Greetings, Just started another game, I am on turn 18 and selected the Culture Perk - Space Explorers. It gave me a free Survey Ship which was great, tried to move it, hit next turn and then a message appeared saying "Survey Ship scrapped due to lack of credits". Checking my credits I have 1215. If its a free survey ship why would this be scrapped due to lack of credits when I was in credit? The action left me confused.... Is this by design?
The only way to be sure was to look at a save, but my guess is that when you got the Survey Ship for free, from the Space Explorers space culture perk, your Ship Support Points went negative (the green ship icon on the top of the screen). This caused you to go into debt in the next turn. The game starts scrapping ships and buildings when you are in debt. The 1215 you got was the result of the debt you had plus the salvage amount obtained from scrapping the survey ship.
I Adam thanks for the reply. Yes you are correct I do have a lack of Ship Support Points, that starts to make sense now however the message "Scrapped due to lack of credits" is what confused me. It wasn't a lack of credits but Ship Support Points! That aside, it seems arsh to scrap the ship without giving the player any indication this might happen on the next turn. A popup when selecting the perk if you have insufficent support points would be good? Alternatively give free support points to allow you to use just that ship, it said it was free. Giving some early perks can make the game more enjoyable for new players at the start esepcially when all your planets are uninhabitable. Just a thought .....
Another thought is that you could allow the player to go into debt with their credits, but with a stiff penalty (empire wide morale penalty?) the further into debt you go. If morale hits rock bottom empire wide - you get dispossessed of your authority I never really understood the scrapping of ships BTW when you run out of funds. The under-funded ships (or random buildings) could simple become deactivated until you had a positive income again.
Although it was the negative SSPs that caused the lack of credits, the message says "scrapped due to lack of credits" because ultimately it was the lack of credits that triggered the scrapping. However, I admit that it can be confusing to get that message without a clear link of what happened. Perhaps a message about entering into negative SSP would be in order. You have a point. We'll consider your suggestion, to make the survey actually free or to give extra SSP at the start. We'll see. Thanks for your feedback.
This is a balancing act. Knowing the requirements involved, I ensure to grow my SSPs before I start partaking of free ships. This plays out differently game to game. For example, if you can colonize a planet quickly, you pick up 2 SSPs. One from the colony itself and the other from the used colony ship no longer requiring support. If I can't colonize or expand my SSPs quickly then I delay taking free ships right away. I already find the number of free ships, (colony, survey, outpost) to be generous so I'm not sold on making a survey ship truly "free" Keep in mind that when you select a free ship and lack the support point available, the tooltip tells you "you don have enough support points" as you are bout to make the selection. There is nothing wrong with a bit of a learning curve in these types of games, it is expected.
