Shipbreaker Salvage - Salvage Rework Proposal #575
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Princess-Cheeseballs
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Princess-Cheeseballs
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Some comments.
Overall I prefer docs to be a bit looser as you can't expect everything to remain the same from design to implementation but this feels like the right direction.
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| Once a wreck has been spawned, it will be located somewhere in nearby space in close proximity to the Salvage Bay. If the wreck is not within the player's viewing distance, Salvage may use a _Mass Scanner_ mapped in the Bay to locate it. When compared to previous iterations of Salvage, the wrecks are meant to spawn much closer to the station. Regardless, Salvage will want to move the wreck closer to the Salvage Bay as it will make it faster to extract materials from it and is a necessity to complete later steps. This is known as _towing_. | ||
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| To tow the wreck, Salvage will have access to _grappling hooks_ and _magboots_. While grappling hooks on their own simply drag the user towards the hook, when combined with the grounding force of the magboots Salvagers are able to pull grids towards each other (or in the case one has a station anchor, only the one without gets pulled). Ideally Salvage will be able to stand on the outer rim of the station and use their grappling hooks to drag the wreck until it is within working distance; once it is, they can proceed with the next step. |
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This seems like something that would be better served with its own tool.
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I'm taking inspiration from the fact that you can already kinda sorta do this with magboots, but with fire extinguishers. If you stand on a grid with magboots and spray, you affect the grid. Can make your own water-powered manual shuttle this way!
I included a stationary "spear gun" in the Further Embodiments section that could be a machine used for this purpose, but I think since salvagers already have use for both magboots and grappling hooks for other parts of their work and that it's fairly common game language to have a grappling hook pull things towards you as much as it does you to them, that it could work for this purpose too.
You get to shoot your grappling hook at stuff and reel it in. It's awesome!
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For #577 I had been playing around with this a little and it seems doable - my implementation was a "winch" which would accept a grappling hook and, if the grappling hook had something attached, start pulling it in. (Can absolutely confirm it is awesome feeling)
One naive gameplay interaction is that if you pull an object from far away and continuously add impulse to it, it will accelerate to dangerous speeds leading to a high velocity collision - I am personally pro-chaos, but would you want that (an alternative is to cap the winching speed unless altered somehow)
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| Industrial shredders work by grinding up any tile that comes in contact with the open front of the machine, destroying it and any structure attached. It is essentially a recycler specializing in grids. As wrecks are mostly made up of metal and glass parts, this becomes the main method Salvage produces steel and glass sheets. To prevent Salvage from simply sending a fresh wreck straight into the industrial shredders they provide a remarkably lower yield for wreck resources and items that can already be recycled, and some wreck resources may harm the shredders if inserted into them. | ||
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| Since some individual grid tiles could feasibly be made with less than one sheet of steel material, those tiles only have a percentage chance to produce a sheet. E.g. lattice, which is made of 1 steel rod (equivalent to 0.5 steel sheet) has at most a 50% to produce a sheet. |
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I think it'd be better if instead the recycler just couldn't extract certain materials. Maybe it can only extract steel, glass, and plasteel but not plastic, gold, silver, uranium, or plasma.
If recycling is just inefficient, then it may just be faster and easier to just recycle the whole grid and then do w/e with your remaining time.
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I am definitely open to just making the shredders outright destroy wreck resources or other such materials, should it turn out players are so lazy they just shred the entire thing for single-digit bars. Overall something that can be looked at and discovered in playtesting.
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| Shredders do not have the safety mechanism of recyclers which means they deal contact damage, but the damage is low enough that it isn't an efficient method of murder. You wouldn't want to stand or walk through a shredder for a long duration but just touching it for a few seconds won't be lethal. | ||
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| Shredders are *only* able to shred wrecks attached to the linked salvage magnet. While realistically there shouldn't be a limit, this is an instance where moderation efforts need to be made as having them able to shred any grid would make major griefing and self-antagonism too easy to perform, and also allow crew to easily weaponize the shredder wall against shuttle-based antagonists (despite how awesome it sounds, we do not want crew to mount shredders to a Cargo shuttle to bulldoze the Xenoborg Mothership). There is the possibility to remove this limitation as an EMAG interaction for the salvage magnet however, though if that is to be implemented it should come with a station-wide announcement to alert crew to the impending danger. |
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Shredders are a pretty big mapping concern. It sounds like they'd take up a lot of space, so why not just have the magnet be able to delete chunks of a grid at a time as part of its functionality? Or just have it break apart the entire grid when it's finished in one fell swoop?
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My main concern with this proposal while it was just an idea in my head was specifically the size issue. It really does sound like it would be a large addition to most stations on paper.
Then I tested it ingame and it turns out that it is actually not that spacious as it may seem. Containment chambers are as large as they are since they need to fit a full square plus additional space for emitters (this is a big one), walking, wires and meteor shielding. The Salvage Bay and the accompanying "shredder wall" doesn't end up being that big in practice.
That's not to say maps won't benefit from some restructuring, but compared to something like say genpop I think the impact will not be as big.
Packed is probably one of the most tucked-in Salvage departments and while it is probably the worst situated it could still pull off a full 9-tile width with a bit of elbow grease:
Most stations are like Bagel though, featuring large portions of unused real estate right next to Salvage:
Oasis, Bagel, Exo, Snowball and Plasma are all like this. Marathon probably has the most space.
From my very rudimentary testing in the dev environment it is simply just... Fun to feed large shuttles into the woodchipper. While using the magnet to deal with the grid might be more efficient, I think it just isn't as fun. And if the shredder wall needs to be smaller, the separation charges are there for it and we can 100% design the shuttles to make placing the separation charges in key locations simple for easy disassembly.
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As a (perhaps temporary) stand-in for the shredder wall, what about using charges (or cleverly using the grapple) to blast the grid away with physics? That would also be fun, in my head.
RemFexxel
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What a read. I like this PR, though.
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ArtisticRoomba
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Overall the proposal is an actual design document that addresses Salvage's past faults so I'm definitely willing to try it out. I had some concerns with the grid splitter but they are so minor and easily fixable that I don't see it to be an issue.
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| Separation charges will only activate if the line they create fully separates the two parts of the grid from each other. If the charges do not form a full cut across the grid or there are other sections still connecting the parts together, the charges fail to activate. Since separation charges have potential for some pretty strong antagonistic plays, such as disconnecting vital station sections, placing a single separation charge has a fairly lengthy do-after. | ||
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| It's recommended (but not required) that _weld charges_ are implemented as well, that act opposite to separation charges and give the ability to attach grids together. These would work well as an Engineering tool and/or part of the RCD. |
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Engineering doesn't really have a use for this currently.
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Kinda? Sorta? I encountered a situation just yesterday where a syndie bomb blew up the armory on Fland and for whatever reason a chunk of floor tile was still in the hole. Had to be RCD'd away.
There's also the case against disconnecting AIs, which is mostly redundant these days since most AI attachments have been reinforced to avoid it, but I am concerned that the inclusion of separation charges could maybe bring that back into vogue.
Regardless the weld charges are just a minor footnote on the impact BreakSalv can have and not really necessary for the gameplay loop to function.
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I fully expect some players to manage disconnecting some part of the station and there should be some mechanic to put it back together. Not necessarily weld charges, just... something. At some point. Eventually.
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Literally been thinking of adding this sorta "welding charge" thing, but never got around...
But yeah, there are definitely times when having something reattached to the station is very very wanted. Good old AI snipping off, solars, etc. Or just extreme damage to the station. Ship based forks will absolutely love this, too.
Also could allow for fun stuff with antagonist shuttles, to get them to stop buzzing around and stalling the round out.
src/en/space-station-14/departments/cargo/proposals/shipbreak-salvage.md
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| #### Grappling Hooks | ||
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| pulling grids is fun idk what else to say yippee pew pew i'm so strong pulling shottle weee |
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| ### Grid dragging | ||
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| Before writing this document I had a short sync with Slartibartfast who has experience with grid movement. He said it was likely feasible to implement something like a grappling hook pulling, though it depends on how well Box2D supports continuous forces being applied to a grid. A `DistanceJoint` on the hook may be sufficient however so signs point towards this not being a difficult thing to implement. |
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though it depends on how well Box2D supports continuous forces being applied to a grid
Pretty sure this is what shuttles do internally
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| Before writing this document I had a short sync with Slartibartfast who has experience with grid movement. He said it was likely feasible to implement something like a grappling hook pulling, though it depends on how well Box2D supports continuous forces being applied to a grid. A `DistanceJoint` on the hook may be sufficient however so signs point towards this not being a difficult thing to implement. | ||
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| The main issue likely encountered is that grid mass is currently not very accurate. This would cause problems when determining pull strength and also how the grids should pull towards each other if neither grid on either end of the grappling hook is anchored. If this becomes an issue, grid mass calculations would need a pass to ensure it's more accurate. |
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Our item masses are currently a gigantic meme so we would have to balance everything wholesale.
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Gotta happen sooner or later.
Thank you RemFexxel for the proof-reading! Co-authored-by: Rem <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: Rem <[email protected]>
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@RemFexxel Thank you for doing a proofread pass, really appreciate it! ❤️ |
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| Once a wreck has been spawned, it will be located somewhere in nearby space in close proximity to the Salvage Bay. If the wreck is not within the player's viewing distance, Salvage may use a _Mass Scanner_ mapped in the Bay to locate it. When compared to previous iterations of Salvage, the wrecks are meant to spawn much closer to the station. Regardless, Salvage will want to move the wreck closer to the Salvage Bay as it will make it faster to extract materials from it and is a necessity to complete later steps. This is known as _towing_. | ||
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| To tow the wreck, Salvage will have access to _grappling hooks_ and _magboots_. While grappling hooks on their own simply drag the user towards the hook, when combined with the grounding force of the magboots Salvagers are able to pull grids towards each other (or in the case one has a station anchor, only the one without gets pulled). Ideally Salvage will be able to stand on the outer rim of the station and use their grappling hooks to drag the wreck until it is within working distance; once it is, they can proceed with the next step. |
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For #577 I had been playing around with this a little and it seems doable - my implementation was a "winch" which would accept a grappling hook and, if the grappling hook had something attached, start pulling it in. (Can absolutely confirm it is awesome feeling)
One naive gameplay interaction is that if you pull an object from far away and continuously add impulse to it, it will accelerate to dangerous speeds leading to a high velocity collision - I am personally pro-chaos, but would you want that (an alternative is to cap the winching speed unless altered somehow)
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| Separation charges will only activate if the line they create fully separates the two parts of the grid from each other. If the charges do not form a full cut across the grid or there are other sections still connecting the parts together, the charges fail to activate. Since separation charges have potential for some pretty strong antagonistic plays, such as disconnecting vital station sections, placing a single separation charge has a fairly lengthy do-after. | ||
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| It's recommended (but not required) that _weld charges_ are implemented as well, that act opposite to separation charges and give the ability to attach grids together. These would work well as an Engineering tool and/or part of the RCD. |
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I had a conversation about MergeGrids (which, while it does exist in the engine, is not used in anything) and we came to a conclusion that fully merging grids is probably too dangerous physics-wise (e.g. if someone makes a walkway between the vgroid and the station it can have wonky effects) -- in #577 i propose a "piton" for rapid docking instead, as well as a system for something like sharing power between grids, which would be safer (and maybe allow for something like towing a grid behind your shittle)
Also, I imagine shipbreakers might want to dock their grid in place temporarily while working on it
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I heavily dislike the idea of the shadow fog/kudzu ones. These seem rather more annoying than fun to deal with. |
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I think the mechanical suggestions here are really cool, especially the diverse array of challenges on the wrecks. I have concerns around continuing to promote space movement without tackling the inherent unbalanced strength of space that may continue to be present here and also have issues crop up in other EVA departments like Engineering. Ultimately, I think no matter what happens this document and #569 can take from each other to create the most fun salvage for this game :D |
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| **Retrieval** is the process of spawning wrecks and transporting them to the station so their resources can be extracted. | ||
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| Wrecks are pre-made grids themed around being decommissioned shuttles or destroyed station sections. To access wrecks, Salvage has a unique console in the Salvage Bay called the _Salvage Magnet_. |
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Relying on premade wrecks sounds like it would make this proposal dead on arrival.
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I had a chat with Slart about this and he proposed utilizing the random room replacement system to expand the variety within singular designs of wrecks.
One issue I observed with current magnet wrecks is that they are very loosely designed, mostly based around "what if you find this in space" with maybe some progression in the form of having an internal room with the most valuable goodies being sort of whatever the mapper felt like. With the designated wreck types and resource guidelines I want to see more deliberate and tighter designs.
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Yeah, we do have the tech for this already. Right now salvage has two options:
- pre-mapped wrecks which are cool but low in number, work-intensive to create and quickly get extremely repetetive.
- Randomly generated wrecks and asteroids which are extremely bland as they all are just open areas with a few items and mobs thrown on them.
I think the best approach here is the same as shipbreakers did - premapped ships, but with a randomized interior. And this has a lot of potential for emergent gameplay as the environmental hazards combine in different ways, for example a turret explosion ignites plasma gas, electrovae can be deliberately used to shut down electrical traps and so on.
| #### Towing | ||
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| Once a wreck has been spawned, it will be located somewhere in nearby space in proximity to the Salvage Bay. If the wreck is not within the player's viewing distance, Salvage may use a _Mass Scanner_ mapped in the Bay to locate it. Compared with previous iterations of Salvage, the wrecks are meant to spawn much closer to the station. Regardless, Salvage will want to move the wreck closer to the Salvage Bay, as it will make it easier to extract materials and is necessary to complete the later steps. This is known as _towing_. | ||
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| To tow the wreck, Salvage will have access to _grappling hooks_ and _magboots_. While grappling hooks on their own simply drag the user towards the hook, when combined with the grounding force of the magboots, Salvagers can pull grids towards each other (or, in the case of one with a station anchor, only the one without is pulled). Ideally, Salvage will be able to stand on the outer rim of the station and use their grappling hooks to drag the wreck into working distance; once it is, they can proceed to the next step. |
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The salvage "bumbling through space with limited view range" is one of the worse aspects of the job. This does not seem like a good idea at all.
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I don't think the scenario which you describe will occur. The document describes that wrecks should spawn in view, and if they don't they should be close enough that Salvagers are able to shoot a grappling hook into space to tow it without stepping off the station, reeling it in like a fish.
In the event that the wreck spawns further out, that is cited as an additional challenge parameter.
There is also a feature suggestion to the end of the document describing a "spear gun" which would be a mounted machine on the station to pull the wreck into working distance, though I don't see it a necessitate for the above reasons.
| ### Shredding | ||
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| **Shredding** is the process of finalizing a salvage operation by grinding up the remains of a wreck into base materials. | ||
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| Once all valuable wreck resources have been extracted and the Salvagers are finished with the wreck, it is time to dispose of the wreck itself. For this, the Salvage Bay has a large wall of _industrial shredders_, and _separation charges_. |
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This entire concept of shredding entire ships just seems extremely boring. You'd likely be spending quite a lot of time fiddling with the physics and other nonsense just to watch stuff disappear.
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From my (admittedly very simple) prototyping, it is gratifying sending chunks of materials into the shredders, hearing the crunch and watching materials accumulate. We have that in mini-form with the recycler and I think it is possible to juice up even further.
The main issue I've come across is, as you imply, lining up the grid to fit the shredders. It mostly came down to that the griddrag command doesn't allow for rotation. This was only really a concern when I tried to fit in grids that were just on the brink of being too large.
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After reading through and responding to your comments I think this is the argument against BreakSalv that has the strongest legs, but I also think it is one of those things where prototyping and playtesting the feature further will give the answer and, depending on what that answer is, either make or break the proposal.
| - **Shredder Efficiency:** Efficiency of connected industrial shredders. This is calculated based on whether the shredders have processed any entities that yield less, such as wreck resources. | ||
| - **Wreck Time:** Time since magnet pull started. | ||
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| After some time has passed (short enough not to feel restrictive, but long enough that Salvage can't just cycle wrecks), Salvagers may choose to despawn any remaining grids of their wreck using a "Despawn Wreck" button on the magnet. There is, however, an incentive to thoroughly shred the wreck. If the Wreck Percentage is 100%, the previously greyed-out "Claim Processing Reward" button becomes available. Clicking this button rewards Cargo with a monetary boost and announces in the Supply channel that Salvage finished processing the wreck, along with the Shredder Efficiency and Wreck Time. |
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If the Wreck Percentage is 100%, the previously greyed-out "Claim Processing Reward" button becomes available.
What is this mechanic meant to encourage? It just feels like you're incentivizing people to spend time doing tedious work (ship shredding) for resources they aren't guaranteed to need (metal & glass).
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If we work under the axiom that shredding isn't tedious:
- Progression through the round. Becomes a way to unlock harder wrecks for a challenge ramp-up. This progression is gated behind Salv actually doing their jobs, whereas before there was nothing stopping Salv from looting the station, building a shuttle and immediately fucking off to vgroid or expeditions which were meant to be late-round content.
- Affording Salvagers a natural break. It's incorporated after getting feedback from Salvage players that the current systems do not contain any natural pause moments. This is explained in the Game Design Rationale section.
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I don't shredder efficiency is a good idea.
Material balance will be difficult as efficiency is tied to salvage manpower hours, meaning an overproduction of materials on high-pop servers and vice versa. Wrecks are also already partially randomized in both size and reclaimable materials, which introduces another variation in maintaining material flows.
Encouraging salvagers to work harder will also increase isolation as you're discouraging salvagers from leaving wrecks to keep working.
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| As some wrecks will contain useful tools and equipment to better deal with the three core parts of BreakSalv, there will be a natural progression inherent to Salvage's gameplay. Science may also provide upgraded tools through research and usage of Salvage's materials. Some wrecks will likely be discouraged by being too dangerous or slow to process without these upgrades, lending to a sense of becoming more powerful over the round. | ||
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| As a way to add further progression and provide some breathing room for Salvage, BreakSalv also features an upgrade to the salvage magnet's capabilities. This unlocks after Salvage has a certain number of 100% Wreck Percentage completions in the form of a greyed out "Magnet Upgrade" button in the wreck selection view becoming available. Pressing this starts a fairly lenghty progress bar during which no new wrecks can be selected. Salvagers are encouraged to spend this time taking a break on the station and/or visiting the other departments for upgrades. |
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Why are we encouraging ship shredding, again?
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In your post on the forums, you describe an idealized version of Salvage where they primarily focus on getting rare materials where some is sold off to give Cargo the funds to purchase steel and glass.
I think giving Cargo that responsibility is lame because it doesn't bring anything new to their gameplay loop, and shredding serves in effect the same end-functionality but in the hands of Salvagers.
In either of the cases, steel becomes a result of Salvage work. Either Cargo buys the steel with the extra money Salv affords them, or in BreakSalv they save money by not buying the steel.
A problem we've had with our current and past iterations is that this relationship breaks if Salvage decides to not engage in steel-producing mechanics. BreakSalv is different from vgroid, magnet pulls, and expeditions in that it becomes a reliable part of the core gameloop.
PJB3005
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GitHub is a broken pile of shit of a website and split my review in two.
Anyways, this proposal really does not seem to solve things. It's just "what if the previous magnet but with shredders and a lot of premade grids." The shredders I outright do not see the gameplay benefit to other than "it sounded cool", and the rest is not enough to fix this department.
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| BreakSalv intends to provide the following experience: | ||
| - Hard work not for the faint of heart under a sci-fi megacorp industrial aesthetic. Salvagers should feel like they are cool by braving the dangers and efforts inherent to their job. | ||
| - Visible results from their work. Seeing a huge pile of materials come out of the shredders should make the Salvagers feel like they are contributing to the station. |
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Seeing a huge pile of materials come out of the shredders should make the Salvagers feel like they are contributing to the station.
SS14's departments do not need this many resources. So either this really isn't "huge piles" or it's such huge piles that it's utterly worthless. This already happens with current salvage rounds.
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Another note is that due to Cargo's current poor design, even if salvage has materials, it's often difficult for departments to get their hands on them in a round for it to actually matter, in my experience.
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"Huge" is relative and I feel it is obvious that I am not advocating for gamebreaking levels of overabundance. The return the shredders give can be tweaked and the goal when making the wrecks is to have better understanding of just how much resources shredding one is worth.
Writing "Seeing piles of balanced amounts of materials as to not trivialize future resource gathering but not so small as to make the activity useless should make Salvagers feel like they are contributing to the station" isn't gonna read as punchy.
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I agree with Roomba's comment, but also see it as OoS for this document.
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See earlier comment regarding shredding efficiency.
| BreakSalv intends to provide the following experience: | ||
| - Hard work not for the faint of heart under a sci-fi megacorp industrial aesthetic. Salvagers should feel like they are cool by braving the dangers and efforts inherent to their job. | ||
| - Visible results from their work. Seeing a huge pile of materials come out of the shredders should make the Salvagers feel like they are contributing to the station. | ||
| - Completionism and optimization. Salvagers will want to hit 100% on the Wreck Percentage with high Shredder Efficiency and low Wreck Time, but may situationally forgo it for a faster, lower reward. Good Salvagers can brag about how fast they completed a wreck. |
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This is explicitly and commonly known to be a bad thing in game design. Going for 100% completion is not generally considered fun, and often just results in extreme amounts of tedium with little gain.
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This is difficult comment to respond to because what you are saying textually is correct, but I think you are misattributing the lesson.
I was hoping to be concise but I'm bad at meeting a short and quippy statement with something short and quippy on my own:
100% completion is bad when trying to achieve it leads to unfun or repetitive gameplay. It's axiomately true, and I'm sure we've all played games where getting all the achievements or full completion percentage sucks. It doesn't even need to be on a macro-level, just getting full score on individual levels in games can be tedious. Don't get me started on hidden endings/content locked behind it. 🤢
At the end of the day, what constitutes "100% completion" is entirely arbitrary and is set by the game designer. And when set correctly it is something we either do not mind, push us into trying challenges we otherwise wouldn't have, or give an optional target for player types that seek that level of mastery.
In a game like Satisfactory, you will at all times be fully aware of how efficient your factory is. All the data is there for you, with exact percentage numbers of how well you are feeding your machines the optimal resource usage compared to your network power limits. For a casual player, this serves as a push into optimizing your machines further but crucially the game does not demand it from you. Experienced players can and do ride the line of 100% optimization as a way of skill expression and so they can brag about their completionist factories.
BreakSalv isn't Satisfactory and sets a much lower bar for what it considers 100% completion. For the Wreck Percentage it's how many grid tiles remain from the wreck, and since these will by-and-large be connected, ensuring they all get into the shredder is not difficult. Shredder Efficiency tracks how well you cleared out the grid beforehand and seeing as how that is effectively a "Salvager laziness metric", this combined with the Wreck Time is where experienced Salvagers will find their bragging rights.
If you're a casual Salvagers, you will likely hit 100% Wreck Percentage often, and depending on your approach you'll either have low Efficiency or high Time. And the game isn't gonna go "Hmm, maybe if you were better you would have more rewards. 😏"; you'll see the 100% Wreck Percentage pop up on the console as the primary metric, QM will thank you for the materials, and you'll feel good. Hell if QM's yelling at you that there is a massive silver shortage you may forgo any metric whatsoever just to get a quick extraction and pull - the game enables and encourages this.
But crucially the data will now be there for experienced Salvagers to take advantage of. Optimizing extraction is inherently part of all resource generators' gameplay, Salv just gets tools to track it so that we can cater to the type of player that finds that fun.
Of course this all relies on the assumption that getting 100% Wreck Percentage, high Efficiency and low Time has been set to be fun, non-repetitive gameplay. And if you think shredding doesn't sound fun, sure, I can see how this seems less appealing. So that is why ensuring those core elements are engaging is important.
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See earlier comment regarding shredding efficiency. Salvagers will already progress via science and magnet upgrades.
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| #### The Salvage Magnet and Wrecks | ||
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| Wrecks provide variety to the round, both in the selection of available wrecks and in the contents they may provide. They are also excellent opportunities for environmental storytelling; all wrecks should have some sort of "lore" behind them that ties into their wreck type and what they depict. Wrecks should not be created through pure random generation but should be hand-crafted grids by our talented mappers. Wrecks should ideally not have just a single way that they can play out to create emergent gameplay, and Salvagers should feel they can make meaningful choices with what wrecks they spawn in, and also in how they approach them. |
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but should be hand-crafted grids by our talented mappers
We have no mapping tools to support this activity.
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This is grid creation and (as described in a previous comment) random room generation.
We have the tools to support this in the game right now.
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As a salv main I gotta say I love the idea, putting the salv team closer to the station and aligning their objectives with the station's. Deliberate deconstruction of the wreck would also lead to skill expression (or hilarious accidents), especially purging pricey gases or processing potentially explosive machinery. Also, having played both Space Engineers and Hardspace Shipbreaker, I can confirm feeding an entire ship carcass into a giant shredder is indeed immensely satisfying. That being said, the shredders should probably consume a non negligible amount of power so one can't just mount 30 of them on a shittle and proceed to eat the station. |
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Some comments I already mentioned to slam before:
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I should note that Slam has already coded shredders and is now working on grappling.
I'd say this document is a lot stronger since it addresses points I brought up about salvage isolating themselves from the station.
I don't think shredding efficiency is good though. As much as I like rewarding work, I don't like rewarding players to isolate themselves from the station.
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| ### Salvage Magnet | ||
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| The salvage magnet would require a partial re-design with its UI to support the new functionality. Most of what exists could probably be repurposed for BreakSalv however. |
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The magnet should work only on the station grid.
The magnet also needs a green and red light to indicates if there's enough space for the wreck to be pulled.
| - **Shredder Efficiency:** Efficiency of connected industrial shredders. This is calculated based on whether the shredders have processed any entities that yield less, such as wreck resources. | ||
| - **Wreck Time:** Time since magnet pull started. | ||
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| After some time has passed (short enough not to feel restrictive, but long enough that Salvage can't just cycle wrecks), Salvagers may choose to despawn any remaining grids of their wreck using a "Despawn Wreck" button on the magnet. There is, however, an incentive to thoroughly shred the wreck. If the Wreck Percentage is 100%, the previously greyed-out "Claim Processing Reward" button becomes available. Clicking this button rewards Cargo with a monetary boost and announces in the Supply channel that Salvage finished processing the wreck, along with the Shredder Efficiency and Wreck Time. |
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I don't shredder efficiency is a good idea.
Material balance will be difficult as efficiency is tied to salvage manpower hours, meaning an overproduction of materials on high-pop servers and vice versa. Wrecks are also already partially randomized in both size and reclaimable materials, which introduces another variation in maintaining material flows.
Encouraging salvagers to work harder will also increase isolation as you're discouraging salvagers from leaving wrecks to keep working.
| - Improved hardsuit with higher movement speed/defense. | ||
| - Welding goggles/gas mask, insulated gloves, and improved welding equipment. | ||
| - Jaws of life and power drill. | ||
| - Simple laser weapons. |
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Define 'simple.' How powerful are these and how would they get them if not from science?
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| BreakSalv intends to provide the following experience: | ||
| - Hard work not for the faint of heart under a sci-fi megacorp industrial aesthetic. Salvagers should feel like they are cool by braving the dangers and efforts inherent to their job. | ||
| - Visible results from their work. Seeing a huge pile of materials come out of the shredders should make the Salvagers feel like they are contributing to the station. |
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See earlier comment regarding shredding efficiency.
| BreakSalv intends to provide the following experience: | ||
| - Hard work not for the faint of heart under a sci-fi megacorp industrial aesthetic. Salvagers should feel like they are cool by braving the dangers and efforts inherent to their job. | ||
| - Visible results from their work. Seeing a huge pile of materials come out of the shredders should make the Salvagers feel like they are contributing to the station. | ||
| - Completionism and optimization. Salvagers will want to hit 100% on the Wreck Percentage with high Shredder Efficiency and low Wreck Time, but may situationally forgo it for a faster, lower reward. Good Salvagers can brag about how fast they completed a wreck. |
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See earlier comment regarding shredding efficiency. Salvagers will already progress via science and magnet upgrades.
| - Moments of rest. Since all Salvage work requires constant manual effort, salvagers shouldn't be pressured to work continuously. Not having a time limit and forcing minor delays between wrecks (and a longer one for the Magnet Upgrade) are meant to encourage this. | ||
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| There are a few things that BreakSalv is intentionally trying to avoid: | ||
| - Isolationism. While Salvage operates on the outside of the station, since the focus is on magnet wrecks and the shredders, Salvagers do not have much reason to leave the station proper. At worst, a Salvage team may occasionally need to leave the station grid to retrieve a wreck that has spawned further out, but this is only intended to be a temporary excursion lasting for the duration to get out there and tow it back. Salvage should be expected to be found in the Salvage Bay at a level similar to Botany and Xenoarch. |
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Isolation is also bad for antagonist balance, whether your target is a salvager or you are a salvage traitor.
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| Once a wreck has been spawned, it will be located somewhere in nearby space in proximity to the Salvage Bay. If the wreck is not within the player's viewing distance, Salvage may use a _Mass Scanner_ mapped in the Bay to locate it. Compared with previous iterations of Salvage, the wrecks are meant to spawn much closer to the station. Regardless, Salvage will want to move the wreck closer to the Salvage Bay, as it will make it easier to extract materials and is necessary to complete the later steps. This is known as _towing_. | ||
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| To tow the wreck, Salvage will have access to _grappling hooks_ and _magboots_. While grappling hooks on their own simply drag the user towards the hook, when combined with the grounding force of the magboots, Salvagers can pull grids towards each other (or, in the case of one with a station anchor, only the one without is pulled). Ideally, Salvage will be able to stand on the outer rim of the station and use their grappling hooks to drag the wreck into working distance; once it is, they can proceed to the next step. |
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Please specify if salvage will have scopes for this, as well as mitigation measures to avoid slamming two grids and causing collision damage.
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| #### Salvage Specialist equipment | ||
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| From the start of the round, Salvagers should have access to: |
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They will also need a trashbag, or a rework of the ore bag into a 'scrap bag'
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I also think salvage will benefit from a Recycler Charge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaUKIThtdNw |
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🚀 + 🔨 = 💰
This is a design document for a Salvage rework proposal titled Shipbreaker Salvage, or BreakSalv! Because you break things apart, and you get to take breaks, and maybe there's breakfast at the end. Or it breaks the game! Enjoy!
Thank you to Slartibartfast and Minemoder for reviewing an early version and providing feedback.