Whole ship recovery should always be significantly more profitable than pod rescue

[crimson marsh]

Self explanatory, especially given that recovering ship necessarily interrupts dive.
Note that this is recovery of a ship that isn't legitimate salvage.

(Of course bounties for disabling a ship should always be more costly than recovery fee. )

[crimson marsh]

For the record, I got paltry 44k for recovering a disabled k37 (I haven't shot it up myself).

[waxen wolf]

Easy way to address it might be to include the pod in cargo when you recover a ship.

[slim rune]

• an "i always repay my debts" spawn afterwards, assuming you weren't the one who disabled them in the first place

[muted cedar]

I have a different take on this.

I think the issue is, that destroying such a ship (and thus spawning the pod instead) is an option (as it also is after failed attempt to recover a legit derelict).
If the ship is abandoned and a derelict, why is there a pod to rescue?

And the way this relates to and addresses the initial problem is:
If the ship is empty, there is no moral obligation to end your dive by rescuing it.
If we know the pay is gonna be crap and no lives are at stake - "leave it to licensed specialists" to collect the paltry 44k.

And yes, if the ship is indeed disabled and still has crew aboard, we should get the rescue bonus added on the finders fee.

It's just not the situation i usually run into.

[crimson marsh]

For example.
I'd make it pod + function of actual ship cost (as recovered).

[crimson marsh]

Yeah, but we're not talking about derelict, we're talking about freshly disabled ships that aren't legitimate salvage.

For derelicts we should indeed either get no pod, or get separate (empty) kind of pod we only get fairly paltry sum for recovering (<=20k).

[waxen wolf]

Well, the recovery fee is for the equipment, not the occupant. 🙂

If they're feeling extra gratitude, that sounds like a personal problem.

As for derelicts . . . you don't HAVE to have the pod leave the ship to be safe in a pod, if the ship jsut dies instead of exploding. Hmm, but we do have dialog that confirms nobody's there. Fair point.

[crimson marsh]

There is still meta effect of either not caring to abort the dive for even less ebucks than you'd get for just popping a pod or strapping it to a craddle, plus you ARE recovering the crew of freshly disabled ship.

[crimson marsh]

Empty pod arguably is still valuable as proof of ship's destruction (one less derelict to look for that can be purged from listings) and probably contains blackbox with valuable circumstantial information.

[waxen wolf]

Well, if nobody's there, they probably left in the pod. Probably.

If you don't care to abort the dive, that's kinda fair. Like, not every scrap heap on the side of the road is worth towing to a garage and restoring.

[waxen wolf]

What if your crew could estimate the damage in dialog? Expand the ||"look, the reactor's cracked"|| dialog to things like "Given the damage . . . maybe a market value upward of (leftmost significant digit of the market value, with the appropriate number of zeroes)."

It would require a mechanic on board, and maybe their experience skill can govern whether they get it wrong.

[crimson marsh]

Would be good and would also introduce more player input into "will crew need X months of sick leave?" EVA gamble.

As in:

you see space tesla, BUT it's badly fucked up, BUT you have no 🦾 - wat do?

[muted cedar]

Yeah i understand, but those things are related in a way, where solving one might bear on the other.

[waxen wolf]

Not sure it should influence the gamble; we already have a dialog for that, and I assume if we wanted it to be less of a gamble, it would be less of a gamble, using that dialog as a mechanic.

[muted cedar]

Yeah the gamble as such is fine. It's a bit of bummer, that it tied to a meta stat (as i understand it - you chances drop as you get richer). But other than that it works well, there needs to be some randomness involved, you can't just make it full on choice situation.
Maybe making the gamble depend on the mechanics skills would be more prudent. And this dependency could be reflected for immersion reasons in the dialog - a good mechanic would be more confident.

[crimson marsh]

Not all that related. Derelict or otherwise legitimate salvage is worth more recovered intact anyway. You don't gain anything from busting it unless you can't take it home, or (for UIOs) don't want to interrupt a dive.
For freshly disabled non UIOs you're literally at loss if you try to bring them back instead of blowing up the ship and grabbing the pod.

[crimson marsh]

It would still be a gamble, but it would be a more informed gamble - for example you could find broken down EIME with lower than average chances of booting it up (and assume your crew correctly assesed its condition which is not given), do you take a high-risk, high reward-gamble?
It would always carry risk, but this risk would vary and your crew could help you assess it.

Player input is nearly universally better than pure push button to RNG.
Even in a traditional RPG where virtual dice roll constantly a combat isn't a single action affair - you keep performing actions and dynamically assessing your chances when picking your next ones.
Hell you could make EVA multi-step process, with risk, information and choices (continue, get back, get tools and remove particularly valuable external components - engines, esp. torch being inherently risky or outright off-limits because of radiation) at each step.

[waxen wolf]

You already get a bit of information on your gamble, if you wait for it.

[muted cedar]

It's right in your thread title. You are comparing the pod reward vs the ship reward.
Because right now every ship drops a pod, it is what makes the comparison between the value of the pod and value of the wreck relevant in the first place.
If there was no pod, a random pile of junk not having any value would be entirely reasonable and of no consequence.

[crimson marsh]

Yeah but you have it ass backwards:
True derelict, that might plausibly have no pod (and maybe should) is always worth more than pod.
Freshly disabled ship will have pod, because it has crew and you can't handwave it as them teleporting away, yet recovery fee is lower than pod recovery reward, even though it's more challenging, more costly (abandoning dive), and from in universe POV more desirable (they get ship back and crew that wasn't explosively packed into POD and put in artificial suspension which is presumably not a safe and painless operation).

• Derelict - pod VS 🦾 salvage VS EVA

• Disabled UIO - bounty VS 🦾 salvage

• Disabled other - pod VS 🦾 recovery 👈 the thing this thread is about

• Regular pod and bounty only differ in amount, but they are both relatively low cost, low risk, low reward option - you don't need to interrupt dive, you don't need much skill to pull it off, you don't need special equipment or crew, you don't face serious risk.

• Arm salvage is high reward, moderate risk and high cost - you get entire ship (which is worth much more than any pod even if shitty and busted, and can be repaired if you can wait for payoff), but need to have 🦾, interrupt dive and risk damaging yourself or busting your prize if you're clumsy.

• EVA is high reward, high risk, low cost - you get entire ship and don't need anything other than crew and remass, don't need to interrupt, but it has high risk of failing and depriving you of crew for prolonged time - it's a gamble.

• Meanwhile recovery has cost and risk of 🦾 salvage, but lower payoff than just grabbing pods - it's never worth it and it makes no sense either in-universe or from balance POV.

Imagine if you were on a boat, but it broke down. So you called coast guard for help.
And they would sink your boat with a missile and try to recover your drowning, potentially wounded ass instead of just tugging the boat.
W. T. F.