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[Vundaex]

It has occurred to me multiple times that it was wasteful to squander supplies on a ship I was going to mothball anyway.
It's especially frustrating when trying to recover a large ship that requires a lot of supplies, and I think it makes sense to give players the option to either recover or mothball.

[DirectionsToL3Please]

Unless you have Field Repairs, you recover derelicts at very low hull/armor/CR anyway, and pay the shown recovery price over time as you repair it.  If, immediately upon recovering your derelict, you mothball it, then you don't pay that price until you're ready to pull it out of mothballs. It's just one click; as soon you exit the recovery screen, press F to get to your fleet screen, then click Mothball on your new ship.

[CrashToDesktop]

Just to add on to what was said above, Field Repairs means derelicts/post-battle recoveries come in at 20-40% CR for free, so you're not paying for it there either.

[Vundaex]

Imagine the situation very early in the game when supplies are scarce and someone would like to recover a large derelict ship. The cost isn't low and spending resources there can undermine exploration.
When recovering a ship, players have to use supplies and crew immediately to make it part of their fleet, then it will slowly use up supplies to regain CR. There is an upfront cost as you said, does mothballing allow players to recover any supplies? I haven't noticed it.

[Vanshilar]

When recovering a ship, players have to use supplies and crew immediately to make it part of their fleet, then it will slowly use up supplies to regain CR.

Actually, it takes no supplies at all to make a ship part of the fleet. If you look at your supplies right before and right after you recover a ship, you'll see that it doesn't change.

What the screen is showing you is how much supplies you'll need over time to restore the ship back to full CR. But that's not taken immediately, but over the ship's natural CR recovery rate.

So if you recover a ship, then immediately go to the fleet screen and mothball it, it won't use up any of your supplies.

[Wyvern]

So if you recover a ship, then immediately go to the fleet screen and mothball it, it won't use up any of your supplies.

False. It won't use up very much of your supplies, but - especially if it's a large ship or if you recovered several hulls after a battle - it will still use up some. No matter how fast your reflexes, you can't get to the fleet screen to mothball things without some time passing.

...Honestly, I'd be okay if the game just automatically put you in the fleet screen after you recover a ship. For the people who don't want to mothball the recovered ship, that's one extra hit of escape; not a big deal. For the people who do want to mothball the ship without unneeded supply expenditures, they'd actually be able to do that.

[Vanshilar]

False. It won't use up very much of your supplies, but - especially if it's a large ship or if you recovered several hulls after a battle - it will still use up some. No matter how fast your reflexes, you can't get to the fleet screen to mothball things without some time passing.

In the "settings" menu, if you check "Pause campaign after battles", then it'll automatically pause the campaign after a battle is over. In which case, since it pauses immediately, exactly zero supplies will be consumed. So if this is a concern, then that setting just needs to be enabled.

[Vundaex]

Then the UI can be considered misleading. To recover a ship, crew and supplies are needed. A crew resource has an immediate effect, and I thought the same was true of supplies because of the behavior of the crew resource.
Anyhow, thanks for pointing that out, I can now recover all of the ships I can.

[Vanshilar]

Then the UI can be considered misleading. To recover a ship, crew and supplies are needed. A crew resource has an immediate effect, and I thought the same was true of supplies because of the behavior of the crew resource.

Yes I very much agree with this. I thought the same thing (that I won't have enough supplies to cover recovery) when I first started playing, until I compared the actual supplies I had before and after combat and realized how it actually worked.

What makes it more confusing is that the ship recovery by necessity comes before the loot screen (since ships not recovered are what's used to determine your loot), so the ship recovery screen comes right before you get a bunch of supplies to help cover that recovery. So the player might think he can't afford it, when in fact he'll be getting a bunch of supplies the very next screen that may make up for it.

Unfortunately, I don't know how to make it clearer. After all, the text does say "(over time)" for the supplies needed for recovery. So it does explain it a bit. So it's one of those things where the game does say it, but it's something which the player has to figure out how it actually works.