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[CrashToDesktop]

So, first off, this is an amalgamation of a couple of posts I've seen around the forum (some with their own dedicated threads, others just briefly mentioned on a blog post thread) as well as ideas of my own.  People whose ideas I'm using, you know who you are.

Alright, with the series of campaign updates rolling along, I feel like the next step should be to make some changes to the salvage mechanic as a whole (which includes the loot you get at the end of the battle, the ships that become boardable, and everything intertwined with those).  I guess I should start at the very beginning of this: ship destruction.  I'll be making a couple of real-life connections to this issue, so turn away if you don't like that kind of thing. So, most of the time when ships and tanks are sunk or knocked out, the base structure itself remains operational.  Concerning tanks - most tanks are abandoned when the hull gets penetrated a single time and causes catastrophic damage to the crew (which is reasonable), and thereby causes the tank to be combat-ineffective by lack of crew.  Concerning ships - most of the time, the only reason ships are abandoned and left to sink are when there have been holes blasted through the hull underneath the waterline and sinks the ship that way.  Very few times in both cases does the tank or ship blow up in a spectacular way.  Hits to the magazine are usually the case where this happens.  In Starsector, every disabled ship, big or small, goes off with a tremendous boom when the hull has been ground down to 0.  My suggestion for this is to make ships become "combat-ineffective" once a couple of criteria have been meet.

SHIP DESTRUCTION:
"Combat-Ineffective" is the name of the game here, a new status for ships that have taken too much of a beating in battle.  Now, the criteria for combat-ineffectiveness can be broken down into three separate categories as follows: Engine Damage, Weapon Damage, and Crew Loss.  At least two of these criteria must be meet before the ship becomes combat-ineffecitve.  The first two relate to damage to specific areas of the ship - the first being engines, the second being the weapons.  EMP damage is not taken into account, only raw damage done from HE, Kinetic, Energy, or Fragmentation.  Both use somewhat-hidden numbers to determine when that criteria has been meet, but will be translated to the player via combat effects on the left-hand side of the screen (where things like the Sensor Bouy with +10% damage is shown).  If you hit the engines enough times, an effect will show up on the left side of the screen saying "Heavily Damaged Engines" with a hit to mobility and top speed, maybe 15% (number subject to change).  If you've gotten your weapons hit a few too many times, a "Heavily Damage Weapon Mounts" debuff will appear and have a penalty to the recoil of weapons, maybe +15% increase weapon recoil (number and effect subject to change).  Loss of too much crew will have an overall -10% hit to all weapons and maneuverability with "Insufficient Crew" debuff (numbers subject to change).  Crew loss is a bit special compared to the other two - Fragmentation damage done against the hull has a massive bonus against it (since bits of metal and spall flying at supersonic speed and bouncing around in metal boxes tends to shred people).  Once a ship becomes "combat-ineffective", all control of the ship will be lost (for both the AI and the player), no engines, shields, or weapons will be active.  If there are any ambient lights on the ship, those will go out.  The ship will appear as a grey circle on the combat map, and orders cannot be given to it.

Once a single one of these debuffs appears, the AI will report it to you in the top-left corner of the screen where the regular combat messages appear, with the same audible alert message as CR loss.  Same goes if two criteria are met and the ship becomes combat ineffective.  Vanilla ship destruction mechanics are still in here, not to be forgotten - if the hull of the ship reaches 0 at any point in the battle, then the ship's reactor will have taken too much damage, and the standard explosion will take place.

BOARDING:
Onto the boarding mechanics - they will stay mostly the same, with the exception of the ship's condition after battle and how difficult the boarding is.  The first step is to determine the victor of the battle.  All of your ships made combat-ineffective during the battle will be recovered if you win the battle (that's the beauty of this mechanic - they've only been made combat-ineffecitve, and thus can be recovered without much effort, and also have a much lower tendency to blow up).  You will also get the option to board or destroy any combat-ineffective enemy ships.  The standard procedure with destroyed ships (ships that have exploded) will take place here as well, with the regular small chance of boarding enemy ones or recovering your own.  If you loose the battle, then the enemy will have the option to board your own combat-ineffective ships, as per usual.  Once you've found a combat-ineffective enemy ship, the standard options are still there - board, blow it up, or let it go.  However, some extra information is given - the two criteria that the ship meet when it was made combat ineffective.  The two latter options function the same, but the boarding mechanic is vastly different.

When boarding, you will have to take into account what parts of the ship have been knocked and double-check the single other, still-effective aspect of the ship.  If the ship's engines and weapons have been taken out, then it won't be going anywhere soon, but still has a sizable amount of crew milling about inside willing to defend it to the death (and maybe even counter-board your own ship and take it out from under you).  This might make an assault team going through space a viable option, to prevent the enemy crew from counter-boarding your own ship, but there will be casualties.  If the ship's weapons and crew have been knocked out, direct docking is fine, but if you don't take the ship fast enough, the enemy crew can repair the engines and escape with your marines and crew still on it - a slight problem, depending on how many crew you invested into boarding it.  If the engines and crew have been knocked out, then docking might not be a good idea - the enemy ship's weapons can wreck havoc on your own ship, possibly destroying it during the boarding process and loosing everything you invested, possibly including the ship you were trying to board.  It's a game of rock-paper-scissor that, if not played correctly, can result in some considerable losses.  However, this system is much more predicable than the current system of boarding that is a complete game of dice.

Once (if) you take the ship, the condition that the ship was in when it was made ineffective will determine the shape it's in when you bring it into your own fleet.  A ship captured with the crew and engine knocked out will have all the weapons mounted on it when it was in battle, but the engines will have some massive debuffs in burn speed until repaired.  Weapons and engines knocked out (the easiest way of making a ship boardable) will have no weapons mounted when captured and have the same engine debuff.  Ships captured with crew and weapons knocked out will have no weapons, but have a functioning engine with normal burn speed.  In all cases, the ship will be in a 0-CR state with whatever hull left by the end of the battle (damage is kept track of even after the ship is made combat ineffective) and must be repaired quickly.  Now, I've given this next part some thought - the engine debuff is rated as a removable hull mod (costs 0 OP and can't be put on a ship normally by a player).  However, if you choose to remove this hull mod while in space and the ship is at low CR, the impacts will be obvious - with the next update, removing hull mods while in space gives a massive CR hit.  If you remove that while in space, there's a very good chance that the ship in question will suffer an accident while in space and destroy itself.  So, do you want to suffer the lowered burn speed for a while until you get to a space port to remove it (or repair the ship to a high enough degree that you can safely remove the hull mod) or take a chance to escape with the ship at top burn speed but have a chance of blowing up the ship via accident?

SALVAGE:
Once the boarding is over, the salvage operation begins.  The salvage operation is changed greatly - there are two options for salvage, a "Quick" and a "Thorough".  Quick is the current system - the crew scoops up any leftovers strewn across the battlefield and gets back to their own ships ASAP.  Thorough is different - choosing this option, all destroyed ships (blown up) can be recovered as hulks and much more loot is recovered (as the crew searches all the nooks ans crannies of the destroyed ships), but this process takes time on the campaign map, maybe an in-game day.  You will not be given any option to pick up loot until the operation completes on the campaign map.  However, you can interrupt the salvage operation at any time for no return, but can let you escape if you get into a tight situation.  If you do interrupt a Thorough salvage operation, then you will only be awarded the credits from a Quick salvage operation, no loot pick up will be available.

The new mechanic here are hulks - hulks are ships beyond recovery that can be sold for scrap at an orbital station with the right market condition - Shipbreaking Center (which is currently in Starsector at the Agreus port in the Arcadia system).  There they can be sold for any number of resources, be it credits or commodities depending on what fits the game better.  These destroyed hulks will appear as ships in your fleet, but will take up no logistics or crew (in terms of code needed, they're just skins of ships with no weapon slots, no crew needed, and 0 OP - a bit like the D-variants of ships, just even worse).  However, since they have no crew or engines, they must be towed.  All ships can tow a hulk at no negative modifier to it in combat or CR, but unless it's got the Monofillament Tow Cable hull mod, it will suffer a burn speed penalty (numbers to be decided).  The game should automatically default towing hulks to the fastest ship in the fleet, with the Monofillament Tow Cable and maximum burn speed taken into account for best logistics (and take a lot of numbers off of the player's shoulders).

This system of salvage is meant to mesh in nicely with the eventual kind of dystopian view that Starsector is supposed to have - ships are rare and expensive, and as are the autofac blueprints that make then, and this every single part of it is saved or reused in any way possible.

Other Possibilities:
Only just got to adding this bit once I finally woke up and re-organized my brain about this.  With these new features, a variety of other possibilities involving hull mods and character skills can modify the numbers greatly.  I'll give one example of each as not to ruin any creative processes too much. The "Reinforced Bulkheads" hull mod might also reduce the fragmentation damage bonus by 50% (bringing it in line with the other ways to kill off the crew), due to installed spall liners.  For characters skills, the "Advanced Tactics" skill under the "Leadership" aptitude could increase the speed of a Thorough salvage operation by some percent per level.

That pretty much concludes my suggestion list.  If you've been one of the brave souls to read the entire thing, bravo my friend.  You deserve a cookie and a pat on the back.

[SafariJohn]

I like it.

If you've been one of the brave souls to read the entire thing, bravo my friend.  You deserve a cookie and a pat on the back.

Oh come now, it's not that long.

[CrashToDesktop]

Oh come now, it's not that long.

When I was typing it, it was incredibly dense for how long it was.  Maybe that was the sleep getting to me, eh.

[SafariJohn]

It's "only" three and a half pages long. Which is way less than the stuff I often read.

[CrashToDesktop]

It's "only" three and a half pages long. Which is way less than the stuff I often read.

You liked it, and that's the important bit.

EDIT:
Made some changes to the BOARDING aspect, mainly about the state a captured, combat-ineffective ship after capture.

[Adraius]

Yay, you rediscovered paragraph breaks!  I saw this last night and decided it was a bit too dense for my tired brain. =P

I like literally everything you've presented - I would love to see this in the game.  The only bit I'm a little unclear on is the transition from combat-effective during battle to board-able in the post-battle dialog.  Once you've made a ship combat-ineffective, you said that, in addition to exploding if it reaches zero hull, there would also be a 'reactor meltdown timer', after which it will explode as well?    In order for the ship to be boardable, the battle needs to be won before the reactor explodes, yes?  Do these always occur?  Does the player always know the exact time until detonation?  How long are you thinking the explosion delay should be?

Assuming I understand this right, it seems that the timer has two different purposes pulling it in different directions.  On one hand, it should be short enough that the threat of an explosion should be a serious danger to ships that find themselves very close to a ship rendered combat-ineffective.  On the other hand, it should be long enough that if a player sees a timer on a ship he wants to capture, it should be lengthy enough for it to be feasible in some scenarios for the player to mount an effort to win the battle quickly.  I'd also suggest that a) reaction meltdown not be a certainty, that it b) only appear on perhaps 1/3 to 2/3 of ships, and that c) the timer be only approximate - show a minimum estimated time, with the ship actually exploding at that time +0-50% of the minimum timer, with longer timers (and high explosion radii and damage, of course) for larger ships.  I think the possible timer length for each ship class should also vary pretty widely, too.  I'm not sure exactly how wide they should be - I kinda like them varying very widely; that way you get some "it's gonna blow!" ships and some that you have a good chance of capturing if you push hard to win.  As a very rough set of numbers, I'm thinking of minimum timers of 3 - 15 seconds for frigates to 8 - 30 seconds (or longer?) for capitals.  Those are just the ranges for the worst-case detonation timers, the actual explosion would follow +0-50% of the timer after that. (have a prominent blinking timer bar next to the ship)

[CrashToDesktop]

Yay, you rediscovered paragraph breaks!  I saw this last night and decided it was a bit too dense for my tired brain. =P

Hehe, yea.  It was late for me last night when I typed that up.  First thing in the morning I came back and re-organized it.

The only bit I'm a little unclear on is the transition from combat-effective during battle to board-able in the post-battle dialog.  Once you've made a ship combat-ineffective, you said that, in addition to exploding if it reaches zero hull, there would also be a 'reactor meltdown timer', after which it will explode as well?    In order for the ship to be boardable, the battle needs to be won before the reactor explodes, yes?  Do these always occur?  Does the player always know the exact time until detonation?  How long are you thinking the explosion delay should be?

No, those are two seperate functions.  The ship-timer-explodey function was from Gothars, I believe.  In all honesty, it doesn't relate to the overall plan of things that I had in mind when I was making this - it's just an awesome feature I liked.  I really should just remove it to prevent confusion, though.

To clear things up - once a ship becomes combat-ineffective, then all control of it is lost.  It's vulnerable to the elements while the battle is still going on - stray missiles, asteroids, or even deliberate fire by you or the AI that just wants that ship destroyed.  It will be no means explode randomly or based on a timer - unless it's hull reaches 0, of course, where the standard vanilla stuff kicks in.  That also pretty much nullifies the rest of your post as well, I guess.

EDIT:
Alright, I've removed that confusing feature.  I might add it back into the suggestion list if someone manages to find a proper place for it in my grand scheme of things, though.  Also swtiched around some text in the SHIP DESTRUCTION category to nudge you into the idea a bit better.  And I added in a final category, for things that can be done with the system here.

[celestis]

Cool ideas, hopefully something like this will eventually be implemented. The only thing I doubt about is the "thorough" salvage. I see the totally viable point of making player vulnerable, but assuming the frequency of salvage operations it will start to be annoying really quickly... Burn debuff may be more acceptable here.

[SafariJohn]

Cool ideas, hopefully something like this will eventually be implemented. The only thing I doubt about is the "thorough" salvage. I see the totally viable point of making player vulnerable, but assuming the frequency of salvage operations it will start to be annoying really quickly... Burn debuff may be more acceptable here.

As long as it only takes about the same amount of time (~5 seconds) as installing a comm sniffer and is interruptible in case you need to run away, I don't see it being too bad. Of course, YMMV, as I'm rarely bothered by the 20+ second reloads of some vehicles in World of Tanks.


Hmm, perhaps if you choose thorough salvage, you get the quick salvage loot screen first, then you have to wait for salvaging to finish to get the rest. That way even if you have to ditch your salvaging operation you still get a little bit.

To tie up one loose end: anything you didn't take at the quick loot screen should pop up again at the second loot screen.

[CrashToDesktop]

As long as it only takes about the same amount of time (~5 seconds) as installing a comm sniffer and is interruptible in case you need to run away, I don't see it being too bad. Of course, YMMV, as I'm rarely bothered by the 20+ second reloads of some vehicles in World of Tanks.


Hmm, perhaps if you choose thorough salvage, you get the quick salvage loot screen first, then you have to wait for salvaging to finish to get the rest. That way even if you have to ditch your salvaging operation you still get a little bit.

To tie up one loose end: anything you didn't take at the quick loot screen should pop up again at the second loot screen.

Yup, pretty much exactly what I was thinking.  The Thorough salvage operation would take about an in-game day to conduct, but can be interrupted any time.

Good point on the Thorough salvage with the Quick selection screen - but then it would be a no-brainer to choose "Thorough" every time knowing you can escape at any time with the same loot you got from the Quick operation.  It needs to be a proper choice, even a risk, to make.  So I don't think I'm going to add that in.

[SafariJohn]

Good point on the Thorough salvage with the Quick selection screen - but then it would be a no-brainer to choose "Thorough" every time knowing you can escape at any time with the same loot you got from the Quick operation.  It needs to be a proper choice, even a risk, to make.  So I don't think I'm going to add that in.

True. The most obvious change that would make it a choice and have both loot screens would be to make thorough salvaging uninterruptible.

Perhaps another option would be, if the player chooses thorough salvage, to give them the first loot screen for items, but hold their credits until they finish salvaging. So you can go quick = items + credits, thorough + interrupt = items only, or thorough full = more items + (maybe more) credits.

Edit: Or through + interrupt = credits only. That seems like it would be better.

[CrashToDesktop]

To be honest here, credits from battles alone are pretty minuscule here - you gain more credits from selling off the weapons and commodities you get from the battle than the credits from the battle itself.  Giving more credits from Thorough salvage is also very much a dependent variable - some people might want more credits, others more loot.  But credits can be made in droves right now, so holding back credits isn't going to be very beneficial.  I'm also taking into account the Megas-cases here - all he wants is to take the supplies and any rare weapons he can get his munchkin-paws on (the Needler-series of weapons, for example), and I'm pretty sure he could care less about the tiny amount of credits gotten during battle.

I could agree with just getting credits if you interrupt a Thorough salvage operation - I'll add that in.  Seems reasonable.

[Gothars]

There are some things in here I like, for example the option for thorough salvaging.

The main point however, the two-out-of-three ship disabling system, doesn't seem to add enough value for its complexity. You're basically adding three more health bars, and for what? Being able to board more ships could be archived much more easily. The term "Combat-ineffective" does actually mean the same things as "Disabled", doesn't it?
Besides, the combat is rarely precise enough for you to easily target specific (shield and armor protected!) areas exclusively, not to speak of the AI. But while shooting at the ship at large is fine now, with specific target regions it would lead to frustration (especially when your AI buddies don't hit what you want them to).

[CrashToDesktop]

Hey, a dissenter at last.

For the Thorough salvage operation - you liked it, yes, but do you like the towing and selling of the destroyed hulks?  I found it an interesting idea when I read it on the forums, and I felt it tied in rather nicely with the salvage idea and the setting that SS is eventually supposed to take on.

For Combat-Ineffective and disabled - in my own mind, I see "Disabled" to be a bit more of a severe term when compared to combat-ineffective.  But yes, they pretty much mean the same thing.

Yea, I do agree that combat is rarely precise enough to allow for this to happen too often between the AI.  However, in the hands of the player, it's fairly easy to do it (although it will take time) - targeting engines and exposed hull with fire is a pretty common tactic (if I'm not underestimating the capacity of the community as a whole, hopefully).  Some improvements to the AI are probably needed if this goes through, yea.

I feel the complexity of the system is well worth the reward of being able to board more ships, and board more ships more reliably - boarding ships right now is very much of an RNG game, involving a 50% chance to just blow up on boarding.  Being able to pick and choose your shots on an enemy ship in order to make the boarding game easier and more predicable seems like a much better deal.

How could this be achieved more easily without involving a lot of RNG?  That was one of the goals I had in mind when making this suggestion (although I didn't state it in the OP, I'll give you that).

[Gothars]

Hey, a dissenter at last.

At your service

For the Thorough salvage operation - you liked it, yes, but do you like the towing and selling of the destroyed hulks?  

Nah, not in general - let's just say towing hulks doesn't seem like something you'd find in a sci-fi novel. It's something boring that happens after the main hero (or villain) went to do more interesting stuff. And it doesn't exactly solve any existing gameplay problem, right?

How could this be achieved more easily without involving a lot of RNG?

The problem with any solution that does not rely on RNG is that it opens a can of worms. For example, when getting a ship boardable is easy, it becomes trivial and boring. When it's hard, it motivates players to do boring workarounds like destroying the support fleet of an intended target and then re-engaging the isolated ship. While you could deal with all of those, it seems like it would once again add a lot of complexity.
Maybe rethinking the whole ship acquiring dynamic in the Sector might be the more fruitful direction. For example making new ships very rare and very expensive, while at the same time making the boarding of ships commonplace (although costly in repairs), would fit the whole dystopian theme very well.