This has been raised a number of times, as far back as 2018, but rather than necro those posts I thought I'd raise it as a request again.
https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=14837.0https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=23814.0With ship recovery mechanics, any ship that is eligible for recovery (either guaranteed due to the ship having the reinforced bulkhead and/or rugged construction hullmod, having an officer as the ship's captain, having an s-mod, or having the Hull Restoration character skill, or otherwise the RNG chance of the ship being recoverable anyway) shows up in the post-battle list of ships to be recovered.
However, UI limitations in the design of this window cap the list of ships to only 24 regular recovery (no story point needed) and 24 special recovery (story points needed). Any ships above this limit will not appear on the recovery window. Additionally, I haven't looked at the code to confirm this, but anecdotally I've noticed frigates tend to make the recovery list first, and capitals make this list last. This preference for smaller ships seems to fall in line with the mechanics of the Hull Restoration skill; low DP ships have a higher percent chance of being recoverable (90%) compared to high DP ships (75%).
Given the default fleet size in the settings file is 30 ships and the mechanics for which ships make the cut and which ships don't seem to favor smaller ships, this causes issues in the following instances:
- Losing your own ships designed around the Derelict Operations character skill. Players going this path expect to lose ships often, both to acquire D-Mods to lower the deployment cost of the ship for future battles, and because they are running junk ships expecting to beat the enemy with quantity over quality. This thus is an encouraged mechanic; lose your own ships. Particularly challenging battles may entail losing some or a good portion of your fleet. This means your good ships lost may be pushed off the recovery list, especially if you're facing off against a large fleet of ships with rugged construction, such as pirates with hounds & cerebus or explorarium fleets.
- Recovering good Explorarium ships. If you can individually isolate 2 sets of 25-ship Explorarium fleets that have 5 Ramparts and 20 junk destroyers/frigates each, you can acquire both sets of 5 Ramparts. If instead the two fleets attack together, you will likely find 24 junk destroyers and frigates in the salvage, with no option to recover the Ramparts. This is particularly bothersome in mods that focus on adding more Explorarium ships. Many of the Explorarium capitals and cruisers developed by mods can only really be found from accepting a contact bounty to eliminate a rogue Explorarium fleet, and that fleet will likely have 30 ships (fleet max), of which 1-3 are the prized capitals / cruisers...guess which ships do not make the recovery list, despite having rugged construction?
- Super-sized battles, particularly if you have the Hull Restoration skill. Super large battles may happen, either by adjusting the settings to change fleet sizes beyond 30 ships, or just by running into multiple pirate/pather or other faction fleets all at once. You may have the skill to use your 30-ship fleet to fend off 60+ ships from enemy fleets and only lose a few ships yourself, but if you killed enough ships you may unfortunately find so many frigates and destroyers made the recovery list that the few cruisers and capitals you yourself lost and cared about recovering got pushed off the recovery screen.
Can the UI be re-done to allow for a more practical ship limit during recovery? I understand not making it completely unconstrained, to prevent some massive performance lag if someone has set 100+ ship fleets and the menu is trying to pull up 500+ ships from a battle. But a limit of 40-60 ships for each menu should be a good number to allow for many of the above issues to be mitigated or eliminated.
Thank you.