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[Sy]

An alternative for tugs would be a hullmod that allows ships to burn less fuel by extending it, e.g. with organics. Such a "dirty burn" could increase sensor profile and maybe cap CR at some 50% or such. Would fit thematically.

i think with a significant max-CR penalty, the sensor penalty isn't even needed, and garbage balls already often have a bit worse sensor stats due to various d-mods.

i'm in favor of a hullmod that trades CR for fuel efficiency though. probably should have very low OP cost (so that installing it on combat ships isn't a big deal) and maybe reduce cargo capacity in turn (so that it's not a no-brainer for all non-combat ships).

could be explained as installing some cheap but large fuel compressor/converter/injector thingy into the cargo hold, creating higher thrust per unit of fuel, but putting additional strain on the ship's chassis, or producing more dangerous exhaust that slightly degrades exposed combat hardware (engines, weapons, armor, etc).

if it's unlocked by one of the garbage ball skills (rank 2?), i think the hullmod itself doesn't need to specifically treat d-ships different from undamaged ones.

[Gothars]

if it's unlocked by one of the garbage ball skills (rank 2?), i think the hullmod itself doesn't need to specifically treat d-ships different from undamaged ones.

The CR limit would be enough so you don't want it on your proper ships.

A cargo penalty seems unnecessary, low CR degrades a ships abilities to travel rough terrain, emergency burn and escape. That should be enough to make you think twice about putting it on your freighters.


On the other hand I'm very curious what Alex had in mind when he said he liked the tug idea, we don't know any specifics.
 

[Sy]

The CR limit would be enough so you don't want it on your proper ships.

how so? a CR penalty doesn't affect proper ships more than d-ships, it just fits better thematically with the latter. i wouldn't put it on my flagship or any that already often get low on CR, like through high deployment CR cost or very low recovery rate. but again these things are independent of whether the ship also happens to have some d-mods.

A cargo penalty seems unnecessary, low CR degrades a ships abilities to travel rough terrain, emergency burn and escape. That should be enough to make you think twice about putting it on your freighters.

tbh, i rarely ever use EB anymore, now that i have SB. i think i used it like a total of ~5 times in the several dozens of hours i've played 0.8a.

On the other hand I'm very curious what Alex had in mind when he said he liked the tug idea, we don't know any specifics.

yup!

[Megas]

tbh, i rarely ever use EB anymore, now that i have SB. i think i used it like a total of ~5 times in the several dozens of hours i've played 0.8a.

The only time I use EB now is when I accidently hit 4 instead of 5 and activate EB instead of SB by mistake.  EB is obsolete for the player.

[Sy]

i wouldn't call it "obsolete", but it now is what it says it is: Emergency Burn. not Better Play It Safe Burn or Pursuit Burn. ^^

i use it when i really need additional speed right now, which is almost exclusively in emergency situations that pop up without much prior warning (or because i missed the warning..) and leave no room for engaging SB or dealing with it in some other way.

to be clear, i feel this is a good thing. but it means anything related to EB doesn't have nearly as big an impact on gameplay/balance anymore as it would've had before we got SB.

[Megas]

EB does not provide more speed when I am already in SB nearly all of the time.  For me, EB would slow my fleet down and burn fuel.  If I had to use EB much, I probably wound abandon the clunkers and the other burn 7 ships because they are too slow on the map.

[Flying Birdy]

Another thing I found with a garbage-ball fleet is how the fleet engages with the AI piloting garbge ships. There are very real stacking efficiency penalties that play out in an actual battle, where the AI's engagement width is a lot lower than it should be. More often than not, the AI will engage 1 v 1, even though the enemy fleet is outnumbered maybe 3:1 or 4:1. I've observed my lasher ball to frequently engage in a triangle, where one ship goes first, and two ships remain behind it. This is especially true when my AI is piloting ships against enemy ships that outclass it. A lot of this leads to the garbage fleet becoming less and less effective as its size increases.

One other way I've thought about to make garbage hulls more effective is to buff ships that are more designed to be garbage hulls (maneuverable and houses nothing but missles). The kite is not meant for garbge balls; needs a buff changing its maneuver jets with flairs, no civiling hull, and burn 10. Same thing with the buffalo 2, but only remove its civvy hull. This way, I can just throw a much of these garbage missles balls at my enemy, and watch the magic happen.

[Megas]

The thing I like clunkers most is they are disposable.  If I lose a pristine ship with good weapons, it is a game reload moment.  If I lose a common clunker with nothing but common weapons, I shrug and continue the game.

Without commission for easy ship access and without Surveying 3 for easy money, clunkers being common is nice.  Do not get me wrong, I prefer to use pristine ships, but that is generally not an option for my current character.

[Embercloud]

Make a hull-mod that saves crew when a ship is destroyed, with percentage saved scaling for ship size. This way d-mod cruiser losses are not as severe and d-mod cruisers become actually useful and viable.

Suggestion:  Expand Recovery Shuttles hullmod to apply to all ship losses, not just fighter losses.

I thought about that as well, would be great to see. There is always the blast doors hullmod, however

[Deshara]

You know, I'm really liking the idea of using Tugs to reduce fuel use. Going to look into that.

And yeah, fuel cost of "garbage ball" fleets (as they're affectionately known internally) are definitely at odds with the rest of industry encouraging exploration, which did come up in testing as well, but no obvious/clean solution presented itself. Using tugs here just might be that.

Convoy tugs? Makes sense, doesn't need to be mutually exclusive with speed-boosting tugs (maybe combinable in a fleet setting for one willing to run a shuttle for two or more tugs, plus the supplies for three ships.

OH and you could make civilian hullmods double the benefits of tugs

[Giblodyte]

The main problem for me was just the insane cost of removing the D-mods. It means either you just ignore ship salvage entirely, you fly around with crappy ships that cost more in dead crew/supplies/fuel than their utility could ever justify or you pay an extraordinary amount of money in the late game to restore a rare ship. It would be good if there was a more viable option whereby you could actually incorporate a fully restored hull into your fleet in an economic way. If restoration were 75 - 80% of the cost of a new one you'd still have to pay for all the supplies to bring up the CR and there would be some economic advantage to investing in those skills in order to build up your fleet.

It's hard to see at what point in the game it's practical in the current form except for very late when you want cool ships you can't buy from hostile factions. You can buy a new hammerhead straight up as soon as the campaign starts so rolling with a bunch of junk frigates is still probably going to be less efficient even if you disregard skill investment.

[nomadic_leader]

Recovering a d-hull ship interrupts whatever you were doing. You have to drop everything and go back to the nearest market (which sucks if you're exploring/etc) and stock up on crew and supplies or put it into storage, because mothballing means you can't do various burn things.

Basically salvage is so easy that you can salvage tonnes of ships faster than you salvage crew for them. So either salvage has to be nerfed, or battles need to drop crew cryo pods (do they at all?) Or mothball mechanics need to be changed a bit.

[Sy]

So either salvage has to be nerfed, or battles need to drop crew cryo pods (do they at all?) Or mothball mechanics need to be changed a bit.

or you just get yourself a troop/passenger transport or two and keep a bunch of extra crew on hand. i actually quite like that this gives me a reason to use those ships, especially now that marines aren't used for boarding anymore.

i often keep a few recovered ships around in my fleet for quite a while, not mothballed but not outfitted for combat either. i only head back to my home base specifically to store/outfit recovered ships if i have a large number or a special one that i wanna make part of my combat fleet asap.

[Vind]

Repairing D-hull is like disassemble ship to pieces and assemble it again with new parts - it is must be more expensive than building new one. But additional penalty on each D-mod is too high.Also salvaging engines/sensors/armor and other components from corresponding ships so you can remove associated D-mod with reduced cost would be cool.

[Giblodyte]

Repairing D-hull is like disassemble ship to pieces and assemble it again with new parts - it is must be more expensive than building new one. But additional penalty on each D-mod is too high.Also salvaging engines/sensors/armor and other components from corresponding ships so you can remove associated D-mod with reduced cost would be cool.

Yeah this is a good idea, Some D-Mods are much more ship breaking than others. I could live with glitched sensor array and structural damage much easier than faulty power grid, degraded engines or destroyed weapon mounts. Selectively removing those at say 1/3 of ship price would be great.