FEATURE INFO Spawn, Respawn, Destruction settings of AI Vessels

So just to make sure I understand you want to loot patrol vessels before you destroy the core?

 

Can't containers be opened without having to destroy the core ?

 

thank you

this is the kind of information we need to be able to provide informed feedback.
Please add the vanilla timers to the description. The discussion is different if an entity despawns in 30 seconds or 30 minutes and that is a vital part of how Eleon thinks this works.

 

Please excuse my ignorance again but I thought that you could not board a moving ship. If thrusters are still present then the ship will still be moving. How do we loot it?

 

You can't - you have to stop it first.

 

Oh, I think I get it now. So you have to shoot out the thrusters, hence triggering the detonation sequence and then have x amount of time to loot?

 

Exactly - all of them. I did try once in GodMode to loot it while flying, but I was just ghosting through walls and everything...

 

IIRC about 3 Minutes...could be more...therefor HURRY UP!

 

Only if someone locked them. But normally you get a faction related warning but could access them anyway

 

What happens to the vessel if I do not disable the vessel I just run away.

 

So now if the battle takes a different course and you shoot out the core with manual firing guns the ship's will despawn instantly? Sorry trying to get my head around this. It seems a big game changer for quite a few players and the way to play. I understand a timer should be involved to keep space clear but it needs to be longer in time so if your after the loot you do have time to loot.

 

Thanks. I was just asking @ravien_ff who was asking Hummel "So just to make sure I understand you want to loot patrol vessels before you destroy the core?" - Since he makes scenarios I assumed he knew players don't have to "de-core" a structure to open containers. I should have written " Is it not true that... "

 

usually yes. Depending on what your current supply need is and the number of alien crates in the mix the greater value is in looting the components of the ship not in the containers. If there are no very rare or ultra rare crates the crates just become a small bonus, not the prize.

 

What becomes clearer now is that there was a confusion between "looting" and "salvaging". As can be seen from Hummel's comprehension, "loot" is what lies in containers, and the blocks and devices of a ship are not "loot" but blocks and devices. That is also what I understood when reading this explanation by Hummel.

 

My suggestion for this mechanic is: all the alien vessels (PVs, OPVs, OPVs SBD and Freighters) must have the same behavior so the player don't get confuse with the mechanic and report it as a bug. So, a desirable mechanic could be as follow:


1. The alien vessel stops when the player destroy its thrusters, or the core or other vital component of its engine.

2. A message is displayed to the player that says a self destruction mechanism is initiated so the player has, lets say, 30 minutes to scape for the explosion (Could be nice if the destruction timer is showed in the P menu in case the user sets their own core). This value can be changed on configuration files.

3. If the core is still working, the player can destroy it without the vessel disappear. The destruction of the core is important for looting (salvaging) components of the vessel. However, if the player set their own core on the vessel, a message could tell him that the core is not fully compatible with the vessel technology so, some functions will not work properly (like driving the vessel).

4. After the self destruction time is reached, the player will see an explosion and the vessel will disappear immediately.

 

Its extraordinarily demotivating for players to have this be the system. To take away the 'dream' of fighting a heavily defended, armored, shielded capital vessel tooth and nail, to finally defeat it to capture it and have it for yourself. I could be mistaken, but on seeing a lot of those things, I really do think its one of the first things players think about doing with them. It was certainly what I thought of, as well as my friends who I play the game with. And to have the player only learn that they can't do it after they build themselves up to the point of defeating it? Can't remember the last time a game let me down that hard. And I can't even salvage it for parts. just... POOF. its gone. In my case it was a Zirax Frigate.

And I know from other posts that the system was implemented because of servers which left a ton of things lying around that had to be deleted, and yes that's understandable. For large servers where its an issue. Where its less reasonable is in single player, where a person is realistically never going to have that problem, or small multiplayer servers like the one im playing on with 4-5 friends.

If it were up for debate about it being changed, which I SEVERELY hope that it is, then players should have the opportunity to do what they want with the vessel before it gets despawned, or self destructed or whatever. If I want to take it and use it for myself, Shouldn't that be an option? Its an open world game, please don't restrict my options like that. It just sucks; its not fun, its just dissapointing and sad and makes me not want to play or engage with them.

Alternatively, if the devs are bent on not giving players the opportunity to walk away with the captical vessel they defeated (which would be severely dissapointing), then the risk-reward balance with these encounters absolutely needs to be rebalanced. These ships are dangerous to fight to some degree, and defeating them as a result should result in a decent reward. (High difficulty should give high reward.) I got more out of an abandoned base on the starter planet from just shooting some scorpions and looting the myriad of alien containers inside than I did from taking down a Frigate. thats INSANE! I should walk away from a fight like that with more than two alien containers worth of loot.

And there are other solutions to the memory problem that these ships presented to servers before implementing these systems. All it would have to be is that if a player placed their own core on a ship, showing that they intended to actually use it, the ship would not despawn/self destruct. And if a player did this only so they could receive full items instead of salvage, you could make it so ships without a core are set to despawn after X minutes so that players have a chance to either loot it and take their core back, then it would despawn, or leave their own core in and have it for themselves. This might not be a perfect solution because it means if a players core on a ship got destroyed they'd lose the ship if they didn't replace it, so this might not exactly be the solution, but honestly almost anything is better as a solution than self destructing/despawning ships.


TLDR: Its extrodinarily unfun and demotivating for ships to just dissapear after you fight them. I severely hope this gets looked at again and that players should be able to take a capital vessel they beat for themselves, or at least get far greater rewards than they currently do for beating them. Risk reward structure must be better for these ships to be worth engaging with. As it stands, I will be just pathing around every enemy capital vessel because there is nowhere near enough incentive to fight them currently. And finally, there are better solutions to the problem this system was initially created to solve, and I really hope that one can be found that isn't demotivating and unfun to the player.

 

Just wondering... would I want to use a ship I could defeat in battle with another ship I made ? Mmm....