An extremely silly question, buut...

[geoschmo]

Getting back to the original question though, it would be a cool feature if there was a way to "turn off" maintenace support for specific ships. Doing so would decrease or eliminate the amount of resources that go towards that ship, but at some penalty. Perhaps an increased chance of a random damage event to the ship. Say a percentage chance per turn that one of the compononents would be destroyed. The ship would in effect slowly rot over the course of a few years in space without maintenance.

Maybe to prevent abuse you would only have this option for ships that were completely out of supply?

Geoschmo

[Gryphin]

Perhaps being able to add 20 or 30 percent to the cost of the ship so it will have 2 or 3 times the range. This could reflect the extra cost to make the ships more efficient and better made.
Reminds me of how Singer Sewing Machine Corp nearly went out of business be cause their machines would not break or wear out.

[dmm]

Really, it is ridiculous that you can't scuttle a ship. Not at all realistic, and not in keeping with every other game I've played. And how are you providing maintenance to a ship that is out of range? If you are paying some ephemeral "trader network" for the maintenance, then have them give the crew a ride home after the crew blows up the ship.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by dmm:
Really, it is ridiculous that you can't scuttle a ship. Not at all realistic, and not in keeping with every other game I've played. And how are you providing maintenance to a ship that is out of range? If you are paying some ephemeral "trader network" for the maintenance, then have them give the crew a ride home after the crew blows up the ship.

I tend to agree with you. Although allowing it would have some implications. You could perhaps give every hull the self destruct ability, or if that doesn't work, make the self destruct device a level 1 tech. But either of those would negate any possiblility of using boarding parties.

If a hardcode change were made to allow for scuttling without a SDD outside of combat that would do it. Although it would eliminate the tactic where you incapcitate the enemies ships but leave them around to use up maintenance. Although to be honest that's a bit of a cheese tactic anyway.

Geoschmo

[dmm]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
If a hardcode change were made to allow for scuttling without a SDD outside of combat that would do it.

Yeah, that's what I had in mind.

[Gryphin]

Hmm,
"Blows up the ship"
Or leaves it as a trap/bomb for others.

[geoschmo]

Or maybe an abandon ship order. You lose control of the ship and it sits derelict until boarded by someone. Of course that could be abused. You build a massive fleet and park it some where and abandon it and keep a fleet of cheap boarding ships nearby to take over when needed.

What about allowing you to mothball a ship regardless of whether or not you have a space yard available, but only allow unmothballing with a space yard handy. That would do it, and shouldn't require too much in the way of code changes. Just remove what ever flag tells it you have to be at a space yard.

Geoschmo

[Perrin]

Klingon Boarding Party to Klingon Captain> There is no one here.. the computer seems to be incontrol.. at least it is talking.

Klingon Captain> Strange.. Let me hear.

Computer> 5.... 4.... 3...

Klingon Captain> Get Out of There!!

*BOOOM!!!*

[Mephisto]

A pizza class ship?

[Gryphin]

Hmm, and extremely silly morph of an extremely silly question. How do we do it?
< moving my replys to the Cantinna"