(No) Salvage

[magic.coding.fairy.peridot]

So I'm playing the rescue-the-recon-team mission and I blew away one enemy mech and scared the pilots out of two others. Great, I can go on with the chase. But what about these mecha? I can walk over to the destroyed one and pick up its weapons (junk, but it's early game and I don't have much money). The other two are just standing there empty. If this were a salvage included mission, I assume they would have vanished to indicate I was salvaging them. But they haven't, so I'm faced with a decision: do I just leave them there and hope I'm wrong and they get salvaged? Or do I blow them up so I can collect the weapons from the wreckage?


I see this as several related problems:

* How do I tell whether a mission allows salvage, and if so, whether I'm going to salvage a particular mech? Some missions tell you in the mission assignment, which I promptly forget, especially if I have several other (e.g. plot-related) missions in the queue. It would be nice to have a message when I successfully salvage a mech, and also a message saying something like "there won't be time to salvage any mecha from this battle" or "the police will want these mecha as evidence".

* Why is this mission no-salvage? There doesn't seem to be any kind of time limit or exotic location. I liked the old GH1 base-destruction missions, where enemies kept spawning in droves, so you clearly couldn't hang around and salvage complete mecha. As a nice bonus there was always a decision - do I stop and collect that nice Breaker cannon on the mech I just blew away, or will its friends stomp me if I try? In more ordinary missions, though, it's usually a headscratcher why you don't get any salvage.

* No-salvage missions nevertheless allow manual pillaging. Is it really sensible that I don't have time/means to get an intact mech home but I have time to stand around punching it to pieces and collecting the wreckage?


I think the fact that manual pillaging is necessary is kind of reasonable - it can be a royal pain, particularly on space maps, but it does force a choice - is it worth the trouble to collect the Utility Laser from that wrecked Dora? Do I want to bother cluttering up my inventory with another four swarm missile launchers for a paltry few thousand dollars?

How about making salvaging part or all of a mech a skill operation? To saw the leg off that Savin you walk up to it and apply Mecha Engineering (or whatever); if it's a Buru Buru you might not bother. One could even apply this to complete mecha; you walk up to them and do some action (not sure which) to send them home. Or you leave them there and talk to someone at the spaceport to get them towed (though this leaves the question of "will I be able to get this towed or will it disappear, so that I should blow it up and saw off its leg?"). Or maybe apply some skill to tag them so that they can later be towed. This whole approach is to make all salvage explicit, which could be annoying for people who grind for parts and money.

Alternatively, you could make all salvage implicit: just walk away from a battlefield and it collects anything you could have collected if you'd stuck around. So intact mecha if allowed, loose weapons and armor, and possibly limbs from wrecks and intact mecha you could have stuck around to wreck. This streamlines the combat cleanup process - just walk away, confident that you will obtain all the spoils.

What we have now is somewhere between those two options, in which some spoils are collected but others need to be harvested manually (and in some cases this requires standing around pummeling empty mecha).

As a very simple improvement, I'd like to request messages when salvaging happens. For example "You have won Mounteer's mission!" <enter> "You salvage the Buru Buru", "You recover an arm from the Ovaknight", or "You leave the evidence for the police", or "You hurry away to follow Egpu".

[EuchreJack]

I agree that it would be nice at the initiation of the mission combat indicating whether there will be salvage.

Actually, when you consider the time-to-money ratio, destroying mecha for weapons may not be the best idea.  If I spend 5 minutes destroying a mecha to acquire its weapons, then perhaps I could have used that time to get another mission, or maybe even complete another mission (if I specialize in long-range weaponry and mecha gunnery).

I definitely agree that auto-salvage based on what the player could have picked up would greatly increase my enjoyment of the game.

[magic.coding.fairy.peridot]

The new devaluation of salvage has changed the whole ball-game here. It's no longer worth collecting salvage just for the money, since there's no money in it. Salvage is only useful if you want to scavenge weapons or armor. This means you can just ignore all those wrecked buru burus, which is nice. The only catch is all those down-massed modifications: every once in a while you run into a Reaver Railgun that weighs less than usual (even when fully loaded). So you have to go collect them all in hopes of finding one of the light ones...

[Ephafn]

As far as I know, reduced-massed weapons are only present in themed mechas. And since you definitely should loot these guys anyway, it shouldn't change your behaviour.

[magic.coding.fairy.peridot]

Is there a way to tell, from the map view, which twisted wreck was a theme mech? All I see is "Corraich" and an indication of how it's damaged. In fact, without a mecha infodex, can you tell they're themed when they're alive? I know sometimes (always?) some character will announce that they're driving a themed mech, and so sometimes I can keep a mental eye on which of the several Vadels (say) they're driving and where it gets blown up. But if I can't see the enemy, I may have several turns to forget which one was which, and with the drifting of wreckage in space it may be hard to tell which wreck it was.

I guess if custom mecha are always announced, I can just loot all wrecks of that type.

[Frumple]

As far as I know, reduced-massed weapons are only present in themed mechas.

Nah, there's some reduced-massed ones on non-themed machines; the 2.5 (mass -4) ton machine cannon on the Wraith, ferex, always a nice find early on. Given the number of mass reductions in the base machines (Notepad++ finds 1034 instances of 'mass -'), there's bound to be a few more, heh. There's another 187 instances in the theme files, for reference, at least in v0624.

Re: Themed mecha, not really. You can check back through messages to see who the ace was and target their machine, but other than that, seeing what's shooting weird things at you, or manually checking the wrecks, I know of no way to tell offhand which of your foes are piloting themed machines. The infodex is the only way to check for sure, if you're not familiar with what machine's loadout is what.

[Ephafn]

Nah, there's some reduced-massed ones on non-themed machines; the 2.5 (mass -4) ton machine cannon on the Wraith, ferex, always a nice find early on. Given the number of mass reductions in the base machines (Notepad++ finds 1034 instances of 'mass -'), there's bound to be a few more, heh. There's another 187 instances in the theme files, for reference, at least in v0624.

These weren't the mass reduction I was considering. While many mechas have weapons/armor/whatever with mass -X, these can be learned. A Wraith will always have that 2.5 tons machine cannon, so you don't need to salvage the Wraith to decide whether you want the cannon or not. On the other hand, the themed mecha code can randomly reduce the weight of weapons, so you pretty much any weapons of the themed mecha can get reduced mass. Hence reduced massed reavers for example. But you cannot know until you check, either by salvaging or using the Infodex.

[Frumple]

On the other hand, the themed mecha code can randomly reduce the weight of weapons, so you pretty much any weapons of the themed mecha can get reduced mass.

*blinks* Really? I thought it just drew from the theme files; they do have several cases where non-theme weapons are downmassed, but I wasn't aware of a random mass adjustment involved. Can it adjust upwards, too? Wouldn't make a functional difference to someone who didn't peruse the theme files, but that's an interesting tidbit anyway. One of these days I'm gonna' have to figure out how to increase themed machine appearance, heh. Probably make for a heckuva interesting run if everything was themed...

Though checking, the reaver itself isn't much more than a reduced mass heavy railgun that shoots a lil'faster. Coulda' been what the original point was referencin', mebbe? EDIT: Wait, no, no, reading comprehension fail, here. If it's not sleep deprivation it's digestion sluggishness, heh.

[magic.coding.fairy.peridot]

On the other hand, the themed mecha code can randomly reduce the weight of weapons, so you pretty much any weapons of the themed mecha can get reduced mass.

*blinks* Really? I thought it just drew from the theme files; they do have several cases where non-theme weapons are downmassed, but I wasn't aware of a random mass adjustment involved. Can it adjust upwards, too? Wouldn't make a functional difference to someone who didn't peruse the theme files, but that's an interesting tidbit anyway. One of these days I'm gonna' have to figure out how to increase themed machine appearance, heh.

Though checking, the reaver itself isn't much more than a reduced mass heavy railgun that shoots a lil'faster. Coulda' been what the original point was referencin', mebbe?

Well, really I'm just trying to find a way to avoid looting everything on the battlefield every time. As a first pass, I could just say "oh, I've looted fifteen buru burus already, I know they never have anything useful". This fails if either there's a buru buru variant I've never seen before (since I can't tell variants by looking at the wreckage) or if one of the buru burus was actually a custom buru buru (since I can't tell that either by looking at the wreckage).

Will the Mecha Infodex let me see the hardware on a wrecked mecha? If so, does it work only if it's on my mech, or can I install it on a lancemate's? There never seems to be enough room on the onboard computers.

The second nuisance, though I guess it's less important, is that it's sometimes difficult to tell, once you've got the weapons back to the shop, whether they're downmassed or not. I look at a Reaver Railgun I picked up and it's 6 tonnes rather than 6.5 - but no, that's because the ammunition is half-empty. This one that's 5 tonnes, though, is lighter, even though it has the same name and serial number. So I have to remember how much the weapons I'm interested in weigh, and I have to reload everything (including those nuclear missile launchers I have in storage) before I can do the comparison. To add insult to injury, those nuclear missile launchers I spent those millions reloading aren't worth anything to sell... Could modified weapons be given modified names? RG-16a Reaver Railgun for the 5 tonne one, or RG-16 Custom Reaver Railgun for any non-stock one?

[Frumple]

Dunno if the infodex on the lancemate would let you use it, but it definitely would let them use it in tactics mode. For the reloading thing, it's not ideal, but current state you can just eject the ammo on the weapons you're comparing; I don't believe I've seen down-massed ammo, yet... and if there is, you can just reload one of the weapons with the lighter ammo and roll with it.

Pretty bloody sure the 'dex won't let you check the setup on a downed machine, though. Could be wrong, o'course, heh.