An extremely silly question, buut...

[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!!!*

[Batman]

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.

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by 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

Obviously, there needs to be a distinction between 'abandoned' and 'mothballed'. 'Mothballed' means 'preserved' after all. Can a desperate crew forced to abandon a ship possibly take the necessary measures to 'preserve' their ship? By definition, no. Simply, a ship that has been abandoned will break down and disintegrate. Just have it lose a certain number of components every turn after it has been abandoned. When the components run out, poof! I'd say at least 2 components per turn wouldbe good.

[ June 05, 2002, 19:45: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[geoschmo]

I like the idea Baron, but I don't think a ship abandoned in the vacuum of space would fall apart that fast. Perhaps 2 components a year, but not 2 a month.

There is a realistic difference between abandoning a ship and mothballing it, but perhaps there doesn't need to be a game play distinction. It would save some coding I would think if the same function were reused. You could say...

• Any ship can be mothballed regardless of whether it's at a space yard or not.
• Mothballed ships can be only be unmothballed if they are in a sector with a space yard.
• Mothballed ships take gradual damage, unless they are in a sector with a space yard.
  

I think if this is done though, two things should be changed as well. Well one for sure and the other maybe.
For sure mothballed ships should not give a system view as they do now. They should be like mines in that respect instead of like sats. This way the ship isn't really a derelict, it still belongs to the empire that mothballed it, but it could be easily snuck up on and taken by another emnpire with boarding ships.

The other thing that maybe should happen is the ability to booby trap mothballed ships. Say the SDD would still work, even though it's mothnballed. But that might not be fair, so I am not sure about that. I would like that idea better if SDD's werent' a hundred percent effective, but that's another argument.

Geoschmo

[Baron Munchausen]

Excellent! Yes, I agree it would be cool if mothballed ships were seizable. Defense should be zero. If you can get next to it & board it's yours. But when reactivated it would have zero supplies, of course. No combat tricks of seizing mothballed ships & using them immediately!

Automatic decay if they don't have a space yard nearby to maintain them is also good. Ok, I'll compromise on one component (randomly chosen) per turn as the decay rate. The vast majority of mothballed ships will be in a spaceyard sector anyway.

Now the question is: How do we get MM to do this along with all the other things we're requesting?

[dmm]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
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.

Actually that would be worse. You could mothball a fleet, then unmothball it in a single turn with a single space yard ship. [edit: oops, I just realized what a dumb criticism that was, since you can already do that!]

The suggestion to have damage accumulate over time is a good one but might be hard to implement. Much easier would be to destroy all components but leave the hull there. (Is that possible? Maybe need to leave one component, bridge or MC, for example.) This would allow someone to come along and salvage the wreck, but they would need a repair ship and supplies. I wonder if you could mothball it, too? Then someone would have to unmothball it AND repair it. But you probably can't unmothball someone else's ship.

Easiest thing to do is just make it go away. Maybe the Trade Federation takes it as their rescue fee?

[ June 05, 2002, 20:27: Message edited by: dmm ]