History VideoGame / HardspaceShipbreaker

* BanOnAI: AI is illegal under some Earth laws and [=LYNX=] HR gets twitchy over the idea of [=AIs=] being involved in an in-universe ''roleplaying game'', evidently. The log from one data drive describes the ban as an early win for workers after [[GreatOffscreenWar the "AI Wars"]], although the {{MegaCorp}}s relocated to the Jupiter Frontier to bypass the laws. When salvaging AI-controlled ships, AI cores are marked for destruction outright, and LYNX will actively ''pay you'' for their destruction.

** The October update added Ghost Ships, vessels that have been overtaken by a rogue AI which serve as the first genuinely hostile threat in the game. Existing as small cores attached to various surfaces, they're harmless if left alone but will retaliate if you start destroying them, which you need to do as part of the work order. They can mess with the ship's systems to cause you harm, from something as simple as venting flame through the life support systems to ''causing a reactor meltdown''. It's in your best interests to neutralize as much of the critical systems on the ship as you can before trying to clear them out.

* 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. Weaver also got hit by this when he got moved to MissionControl; LYNX tacked in additional training costs to make sure the debt stayed strong.

* ResurrectTheWreck: At the start of Act 2, Weaver decides to give the player an old Armadillo salvage vessel that he'd bought before his accident. Lou sends the player a diagnostic utility program that lists the parts needed to bring the ship back online; players can find the parts in ships being salvaged, although it may require destroying valuable equipment to gather the parts. [[spoiler: There's an optional CG epilogue cutscene of the Rook taking the Armadillo into the unknown if the player manages to repay their debt and finish repairs of the Armadillo.]]

** The story has you indentured in an inescapable contract, forced to work backbreaking hours, nickle-and-dimed by the corporation into sliding ever deeper into debt. The game makes you work no more than fifteen minutes per day, with daily fees that subtract a small fraction of daily earnings, and debt that can theoretically be cleared in a few hundred days. (Though note that if you ''do'' clear the debt that way, LYNX will invent additional fees and accounting errors as an excuse to not let you quit your job yet.)

** 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 will explode almost instantly.

* GameplayAndStorySegregation: Regardless of whether or not you've picked up parts to repair the Armadillo, [[spoiler:Hal will accuse you of stealing parts at the end of Act Two]].

** The mechanics of power go largely unexplained, and though intuitive in some cases, could bear some explaining. There are no wires between power sources and the rest of the ship. The hull itself is treated as a medium for power to flow, and objects will receive power as long as the power source is attached and there is an unbroken connection between it and the objects it powers. If the power source is removed or the connection is broken, door switches, atmospheric regulators, and thruster release valves cease to function. The latter is especially important, as it means you can't remove the thruster from a Class II Reactor assembly or the engine housing of a Mackerel without doing some extra legwork to throw the thrusters into the barge while still attached to the pipes of a Class II reactor or with the panel that the release valve is on in the Mackerel.

* 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. It isn't actually threatening unless you damage one of the red health bars, however, at which point oxygen starts to leak out and you ''really'' need to get moving.

--> '''Shippy:''' It looks like you're trying to repair your ship. Would you like some help with that?

* BanOnAI: AI is illegal under some Earth laws and [=LYNX=] HR gets twitchy over the idea of [=AIs=] being involved in an in-universe ''roleplaying game'', evidently. The log from one data drive describes the ban as an early win for workers after [[GreatOffscreenWar the "AI Wars"]], although the {{MegaCorp}}s relocated to the Jupiter Frontier to bypass the laws. When salvaging AI-controlled ships, AI cores are marked for destruction outright.

* OneHundredPercentCompletion: The Mini Me sticker is awarded for a 98% or higher salvage rate on any given vessel. 100% is impossible, due to the material lost when cutting or melting certain salvage.

%%* AbortedArc: The game is still in Early Access, and as of the 0.7.0 build, the plot ends on a cliffhanger, even though the player can continue paying off their debt and levelling up as usual.

* BigBad: Calyssia Rai-Paulsen, [[CorruptCorporateExecutive the CEO of LYNX]]. With LYNX being the original force behind the dissolving of unions the moment she learns that there's a secret movement trying to get the workers to unionize she sends out administrators across the solar system to weed them out.

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: The Union is finally recognized by the galactic government at large making them an authority LYNX can no longer just ignore, LYNX is forced to give into their demands, insane amounts of debt are wiped away, and Hal is demoted back to processing where he started. However, not everyone is taken out of debt by the new reforms, Calyssia Rai-Paulsen suffers no consequences having pinned the entire incident on (and dissolving) the administrative team, and Weaver retires to an opportunity on Earth leaving the team behind the day they go back to work after the fallout of Hal's meltdown being made public.]]

* ShoutOut: When activating the Data Miner program, used for extracting files from data drives found inside wrecks, it plays a bleepy electronic version of the opening bars from "In the Hall of the Mountain King" by Grieg. The same piece of music was used in the game ''[[VideoGame/ManicMiner Manic Miner]]''.

** Demolition charges are destructive when first unlocked and take a long time to become practical to use. As such, absolutely every cut point that can only be destroyed by them can be bypassed at a small loss of material.

* DumpStat: Suit upgrades. All they do is make you more resistant to damage and add a sound synthesizer to give audio cues for certain ship functions. If you're careful, neither of those things should ever be necessary, letting you save points for upgrades that let you salvage faster. Thermal upgrades do see some use in salvaging Quasar thrusters, however, as you are guaranteed to deal with a sprawling fire every time you take one apart, unless you use the conveniently supplied cans of coolant to freeze the pipes feeding the nozzle (those only appear after a certain rank, however).

* CloneDegeneration: Weaver used to be a Cutter, until an unspecified issue with cloning prevented him from returning to the job. Now he helps new Cutters learn the ropes.

** The scanner lights up material with certain colors depending on where it goes or what it does. Primarily, this allows you to identify structural points marked with yellow that can be melted with the Stinger. Likewise, when using the augmented reality/x-ray visor, each mode uses color-coding for each significant type of component in the active mode (for example in 'Objects' mode, general items like walls or switches are yellow, components like fuel and nacelles are orange, cargo containers are green, and resources are pink[[spoiler:, and the AI nodes are ''red'']]).

* DumpStat: Suit upgrades. All they do is make you more resistant to damage and add a sound synthesizer to give audio cues for certain ship functions. If you're careful, neither of those things should ever be necessary, letting you save points for upgrades that let you salvage faster. Thermal upgrades do see some use in salvaging Quasar thrusters, however, as you are guaranteed to deal with a sprawling fire every time you take one apart, unless you use the conveniently supplied cans of coolant to freeze the pipes feeding the nozzle.

* 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, a ship ceases to be worth salvaging if you've met the available salvage goals.

It entered UsefulNotes/Steam Early Access on June 16, 2020, and the full version was officially released on May 24, 2022 to both Steam and Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass.

* BanOnAI: AI is illegal under some Earth laws and [=LYNX=] HR gets twitchy over the idea of [=AIs=] being involved in an in-universe ''roleplaying game'', evidently. When salvaging AI-controlled ships, AI cores are marked for destruction outright.

** The mechanics of power go largely unexplained, and though intuitive in some cases, could bear some explaining. There are no wires between power sources and the rest of the ship. The hull itself is treated as a medium for power to flow, and objects will receive power as long as the power source is attached and there is an unbroken connection between it and the objects it powers. If the power source is removed or the connection is broken, door switches, atmospheric regulators, and thruster release valves cease to function. The latter is especially important, as it means you can't remove the thruster from a Class II Reactor assembly or the engine housing of a Mackeral without doing some extra legwork to throw the thrusters into the barge while still attached to the pipes of a Class II reactor or with the panel that the release valve is on in the Mackeral.

* StandardHumanSpaceship: The Mackereal and Gecko variants have boxy designs with little variation even in the different models. The Javelin looks like something out of near-future science fiction like ''Film/TheMartian''.

** The mechanics of power go largely unexplained, and though intuitive in some cases, could bear some explaining. There are no wires between power sources and the rest of the ship. The hull itself is treated as a medium for power to flow, and objects will receive power as long as the power source is attached and there is an unbroken connection between it and the objects it powers. If the power source is removed or the connection is broken, door switches, atmospheric regulators, and thruster release valves cease to function. The latter is especially important, as it means you can't remove the thruster from a Class II Reactor assembly or the engine housing of a Mackeral.

* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: AI Nodes can wirelessly operate ship systems, even if they don't have power. The only requirement is that the systems be physically connected to some part of the ship. Anything you've yanked off stayed deactivated. It can also depressurize a ship without a single working regulator, though this can actually be helpful if you don't feel like going through the effort of doing a controlled decompression.

** Once the Power Generator on a ship is pulled, all Airlock Consoles will become unpowered and nonfunctional, as will Atmosphere Regulators and the switch to safely release thrusters. Make sure you've gotten done with compression/decompression and detached the thrusters before yanking the Power Generator.

** 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 are suddenly berated for the loss of a terminal because of this little thing. Fortunately, an update eliminated it.

* NotTheIntendedUse: The Splitsaw is meant to cut large lines in walls so they can be separated into manageable pieces. What it also does is destroy any standard cut point in one shot, far faster than the Stinger can melt the same object. As long as you're careful about aiming, it's far and away superior to the Stinger in nearly every situation.

* GuideDangIt: Understandable for an early access game, but there are a few functionalities that would ''really'' benefit the player to know early that the game doesn't explicitly tell you during the tutorial at this point.

** You drain the coolant from the pipes of Class II Reactors by removing the three small canisters from inside their Environmental Control Unit's central compartment, but doing so when the fuel lines are already cut or vice versa will immediately trigger the start of a reactor meltdown. Work fast.

* YouCantThwartStageOne: It doesn't matter what you do, [[spoiler:Hal will point out Rook stealing parts for the Armadillo at the end of act two, even if you've never picked up a single one.]]

It entered Steam Early Access on June 16, 2020.

* AbortedArc: The game is still in Early Access, and as of the 0.7.0 build, the plot ends on a cliffhanger, even though the player can continue paying off their debt and levelling up as usual.

* NowYouTellMe: Can happen to you during the reactor tutorial if you follow Weaver's guide on how to remove the reactor just before he tells you that you should clear a path since the reactor's going into meltdown once it's nudged out of its position. Cue the player panicking and scrambling to get the reactor to the Barge before it melts down completely.

* 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, causing a steady health drain. 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 neutralized with coolant, or by simply waiting a while for them to dissipate on their own (roughly half a shift). It is possible for ships to spawn with radiation already in place, which can be a problem given their proximity to the cockpit in some vessels.

* AbortedArc: The game is still in Early Access, and as of the 0.5.0 build, the plot ends on a cliffhanger, even though the player can continue paying off their debt and levelling up as usual.

* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: AI Nodes can wirelessly operate ship systems, even if they don't have power. The only requirement is that the systems be physically connected to some part of the ship. Anything you've yanked off stayed deactivated.