Request for recycle command

[Falcrack]

Can we have a command for ships to be recycled at player owned shipyards and equipment docks? Basically, just select the ship, right click on the shipyard/equipment dock, choose "recycle", and all or a portion of the wares used in the construction of the ship and its modules get added to the storage of the station. If the amount of recycled wares exceeds that of the storage capacity, they simply get ejected into space around the station.

[mr.WHO]

Yes, this is something that is bizzare that is still missing in X4, while it was present in X3.

[mingus44]

While we're on the subject, how about a station recycle command too?

Select a station and order a ship builder class vessel to dismantle it. The components, hull parts etc. could end up in build storage -with a maybe ~ 10% loss and all the energy cells gone - ready to be used elsewhere and everyone is happy. It's a bit sad having such a dynamic universe and such a static personal empire within it.

[mr.WHO]

While we're on the subject, how about a station recycle command too?

Select a station and order a ship builder class vessel to dismantle it. The components, hull parts etc. could end up in build storage -with a maybe ~ 10% loss and all the energy cells gone - ready to be used elsewhere and everyone is happy. It's a bit sad having such a dynamic universe and such a static personal empire within it.

You can already dismantle entire station, but you then need to manually transfer the resources from build storage to transport ships.
Then you can delete the plot.

[adeine]

The curious thing is that the command already exists. AI factions will recycle ships you sell them, with its own command icon and everything.

It's just not exposed/available to the player right now.

[mr.WHO]

Inability to recycle, reverse engineer and stealing blueprints is the reason why I stay away from pirate gameplay.

I haven't even boarded anything, bar a few ships on 1.0

[Falcrack]

Inability to recycle, reverse engineer and stealing blueprints is the reason why I stay away from pirate gameplay.

I haven't even boarded anything, bar a few ships on 1.0

You can safely board SCA ship with no rep loss. Nice way to snag a few destroyers, and they are good money if you sell them.

[exogenesis]

Recycle at player shipyard would be very useful.

If only to be able to change ship types in a large fleets (mining/attack/trading)
without having to accumulate hundreds (or more) 'dead' ships,
since you can effectively only sell off a few at a time to NPC shipyards/wharfs.

e.g. I switched completely from Drills to Alligators across my empire, & many Cthonios to Cranes,
now have *very* many spare Drills & many Cthon.s, which I can't get rid of,
almost certainly 'clagging' up CPU & FPS.

Mind you, for me, a return of the 'self destruct' command from previous X-games would be as useful...

[Buzz2005]

send them to a xenon station, as good as self destruct

[exogenesis]

Yea, usually, but I'm +30 with Xenon & supporting them, otherwise they'd be extinct.

Just a 'blow this ship up' would be handy

[Zloth2]

(Because I like trying to make up formula like this)

% Chance of acquiring a ship blueprint:
Highest service skill on the station + 2 * log(# of work force with 4+ skill) + log(# of work force with 2+ skill)
{So probably a 7 or 8 percent change for a big station, maybe 16 percent if you have a huge, skilled pool of service workers.}

Player can request that research take priority over recovery and get a small percentage bonus in exchange for getting fewer (no?) wares from the ship. Handy for folks who have full storage.

Might need to make weapon and many shields have a less chance of revealing a blueprint, because there's going to be a lot more of them.

P.S. No recycling crew to make soylent green!

[Falcrack]

I would suggest recycling ships is tied to getting a chance to research the blueprint of the things being recycled. Every time a ship, weapon, shield, or engine gets recycled, it adds maybe ~25% progress towards these items, and once 100% is reached, you can begin a research mission to research that ship chassis, weapon, shield, or engine. This research would cost resources, maybe double the amount of resources needed for the part, to simulate the need to make prototypes.

There also needs to be a way to obtain blueprints for fabrication bays without paying a faction for this blueprint.

This way, you could play a pirate gameplay, being allied with nobody, and still be able to obtain all the blueprints needed to build your own ships.

[adeine]

I would suggest recycling ships is tied to getting a chance to research the blueprint of the things being recycled. Every time a ship, weapon, shield, or engine gets recycled, it adds maybe ~25% progress towards these items, and once 100% is reached, you can begin a research mission to research that ship chassis, weapon, shield, or engine. This research would cost resources, maybe double the amount of resources needed for the part, to simulate the need to make prototypes.

There also needs to be a way to obtain blueprints for fabrication bays without paying a faction for this blueprint.

This way, you could play a pirate gameplay, being allied with nobody, and still be able to obtain all the blueprints needed to build your own ships.

Yeah, this seems like the right way to go about it. Random % chances are incredibly annoying, having it contribute to an overall research percentage would be a good way to implement it.

This way it could even use the existing backend for research projects, it just needs a little extension to the UI.

Not being able to EMP fabrication modules is really arbitrary to begin with, and now that EMP bombing a station no longer turns it hostile everything else is basically free. I think this entire part of the gameplay could use a rework. Stealing blueprints should be less trivial and actually involve doing something interesting if you want to encourage pirate playstyles. Hacking stations is also kind of an abandoned mechanic, so perhaps something to tie all of it together?

What if the way to illegally get the fabrication blueprints is a mission chain that culminates with boarding a faction's shipyard (not even necessarily for you to keep it/have it change ownership, but as the final ingredient to research the blueprint). Boarding stations in general sounds like it could be fun - having to actually have to use a fleet of marine vessels and strategically plan things out.

For instance, you could have it so boarding or tampering with a station sends out a distress signal to alert the faction's fleets so just rushing in blindly without protection is suicidal (not to mention the station's defences should it have them) and make it so there's actually a point for the different station hacks. E.g. being able to delay the emergency response by a number of minutes, hacking to disable the turrets for the boarding pods to make contact, etc.

Possibilities are endless, even without major changes to the way things work right now.

[LameFox]

I would suggest recycling ships is tied to getting a chance to research the blueprint of the things being recycled. Every time a ship, weapon, shield, or engine gets recycled, it adds maybe ~25% progress towards these items, and once 100% is reached, you can begin a research mission to research that ship chassis, weapon, shield, or engine. This research would cost resources, maybe double the amount of resources needed for the part, to simulate the need to make prototypes.

There also needs to be a way to obtain blueprints for fabrication bays without paying a faction for this blueprint.

This way, you could play a pirate gameplay, being allied with nobody, and still be able to obtain all the blueprints needed to build your own ships.

I fill this gap in the game with a mod at the moment but they really do need to put this in there. If that mod breaks someday with an update I'm pretty much done with the game as-is. I have repeated the trader-privateer playstyle enough already, a sandbox game should be better at providing options than this.