New Carriers EDIT:, salvage and stuff (rant)

[Shoat]

BTW I think salvage efficiency should be equal for all command stations except Home (and maybe Warp Jammer).

Reason:
-Wave comes, use Military station to fend off attack
-You now have a lot of scrap, switch to Logistics station to collect at highest efficiency
-Switch back to Military station when done (or new wave comes)
-A winner is you

Shouldn't that be impossible?
Nowadays there is a 120s cooldown when trying to switch command stations.

If you'd try that the result should be that you spend 2 minutes, half of the "scrap prime time" (keith said above it takes 4 minutes to process 90% of the planet's scrap), with ZERO scrap income from that planet because you're waiting on the cooldown to finish and the logistics station to START building.


Not that I'd want to meddle with math right now (just got done with finals *shudder*), but I'm pretty sure that would be very very inefficient compared to having a lower % scrap rate for the full 4 minutes.

[DrFranknfurter]

it's only really sensible if you have lots and lots of scrap and knowlege (to unlock the logistics), but you can very quickly build new stations without destroying the old one first by selecting the command station and using the CMD tab, rather than using a colony ship. Lots of engineers make command stations go up in a couple of seconds.

It's never neutral so you don't lose scrap. Plus logistics slow things down so even if enemy ships turn up it isn't all bad...

[Shoat]

it's only really sensible if you have lots and lots of scrap and knowlege (to unlock the logistics), but you can very quickly build new stations without destroying the old one first by selecting the command station and using the CMD tab, rather than using a colony ship. Lots of engineers make command stations go up in a couple of seconds.

It's never neutral so you don't lose scrap. Plus logistics slow things down so even if enemy ships turn up it isn't all bad...

Oh, so the cooldown only applies to colony ships?
I just hate having a new station in a different spot than the previous one , so I stuck with ye olde option of using two colony ships for changing station type. Thus I never noticed that building it directly from the old station does not have a cooldown.

Anyway, if Histidine's strategy of quickly switching to a high-% command station after each assault becomes too powerful to be tolerable it's very easily  nerfed (newly-built command stations don't gather scrap for a minute or two afterwards, bam!).

[kasnavada]

Looking at the salvage nerf coming up, and I feel maybe it is a bit too much of a nerf, especially given that most command stations only have an efficiency rate of like 10%.

Don't have hard numbers to back this up though...

Folks have taken the opportunity to tank with their homeworld to score the 50% efficiency.  Which tends to make things more exciting, I think

Note: I'm playing at 8/8, second game with (s)crap. One with the "old" turrets, the other one with the "new" turrets.

And, no, it does not really makes the game more interesting.

The whole "tank homeworld" stuff is not really a good gameplay initiative... and it's waaaaay unbalanced at that power level. Basically there is little to no risk involved in not tanking homeworld with the recent changes.
- Hacking removed most of the "out of place" defend points.
- Taking a regular wave at less than about 200 AIP will result in negligible amounts (in the order of 300-400 / s) (s)crap.
- With the new turrets, defending "out of place" planets is easy. The AI nearly always suicides now. This does cost a high amount of energy. Basically the only thing I go and defend against is the "revenge" waves. Regular waves are nearly irrelevant.

However, taking any wave on the homeworld will on average gets a 5 times higher amount of scrap. Now, a load of game modes enable stronger waves (botnet golem / spire campaign in that particular second game) and since they always go at the throat, the amount is ridiculous. I actually rejoice at the choice of the AI to go at the throat and attack there, as it means I'll be able to build 6-8 dozen merc ships after I rebuilt my entire fleet. That includes two dozen of the basic spire campaign frigate. I used one such exo to build, entirely, one spire city. However, when I don't have that income, I can't rebuild anything and have to wait for new exo to arrive.

I've been hesitating to unlock logistical stations but since I saw I could reroute the waves to the homeworld I decided against it, and unlocked both military versions to make defending the homeworld even easier.

In short:
The 'main' salvage on what I unlock will be either 8, 12, 10 depending on whether your station is military 3, 2 or warp jammer, salvage is basically low with regular waves on homeworld, pathetic with other regular waves, and waaaaay OP with "strong" waves, even with the latest version, since they are completely predictable and can be moved to where the salvage percentage is higher. AKA: the homeworld. I literally have not seen even one exo hitting another world.

What I'd propose is :
- remove the salvage property from all command stations,
- create "salvager" buildings which will give 30% (unique) / 15% (5 times), and have the AI consider higher wave strength, and avoid any kind of suicide run there, since they are obviously a trap.
- give a 5% salvage bonus for every death on allied planet.
- salvagable quantity should be something like the square root of the base cost of the unit. If not enough, get a cube root or even higher.

[TechSY730]

Yea, IMO salvage is still too strong, though no longer game breaking like before.

Not sure if I would go so far as to remove it from command centers. I think just needing home world salvage rate and especially efreciency, and buffing other command stations' salvage rates and effeciency, especily Mk. Is (with HW being no worse than tied for the best salving Mk. III unlock, or alternatively, let the command station foldouts contribute to salvage rate and efficiency)

Also, big things still let yo hit crazy amounts of salvage (usually hitting salvage cap) way too easy. I think one sort of sub linear scaling is still needed, but at a less harsh decrease than the original try at that as the salvage cap thing is also helping things from getting out of control.

Also, salvage seems too "strong" for the AI. Often, reprisal level 1 can be 6-7x the strength of nornal waves on difficulty 8. Though given they still don't pose that much of a threat, maybe the salvage wave sizes are fine, and wave sizes of 7-8, difficulties need to go up. In any case, 6-7x for salvage reprisal level 1 vs normal waves is a bit too much even for difficulty 8, IMO.

[kasnavada]

If the salvage is to stay on stations, IMO it would needs to be fixed by station type, with military having the largest. Because unless military has the largest salvage, I'd redirect to the home station. I'd rather defend where the AI is most likely to attack. If I try to force the defense to another station, let's say a logistical station chokepoint, I'm about sure that I'll have to defend the homeworld too because the AI will bypass this now and then. Also, leaving the home station "undefended", "vulnerable", nearly guarantees that other stations won't get attacked, and makes it less likely that you lose to energy shortage. And, I need the scrap.

But problem is... military can't be the largest. It's got enough advantages over other station type already.

For me, this is the main reason for which salvage should be independant from stations.

[NickAragua]

Kahuna: I just finished a game on 7/7 with the salvage mechanic and the new turret caps. Both metal and energy were quite relevant.

The energy cost of a full cap of turrets per planet is pretty prohibitive compared to what's produced by an energy collector, so available energy determines how many planets you can actually defend before your force fields start blinking off after a stray raid or plasma siege starship pops a command station. If I want to defend more planets, I need to sacrifice my non-salvage income to build a bunch of matter converters, which makes those salvage bursts even more critical as that's the only time I can really build a serious number of ships.

Without salvage, I would never be able to even consider building the Fallen Spire structures and ships (or, to be honest, rebuild my standard fleet) in any reasonable time frame. As I recall, the point of "salvage" was to negate a lot of those "it takes forever to rebuild my fleet" complaints.

You have to realize that, on 10/10, AI waves and other attacks  (based on this wiki article) dwarf anything that comes at you in 7/7, so they probably generate a lot more salvage. Thus, if you want your 10/10 game to be harder and insist on a balance change for challenge, I would recommend linking salvage effectiveness to difficulty level. If you regularly play on 10/10, you are on the far right of the bell curve (where right = higher skill). If the game needs to be harder on higher difficulty levels where I don't dare go, then so be it. But it really doesn't need to be harder on the "standard" difficulty level.

[Aklyon]

I agre with nick.

[Kahuna]

I agre with nick.

As do I

[keith.lamothe]

I would recommend linking salvage effectiveness to difficulty level.

FYI this is already the case.  The AI's salvage effectiveness, that is.  Taking Diff 7 as a baseline, Diff 8 is about 1.42x Diff 7, Diff 9 is about 2x Diff 7, and Diff 10 is about 3x Diff 7.

[relmz32]

I think some re-working of salvage efficiency could help.
These are the assumptions that i am entering into this with:

• 50% on the HW knowledge-free is straight up too good.
• 8% on not the HW is too low.
• Logistics station unlocks need a buff

Idea:
HW naturally has 40% salvage

All non HW give 20% salvage

However, the Logistics Command gives 5*(mk-1)% salvage bonus to the system, meaning that it actually gives 20, 25, 30 salvage
along with the mk 2 and mk3 foldout give +5% and +10% efficiency to the homeworld as well (Taking it to 45% and 55% at mk2 and mk 3 unlocked).

[Peter Ebbesen]

Or have the standard forts and spire hubs increase salvage:

Homeworld: 40%
Command stations: as current.

Fort: +1% salvage per mark. (So total +6% from all 6 L1 forts, +8% from all 4 L2 forts, +9% from all L3 forts)
Spire hub: +10% per level.

Yes, it would enable homeworlds with even more salvage than currently (63% if fully forted up), but more importantly, if somebody decides to tank waves in other places and defends them strongly with some of the defenses that are severely limited in numbers, they'll get higher salvage, and they'll to a large degree be able to control it themselves by where they build the forts.

[TechSY730]

I would vote for just reducing the disparity between HW salvage and normal command station salvage. IMO, the HW should still be the best or tied for best (aka, no Mk. III command station will overtake the HW salvage rate, at best tying it), but the difference being less should make the risk of having waves at your homeworld be more relevant compared to the reward for letting waves be there. IMO, This should be accomplished through both nerfs to the HW salvage rate and buffs to the normal command station's salvage rates.