Recycling observations

[Falcrack]

I notice that when I change out equipment on ships, components are not recycled, unless they are being used for adding to new weapons at the same time. Here are some tests I did:

Plasma cannons cost 20 weapon components each, Ion Mk2 cost 20 weapon components each, so I am switching between these two to see whether they are getting recycled or not.

I had an Eclipse outfitted with 4 plasma, and changed equipment to 2 plasma + 2 Ion Mk2 (should be a net gain of 20 weapon components)
Result: Amount of weapon components at the wharf did not change
If there were no recycling whatsoever, then adding the two ion Mk2 should have resulted in a loss of 20 weapon components, but it appears that the weapon components from the plasma cannons being removed were applied towards the new ion cannons. But logically there should have been 40 weapon components gained from recycling of the 2 plasma cannons, and 20 lost from addition of the two ion cannons for a net gain of 20 weapon components. But there was no net gain observed at the station.

I had an Eclipse outfitted with 2 plasma + 2 Ion Mk2, and changed equipment to 4 plasma (should be a net loss of 20 weapon components)
Result: Amount of weapon components at the wharf decreased by 20
Adding the two plasma cannons should have resulted in a loss of 40 weapon components, but removing the two ion Mk2 should provide a gain of 20 weapon components, for a net loss of 20 weapon components. This appears to be what happened. So some recycling is happening.

I had an Eclipse outfitted with 4 plasma, and removed them all without replacing with a different weapon (should be a net gain of 80 weapon components)
Result: Amount of weapon components at the wharf did not change

I had an Eclipse outfitted with no weapons, and added 4 plasma cannons (should be a net loss of 80 weapon components)
Result: Amount of weapon components at the wharf decreased by 80

Long story short, recycling components only ever seems to happen when there is another simultaneous change that would require these components as well. It does not seem to be the case that you could strip weapons or equipment from a ship and get a net gain in components at the shipyard. Is this a bug, or intended?

[MarvinTheMartian]

Hopefully this can be addressed in 3.0
Weapon components are in high demand (in my game at least) so scale this up and there's a financial impact.
I've only just built my first ship fabrication module and I will see if this applies to other items like engines and shields too, looks easy to test with this methodology.

Cheers
Marv

[Falcrack]

Hopefully this can be addressed in 3.0
Weapon components are in high demand (in my game at least) so scale this up and there's a financial impact.
I've only just built my first ship fabrication module and I will see if this applies to other items like engines and shields too, looks easy to test with this methodology.

Cheers
Marv

I just used weapon components to illustrate the general principle. In short, there does not seem to be circumstances where recycling will result in a net gain of a ware (ie all the wares used for a components go back into storage when the component is removed and not replaced). But, if the requested change both recycles and consumes the same amount of a given ware, then there will not be a net loss of that ware.

[MarvinTheMartian]

I think it should deposit recycled components back into storage, even if that's at a slight loss due to the process. Doesn't make sense to use them when swapping out but not on removal

Do station modules work the same way? I've noticed recycling on relocating a module on the station but hoping I can dismantle modules and use the reclaimed claytronics etc for another station

[Chris0132]

Dismantling station parts gives you a full refund as far as I've observed.

[Imperial Good]

As far as I am aware recycling ship loadout does not refund any net components and this is by design. I think it is to prevent players from flooding the storage of NPC warf, shipyards and maintenance bays such that they cannot buy the wares they need to operate.

Module deconstruction should refund all the parts that were used. However module loadouts might not be refunded but that is possibly a bug.

[Falcrack]

As far as I am aware recycling ship loadout does not refund any net components and this is by design. I think it is to prevent players from flooding the storage of NPC warf, shipyards and maintenance bays such that they cannot buy the wares they need to operate.

Module deconstruction should refund all the parts that were used. However module loadouts might not be refunded but that is possibly a bug.

They could get around this by just having shipyards and equipment docks automatically dump excess wares into space if there is not enough storage space. Say for example there is storage room for 1000 more e-cells at the shipyard, and there is an inbound freighter with an order to sell 800 e-cells. So technically there is only room for 200 e-cells with the ware reservation, even though the storage says it could hold 1000 more e-cells. Suppose that while the freighter is inbound, a component is recycled which should give a net gain of 500 e-cells, but because of the inbound freighter, only 200 e-cells is added to the station from the recycling event, and the remaining 300 e-cells is dumped into space around the shipyard in a container. If you are making this change at an NPC shipyard, you only get paid for 200 e-cells instead of 500 e-cells had the freighter not been inbound.

[MarvinTheMartian]

I can understand the reasoning for not overstocking the station storage, especially if it ends as a potential exploit. And, I guess, that you'd not want to have different logic for player and NPC shipyards/wharves.

If I was to put forward a solution, it would be to limit the restock to the allocated storage of that ware in the station but, again, this has wider reaching impacts and would have to be different in player stations and really not be worth the effort in dev and test for a very minor thing. So I'll retract my assertion that this should get consideration in 3.0.

Good to know this though so you can avoid extra material use when swapping turrets etc. as I like to strip the hull and rebuild it again - instead I'll sell the turrets to NPC wharf.

Perhaps the PHQ could recycle ships in the future? (like we had in X3)

[Imperial Good]

They could get around this by just having shipyards and equipment docks automatically dump excess wares into space if there is not enough storage space. Say for example there is storage room for 1000 more e-cells at the shipyard, and there is an inbound freighter with an order to sell 800 e-cells. So technically there is only room for 200 e-cells with the ware reservation, even though the storage says it could hold 1000 more e-cells. Suppose that while the freighter is inbound, a component is recycled which should give a net gain of 500 e-cells, but because of the inbound freighter, only 200 e-cells is added to the station from the recycling event, and the remaining 300 e-cells is dumped into space around the shipyard in a container. If you are making this change at an NPC shipyard, you only get paid for 200 e-cells instead of 500 e-cells had the freighter not been inbound.

This has been suggested many times already be people such as myself and even discussed heavily on discord. The issue is not as simple as you think since the cost of ship loadout has nothing to do with the raw material cost to produce it and instead is defined by separate entries in wares.xml, and is usually 2-4 times the worst case price of the actual wares.

Software should not be refunded at all or should have a material cost associated with it. Currently one can generate infinite free money by modifying on software at your own shipyard, warf or maintenance bay for free and then modifying that software off to the NPCs. Once software is installed or upgraded there should be no going back.

Good to know this though so you can avoid extra material use when swapping turrets etc. as I like to strip the hull and rebuild it again - instead I'll sell the turrets to NPC wharf.

By the time one operates their own shipyard or warf money becomes so trivial anyway that the wasted parts for weapons are insignificant.

[MarvinTheMartian]

By the time one operates their own shipyard or warf money becomes so trivial anyway that the wasted parts for weapons are insignificant.

One should never, ever generalise.

I'm down to my last 40m Cr after buying the blueprints for the S/M Fabrication module and Magnetar Gas miner. My station is diverting all hull parts to building the module and ships (except Magnetars I know realise ) so I'm not selling the very profitable weapon components either. Perhaps when I'm printing Cr by the millions I'll not worry about a thousand here or there but right now I'll take what I can get!