History VideoGame / HardspaceShipbreaker

* MovingTheGoalposts: If you completely eliminate your debt, a message pops up stating that LYNX needs to recalculate it based on several charges they missed in the initial estimate, and until they do you just have to keep working.

* TheAllegedCar: Or spaceship, as the case may be, but some of the vessels you salvage are clearly past their prime, and some of the design decisions seem just flat-out ''bad''. In particular, the Javelin-class vessels are obsessed with external/exposed fuel tanks in a setting where not only are there no apparent DeflectorShields, but [[FletchetteStorm Kessler Syndrome]] is active and a ''very real risk'', and thus a stray chunk of aluminum like the ones you scatter around during disassembly could blow up the whole damn ship if it so much as glances the fuel lines.

* MissionControl: You have two or three; "Weaver", an ex-Cutter who guides you through the tutorial and provides time-based reminders, and Control, who calls out (un)successful material deposits. Your spacesuit will also call out some hazards like decompression or low oxygen.

* NothingIsScarier: The Ghosts Ships are devoid of their original crews and passengers with no readily apparent evidence of what happened to them. No skeletons, no bodies, nothing. When you start finding helmets inside of them even Weaver chimes in with just how uncomfortable it makes him.

* OxygenMeter: Aside from the hard time limit on shifts, you also need to watch your O2 supply. Worse, if you take enough physical damage to lose the first 'red' point of suit integrity, your helmet breaches and you start ''rapidly'' losing oxygen.

* SunkCostFallacy: The game actually warns you about this. In a standard game, you have 15 minutes per shift to salvage whatever you can of a vessel, after which your daily fees and profits are calculated. The next day, you can choose to continue salvaging whatever you didn't finish the first time, but the game will first give you a prompt warning about efficient use of your time. Depending on how much of the ship you salvaged the first time and whether or not you reached all the salvage goals, it may be more profitable to simply abandon the ship and start on a new one. Generally speaking

* TrialAndErrorGameplay: You are given basic tutorials on the riskier parts of disassembling ships as of the .40 update. But beyond this, you're left to figure out the rest of the shipbreaking process on your own. If you screw up, you learn something new for the next shift.

* StandardHumanSpaceship: The Mackereal and Gecko variants have boxy designs with little variation even in the diffierent models. The Javelin looks like something out of near-future science fiction like ''Film/TheMartian''.
* StickyBomb: The demolition charges can be upgraded so that you can throw them and they'll stick to things on impact, assuming you get the angle right. If you get it wrong they'll bounce off instead, and now you have loose explosives tumbling around the bay.

* SunkCostFallacy: The game actually warns you about this. In a standard game, you have 15 minutes per shift to salvage whatever you can of a vessel, after which your daily fees and profits are calculated. The next day, you can choose to continue salvaging whatever you didn't finish the first time, but the game will first give you a prompt warning about efficient use of your time. Depending on how much of the ship you salvaged the first time and whether or not you reached all the salvage goals, it may be more profitable to simply abandon the ship and start on a new one.

** The Free Play mode lets you practice on all the ship types so you can learn to disassemble them safely.

** One of the upgrades allows you to draw oxygen from pressurized areas. This sounds nice, except the first thing you'll do in any ship is vent it of atmosphere to prevent decompression events and other bad interactions. What little use you get out of it will maybe save you the need to purchase oxygen once, at best twice if it's a Javelin, and as the hazard level increases you'll be less likely to maintain any pressurized areas for very long.

* ArsonMurderAndJaywalking: One of the pro-union newsletters you get notes some of the ways in which LYNX treat their employees like garbage; things like

** Not allowing you to get any body modifications (piercings, tattoos, ''contraceptive devices'', etc) without corporate approval.

** The throwing upgrade for the demolitions charges is a lot of fun, but has very little practical benefit. Charges need to be placed carefully to avoid damage to adjacent objects, and throwing the charge in such a way that it lands properly takes almost as much time as placing the charge manually, with the added wrinkle that it's not guaranteed to land correctly even if you make the effort.

* AbilityRequiredToProceed: Demolition charges are required to disassemble ships above Class 7, as they have reinforced cut points that have to be blown up.

-->''Warning: your oxygen reserves are dropping below statistically profitable levels.''

** When using the grapple beam to detach objects, the object will rotate slightly to simulate the force being applied to it. This can cause problems when used on long, destructible objects like computer terminals on a table, as the rotational will cause them to rotate into the table and be be destroyed immediately after being freed.

** Interior and exterior hull panels are connected not only by the obvious structural connection points, but by any removable objects that happen to be touching one or more of them. This is a big problem on the Gecko, as the placement of certain objects will prevent the removal of large hull sections that are otherwise completely disconnected. For example, the cockpit of a Gecko usually has computer terminals that intersect with the outer hull section encapsulating the cockpit, preventing removal of the outer hull until you fly into the cockpit and detach the terminals. In a particularly weird example, heat sinks mounted on the exterior of the inner hull will prevent the outer hull next to it from being removed, even though the two aren't actually touching one another.
** On the panel that the power generator is mounted to, there is a computer terminal that is nothing but a featureless box. It can't be pulled off; you have to melt the panel off it get it loose. Many a player has been confused when they fail a "Salvage computer terminal" work order because of this little thing, though the elimination of work orders at least solved that issue.

* OminousCrack: Get hit by something moving fast enough and a crack will appear on your helmet, complete with scary noise to get you moving to the Master Jack for repairs.

* TechnicolorToxin: The Pretty Rad update introduces radiation filters. Stored in a containment unit, the actual filter is extremely fragile once removed. So much as lightly bumping it will cause it to release a small cloud of blue particles that irradiate you if you get too close. If the Stinger beam passes through the cloud, it will excite the particles, turning them orange and making them more dangerous. The particles can be neutralizes with coolant, or by simply waiting a while for them to dissipate on their own.

* NoOSHACompliance: LYNX Corporation cuts every corner they can when it comes to employee safety. Your suit is a 50-year-old design, your tools are constantly breaking down and in need of repair, your suit only holds a few minutes of air (and cannot cover a full shift even fully upgraded), and that's not even mentioning all the hazards you'll encounter when disassembling the ships.

* BlackComedy: Much of the game's humour is built on parodying corporate dystopia. [=LYNX=] issues their Cutters with a space suit design that's almost 50 years old, charges them a daily rental fee for all of their equipment, and claim that the suits generate lots of "passionate feedback" from their staff, for instance. Doesn't take a genius to figure out what they really mean by ''that''. Then there's your suit itself;

* TrialAndErrorGameplay: Beyond a basic tutorial, you're given no instructions on how to properly disassemble ships. If you screw up, you learn something new for the next shift.

* HollywoodMagnetism: Your gloves are stated to have powerful magnets in them so that you can use them to move around and hold onto things. Whilst aluminum and titanium ''are'' (para)magnetic, 'nanocarbon' probably isn't. Why these magnets don't mess with things you touch or hold isn't explained either.

* ExpendableClone: Signing on with LYNX means they extract your DNA so they can clone you and grow replacements as necessary. If that weren't bad enough, the process of extracting your DNA also kills you, after which they clone you so you can get to work.

* GameBreakingBug: Ordinarily, your Stinger will only hit objects you're directly targeting, even if the beam clips through another object. The exception to this is fuel/coolant tanks. If the Stinger beam intersects the tank at any point, it's as good as if you were intentionally shooting it.

** One of the upgrades allows you to draw oxygen from pressurized areas. This sounds nice, except the first thing you'll do in any ship is vent it of atmosphere to prevent decompression events and other bad interactions, and it has to be fully upgraded to restore oxygen at a respectable rate. It gains a measure of usefulness once you acquire the largest O2 tank, which lasts 13 minutes of your 15 minute shift. Spend a couple minutes inside a ship preemptively detaching some things in a pressurized room and with the highest refill rate offered you'll be good to go for the rest of your shift. Even so, that's good for one shift on average, maybe three on a Javelin if you're careful.

* BottomlessFuelTanks:
** Not here. You'll need to keep an eye on your jetpack's fuel gauge; if it runs dry, you'll be limited to using your grapple gun's retraction function and your magnetized gloves to move around. That said, even a single upgrade is sufficient to last an entire shift, so it becomes a moot point rather quickly.
** For the ships themselves, however, they have effectively limitless fuel until you either drain or ignite it, at which point it's just gone.

* DeathIsASlapOnTheWrist: Assuming you're playing in standard mode, it's $150,000 per clone and that's it. This might SOUND like a lot, but the daily fees for your rentals alone total about $500,000 ''per day,'' and you can expect to make that much back just by salvaging a single low-class Reactor part. There's also Limited mode (where you only have 30 revives before game over) and No Coverage (where even a single death ends your effort), but both modes require reaching a certain Certification Level in a standard/unlimited run first.
* EarthThatUsedToBeBetter: It's still inhabited, but it's resource-poor, suffering from overpopulation issues, and civil unrest/rioting are common; Humanity has spread out across the solar system via the 'rail gate' network, literally catapulting people and supplies to their destination with giant mass drivers. It doesn't sound like they've managed to leave the solar system as a whole though.

* GameBreakingBug:
** Ordinarily, your Stinger will only hit objects you're directly targeting, even if the beam clips through another object. The exception to this is fuel/coolant tanks. If the Stinger beam intersects the tank at any point, it's as good as if you were intentionally shooting it.
** The barge clears between shifts, deleting all objects within its boundaries regardless of whether or not they're valid barge salvage. This can be problematic if the barge clears an object you need to complete a work order, because the game doesn't register the deleted items as being destroyed, making the work order impossible to complete. This is most obvious when trying to salvage objects with AI cores attached.

** On the panel that the power generator is mounted to, there is a computer terminal that is nothing but a featureless box. It can't be pulled off; you have to melt the panel off it get it loose. Many a player has been confused when they fail a "Salvage computer terminal" work order because of this little thing.

** All the time. Your visor can crack (or even breach), your HUD elements can glitch out, and when your scanner unit is worn down it'll frequently glitch out whilst in use.

* KillItWithFire: The only way to dispose of the [[spoiler:Machine God's AI Nodes]] is to burn them up with the Stinger/Splitsaw or throw them into the Furnace.
* KillItWithIce: Larger ships may have one or more struts covered by heat-resistant cut guards that cannot be melted by the Stinger. To break them, you have to freeze them using coolant. Force pushing an object into them also works, but you have to be careful about what else that object might hit. If you've unlocked the Charged Push upgrade, a charged shot will break it instantly.

* LeftTheBackgroundMusicOn: The VariableMix western/country background music is just music for the player, right? Nope! If you take damage, your helmet's radio will malfunction and the music will change - typically to something completely different, and often rather more comedic or dramatic. This lasts for a couple of minutes, after which [[PercussiveMaintenance the player character smacks their helmet]] and it returns to normal. One of the data logs notes that LYNX psych-profiles their workers to determine what type of music they'd like best and forcibly pipes it into their helmets at all times.

* SunkCostFallacy:
** The game actually warns you about this. In a standard game, you have 15 minutes per shift to salvage whatever you can of a vessel, after which your daily fees and profits are calculated. The next day, you can choose to continue salvaging whatever you didn't finish the first time, but the game will first give you a prompt warning about efficient use of your time. Depending on how much of the ship you salvaged the first time and whether or not you finished the work order, it may be more profitable to simply abandon the ship and start on a new one.
** By the same token, it may not always be cost effective to correctly sort every bit of salvage. The crew area, for example, is largely furnace scrap with some processor and barge salvage that is not easy to separate in a timely manner. When you're running against the clock, it can be worth it to simply tether the whole thing into the furnace and take the loss on the other components.

* TrialAndErrorGameplay: Beyond a pretty barebones tutorial, you're given no instructions on how to properly disassemble ships. If you screw up, you learn something new for the next shift.

[[caption-width-right:350:''Current Debt: $1,000,000,000'']]

* WorkOffTheDebt: To the tune of $1,000,000,000. It's going to take a ''while''.

* TwentyBearAsses: Each certification level requires you to complete a certain number of tasks -- work orders, amounts of a certain type of salvage, etc. -- to unlock the next. As a practical matter, finishing work orders will be the most time consuming of these, as the number is set much higher than the other goals, especially in the higher certification levels.

* InterchangeableAntimatterKeys: Utility Keys are used to cut the flow of power from a ship's reactor to its thrusters, allowing you to detach the latter safely. These keys can occasionally be found in ships themselves or bought at a moderate fee at the Hab's terminal if not. They can appear even if a ship has nothing to use it on. In this case, you'll just put them in your pocket and hold onto them until you're working on a ship that does, at which point any of your keys will work in the terminal and you're unable to retrieve them once used.

** There is also an option to play with a more relaxed mode that removed fuel, oxygen, and shift time limits. You'll still have to worry about explosives and other hazards, and oxygen leaks if your suit is damaged.