Fractal Softworks Forum
Starsector => Suggestions => Topic started by: Embercloud on May 11, 2017, 03:23:11 AM
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It would be more logical to use metal to repair hull and armor damage. It would also remove some of the ridiculous amounts of metal you salvage (and then hoard because I can't bear myself to waste stuff)
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If you want to push that angle then crew should also consume food...
Supplies is meant to represent everything a ship needs to run, be it food or spare parts. Now personally I wouldn't mind if Supplies were done away with and all maintenance be paid through various commodities, but there's nothing wrong with the current system either.
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It would be more logical to use metal to repair hull and armor damage. It would also remove some of the ridiculous amounts of metal you salvage (and then hoard because I can't bear myself to waste stuff)
Hoard until ready to trade? (Market orders for metal aren't blocked by having it in storage.) I just wonder if there's some legal downside to selling metal that doesn't have a matching legal purchase order.
(in general, the game is exceptionally non-transparent regarding what can make a patrol want to look for you. The only way to know there's a problem in time, is having to track down your trade contact rather than getting the comm signal immediately.)
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I could see metal to partially be used as a substitue for supplies during repair but with a terrible ratio. Something around replacing half the supplies required by ten times as much metal. Then you are replacing an expensive ressource by a cheap one at the cost of cargo space.
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I could see metal to partially be used as a substitue for supplies during repair but with a terrible ratio. Something around replacing half the supplies required by ten times as much metal. Then you are replacing an expensive ressource by a cheap one at the cost of cargo space.
This is the only way i could see this working
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It would be more logical to use metal to repair hull and armor damage. It would also remove some of the ridiculous amounts of metal you salvage (and then hoard because I can't bear myself to waste stuff)
Hoard until ready to trade? (Market orders for metal aren't blocked by having it in storage.) I just wonder if there's some legal downside to selling metal that doesn't have a matching legal purchase order.
(in general, the game is exceptionally non-transparent regarding what can make a patrol want to look for you. The only way to know there's a problem in time, is having to track down your trade contact rather than getting the comm signal immediately.)
I usually hold on to it until I find either a purchase contract or if I get to coatl to restock on supplies
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Aren't supplies supposed to represent MREs (hence not needing food), spare parts and likely standardised armour plating (hence not needing metal)? If metal was to be useable as a repair material, then it would likely take far longer than the repairs from supplies due to needing to find stuff that hasn't been pre-shot up and then cutting it down to size and punching any required rivets/fastening points on it, etc.
All-in-all, it just seems like it would add more needless busywork to things that wouldn't see any use
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To be honest, from Alex's descriptions of SS armour, metal plates are too simple to be used as a substitute. Besides, I expect it to be a coding hassle since repairs are "free" if they last shorter than CR recovery.
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Sometimes logic needs to be stretched a bit. Otherwise we start needed to buy bread and soap for our crew, and nobody wants to start playing Oregon Trail in space. We repair ships with missile parts, eat armor plating, and reload guns with steak.
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I could see metal to partially be used as a substitue for supplies during repair but with a terrible ratio. Something around replacing half the supplies required by ten times as much metal. Then you are replacing an expensive ressource by a cheap one at the cost of cargo space.
I think Tarti's idea is a best approach if something like that was going to be implemented. But being honest, I don't see a need for this. The current system is fine, especially that we practically ALWAYS get some supplies while salvaging. So I don't see a need to dabble in it to allow metal to work as substitute when we're salvaging supplies along with the metal itself. And easy explanation why, is that derelicts already provide us with spare parts & metal - aka supplies. The leftover metal is of the type that's hard to use by the fleet welders & stuff.
The idea isn't bad in itself, but right now it sounds more like an unnecessary complication.
As for metal itself, you can turn a hefty profit even without procurement missions if you know which planets/stations pay well for it. Like 40 or 50 a piece at Chicomoztoc in Aztlan system. I used to dump it on bm but not bothering anymore since usually difference is minuscule - while it always contributes to some trading rep.
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personally i think it would be an interesting mechanic, but it could instead of being used as a main function of metal plates, instead be used as a last resort by the crew. so say your crew runs out of supplies. they then start to cannibalize the cargo holds contents to fill in the gaps that makes, so to keep CR up etc they would start to eat your metal, food, etc. albeit at an quick rate until you can get proper supplies. though not so quick as 10 to one, thats just silly. i would say 200% of your supply consumption value, obviously not affected by skill modifiers.
Additionally you could limit the max CR a ship could recieve my saying, you can only get 10% CR per item the fleet can consume from storage. So only one type of commodity say metal you would only be able to get 10% CR per ship this way. But if you had metal and food then you could get up to 20%CR. I would also limit the types of cargo that can be consum d for CR to stuff that can make some logical sense. Like metal, food, volatiles, luxury goods. Organics. Harvested and cloned organs. (Though obviously those last 3 would be pretty low on what most people would want to eat, in an emergency faced with death, we would likely eat it. ) I would further limit max CR with this method of emergency rationing to 50%CR max.
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I rather like how simple the system is now, though. There are a lot of things in this game that are already wicked complicated and take a long time to fully understand. Why add more rules and edge cases shenanigans?
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Personally I don't always have the capacity or cash to fly around 100% certain that I won't run out of supplies before I get back to civilized space with the credits to buy more supplies. And as such if my hold has food and other commodities in it that in theory could be cannibalized for supplies then it makes me quite angry and somewhat yelling at my digital crew to "eat the food you fools, and use the metal to patch micro meteor hits." Before they all just blow up from 0CR.
I think it could certainly add a balance to how much you want to spend on supplies for your expeditions, vs what supplies you think you can find and the cargo you will find.
Kind of "firefly" like, out on the raggedy edge with no money to make those repairs properly, but you use what you got, and what you can to make it work.
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I would like the ability to partially offset supply costs with other commodities. Burn metal to repair armor for less supplies; burn food to use less supplies for maintenance; burn machinery to restore CR with less supplies, something like that. Inefficient with cargo space, not very efficient with money but maybe sometimes worth it if you can find these things for cheap.
And why? Because it's good when stuff has uses other than being vendor trash, and because when there are survival mechanics there also need to be extra options to improve your chances when things go wrong. (I recently played The Long Dark and decided it's crap when I died of thirst with a fire, a metal container and snow all available, because there was no ability to melt snow for water. Hence this thought. Running out of supplies in Starsector with a hold full of stuff is not quite as egregious, but it's the same principle.)
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Kind of "firefly" like, out on the raggedy edge with no money to make those repairs properly, but you use what you got, and what you can to make it work.
But then you watch that one episode where they didn't have that tiny little part they needed and their entire ship craps out on them. All I'm saying is that I feel that keeping it simple is probably the way to go.
to be extra options to improve your chances when things go wrong.
Like a distress beacon?
no ability to melt snow for water.
A bit off topic, but how long has it been since you've played that? Melting snow to get water is one of the easiest ways to get water.
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Sometimes logic needs to be stretched a bit. Otherwise we start needed to buy bread and soap for our crew, and nobody wants to start playing Oregon Trail in space. We repair ships with missile parts, eat armor plating, and reload guns with steak.
Streteched a bit, maybe. Although the more correct term would be "simplified".
But not thrown out of the window.
Repairs should never be free.
Running a war fleet should be difficult. There's a reason only billionares ride in big jachts (the fuel and maintainance on some of these is redicolous)
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more complexity does not means more depth.
its possible to implement 99 different items used for ship maintenance and repair and force player to fly around sector searching for parts he need, sadly, this unfun and very boring.
especially if you unable to find that part ?42 anywhere and can't do anything about it.
think about 3d printer that uses unified ceramo-plastic-metal alloy to forge all things ship may need, that nanoforge 3d printer can use only special blend and nothing else.
just image 10 blends of fuel and ships running only on very specific blend that cannot be replaced by anything.
no nukefuel105 and your medusa can't enter hyperspace.