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Author Topic: Improve salvaging/boarding, and improve the "point" of -D variants, all in one!  (Read 6443 times)

angrytigerp

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AKA "boarding/capturing solution thread #39"

So I gots to thinking, the -D variants of ships certainly add a richness to the universe -- drives home the point that ships are lasting for years, decades even, past their prime. But other than sprucing up Pirate fleet lists, -Ds don't really do much other than... Exist. I've got a few concepts to fix that, maybe, some of which improve boarding in the offing;let me know what you think of any or all of these:

1.) Increase chance to board, but make the increased chance correlate with "chance to recover ship as -D Variant".

The shortest, sweetest solution, really. However, this assumes that every vanilla ship will have -D art of its own, which strikes me as a daunting task, which is to say nothing of the nightmare this would be for modders. Hence my slight hybrid solution:

2.) Same as 1.), but roll is instead for failure to recover (be it too damaged in fighting or self-destructing); full recovery (which is to say, the two possible vanilla outcomes); or (the change I'm proposing), a chance to have one or multiple penalty hullmods (like Faulty Power Cores/Damaged Engines at present, and hopefully with more to come...? OP-reducing mods, maybe?)

One more concept I was thinking about, but requires a bit more work, would be:

3.) Keep vanilla boarding exactly as it is (ship defended by crew, successful capture yields mod-less hull), and add roll for a separate pool of derelicts to the post-fight results where the crew is dead, but recovery (which still isn't guaranteed) will always yield a -D variant and/or install penalty mods (as would happen with 2.))

This makes it so that there's no RNG element for the ships you have to fight for beyond whether you cap it in the first place (hopefully minimizing frustrations), but also that there's a chance that you can snag a couple more goodies from a fight.

Now, along the same lines but aimed at different targets:

A.) Construction Rigs and/or some yet to be determined dedicated Salvaging Ship (with either or both possessing some help hullmods to accomplish below feats) can reduce -D variant or penalty mod roll chance (for 1.) and 2.), respectively), or increase lifeless derelicts' (3.)) chance to appear after battles.

B.) Skills should be added offering bonuses/chance to get a desired result to any of the roll rates I mention above.

C.) (Most difficult to place using current game design) perhaps add a service to stations/planets to overhaul a ship, purging any penalty hullmods installed, for a credit fee (and maybe something more meta like raw metals?)

EDIT: Unfortunately, this thread will have to pan out without me -- got some at-sea stuff to do with the Navy coming up, and will be gone for a few weeks. Will attempt to keep up using slow-ass ship Internet every once in a while, so keep the debate going! ... Or let the idea die the death it deserves, whatevs.
« Last Edit: August 09, 2015, 09:29:40 PM by angrytigerp »
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xenoargh

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I would really dig being able to use the Construction Rig to convert -D variants, along with finally having a use for the "convert" button :)
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Megas

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If D cannot be fixed, it is good as dead, and I will scrap any I get from boarding immediately (then reload the game for another try).  I do not bother boarding Ds, I knock them out for good.  I only bother boarding ships with standard stats.

If D can be fixed, then I can consider boarding them, especially if the ship is rare or something I use by the dozens.  After all, cost is no object late in the game.

I would not waste precious skill points on improved boarding chances when they are better spent making my fleet stronger or more efficient killing machines.  Currently, level needs to be in the 70s to 80s to get everything useful in a fight.  I do not want to waste them on convenience stuff that can be effectively done by repeated game reloads.

I like to use Convert to change Tarsus to Condors and the like, or to reskin various ships.
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TheHengeProphet

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[snip] having a use for the "convert" button :)
[snip] I like to use Convert to change Tarsus to Condors and the like, or to reskin various ships.

Is there something I've been missing here?  I don't know of any convert button...

But yes, I agree, being able to repair D variants would be phenomenal, but I expect it would be expensive.  Sometimes, retrofitting can be more expensive than making a new one, depending on how far deteriorated the given thing is.
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Midnight Kitsune

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[snip] having a use for the "convert" button :)
[snip] I like to use Convert to change Tarsus to Condors and the like, or to reskin various ships.

Is there something I've been missing here?  I don't know of any convert button...

But yes, I agree, being able to repair D variants would be phenomenal, but I expect it would be expensive.  Sometimes, retrofitting can be more expensive than making a new one, depending on how far deteriorated the given thing is.
In the refit menu, there is a dimmed out button called Convert that currently has no use
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Taizo Puckett

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2. + B. from OP seems reasonable to me. And I would make full recovery *very* rare. Player should have incentive to make enough money and rep to buy desired ship.

Here's another idea. Add new crew member type - Engineer -whose presence and skills will affect repair speed and own disabled ship recovery chance. Add them to boarding team to increase chance of boarded ship recovery.

As for modding support, isn't there an API to get all currently installed mods and add visual representations for them? If not, it should be.
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Megas

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Quote
2. + B. from OP seems reasonable to me. And I would make full recovery *very* rare. Player should have incentive to make enough money and rep to buy desired ship.
It is frustratingly rare enough already, with poor chances from hard docking or near-zero chance from assault teams.  (I always hard dock - always!)  I admit that if chances are low enough, I would either give up on more common targets or simply spend a day or so reloading games until I successfully board that Hyperion or other very rare ship.  (I have spent days or weeks on item and XP runs during Diablo 2's heyday, so this is chump-change, despite being boring and evil.)

If full recovery is rare, and I cannot fix it, it is good as dead, and it is reload time until I get an intact ship.

My suggestion to improve boarding:
  • Make success very high or 100%.
  • Increase cost of marines so that boarding the ship is more expensive than buying it from a shop.
  • Increase marine effectiveness compared to crew, to justify increased cost.
  • Reduce bonus of Special Ops perk.  Half requirements for boarding would be very powerful with this suggestion.
  • Increase target ship defenses so that you need either marines or lots of crew to win.
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TheHengeProphet

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In the refit menu, there is a dimmed out button called Convert that currently has no use

Oh, that thing!  I never noticed it because it was greyed out...

Quote
2. + B. from OP seems reasonable to me. And I would make full recovery *very* rare. Player should have incentive to make enough money and rep to buy desired ship.
It is frustratingly rare enough already, with poor chances from hard docking or near-zero chance from assault teams.  (I always hard dock - always!)  I admit that if chances are low enough, I would either give up on more common targets or simply spend a day or so reloading games until I successfully board that Hyperion or other very rare ship.  (I have spent days or weeks on item and XP runs during Diablo 2's heyday, so this is chump-change, despite being boring and evil.)

If full recovery is rare, and I cannot fix it, it is good as dead, and it is reload time until I get an intact ship.

My suggestion to improve boarding:
  • Make success very high or 100%.
  • Increase cost of marines so that boarding the ship is more expensive than buying it from a shop.
  • Increase marine effectiveness compared to crew, to justify increased cost.
  • Reduce bonus of Special Ops perk.  Half requirements for boarding would be very powerful with this suggestion.
  • Increase target ship defenses so that you need either marines or lots of crew to win.

Agreed...  Success as it is happens to be so hazardous and prone to failure that I find it in no way even a viable option.  I stopped carrying marines, because their weight was not worth their measure.

As for increasing the cost of marines, I find that their increased supply usage is almost prohibitive enough.
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Serenitis

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In an ideal world, (D) variant ships should be randomised - ie: have randomly assigned negative mods applied to them upon spawning.
Essentially creating all 'damaged' ships on the fly whenever a fleet which includes them is created. If you can even do this, it would allow you to create (D) variants of any ship in the game (even mods) without having to have pre-defined separate ship classes for them.
You could also have an overlay to apply to such ships to make them look all grotty and mistreated similar to how the damage overlay works so you wouldn't have to have separate images for them.
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Clockwork Owl

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In an ideal world, (D) variant ships should be randomised - ie: have randomly assigned negative mods applied to them upon spawning.
Essentially creating all 'damaged' ships on the fly whenever a fleet which includes them is created. If you can even do this, it would allow you to create (D) variants of any ship in the game (even mods) without having to have pre-defined separate ship classes for them.
You could also have an overlay to apply to such ships to make them look all grotty and mistreated similar to how the damage overlay works so you wouldn't have to have separate images for them.


And since it is essentially the same ship, you can have your ship damaged to (D) or repair existing (D)s without manual assignment(code-wise, about which ship should be converted to which). I like the idea.

Added overlay sounds like extra work for GPU, but won't be a problem if it was generated on-the-fly which I believe is possible.
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Fandanguero

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There was a time when boarding was the main way to obtain a ship. That's surely was crippled. But now boarding option is just useless and marines in your crew and so these Mercury shuttles, you prepared just for boarding tasks are dead weight  :P
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