I did have a Gravsurvey ship that ran out of maintenance supplies when its jump engine broke down. I was unable to get another ship there in time, and eventually it suffered catastrophic system failure and exploded.
I sadly realized only later that I had a maximum of 99 maintenance supplies in the design, but it took 100 to fix the grav sensors. That led to a bit of redesign and retrofitting later on. (The grav sensors had an unfortunate tendancy to fail, rendering the ship useless for its designed purpose.)
See, you remembered it as one notable aspect of the game, and if you would be writing an AAR I am sure that you would retell the episode quite nicely. However I bet you won’t have that trouble again now that you know to put a sufficient number of maintenance supplies on board.
I'm guessing that ships that "accidentally" end up inside the event horizon of a class seven black hole while exploring a jump point don't really count, do they?
Well I would say it counts in one way: It demonstrates that a feature that unexpectedly causes some damage and forces you to re-think your plans can be a worthwhile and enjoyable addition to the game. It adds an aspect to the game without spelling “rocks fall, everyone dies”.
Just having random "bloops you lost a ship" doesn't add much, but perhaps there should be a morale/wealth bonus to rescuing said survivors within time. No random event, if they are going to be added, should be entirely negative(or necessarily positive for that matter).
Well currently the positive reward for rescuing the crew is that the crew, and its captain remain at your services. Additionally this avoids capture (or rescuing and “friendly” interviews) by another race. Conversely, rescuing foreigners might provide you with some intel points. I suspect Steve will add some aspects to captured/rescued crews in 5.7, as he already expressed willingness to look into that topic. So whatever it is, there are some benefits but I could agree that those could be more pronounced.
The concept has merit but I agree that it does need to mean something in the context of the big picture of your empire. If it is just a renamed maintenance failure it ends up just being RP fun and likely not worth the time to implement.
Agreed. But even as it is, it would slightly increase the incentive for forward maintenance facilities in order to decrease failure probabilities. Along the lines of
Nathan_, one could increase the benefits of rescuing stranded crews (moral, wealth?), which would encourage establishing a SAR service at areas of major traffic. The costs would be rather small: A “fighter” of a fighter engine plus fuel and maybe a jump-engine should get quite far in the 14-day lifepod endurance.
I'd be heavily against this. My question is this: Does randomly damaging sometimes mission-critical ships regardless of their state of repair actually add any fun or enjoyment to Aurora?
Well, since it is primarily a negative event it could be sensible to
make it an optional feature.
But yes, I do think there is fun and enjoyment. If you really loose a critical ship in the worst possible moment you would need to scramble, figure out the best possible response to the new situation, get a replacement ASAP, decide whether you want to proceed or aboard… Compared to just moving along with a plan that sounds way more exciting.
Personally, I think that a small element of uncertainty adds to a game, as long as the uncertainty is not so large that you cannot sensibly formulate any plan.
If this was really, really rare I wouldnt mind. However, the 10% of each maintenance failure proposed in the first post is way too high.
I would agree that it has to be rare, and I am completely open to other percentages, the 10% was just for illustration purposes. Note that I did
not suggest that you lose a ship in 10% of the maintenance failures. I suggested that (maybe) 10% of maintenance failures should result in damage to the affected component. I suspect that in the majority of cases this would affect a rather unimportant component like a fuel tank or a missile launcher, with the only consequence that the damage must be repaired. Even if an engine is affected it normally has a 95% chance of avoiding catastrophic failure (current rules). Let’s say critical components are affected 30% of the time a maintenance failure occurs, then the total chance of a secondary explosion is 10%*30%*5%; I.e. you could expect roundabout
one internal explosion per 700 maintenance failures. And even a minority of secondary explosions would likely lead to the loss an otherwise undamaged ship. But again, I am entirely open for other percentages than the 10% initially suggested, just wanting to make sure the principal suggestion was understood correctly.
