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[solardawning]

The 'Safeguard' ships are unique- with only one chance to acquire them during the game.
The Onslaught and Legion have 'Reinforced Bulkheads', ensuring they're recoverable by the player, but the other ships don't- leaving it up to a roll of the dice.

In practice, I'm finding that I'm saving before this battle... and then replaying it over and over until I have a 'satisfactory' amount of them recoverable. I'm seeing others on the Discord chatter about having the same habits.

Any time the player is presented with a special, unique thing that can only be acquired at one point in the game, but the acquisition is left up to chance (as recovery after combat is here), the game mechanics encourage the player to do something non-intuitive and unfun- namely, reload and replay the same battle over and over until they get 'lucky' enough and are satisfied.

I'd ask you to consider adding 'Reinforced Bulkheads' to the loadouts of each of these ships, so that players are likely to have all of them available without having to re-play the battle numerous times.

Thank you for your consideration!

[Megas]

The one time I played that battle, Eagle did not drop, and I thought "Nope! Reload and replay that one!" except I wanted to see what colony item or special blueprint they were guarding.  Nope! It was the dumb planetkiller I could not store.  After that, I have deferred that battle until I decide how to dispose of the planetkiller (since taking it home to mount as a trophy is not an option).

[Ruddygreat]

The Onslaught and Legion have 'Reinforced Bulkheads', ensuring they're recoverable by the player, but the other ships don't- leaving it up to a roll of the dice.

(note that they're recoverable due to a special tag that marks them as always recoverable, not RBH)

[SpaceDrake]

Which, relatedly, due to the extremely unique nature of all these ships, I'm half tempted to say that at least one ship of each class in this fleet should have that tag - it'd guarantee the player gets even more loot, yes, but as it is people will save-scum it anyway, so it's fairly moot.

[Megas]

Which, relatedly, due to the extremely unique nature of all these ships, I'm half tempted to say that at least one ship of each class in this fleet should have that tag - it'd guarantee the player gets even more loot, yes, but as it is people will save-scum it anyway, so it's fairly moot.

The alternative is to always block recovery as done for the Guardian.

But access of unique and powerful loot being totally up to chance is the classic case of scumming until everything that can drop will if the player scums often and long enough.

[kenwth81]

Which, relatedly, due to the extremely unique nature of all these ships, I'm half tempted to say that at least one ship of each class in this fleet should have that tag - it'd guarantee the player gets even more loot, yes, but as it is people will save-scum it anyway, so it's fairly moot.

The alternative is to always block recovery as done for the Guardian.

But access of unique and powerful loot being totally up to chance is the classic case of scumming until everything that can drop will if the player scums often and long enough.

They should be nerfed to follow the AI ship rules rather than breaking and bending those rules. These ships are unbalanced as these extra ships aren't treated as your AI fleet. Recoverable regardless whether you have the AI skill. Being extremely controversial.

[Ruddygreat]

I think they're perfectly fine staying as they are vis-a-vis recoverability / auto ship point contribution, they're probably the coolest thing I've ever seen in the game (mods included).
they're in the same category as the zigg, they're something cool and strong that you can just go get if you want them, but if you don't you can simply ignore them.

and re: consistency, honestly I think they're fine as well. Sure you can savescum to reroll the ships, but like, why? with the vaguely consistent salvage outcomes you'll be at best re-rolling your chances for one, maybe 2 ships which is fine imo, waste your own time if you want to.

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

I wouldn't mind if one of each type was guaranteed to be salvaged, purely for completionist reasons(gotta catch them all)

[Megas]

I wouldn't mind if one of each type was guaranteed to be salvaged, purely for completionist reasons(gotta catch them all)

My thinking too.  This is the main reason why I get Automated Ships from Tech 5 to collect (and casually use) all the Remnant and Derelict ships even when it does not help my fleet enough to justify the skill point investment.  "I just got to have 'em!"

[BigBrainEnergy]

Of all the power-ups the player could get, I was not expecting them to add free automated ships... much less XIV-battlegroup ships. The consequences of this are huge because it breaks officer limits without any skill point investment. It's cool, but I'm not sure how to feel about it since this does mean that you often must use these ships if you care about achieving your fleet's maximum potential.

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

Of all the power-ups the player could get, I was not expecting them to add free automated ships... much less XIV-battlegroup ships. The consequences of this are huge because it breaks officer limits without any skill point investment.

Er, these are still Automated Ships so they require the tech capstone, no? And then count towards the 120 effective core ship DP limit as usual, so you can field one Beta AI Onslaught with no penalties(actually with plenty of penalties from all the unremovable D-mods)

[Megas]

The special automated XIV ships do not require Automated Ships, and they do not count toward the limit.  They are better than normal XIV ships with human officers if you have alpha cores to spare.

Because of this and the once-only nature (similar to Omega bounty) of that encounter, players have every reason to scum that fight until they have at least one of every type.  (I want Onslaught, Legion, Dominator, and Eagle at least.)

[Amoebka]

Taskguard ships are much worse than people here seem to assume. Unless you have derelict ops, and aren't using it to cheese with some monofleet, they aren't even worth using over human mercs.

3 s-mods look nice, but in practice everyone who powergames has BotB already, so this is a loss in flexibility, rather than an increase in power ceiling. The s-mods are also slightly suboptimal, so it is indeed a loss in power ceiling.

Alpha core has 8 elite skills, while human mercs have 6 levels and 2 elite skills. This might seem like a dealbreaker, but consider the d-mods. Not only are taskguard ships guaranteed to have at least 3 d-mods at all times, those initial d-mods aren't random. They are handpicked to be really bad for the ships they are on, Alex was pretty evil here. And since the ships can't be restored, unless you savescum, they will eventually have full 5 d-mods.

Are the 7th and 8th best officer skills and some elite effects worth 3 really bad d-mods and up to 2 random ones? Hell no they aren't.

[Megas]

They cannot be restored?  That changes things.  I did not look at the d-mods (just the number of them on the fleet screen), and thought they were randomly chosen like any other four or five d-mod derelict (Derelicts or the rare ghost that manifest as d-mod Remnants) and could be removed like other ships.  I just recovered them and quickly threw them in Sentinel's orbital station because my fleet did not have enough fuel for the return trip with more ships, while I became more concerned with how to remove the planetkiller from my fleet's cargo when I discovered the bomb was sticky like a cursed item and could not drop or store it (and I did not want to give it away to a faction other than my own).

[BaBosa]

Taskguard ships are much worse than people here seem to assume. Unless you have derelict ops, and aren't using it to cheese with some monofleet, they aren't even worth using over human mercs.

3 s-mods look nice, but in practice everyone who powergames has BotB already, so this is a loss in flexibility, rather than an increase in power ceiling. The s-mods are also slightly suboptimal, so it is indeed a loss in power ceiling.

Alpha core has 8 elite skills, while human mercs have 6 levels and 2 elite skills. This might seem like a dealbreaker, but consider the d-mods. Not only are taskguard ships guaranteed to have at least 3 d-mods at all times, those initial d-mods aren't random. They are handpicked to be really bad for the ships they are on, Alex was pretty evil here. And since the ships can't be restored, unless you savescum, they will eventually have full 5 d-mods.

Are the 7th and 8th best officer skills and some elite effects worth 3 really bad d-mods and up to 2 random ones? Hell no they aren't.

You don't get to pick merc skills though and they cost SP so alpha cores are still significantly better. The ships are still really good though not amazing especially if they don't fit your fleet.