Fractal Softworks Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

News:

Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

Author Topic: Ability to "Mothball and Abandon" a ship from your fleet  (Read 2952 times)

AxleMC131

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1722
  • Amateur World-Builder
    • View Profile
Ability to "Mothball and Abandon" a ship from your fleet
« on: January 12, 2018, 01:07:10 PM »

Ideally this would be an option alongside Mothball/Scuttle/Refit/etc. in the fleet screen, and would result in the ship being dumped from your fleet but appearing in the campaign map as a derelict. This would be useful for situations where you recover a cool ship on a salvage run, but then discover you don't have the fuel to get it home... But you don't want to scuttle it! So you could "abandon" the ship in the sector and return for it later, recovering it then in much the same way as you would recover a derelict.

If you wanted to be really in-depth, you could even go so far as to allow the player to abandon ships while on the run from pirates, and potentially distract chasing fleets (in much the same way as they tell you to drop an item of clothing if you're being chased by a bear in order to distract it). But that would require some advanced AI and such, so I won't encourage that too hard. :P

But I would still like to see the ability to remove a ship from one's fleet while on the outer rim without completely destroying it.

Thoughts?
Logged

Wyvern

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 3786
    • View Profile
Re: Ability to "Mothball and Abandon" a ship from your fleet
« Reply #1 on: January 12, 2018, 01:35:46 PM »

I do remember, once, encountering a recoverable derelict Prometheus.  Usually when you find a derelict tanker, it has a significant amount of fuel on it, so I thought nothing of just adding the ship to my fleet.

...Turns out it had -no- fuel on it, and I had to scrap the thing.  Would've been nice if the UI had given me the information beforehand, so I could have just left it there and come back for it later.
Logged
Wyvern is 100% correct about the math.

TheEndstoneGolem

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 53
    • View Profile
Re: Ability to "Mothball and Abandon" a ship from your fleet
« Reply #2 on: January 19, 2018, 08:54:00 AM »

Yeah I think that this is definitely a good idea. However there'd be a few issues with it. It would essentially allow you to have an infinite ship store. That would be pretty cool, imagine choosing a procgen world and just dumping ships into it to create an asteroid belt made up of ships. What sort of penalties would this impose, e.g. do you have to spend supplies restoring them? or can they just be left as is with no penalties applied?

Definitely cool idea, and makes sense in terms of 'ships don't just disappear'.
Logged
Using an Astral with 6 Khopesh wings coz I'm that basic B)

TJJ

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1905
    • View Profile
Re: Ability to "Mothball and Abandon" a ship from your fleet
« Reply #3 on: January 19, 2018, 10:39:28 AM »

Abandoned hulls take (random) damage over time*, eventually disintegrating into debris fields.

*perhaps influenced by the terrain types nearby to where they've been abandoned.
Logged

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 23987
    • View Profile
Re: Ability to "Mothball and Abandon" a ship from your fleet
« Reply #4 on: January 19, 2018, 11:06:07 AM »

Just jumping in to say I really like this idea in general, just need a nice natural UI flow for it. Not all on board with a separate option for it in the fleet screen, but... hmm. Maybe have it be an option from the "scuttle" confirm dialog. Made a note.
Logged

AxleMC131

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1722
  • Amateur World-Builder
    • View Profile
Re: Ability to "Mothball and Abandon" a ship from your fleet
« Reply #5 on: January 19, 2018, 03:37:06 PM »

... Maybe have it be an option from the "scuttle" confirm dialog.

That would suffice. Overcluttering the UI is definitely something to avoid, but it'd still be a nice option to have.
Logged

Drokkath

  • Captain
  • ****
  • Posts: 281
  • Xenophilic Mutant Commando
    • View Profile
Re: Ability to "Mothball and Abandon" a ship from your fleet
« Reply #6 on: January 19, 2018, 07:57:53 PM »

Oh, so much yes from me. Despite me being rather a bit late to the topic it's nice to see already that it is being considered and even made a note of! :)

The reason I pitched in is because I have a habit of collecting all the loot from foes but I'm not that keen on completely destroying defeated ships lately, more fun to leave a faction wondering what the heck caused a brutal unprecedented show of overpower by one unknown hostile ship (me) and then get tracing/tracking/hunting fleets sent after me so I can have some more "diplomacy" discussions with them face to face. :D
Logged
For I dipt in to the future, far as my gazer eye could see; Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be.