An extremely silly question, buut...

dmm · #1 June 4th, 2002, 05:15 PM

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 · #2 June 4th, 2002, 05:31 PM

Quote:

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 · #3 June 4th, 2002, 05:35 PM

Quote:

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 · #4 June 4th, 2002, 05:37 PM

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

geoschmo · #5 June 4th, 2002, 06:01 PM

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 · #6 June 4th, 2002, 06:06 PM

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!!!*

Batman · #7 June 5th, 2002, 08:18 PM

Geo, the abandon ship order has some merit I think.

You are right that it would be a cheese tactic to be able to reboard the ships at will, but you could make it so that derelict ships have zero supply and a random number of (randomly determined) damaged components.

The abandon ship order could go in the Retrofit/Modify/Scrap order window. The damage-algorithm could be the same one as for damaging warp points.

You could maybe even add a mineral cost to reclaiming derelict ships. This would make it unattractive to abandon ships that you wanted to later reclaim, and give the abandoned ships a real "derelict" feel.