Short question for creating ship guide.

[Bolt-action Jack]

Dear game devs/steam moderator,

I am in the process of writing a player guide for ships in this game. There are a few things that puzzle me, and I can't figure out the thought process behind, so I'm worried I am missing some key part of the mechanics.

My question is this; why do some ships of equal mass have different crew/officer maximums? In my mind, crew-per-mass is the general measure of the effectiveness of a ship. Other things are important, but come secondary to that cornerstone. It allows for more complex components and specialists crew.

Originally I thought the different crew maximum was a balancing feature, where you'd need a better crew to handle a better ship. But that does not correlate with multiple examples. In short, why would anyone pick the Stellar Falcon over the Vengeance class? Other than the negligible fuel difference, the Vengeance has more crew and more components, without having to be unlocked. There are several ship comparisons like this, and I can't find a core concept to explain this to other players.

P.S. You've done a phenomenal job answering questions on this forum, and I hope one more won't bother you.

[Gilmoy]

Ships are Just Different That Way. They're not consistently better; they don't form a clean spectrum. In design space, ships are a point cloud, which generally cluster around a "power curve", but there are always outliers along every axis. That's the geometrical nature of a point cloud.

Yes, this means some ships are Simply Better than others, and some ships might be not-1st-choice on any axis. Then a player consensus emerges that some ships are just Never Best, and those ships go almost unused across all playthroughs, forever. That's not a problem; it's probably inevitable in any kind of variegated world.

In CCGs, we call cards that never get used "coasters", "screensavers", or "crap" cards, and ... nobody ever uses them. 4Xes have techs we never research, RPGs have spells we never choose. That's OK. In some domains, I enjoy the meta-challenge of winning with as weak a deck as possible, so I happily enter tournaments with all-crap decks and beat up on cheese speed in wacky ways they never even thought of. Here in ST:F, I might want to complete an unlock using a not-best ship, just to say I did it.

Also, remember that the AI ship-encounter wizard can pick every ship, too. So if you're in a Vengeance and you fight against a Stellar Falcon, maybe you're happy about it. (And maybe the other captain is happy about it, too.)

~~~~~~~~

For this one specific example, Vengeance Class and Stellar Falcon both cost 500k, so neither are starting ships. Both have 6M/13S, but Vengeance is "bigger" in many other stats.

8/3 armor/shields, 5L, 6/36 officers/crew, 45 fuel: Vengeance Class
5/9 armor/shields, 4L, 5/30 officers/crew, 75 fuel: Stellar Falcon

So Vengeance Class gets +1L and +1/+6 crew, for -30 fuel and -6 shields. I tend to agree that this makes it Simply Superior, if you build it to minimize its drawbacks. That low shielding means you either go full ship-combat to not get hit at all, or spend an extra component on shields, or just accept somewhat more internal damage in space combats. Fuel is not a big deal iff you pack it with cargo holds. Or make it an ops ship and play card games, and then you don't care much about fuel or shields.

I might still prefer to do stuff in a Stellar Falcon, just to do it

[Chose Carrée]

There is one thing about those large mass/lower crew ships: they can begin to make more sense when you're flying more than one ship. For instance, you could have a spy/trade Callus Freighter and decide to go for a combat Stellar Falcon. Or have a combat/boarding Longbow Cruiser and invest in a trade Horizon Highliner (that's less of a sub-par choice than the first one, probably )

All the while keeping the exact same crew.

[happybjorn]

I'd like to think it's because of a combination of variety (adding spice to the game) and balance. Not some kind of all choices are equally good sort of balance, but that there are trade offs. Having more component slots is great, but it usually comes at the cost of having to buy a higher mass ship or having some mass dampeners. Having more officers is also great, but it takes component slots.

I may be reading into this a bit, but it sounds like you are biased toward some form of maximization. A ship only needs to be sufficient for your needs to have value. Sure, you might value another one more, but that doesn't magically make the other one not have value.

[darion-neclador]

Honestly i would use Component Count per Mass as defining measure for Ship effectiveness. High Crew Counts are mostly useful for Generalist Approaches or if your planning for redundancy in the face of anitcipated heavy losses. 12-18 Crew is more than enough to man all systems of even a heavily modified ship. Also don't forget to factor in the Size of the Engine as Speed is one of the most impactful Stats your Ship can have (both Combat and Travel wise).

Good Luck with your Guide, looking forward to reading it and posting some snarky comments :) !

[Trese Brothers]

@Bolt-Action Jack - always happy to answer, though a lot of other folks beat me to it. There are a number of factors that make ships unique, and this is just one of them -- Hull, base fuel, base shield, armor, component counts, officer and crew maximums, whether or not they have a Scout Bridge ...

The wiki page may also help.
https://startraders.gamepedia.com/Ships

[darion-neclador]

True having a Scout Bridge certainly ups the OPness-factor by around 18.7685% !