Selling ships (and sieges?)

[Thalatta]

51 minutes ago, Grautvornix said:

I would - personally like to have a little benefit, e.g. when destroying a storehouse I don't need anymore. 

That's adding rewards to something that's already too automatic

 

My proposal for Salvage was the simple rule of just doing things "in reverse":

On 18/08/2026 at 11:27 AM, Thalatta said:

salvageable units should have a salvage button when garrisoned on the building that produced them (and take maybe the same as production time), while builders should be able to salvage structures (this working in reverse of building them). The return should be some fraction of the materials used in the first place (maybe except food).

I mean, if you are already near the Dock/Arsenal, you might as well be inside it (it's not that a siege tower is literally inside an Arsenal, but surely when Demetrius' Helepolis was being disassembled by the Rhodians they set up some temporal depot right there, with people that actually knew what they were doing involved, represented by the "engineers" an Arsenal is supposed to have). Regarding the "fraction" mentioned for the salvageable resources:

On 02/09/2026 at 7:52 PM, Thalatta said:

assign every building a realistic "salvage rate", for example, 85% for temples, 15% for houses, or whatever values are best for gameplay.

 

Independently, and personally, to avoid the ugly simultaneous collapse of everything, I'd require one nearby (or better, garrisoned) unit for Self-Destroy to work. I'd rename that then "Set on Fire" or something, it would work only on one's buildings (supposedly being done also from inside), and once triggered the building can be left alone and gets destroyed fast. No time invested in getting the resources back, then no resource reward, but useful for quickly clearing up stuff and scorched earth policy.

[Grautvornix]

For me, in SP games, I sometimes have to move the storehouse closer to the next forest and I'd like to remove older storehouses and gain a little bit back. Same for fishing boats that I build but fish have been depleted or I don't find any (on some maps). I do agree that the default of 50% of resources is a bit too much and I propose to reduce it to 30%.

Frankly, I have not yet seen any scorched earth move by a human player, e.g. deleting a large group of his buildings, but it would be nothing new and already be possible now, I believe.

The mod does not endorse that particularly, except that you get a bit back when deleting your stuff. I do agree, though, that deletion should not be an instantaneous process as it is currently, but might take while. I'll investigate how this could be implemented.

Requesting a unit to be nearby or inside the to-be-destructed building might add a bit too much of micromanagement (in my personal view), so I'd prefer not to require that.

For a siege engine, this might be a good idea , resembling the near-a-dock requirement for ships. let me see what is possible.

 

[Thalatta]

1 minute ago, Grautvornix said:

I sometimes have to move the storehouse closer to the next forest and I'd like to remove older storehouses and gain a little bit back. Same for fishing boats that I build but fish have been depleted or I don't find any

Sure, it'd be all contemplated, just takes more time.

 

1 minute ago, Grautvornix said:

deletion should not be an instantaneous process as it is currently, but might take while.
Requesting a unit to be nearby or inside the to-be-destructed building might add a bit too much of micromanagement

That "while" would only make the "ugly simultaneous collapse of everything" happen a bit later . That's the main reason to require an arsonist. To reduce micro to just one extra action no matter the case, Set on Fire could work like this: select (all) building(s) and (all) arsonist(s), and just press the Set on Fire button/hotkey. This should make the arsonist(s) move to the closest building(s), garrison, "start the fire" and ungarrison (and automatically repeat the process until all buildings in that initial selection are set on fire). The only difference with Self-Destruct would then be the addition of arsonist(s) to the building selection to be destroyed. Self-Destruct for organic units is ok as it is now.

[Grautvornix]

Where do we get an arsonist actor with appropriate animation and a burning building animation? 

Same question regarding dismantling of siege engines. Which actor should we use to illustrate someone working on the siege engine? 

Frankly, I'd rather park these for a moment and instead generate a new mod version that provides the reduced amoutn of recovered resources and the slightly slower destruction.

QUESTION: if destruction is not instantaneous but a process taking a bit of time, how would we deal woth an attack onto that object during that time? Is it not attackable while being destructed, or, probably better, could an attacking enemy grab part of the resources of the destructed building ? (sounds complicated but is probably an interesting gameplay aspect)

 

[Thalatta]

No new actors are needed for anything, it's just the present units doing or getting stuff done when garrisoned (unseen).

 

15 minutes ago, Grautvornix said:

if destruction is not instantaneous but a process taking a bit of time, how would we deal woth an attack onto that object during that time?

Simplest would be that it can only be attacked (but the process should be fast enough for this to have no relevant use case).

It shouldn't be capturable or salvageable, unless there's a method to stop its ongoing destruction (implying complicating things).

[Asher]

Maybe you guys already decided on something, but what if you could like convert a ship. It is like selling or returning something to a store and getting store credit. You sell you ship back, and some of the wood can be used for another one

[Thalatta]

11 minutes ago, Asher said:

like selling

On 18/08/2026 at 11:27 AM, Thalatta said:

An independent thing could be the ability to sell certain units to other players, for metal.

 

12 minutes ago, Asher said:

or returning something to a store and getting store credit. You sell you ship back, and some of the wood can be used for another one

Salvage then, as has been just discussed: returning something (a ship) to a store (the Dock) and getting store credit (salvageable fraction).

[Grautvornix]

OK, that is exactly what the mod already does (only the animation remains "delete" and does not show selling the ship)

Side note: The mod does not provide store-specific credit (which I believe is ok), i.e. when returning a ship, you are getting back a fraction of resources for general purpose. Store credit would mean you get a reduction for your next ship. 

The remaining question is if a building needs to be garissoned with at least unit in order to allow deletion (mimicking arson). I still have doubts on that concept: burning down your building does definitely not give back much useable resources.

Requiring a person to be in placed inside the building to be destroyed appears counter-intuitive to me (this is already strange with a manned tower or siege engine: the crew survives destruction, other than for a ship where they sink together).

[Thalatta]

1 hour ago, Grautvornix said:

burning down your building does definitely not give back much useable resources.

But automatically deleting the building for usable resources is exactly that, plus being automatic, plus getting resources back, plus the animation makes less sense. The only purpose of the "arsonist" (which was never intended to be a new unit, but a role present units take) is to avoid the simultaneous collapse of everything.

Besides, you are defeating the purpose of how the game works. As mentioned: when you delete a building, "the amount of resources you get back depends on how much has been actually built. That is, if 35% of the structure has been built, one gets 65% of resources back, and so on". This implies "100% built means 0% of resources back". The present behaviour "makes perfect sense if one thinks of it as the resources having been set apart beforehand for construction, the resources already used being lost". If you want to press just delete and get resources back, you'd need to change how the whole thing already works, otherwise it makes no sense (if you get back, say, 30% with your method, if a structure is already 70% built and you want to destroy it, it'd be more rewarding to wait until it's completely built and then destroy it ). EDIT: Unless you are already considering all this, and what you get back is the unbuilt fraction and a fraction of the fraction already built, which would be the general rule (at present the fraction of the fraction already built is 0%, and you want to give it a value).

There's another possibility in between all of this: do what you want to do, but require unit(s) to do it ("salvager(s)"), the action is just Salvage, could be quite fast (unrealistic since it should be like unbuilding it, but whatever), and not only avoids the collapse issue, but ends not being in contradiction with present implementations or "too simple and rewarding".

 

1 hour ago, Grautvornix said:

already strange with a manned tower or siege engine: the crew survives destruction

One assumes they got out just before destruction I guess, but sieges are completely weird in the game anyway (which I think needs fixing).

 

Edited 27 minutes ago by Thalatta