum less than buying new.  That price point still doesn't allow repairing stuff to make a profit.

If the goal is to keep players having to stay involved with maintenance, maybe the right answer is that, over time, ships reach a point where they require a "major overhaul" (this could be a D-Mod applied by script, most likely).  This would degrade CR significantly, or something, so players would want to get rid of the debuff, and that would cost serious cash; say, 25% of the value.  But I thought the whole point of Supplies was to abstract maintenance away.

I guess my overall feeling is, if the goal is to keep players from having shiny new ships, the right answer is pretty obvious: raise ship prices, a lot, especially for Cruiser+, and have different resale tiers (say, 5% under Restore base for Frigates, 10% for Destroyers, 20% and 30% for Cruisers / Capitals).  I'm actually pretty happy with the price ranges I've set in Rebal currently; getting into a capital ship feels like you've really arrived (well, until you see the maintenance bills and pay the crew, heh).

If the goal is to keep them upgrading their clunker fleets and feeling involved with that evolution, however, the mechanic as it works right now actually punishes players for bringing in their clunkers to be repaired.  This means whack-a-mole searches of all the Markets to find a pristine hull, or everybody doing boring min-max stuff to get their own production up as fast as they can, rather than taking the cheap route, repairing what they've managed to capture, and making due, which seems more in the spirit of the universe.

[Grievous69]

It wasn't always expensive, but as it is tradition, people cried the game was too easy, you get any ship you want no problem for cheap. So of course Alex nerfed the hell out of it, and now restoring a ship is basically only ever used for something that's impossible to find or a unique ship. This also reinforces save scumming even more (I guess people are fine with it) which is imo stupid. AI derping out in combat means you're going to have to switch that ship for a new one in a market (if you get a bad d-mod). Only thing that makes sense it's so expensive to repair is the Legion(XIV), everything else is silly.

And now we're getting story points so we can prevent unfortunate scenarios and recover a ship before it gets a d-mod, at least that's how I remember it being told. But not much will change, it'll still be smarter to save scum and save that story point for something more useful where you can't just reload the game.

[SCC]

I guess my overall feeling is, if the goal is to keep players from having shiny new ships

The goal is actually to keep players from having shiny old ships and accepting that d-mods are a part of life. It has an added side effect that rewards having a colony with the ability to reliably and cheaply get pristine ships.

[Grievous69]

The goal is actually to keep players from having shiny old ships and accepting that d-mods are a part of life. It has an added side effect that rewards having a colony with the ability to reliably and cheaply get pristine ships.

Ok this might be a bit of a tangent but I still don't like the current idea behind d-mods. Originally they were introduced so that pirate fleets were easier in the early game, since it was very frustrating for some. But now we got to the point where having a "normal" ship is rare. Yeah yeah I know the sector is in collapse, everything is held by duct tape. The problem I have is that many ships feels absolutely horrendous with some d-mods, so you either have to ditch them or restore them. What's that, you got increased maintenance - goodbye; degraded engines on a ship with the slowest burn - goodbye, the one with the reduced range on a combat ship - goodbye. It almost makes me feel as if the game was intended to play with Industrial skills.

I'd rather have positive d-mods so that some ships can stand out, than having most fleets be slightly stronger Pirates. Some ships already feel a bit too anemic and short on OP, I don't want d-mods to make it even worse.

[SCC]

I should have waited with replying until I got some more things to say, instead of just pointing out what Alex has in mind for SS.

D-mods and restoration don't really stand for maintenance, they're more like a second chance for a ship that took much abuse, but isn't dead yet. The cheaper restoration is, the less likely is that the player will play with d-mods or replace that ship with another (maybe same class, maybe another), instead of restoring it and playing the same as before. Alex's goal seems to be making that if the player wants to use the same ship forever, he must never lose it. Or that's what's the effect on me.

It wasn't always expensive, but as it is tradition, people cried the game was too easy, you get any ship you want no problem for cheap. So of course Alex nerfed the hell out of it, and now restoring a ship is basically only ever used for something that's impossible to find or a unique ship.

In the patch notes, the only change about restoration, since it's been introduced, is that it has been made cheaper.

And now we're getting story points so we can prevent unfortunate scenarios and recover a ship before it gets a d-mod, at least that's how I remember it being told.

The only mention of use of story points for restoration is that story points can be used to recover ships you normally wouldn't be able to (so after a battle, some ships can be recovered "for free", while other require a story point to recover).

The problem I have is that many ships feels absolutely horrendous with some d-mods, so you either have to ditch them or restore them. What's that, you got increased maintenance - goodbye; degraded engines on a ship with the slowest burn - goodbye, the one with the reduced range on a combat ship - goodbye. It almost makes me feel as if the game was intended to play with Industrial skills.

Besides increased maintenance or fuel d-mod (especially for logistic ships), degraded engines for ships that would slow me down and flux d-mod for any and all combat ships, I don't really pay attention to d-mods. In fact, I eventually stopped playing with industry skills at all, because while colony and salvaging skills are nice (and safety procedures 2), they are mostly for losing less, while winning more with other skills is more valuable.

I'd rather have positive d-mods so that some ships can stand out, than having most fleets be slightly stronger Pirates. Some ships already feel a bit too anemic and short on OP, I don't want d-mods to make it even worse.

Reminds me of what was it, WoW? Where instead of penalty for a long time Blizzard implemented a bonus that decreases the more you play. Effect is the same, but one way of doing it people disliked, but were fine with the other.

[Grievous69]

In the patch notes, the only change about restoration, since it's been introduced, is that it has been made cheaper.

Maybe I'm just crazy but I definitely remember that I stopped using restoration after one patch. Maybe there was another system or something but I wouldn't just do a 180 overnight with nothing changing.

[Megas]

What I fear is once (the builtin) permamods become part of the new build meta.  They cost story points to install.  I have no idea how easy they are to acquire.  If they become tedious to grind and stockpile, then pristine ships with permamods become effectively unique (in terms of rarity) ships, not unlike Legion14s.  If story points (at max level) are hard to stockpile, and restoration costs remain exorbitant (along with the nerfed colonies and stingy bounties), then reload-and-replay a game as done in older releases (when most stuff was too rare and tedious to replace) becomes highly tempting.

The goal is actually to keep players from having shiny old ships and accepting that d-mods are a part of life. It has an added side effect that rewards having a colony with the ability to reliably and cheaply get pristine ships.

Ok this might be a bit of a tangent but I still don't like the current idea behind d-mods. Originally they were introduced so that pirate fleets were easier in the early game, since it was very frustrating for some. But now we got to the point where having a "normal" ship is rare. Yeah yeah I know the sector is in collapse, everything is held by duct tape. The problem I have is that many ships feels absolutely horrendous with some d-mods, so you either have to ditch them or restore them. What's that, you got increased maintenance - goodbye; degraded engines on a ship with the slowest burn - goodbye, the one with the reduced range on a combat ship - goodbye. It almost makes me feel as if the game was intended to play with Industrial skills.

I'd rather have positive d-mods so that some ships can stand out, than having most fleets be slightly stronger Pirates. Some ships already feel a bit too anemic and short on OP, I don't want d-mods to make it even worse.

It is annoying.  Permamods are the positive mods, and the problem with them is they require a price that effectively turns them into unique ships (see above).  It will encourage player to keep the same ships and preserve them, instead of dumping ships and building new ones with Orbital Works.  In the current release, I let ships die and I build new ones to replace them.  Next release, I probably use Orbital Works to build mostly weapons, and maybe ships I do not have enough of.

I think Restoration will be the way to go, unless it is still too expensive.  In which case, reload-and-replay (because it is faster to do this than waste hours grindup up replacement story points, ships, and/or money) becomes the most attractive option.

EDIT:  Duct-tape feeling is lame.  Pristine neon knights is what I like.  It is annoying that I need to wait until near endgame to get that.  This is one reason why I think endgame is the best part of the game.  Early-game is my least favorite part of the game, and all of my games after the first were Apogee starts because I could not wait to get out of that hell.

EDIT#2:  Normal ships being rare is a reason why I use clunkers until I can reliably produce normal ships.  If I buy one and lose it, I reload the game immediately (because restoration costs an arm and a leg).  If I lose a clunker, I do not care and play on.

I guess my overall feeling is, if the goal is to keep players from having shiny new ships, the right answer is pretty obvious: raise ship prices, a lot, especially for Cruiser+, and have different resale tiers (say, 5% under Restore base for Frigates, 10% for Destroyers, 20% and 30% for Cruisers / Capitals).  I'm actually pretty happy with the price ranges I've set in Rebal currently; getting into a capital ship feels like you've really arrived (well, until you see the maintenance bills and pay the crew, heh).

Ugh.  I thought ships became too expensive in 0.9.1 when they were raised.  It slowed down progression (which was the intent), but it also meant I could no longer fight named bounties once they reached 150k+ because they upgraded faster than I could (until I caught up much later).

I did not bother buying ships except maybe to upgrade my flagship, once or twice.  Nearly all of my upgrades came from clunkers of pirate fleets (and expeditions later).  Once I could repel expeditions comfortably and got a nanoforge, I build my Orbital Works and get ships from there instead.

[SapphireSage]

Hopefully this blog post introducing D-mods as a concept can help shed some light:
http://fractalsoftworks.com/2017/01/20/ship-recovery/

IIRC though, Restoration as an option was made specifically to have it that if you wound up finding an ultra-rare ship or your ultra-rare ship got destroyed, then you would still be able to get it to pristine condition without having to get lucky in shops or finding the blueprints, but at a large markup. However, it wouldn't be something you would do for a ship that you can find everywhere for cheap like Condors.

On the one hand, the downside is that some player's don't really like the feeling going into combat with ships that are weaker versions of themselves sure and they would prefer pristine ships because they have more bang for their DP, but on the other appendage salvaging ships gives a huge power boost for relatively low cost in mere supplies and crew. That power gain would be amplified if not only were you salvaging cruisers and capitals but you were able to get them in pristine condition for the price of say a destroyer or cruiser and partially outfitted with weapons and potentially a useful hullmod you don't have yet. Some people find the earliest stages of SS as the most fun, as its the point, currently, where you're the most threatened and making the restoration price cheaper or conversely the ships more expensive than they currently are then would making salvaging very much stronger than it already is. It would also make flat out buying new ships a bad move by way of making it so that ships are guaranteed to be cheaper to salvage then restore and also possibly making new ships prohibitively expensive and not worth their purchase.

[Megas]

It would also make flat out buying new ships a bad move by way of making it so that ships are guaranteed to be cheaper to salvage then restore and also possibly making new ships prohibitively expensive and not worth their purchase.

That is the dark side (I see) of permamods, if story points will be hard to come by.  Buying new ships (then spending two to three story points on permamods) to replace permamodded ships that were lost or turned into clunkers will probably become "a bad move" since ships with permamods will be better than those without them.

Currently, no permamods mean replacing ships (and weapons) is easy once player gets Orbital Works with forge and enough blueprints.  With permamods coming, building ships would be useful only to get your initial force.

IIRC though, Restoration as an option was made specifically to have it that if you wound up finding an ultra-rare ship or your ultra-rare ship got destroyed, then you would still be able to get it to pristine condition without having to get lucky in shops or finding the blueprints, but at a large markup. However, it wouldn't be something you would do for a ship that you can find everywhere for cheap like Condors.

Works that way now, but may evolve into something else later.  Just like how D-mods were meant to handicap pirates ended up also handicapping players that cannot buy pristine ships.  Instead of handicapped pirates vs. pristine player, we get handicapped pirates vs. handicapped player, or pristine faction vs. handicapped player.  D-mods ended up being used mostly to enforce the apunkalyptic lore instead of giving early-game players struggling against pirates a break.

[Thaago]

Economic balance. Ships with D mods are easy to get, a free cornucopia from every fight the player has. Pristine ships are harder to get: the player either needs level 3 recovery skills and luck, needs to buy them with credits (with a random chance to find them and possibly restricted access), or needs a pretty well established colony to order them. Having an endless free resource be converted to a restricted expensive resource for less cost than its purchase price would nullify the other methods of gaining the expensive resource.

Progression balance/intended pace of the game. D mod ships are given after every battle, while gathering multiple pristine ships takes more time (either in getting funds for buying them, finding them in markets, or assembling a colony and building them for oneself.). The cheaper they are to restore, the faster the player advances to 'endgame' levels of power. I know Megas would like that (as he's said a few times), but I don't think the intended game design is for the player to have an endgame fleet faster than present.

Living with subpar options/playing in the moment/variable path forward. This is a game design goal that I think is underappreciated: if there is a single optimal path to success, a solved game, then there is little to no replay value. D mods aren't the whole story here, but the random nature of dropped ships combined with the fact that dropped ships represent the highest value/fastest advancement potential from fighting push the player in this direction. Cheap/easy removal of D mods wouldn't be completely removing this aspect, but it would be reducing the puzzle/challenge the player needs to overcome and would reduce variable replayability.

In terms of 'lore' and replacing parts, we can pick whatever lore we want to support gameplay. As for real life, its most often not true that repairing things is cheaper than getting one new, especially with efficient automated production like exists in the sector. It depends on seller markup and if there is a material/supply shortage, but consider that even moderate body damage 'totals' a car that is in perfect condition but a few years old. Individual replacement parts usually don't total a vehicle, but they are far more expensive (in both cost and labor) than they would be in a production line setting. Having old cars restored to mint condition is a hobby and passion for people, but really fixing a car that has serious problems is quite expensive compared to buying a used vehicle that runs fine.

[intrinsic_parity]

It's not like having 10 ships as rewards from every fight is a fundamental part of the game that everything else needs to be balanced around. Honestly I would prefer it if ship rewards were significantly rarer but also less likely to be d-modded, or alternatively, if they were rarer to balance out restoring being cheaper. I personally think the whole '10 terrible ships from every fight' thing plays poorly. You end up skipping the vast majority of the rewards you get which doesn't feel good IMO (and the natural new player behavior of taking all the rewards you're offered is a major trap). I prefer good rewards infrequently than bad rewards constantly.

Living with subpar options/playing in the moment/variable path forward. This is a game design goal that I think is underappreciated: if there is a single optimal path to success, a solved game, then there is little to no replay value. D mods aren't the whole story here, but the random nature of dropped ships combined with the fact that dropped ships represent the highest value/fastest advancement potential from fighting push the player in this direction. Cheap/easy removal of D mods wouldn't be completely removing this aspect, but it would be reducing the puzzle/challenge the player needs to overcome and would reduce variable replayability.

The thing is that the game doesn't actually give you any reason to play with subpar options, it just gives you the choice of subpar options. There are no constraints or requirements, so you can always just wait to get the best options instead of taking poor options now.

I agree that having to 'make do' makes for fun gameplay, but I don't think it is realized at all in starsector right now. I think the genre of games that realize this the most are rogue likes (and lites). Those games achieve this because you only get a certain number of floors (and rewards) before you're forced to fight the boss, so you have to get as strong as you can with whatever you're given. There's nothing like that in starsector. No reason to get strong beyond getting strong enough to stay alive (which is somewhat trivial IMO). The push in the last couple patches to make the game easier and more forgiving have really moved it away from anything resembling pressure to get stronger IMO.

[ubuntufreakdragon]

I would make d-mods slightly cheaper ~90% of a new ship.

[Megas]

Cheap/easy removal of D mods wouldn't be completely removing this aspect, but it would be reducing the puzzle/challenge the player needs to overcome and would reduce variable replayability.

I do not fully agree with this.  It just means the player puts up with junk early until he no longer needs to.  Most of my games began much the same.  Beat up pirates, make do with a junk fleet of mostly Enforcers, Mules, and Shrike (P) until I take down some stronger fleets, then get more clunkers (from bounties or expeditions) until I can finally build my own pristine ships near the end of the game.  Forcing the player to live with inferior junk is not adding anything, it just forces the player to live with, well... junk.  That is not fun, because it says the player is not allowed to have nice things (until after significant grinding or other tricks).  As I wrote previously, it is a reason why I like endgame most, because player has nice things then.

That said, I do not mind how things are too much in this current release because the player can eventually spit out fresh ships left and right and not care too much about losses.

What I am concerned about is permamods effective making ships too rare, not unlike most things were before 0.8a or 0.9a.  That can make losses too painful.

The thing is that the game doesn't actually give you any reason to play with subpar options, it just gives you the choice of subpar options. There are no constraints or requirements, so you can always just wait to get the best options instead of taking poor options now.

By endgame, I scuttle everything except maybe ships I lost or an extra freighter I need to haul excess loot in an emergency.  After a certain point, almost all of those ships become vendor trash.

[intrinsic_parity]

My early game is usually doing some missions to buy a few nice destroyers and frigates on the black market which is enough to get a cycle of bounty and exploration profits into more ships (into better bounties) going all the way through to colonies. I only recover ships that I want that are also indistinguishable from pristine or are rare enough to warrant restoring. I honestly don't see much reason to recover clunkers when that works just fine.

[Thaago]

...
The thing is that the game doesn't actually give you any reason to play with subpar options, it just gives you the choice of subpar options. There are no constraints or requirements, so you can always just wait to get the best options instead of taking poor options now.

I agree that having to 'make do' makes for fun gameplay, but I don't think it is realized at all in starsector right now. I think the genre of games that realize this the most are rogue likes (and lites). Those games achieve this because you only get a certain number of floors (and rewards) before you're forced to fight the boss, so you have to get as strong as you can with whatever you're given. There's nothing like that in starsector. No reason to get strong beyond getting strong enough to stay alive (which is somewhat trivial IMO). The push in the last couple patches to make the game easier and more forgiving have really moved it away from anything resembling pressure to get stronger IMO.

This is a really good point! I think the closest we have right now to pushing the player to advance 'efficiently' is the bounty progression and trying to only do combat: if taking advantage of ship drops its easy to stay ahead of it without doing other missions, though its worth it to have a tiny colony to store extra ships when waiting for the top bounty to regenerate/catch up to the player.

But outside of challenge runs like that, players are free to take their time and only get pristine ships, explore the whole sector to only colonize the best systems, reload any combat that they lose, etc. For new players, having pressures that push the player forward in a way that challenges vets would be bad as the game really can be deadly.