When you go bankrupt

[CW]

In 1.41 when you go bankrupt some of your ships get abandoned and these ships seem to be chosen at random. Sometimes you know you are going bankrupt next turn and you might have a junk ship somewhere that you want to ditch to save your precious WP opener from being abandoned, but you have no self-destruct device or another armed ship nearby.

I'd like to see at least a new "abandon" command, or even better overhaul the whole thing completely. What I mean is, you could cut off supply to a ship and it gradually decays, say it loses 50% of components every turn hitpoints-wise if the ship recieves zero maintenance. If you are going bankrupt but you have not chosen which ship to stop supplying, then let the effect spread evenly through out all of your ships. (ie. even if you don't have enough cash to pay off all the maintenance, you probably have enough to pay for part of it. So your ships lose somewhere between 1% and 50% of components hitpoints-wise.)

To stop people from abusing rounding, always round the effect UP. For example you are bankrupt and losing the equivalent of 1 hitpoint worth of maintenance per ship, then the next turn every ship of yours will still lose a complete component. To make the whole thing smarter the AI (for each individual ship) should look at the repair piority list to determine which component is the least important. But I think it should cost some resources to repair components, since people could abuse the rule with repair bays and space yards if repair is free like what it is now.


[This message has been edited by CW (edited 18 October 2001).]