Game-wise, what do you call early-game? Let's say you raid for that blueprint or this nanoforge, what are you going to do with it without colony? By the time I get a colony in the current version (which is kinda the middle-game), I've already make many salvage runs, get a bunch of blueprint and no longer need to make small-scale raid. Do you have in mind to develop other ways to play than colony-oriented?
I mean, if it's worth 300k or some such, you could sell it! As far as "early game", it's pretty vague, but a very rough definition might be before you have a cruiser or a colony (if you were going for one asap and not holding off).
Edit: to clarify, what I really mean by it in the context of raids is that it could be one of the first things you start spending the credits you've earned on, as opposed to more combat ships.
Another point, for the moment, most of commodities (organics, ore, food, base metal) are worth less the fuel needed to go to right place to sell them. Do you plan to make commodities more "interesting" to salvage/raid in the future?
One of the things I mentioned here - trade is adjusted so these are easier to sell for a profit. I.E. the "excess" and "deficit" numbers, in cargo units, are generally higher, especially for the cheaper bulk goods.
I also actually added some salvage specials where you get a *lot* of bulk stuff - say, over 10,000 Ore, or some such. Given that it's possible to sell it, encountering this kind of thing means it might be worth it to play around it - get some real freight capacity temporarily, put the pods in a stable orbit, that sort of thing.
I have to ask: can we make a hullmod increase marine survival rates? Something like: 'Medical Facilities: this ship has dedicated facilities for taking care of battle casualties. Increases fleet-level crew survival rates in battle and marine survival rates from raids by 3/4/5/6%, depending on hull size.'
It should be doable - the stat is a dynamic fleet stat, so you'd probably need to do somethin similar to how the salvage gantry hullmod works, with an additional step of a script (or a listener, rather) collating this data and updating the stat in its ColonyInteractionListener.reportPlayerOpenedMarket() method.
Any plans for Heavy Armaments consumption to boost Marine effectiveness?
Thought about it; didn't get anywhere satisfying; it all (that is, whatever I was able to come up with) seemed to just be stuff with a mathematically-correct solution. Still mulling it over on the backburner.
More ships or even strikecraft with Ground Support Package?
Maybe!
How well would this Crew Hullmods suggestion work as a crew veterency equivalent? Made a change to the suggestion today: Crew hullmods do not do anything while fleet is crew understrength.
http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=17181.msg271063
Honestly, using hullmods for that sort of thing in the base game feels kind of sloppy to me.
An idea for crew experience. Maybe attaching it to an existing mechanic would make it easier to implement? The game already has stat bonuses for increased CR so just either increase the amount of those bonuses for better crew or reduce the CR threshold where you start getting the bonuses. Directly increasing the bonuses seems easiest to communicate to the player.
Ah, that's actually a really good idea, as far as the effect! I like that a lot. Still unsure about it due to the second reason, i.e. crew losses are not a thing that's as well regulated/balanced around as marine losses, but will definitely keep this in mind. As far as the effect, I think that's pretty much perfect.
Maybe I overlooked this, but how do marine losses impact the pooled experience? is it just percent survived * pooled experience?
I didn't mention it, but, yeah, that's exactly how it works. Which means marine losses *don't* impact the experience level.