So, first off, this is an amalgamation of a couple of posts I've seen around the forum (some with their own dedicated threads, others just briefly mentioned on a blog post thread) as well as ideas of my own. People whose ideas I'm using, you know who you are.
Alright, with the series of campaign updates rolling along, I feel like the next step should be to make some changes to the salvage mechanic as a whole (which includes the loot you get at the end of the battle, the ships that become boardable, and everything intertwined with those). I guess I should start at the very beginning of this: ship destruction. I'll be making a couple of real-life connections to this issue, so turn away if you don't like that kind of thing.
So, most of the time when ships and tanks are sunk or knocked out, the base structure itself remains operational. Concerning tanks - most tanks are abandoned when the hull gets penetrated a single time and causes catastrophic damage to the crew (which is reasonable), and thereby causes the tank to be combat-ineffective by lack of crew. Concerning ships - most of the time, the only reason ships are abandoned and left to sink are when there have been holes blasted through the hull underneath the waterline and sinks the ship that way. Very few times in both cases does the tank or ship blow up in a spectacular way. Hits to the magazine are usually the case where this happens. In Starsector, every disabled ship, big or small, goes off with a tremendous boom when the hull has been ground down to 0. My suggestion for this is to make ships become "combat-ineffective" once a couple of criteria have been meet.
SHIP DESTRUCTION:"Combat-Ineffective" is the name of the game here, a new status for ships that have taken too much of a beating in battle. Now, the criteria for combat-ineffectiveness can be broken down into three separate categories as follows: Engine Damage, Weapon Damage, and Crew Loss. At least two of these criteria must be meet before the ship becomes combat-ineffecitve. The first two relate to damage to specific areas of the ship - the first being engines, the second being the weapons. EMP damage is not taken into account, only raw damage done from HE, Kinetic, Energy, or Fragmentation. Both use somewhat-hidden numbers to determine when that criteria has been meet, but will be translated to the player via combat effects on the left-hand side of the screen (where things like the Sensor Bouy with +10% damage is shown). If you hit the engines enough times, an effect will show up on the left side of the screen saying "Heavily Damaged Engines" with a hit to mobility and top speed, maybe 15% (number subject to change). If you've gotten your weapons hit a few too many times, a "Heavily Damage Weapon Mounts" debuff will appear and have a penalty to the recoil of weapons, maybe +15% increase weapon recoil (number and effect subject to change). Loss of too much crew will have an overall -10% hit to all weapons and maneuverability with "Insufficient Crew" debuff (numbers subject to change). Crew loss is a bit special compared to the other two - Fragmentation damage done against the hull has a massive bonus against it (since bits of metal and spall flying at supersonic speed and bouncing around in metal boxes tends to shred people). Once a ship becomes "combat-ineffective", all control of the ship will be lost (for both the AI and the player), no engines, shields, or weapons will be active. If there are any ambient lights on the ship, those will go out. The ship will appear as a grey circle on the combat map, and orders cannot be given to it.
Once a single one of these debuffs appears, the AI will report it to you in the top-left corner of the screen where the regular combat messages appear, with the same audible alert message as CR loss. Same goes if two criteria are met and the ship becomes combat ineffective. Vanilla ship destruction mechanics are still in here, not to be forgotten - if the hull of the ship reaches 0 at any point in the battle, then the ship's reactor will have taken too much damage, and the standard explosion will take place.
BOARDING:Onto the boarding mechanics - they will stay mostly the same, with the exception of the ship's condition after battle and how difficult the boarding is. The first step is to determine the victor of the battle.
All of your ships made combat-ineffective during the battle will be recovered if you win the battle (that's the beauty of this mechanic - they've only been made combat-ineffecitve, and thus can be recovered without much effort, and also have a much lower tendency to blow up). You will also get the option to board or destroy any combat-ineffective enemy ships. The standard procedure with destroyed ships (ships that have exploded) will take place here as well, with the regular small chance of boarding enemy ones or recovering your own. If you loose the battle, then the enemy will have the option to board your own combat-ineffective ships, as per usual. Once you've found a combat-ineffective enemy ship, the standard options are still there - board, blow it up, or let it go. However, some extra information is given - the two criteria that the ship meet when it was made combat ineffective. The two latter options function the same, but the boarding mechanic is vastly different.
When boarding, you will have to take into account what parts of the ship have been knocked and double-check the single other, still-effective aspect of the ship. If the ship's engines and weapons have been taken out, then it won't be going anywhere soon, but still has a sizable amount of crew milling about inside willing to defend it to the death (and maybe even counter-board your own ship and take it out from under you). This might make an assault team going through space a viable option, to prevent the enemy crew from counter-boarding your own ship, but there will be casualties. If the ship's weapons and crew have been knocked out, direct docking is fine, but if you don't take the ship fast enough, the enemy crew can repair the engines and escape with your marines and crew still on it - a slight problem, depending on how many crew you invested into boarding it. If the engines and crew have been knocked out, then docking might not be a good idea - the enemy ship's weapons can wreck havoc on your own ship, possibly destroying it during the boarding process and loosing everything you invested, possibly including the ship you were trying to board. It's a game of rock-paper-scissor that, if not played correctly, can result in some considerable losses. However, this system is much more predicable than the current system of boarding that is a complete game of dice.
Once (if) you take the ship, the condition that the ship was in when it was made ineffective will determine the shape it's in when you bring it into your own fleet. A ship captured with the crew and engine knocked out will have all the weapons mounted on it when it was in battle, but the engines will have some massive debuffs in burn speed until repaired. Weapons and engines knocked out (the easiest way of making a ship boardable) will have no weapons mounted when captured and have the same engine debuff. Ships captured with crew and weapons knocked out will have no weapons, but have a functioning engine with normal burn speed. In all cases, the ship will be in a 0-CR state with whatever hull left by the end of the battle (damage is kept track of even after the ship is made combat ineffective) and must be repaired quickly. Now, I've given this next part some thought - the engine debuff is rated as a removable hull mod (costs 0 OP and can't be put on a ship normally by a player). However, if you choose to remove this hull mod while in space and the ship is at low CR, the impacts will be obvious - with the next update, removing hull mods while in space gives a massive CR hit. If you remove that while in space, there's a very good chance that the ship in question will suffer an accident while in space and destroy itself. So, do you want to suffer the lowered burn speed for a while until you get to a space port to remove it (or repair the ship to a high enough degree that you can safely remove the hull mod) or take a chance to escape with the ship at top burn speed but have a chance of blowing up the ship via accident?
SALVAGE:Once the boarding is over, the salvage operation begins. The salvage operation is changed greatly - there are two options for salvage, a "Quick" and a "Thorough". Quick is the current system - the crew scoops up any leftovers strewn across the battlefield and gets back to their own ships ASAP. Thorough is different - choosing this option, all destroyed ships (blown up) can be recovered as hulks and much more loot is recovered (as the crew searches all the nooks ans crannies of the destroyed ships), but this process takes time on the campaign map, maybe an in-game day. You will not be given any option to pick up loot until the operation completes on the campaign map. However, you can interrupt the salvage operation at any time for no return, but can let you escape if you get into a tight situation. If you do interrupt a Thorough salvage operation, then you will only be awarded the credits from a Quick salvage operation, no loot pick up will be available.
The new mechanic here are hulks - hulks are ships beyond recovery that can be sold for scrap at an orbital station with the right market condition - Shipbreaking Center (which is currently in Starsector at the Agreus port in the Arcadia system). There they can be sold for any number of resources, be it credits or commodities depending on what fits the game better. These destroyed hulks will appear as ships in your fleet, but will take up no logistics or crew (in terms of code needed, they're just skins of ships with no weapon slots, no crew needed, and 0 OP - a bit like the D-variants of ships, just even worse). However, since they have no crew or engines, they must be towed. All ships can tow a hulk at no negative modifier to it in combat or CR, but unless it's got the Monofillament Tow Cable hull mod, it will suffer a burn speed penalty (numbers to be decided). The game should automatically default towing hulks to the fastest ship in the fleet, with the Monofillament Tow Cable and maximum burn speed taken into account for best logistics (and take a lot of numbers off of the player's shoulders).
This system of salvage is meant to mesh in nicely with the eventual kind of dystopian view that Starsector is supposed to have - ships are rare and expensive, and as are the autofac blueprints that make then, and this every single part of it is saved or reused in any way possible.
Other Possibilities:Only just got to adding this bit once I finally woke up and re-organized my brain about this. With these new features, a variety of other possibilities involving hull mods and character skills can modify the numbers greatly. I'll give one example of each as not to ruin any creative processes too much.
The "Reinforced Bulkheads" hull mod might also reduce the fragmentation damage bonus by 50% (bringing it in line with the other ways to kill off the crew), due to installed spall liners. For characters skills, the "Advanced Tactics" skill under the "Leadership" aptitude could increase the speed of a Thorough salvage operation by some percent per level.
That pretty much concludes my suggestion list. If you've been one of the brave souls to read the entire thing, bravo my friend. You deserve a cookie and a pat on the back.
Maybe when something happens (although I do feel partly responsible for slow progress, mentally at least. Whenever I'm here, progress is good. When I'm gone, it slows down), I'll return.
. Been making a few weapons, notably the M60.
