Swapping Ships - Details and Information.

[Vice]

As the topic of ship storage comes up from time to time, I thought I'd provide some information here in a post that can be referred/linked to for those interested. Here are some details on why the ship storage system in Evochron was designed the way it was beginning around 2007-2008.

There are three methods of transferring to another ship, trade in an old ship and build a new one directly in the shipyard, load from templates, and utilize station hangar storage.

Trade-In and Build Directly in Shipyard
The player can quickly retool a new ship in the shipyard from scratch and then just trade in the one they have to upgrade or downgrade to a different one they want. Equipment, weapons, and cargo can be stored or sold before swapping to a ship that can't carry any particular item(s). If a new ship design can't carry the fuel from a current ship, the excess units will be sold for fair market value

Templates
The template system allows you to store the parameters of a ship design and later retrieve it to rebuild a ship of the same design. This option is free in the game, costing no credits, but does have the limitation of requiring a shipyard capable of rebuilding the ship that the template is for. The template option is generally the best route for newer players that may be limited on credits and just need a way to store a ship design they like that can be rebuilt later.

Hangar Storage
The storage system allows you to place a ship frame inside a hangar at a station. This option includes the cost of rebuilding the ship frame you currently have so that you are never left without a flyable ship. Once a ship frame is stored, you can then use your current ship as a trade-in for full credit toward a different ship you design within the shipyard. This procedure can raise the questions of why only the frame is stored and why is it duplicated. There are several reasons, including: keeping items critical for ship operations, requiring a higher cost as one of many player requested expenses (something to spend in-game credits on), reducing reselection/reinstallation steps during the trade and rebuild process, retaining earned items, and reducing cost duplications (by not requiring multiple copies of the same equipment, weapons, fuel, and cargo every time a ship switch is performed). I'll explain in more detail below.

Certain items are kept from a ship frame so that they can continue to be used without requiring the player to pay for redundant copies (many of which may not even be available at the station where they are swapping ships). It would be worse if equipment, cargo, weapons, fuel, and/or crew stayed with a ship the player stores, both from a complexity standpoint as well as a cost standpoint. If everything stayed with the ship, the player would have to:

> Store all equipment, cargo, weapons, fuel, and/or crew they might want to keep before they could store their ship.

- and/or -

> Have to buy new equipment, cargo, weapons, fuel, and/or crew once they've finished storing their ship.

So the player would wind up having to duplicate those items to keep their ship flyable, crewed, armed, equipped, fueled, and cargo loaded. Instead, only the player's ship frame is duplicated for storage and the player gets to keep anything transferrable they previously had automatically. The player can optionally store or sell anything they can't transfer. Then all parameters/elements of their ship frame (basically the things that are part of it) are stored, including:

- Engine
- Shield Core
- Cargo Bay Slots
- Fuel Tanks
- Wing and Thruster System
- Paint Scheme
- Engine XYZ Position and Scaling
- Resistor XYZ Position and Scaling
- Module XYZ Position and Scaling
- Wing and Thruster System XYZ Position and Scaling
- Crew Capacity
- Equipment Capacity
- Countermeasure Capacity
- Armor Plating
- Resistors
- Module

Only the transferrable, immediately important, and/or consumable items are transferred for the player automatically. If the player had to buy all new items, the costs could easily far exceed the base cost of just duplicating their frame. Plus, the same equipment, weapons, and cargo may not even be available anyway to re-acquire at a location where a ship is being stored. It's much easier and more cost effective to keep those important items and either just store the ones the player can't use or buy a few added items as may be needed if upgrading to a larger frame while still keeping the originals.

Ship values are kept 1:1 new or used so upgrading or downgrading comes at no penalty to the player. For certain things that can't be transferred, the game handles all of the arrangements and transfers fairly. If the player can't keep all of their fuel, the excess is automatically sold for the fair market price. If the player can't keep all of their crew members, any excess crew are kept on standby until the player returns to a ship with a sufficient crew capacity.

Equipment, weapons, fuel, and cargo always stay with the ship you have 'ready to fly' unless you sell/store them manually. At that point, if you want to downgrade your frame to something smaller with less capacity, you can sort out what to do with the items you can't transfer to the smaller ship. And you'd have to do that anyway regardless of whether you had stored a ship or not. Since you've already stored a frame, you might as well unload what you can't load/transfer to the hangar while paying the transaction fee only once. Then buy the small frame you're after and configure it the way you want. The hangar is kept accessible directly from the shipyard to facilitate the player managing frame storage and well as any equipment, weapons, or cargo before or during ship configuration.