Allied ships - balance discussion

It seems like the number of allied ships that are spawned directly affects how likely you are to win. Most of them are pretty squishy in a serious fight, but the 3 empty spots in their stores can enable you to strengthen your build a lot. Let's say you manage to sell 3 items for 11, 34 & 50 upgrade cores, that's nearly 100 extra upgrade cores you wouldn't have if that ship hadn't spawned. And if you come across a few allied ships you're getting a few hundred extra upgrade cores and you're set for the late-game.

I think if we were able to sell more items at stations, you could add another rare item or two to the allied ship stores and they would be way less OP.

Might be worth looking at the aggression AI for the enemy ships too. Like the stations they'll ignore allied ships if you're not in the sector, but if you happen to jump into the sector just as a couple of enemies jump in right on top of the allied ship they pop real quick.

Great game though, most fun I've had on a portable game ever!

Interesting, never even thought about this before You are probably right, the allied ships are a nice find indeed in more ways than just being able to hire them.

Thank you for the encouraging words!

I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying that allied ships are helpful because they increase the amount of loot your fleet can hold, so that you can sell them later?

Why not just sell the loot you aren't going to use immediately?

Also, I just found out that you can "stack" identical loot (such as distress beacons) up to 5 deep. So now each ship can carry 20 distress beacons

Another thought on this topic - right now your weapons damage any allied ships that get in the way. It is a little irritating to hire a ship for a few turns, only to see it get annihilated by a volley of your own missiles.

^turns out this only applies to death rays

I think the OP might be unclear on the concept.

Using the trashcan gives you exactly the same amount of loot as selling it properly to a ship or a starbase.
It probably should not be that way, but this is the current state of the game.

As such there is no real advantage to friendly ships in that way. They still can sell something awesome (death ray) periodically if really lucky, and having them follow you can make a difference in combat.