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Author Topic: Tug functionality  (Read 4530 times)

Kwbr

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Tug functionality
« on: May 31, 2016, 09:17:31 PM »

I did a brief search for anyone who had similar suggestions and didn't find much, so apologies in advance if I'm repeating anyone.

After my first real full playthrough of Nexerelin I found myself with almost 1/3rd of the default maximum ship count taken up by tugs, and while that's largely to me being stubborn and refusing to drop below burn speed 9, I find it mildly displeasing that it's required to have a number of these ships for larger fleets when they're entirely useless outside of their single purpose, and that being one that's entirely forgettable once you purchase a tug.

The two suggestions I have are fairly similar and give them a bit of application in combat;
  • Tugs could grab disabled friendly ships for 100% guaranteed recovery, allowing you to have more control over losing some of your more precious ships
  • They could also be tasked with retrieving disabled hostile ships for a 100% boarding chance, which would be useful for nabbing any sort of specialty or rare ship that might've caught your eye.

These alone would probably be fairly overpowered as you could capture or recover just about any disabled ship on the field given enough tugs, so a few balancing possibilities would be to have tugs recovering ships have a huge CR cost, or just have a hard limit on the number of ships you can recover with tugs. Another balancing factor could be that larger disabled ships require more tugs to move at reasonable speeds, not to mention putting a tug / several tugs out in combat is a huge risk considering how flimsy they are, recovery operations would have to be well defended.

The main drawbacks I feel this could have are that it would likely conflict with the system of capturing and recovering disabled ships currently in the game quite a lot, plus this could potentially remove the more punishing aspect of losing expensive or rare ships if you're equipped well enough to recover them. Just because a ship isn't fully destroyed doesn't necessarily mean it would be anything worth salvaging.



Also I've got an entirely unrelated question and not really a suggestion as it has to do with boarding during combat, but would implementing it as a basic command like all the other combat orders be a possibility? It'd probably take way too much tweaking to be viable but I thought I'd ask.
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Deshara

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Re: Tug functionality
« Reply #1 on: June 01, 2016, 12:20:35 AM »

I feel like this would have to be rolled into the far, far away boarding update
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Quote from: Deshara
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Megas

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Re: Tug functionality
« Reply #2 on: June 01, 2016, 05:21:47 AM »

Quote
I found myself with almost 1/3rd of the default maximum ship count taken up by tugs, and while that's largely to me being stubborn and refusing to drop below burn speed 9
That is good!  I consider anything below burn 9 unacceptably slow with the exception of an Atlas fleet (escorted by invincible battleship) to pick up loot from chain-battling in completely hostile systems with no base nearby (e.g., Eos Exodus for those enemies of the Ludd).  This is why Venture is useless; it needs a tug to keep up, and since carriers and fighters are useless in the endgame, it is more efficient to get two Buffalo for capacity or an Apogee for something that can haul and fight.

What is not so good is how many tugs are needed if player has multiple capitals or Ventures.  They eat your slots and fuel.  I need about three or four if I bring an Atlas fleet.

What is really not good is tugs are required for someone who wants a capital (battleship or Atlas) in their fleet.  At least Onslaught and Paragon have the power to make a tug worthwhile.  Burn speed is critical to catch some fleets (and evade fleets you do not want to fight).

As for the suggestions, they seem more appropriate for the Construction Rig.  Now that is a ship that is a drain on your fleet's resources, worse than useless.

Huge CR cost on a small non-combatant ship that never gets deployed in combat willingly is not much of a penalty.  All that does is spike supply consumption for a few days and it is done.

Even with the current 5% chance of capture, you are almost guaranteed to board something in endgame fights that involve forty or more enemy ships.
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Kwbr

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Re: Tug functionality
« Reply #3 on: June 01, 2016, 03:30:00 PM »

As for the suggestions, they seem more appropriate for the Construction Rig.  Now that is a ship that is a drain on your fleet's resources, worse than useless.
I've never even actually used the construction ship so I see how that would make more sense if it's truly that useless. The reason I figured it would work for the tug is because towing stuff is their entire purpose.

Huge CR cost on a small non-combatant ship that never gets deployed in combat willingly is not much of a penalty.  All that does is spike supply consumption for a few days and it is done.
Yeah I guess I hadn't thought about it enough. I'm not sure what else could be used, there'd have to be some limiting factor though.
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Goumindong

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Re: Tug functionality
« Reply #4 on: June 03, 2016, 06:59:25 PM »

This is basically the idea i had for industry.

Ships when they're destroyed become (D) variants with zero armor/CR/hull.

You can haul hulls back to your shipyard with tugs (and maybe have to fight over salvage fields!) and then spend time/resources to remove the bad hull mods (and maybe add more) to turn the ship back into the normal variant. Don't want to take the time to repair the mods you can just repair the armor to use the (D) variant.

Ships too big your your yard/skills means you can't easily make them whole, but you can still use them.

There is a trade off between using a ship now and putting hull mods on it.

It provides the structure that the setting suggests powers the ship economy.
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