Played a bit of MoO2 mixed in with my ISG and noticed a giant discrepancy in salvage values for scrapping ships. In MoO2 you got maybe 6 bcs for scrapping one of your starting frigates. In ISG you get something like 256 credits for scrapping a starting frigate. This seems way out of whack to me and gives the player maybe an easy loophole to afford the militia cruiser or an early leader. Also, scrapping a colony ship is 1875 credits in ISG (not sure how much in MoO2). Wondering if these high salvage values are intended or maybe on the to do list for fixing? As always loving the game and having a blast testing it out.
Perhaps so, but I would surely hate to see them nerfed to MoO2 standards. Money is a funny thing is ISG, most of the time you have plenty of it, every now and then... you struggle. Is there really anything wrong with allowing the player to scrap a ship for money to get that Cruiser or some other goody? I can't tell you how many times I scrapped a survey ship so I could hire a leader before they disappeared, only to spend time constructing another one later on.
IS:G has received criticism in the past about how slow the start can be, especially for the inexperienced. The early game balance is a tightrope. The initial frigates are key to early exploration. Scrapping one or both eliminates your ability to scout as quickly, but can be highly beneficial for hiring a leader, meeting an event's requirements, or even in allowing a temporary over SSP cap penalty due to early game free outpost, survey, or support ships. Ships take a long time to build early on, which has been criticized, but it means those early ships are valuable. Later on in the game, scrapped ships may be too effective at generating BC. I'm not entirely sure, but I could see constructing ships and scrapping them possibly being better than producing trade goods in that same colony. This would seem unintended. So I suppose my real concern is the early economy and ships. The starting BC amount could be increased by a few hundred instead, but that takes away the strategic choice of keeping your scouts or scrapping them that we have now. Off Topic - I wouldn't mind seeing a custom race trait of "Wealthy" or "Prosperous" that provided a larger starting BC amount while we are talking about it though. Perhaps also have it give more production when making Trade Goods? Combined with +BC per POP it could be a nice thematic custom race.
The voice of experience right there, this is all too true. The ability to scrap ships for good sums of money is a choice, a trade off. You do it when you need it but it isn't always there and it isn't always enough. You have those two starting frigates with leaders and it's early, you scrap one of those Frigates and one of the leaders starts to lose opinion, you can't replace it quickly as it either takes a long time or you are half way through a very time consuming construction and don't want to lose it... Choice. @pnye71 spoke about the scrapping for the Militia Cruiser, I've done it you know, but in other sessions one of my Frigates was out exploring and scrapping it would have yielded nothing, the remaining Frigate and my own cash wasn't enough... so bye bye militia cruiser. See, the game doesn't always play out the same and nerfing this is just not sitting well with me. In my view, it isn't ISG that gives too much cash for ships, it was MoO2 that gave too little. Later on in the game, this would be handy in very rare cases, by the time you get to the point where you can build quickly, your economy is usually roaring. Theoretically you could build an FF and scrap it for quick cash, but it will be very difficult to do it early on where you are most likely to need it. Leave it be I say, it adds fun to the game.
Good point. If your frigates aren't stationed at one of your colonies when the opportunity presents itself, you can't even use the scrap option. It doesn't always work out, but it is a nice surprise when it does.
Later in the game, I am inclined to not scrap. If I am going for smashing, then I may. If I am going for expanding, I hold those frigates as I am hoping it will make me look not as weak as I really am. Once I switch to all out military ships, no need to scrap frigates. They can sit on a system that could be attacked by a lone frigate, if undefended. I guess what I see is there are many possible strats that could be used in a given game. We would need a lot more games played to be sure which way to tweak.
This is exactly why once I've explored to my current limit those frigates return home. In case I need quick money for an event or leader. Is there maybe a way to decrease scrap value in thr late game? Maybe tied to a percentage of production or some such?
If there have been complaints on the slow start, then you have swayed me. It can really help to scrap stuff early on to keep things rolling.
Yeah I think that this is the lesser of 2 evils, leaving the salvage values as fairly generous. The other issue is if we change them, there needs to be a way to bring up the pace of the game quickly at a decent clip, which opens up another more sophisticated set of problems.
