Forums » Suggestions

Instead of "Scrap Metal"...

Dec 20, 2006 tianzi link
OK, so I don't sound like I haven't done my homework, I searched Salvage and didn't find anything similar to this suggestion:

Let's be able to salvage complete ships under a certain weight, maybe put them in the hold of a 'moth. Take that 'moth (with the "scrap metal") to the next station and fix the ship that was wrecked. Fixing the wreck would incur the usual repair costs and maybe a re-registration fee.
Dec 20, 2006 Jim Kirk link
You know, I didn't think I was going to agree with this, just by reading the title but I do, a lot! This would be really cool to implement. I might add that perhaps killing someone with a rocket/missile/explosive might make the scrap less easy to put together...
Dec 20, 2006 CrippledPidgeon link
Well, the ship that is salvaged should be worse than the normal ship, though. Like less armor, and less maneuverable. I mean, it was SCRAP, so it would inherantly be less structurally sound.
Dec 21, 2006 krazyivan link
Da, I imagine that streams of high energy positrons have a way of destabilizing the matter with which they come in contact. Therefore, armor and general structural stability is decreased. I imagine it would cost more to repair the ship than it would to buy a new one. Same for metal that's been torn apart by flares and jacks exploding on it.

It still might be cool though--especially if that's a way I can obtain a ship I normally wouldn't be able to fly. I'd never want to have smurf standing high enough to buy a Valk, but flying one that I salvaged after killing its smurf pilot is a whole other story...sounds cool. It'd be especially good if we could officially name our ships. Say I have no trading licenses, but decide to become a trader one day. I could go hunting and end up starting my trading career in a Moth called the "Tianzi Tub" (sorry...too late to think of a cooler name.) That'd be fun.
Dec 21, 2006 Dr. Lecter link
Yeah, I'm not sure about the decreased stats. Stands to reason that if it's salvagable, and I'm willing to pay serious coin to have it rebuilt... then that's that.
Dec 23, 2006 CrippledPidgeon link
Lector, there comes to be a point where a ship it totalled. Where it costs more to rebuild the ship than it would be to build a new one (which is what happened to my car in October).

Although, if there were some ability to kitbash ships (in the far future), taking bits and pieces of good ships and combining them to make some sort of bastardized fighter. Like having cent engines and a marauder wing grafted onto the body of a Valk, so you get four guns on a bizarrely maneuvering fighter with practically no armor. Although making collision meshes that would work 100% of the time for all combinations would be hell. And yea, I'm sure this hasn't been suggested a dozen and a half times :P
Dec 29, 2006 DarBar link
i agree.. sort of.
the merging of ship types might be a bad idea though.. remember the ship engine hacking that was going on, and making life hell?
the only way i can see this being even *somewhat* fair, is if you'd have to collect an insane amount of scrap for this to work and have to pay the local station hot-rodder ALOT of credits for him/her to tweak a killing machine for you. it would throw VO in a totally new direction, though. essentially meaning crafting ships from scavenged garbage.

perhaps having a set of only three or so engines that you may purchase for hotrodding uses, and they would only fit on ships of relative size. i.e. you CANNOT fit a prom engine in a valk, cent, or vult.
basically adding a whole new dynamic to the game, but still have it quasi-controlled and regulated, and still letting the player to use his/her imagination by way of ship building and customizing.

this is interesting, though i am too tweaked on coffee to think about it clearly enough to give an adequate response..
more on this later :-P
Dec 29, 2006 Dr. Lecter link
CP, maybe you could try reading before replying.

Your "point"--that a rebuild can cost more than buying the thing new--presupposes an open market in the ship. In VO, of course, that is a supposition only an idiot would make, since those who would want to rebuild a salvaged ship are those who could NOT buy it new. Thus, the cost of a "totaled" ship is irrelevant: if you're, say, Iran... yes, you would spend ten times the cost of what the U.S. spent building that crashed F-22, to study and rebuild it.

If I'm an Itani cur with KOS Serco standing, I might well be willing to spend twice, ten, or a hundred times what the production cost of a SCP is in order to have one. Are you stupid or just not thinking before you type?

And while there's the weak argument that 'well, damage couldn't be repaired to like new', we're not dealing with cavemen salvaging an Aston Martin to ultimately run like a Model T Ford. There's enough stuff floating around that each side has plenty of salvaged parts of all flavors from the other side's stuff. The cost is in time and effort to scrounge up what's needed and then to make a functional "ship name here".