This is an amalgamated repost of what I liked in this thread:
http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=11182.0For the sake of our eyes, I downgraded the quotes to normal text.
For your perusal & discussion-
Gorgonson's Post:
Maybe one solution to explore to make the phase ships a little less annoying to fight would be to make their phase upkeep cost rise as their CR goes down. That way their normal state would be in normal space, phasing only to do a maneuver or avoid shots, rather than their "normal" state and popping out of phase only to fire their weapons.
I'd endorse this. Unless your loadout is designed for the situation, a phase ship can avoid almost all incoming damage indefinitely. If you wait out the CR of the phase ship, it usually just retreats, leading to disappointing pursuits or taxing re-engagements. If the cooldown before re-phasing scaled with the current flux level, it could work to alleviate the frustration of fighting a ship that spends more time phased than un-phased.
In most planes games you have a fuel gauge and nobody ever complained about it (although it is usually much more lenient). Some strategy games have a morale gauge, almost all games with guns have ammo, strategy games can bring reinforcements, all these mechanics are there to break stalemates or too much harassing... It is actually the space games that for some reason mostly lack those very obvious constraints because of the magic physics of "energy shots with limited range" and "shields".
How would you feel about in-combat refuelling? Imagine the current mechanic of transferring command via shuttle, and apply that to refuelling your ships. You deploy a Dram, or other tanker vessel, which would refuel nearby allied ships in turn, depleting it's own fuel reserves as a result. This would mix-up combat, meaning both players and AI need to systematically retreat to the tanker to refuel, almost making a king-of-the-hill metagame.
In addition, apart from emergency burn, fuel doesn't contribute anything to the game when the player isn't in hyperspace. Giving fuel another purpose, and rebalancing consumption, could add another level of gameplay.
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frag971's Post:
I don't like CR. It's an abstract mechanic that feels like it's artificially limiting the fun. I understand why it's there but i think i'd rather play in a game that can counter the exploits rather than curb it with another mechanic.
Is it then not possible to translate the CR mechanic into actual ships? Instead of having this Readiness mechanic why not have actual ships that cover that? For example: each ship has its own ability to recover, but that ability is limited and the player would want to get a logistics ship that handles that. This ship would be deployed in combat to provide repairs, rearm and drain hardflux. The more ships you field the more/bigger logistics you want to field alongside. This also "fixes" the solo-kiting of deathball fleets by letting the AI retreat and rearm/repair while your single frigate runs out of ammo or gets hardfluxed.
A few things logistics could provide:
- Rearm drones - drones would fly from the logi into the friendly ship to add a flat amount of ammo.
- Repair "fighters" - flies to friendly ships and "deals negative damage" to repair the ship. Note how this is a fighter and uses up deployment. These are also suicidal so you would need to spend Supply to build new ones during a battle to provide more repairs. Visually it would look like a canister of nanobots that gets used up to repair the ship.
- Flux drain "weapon" - a turret that targets friendly ships and deals negative hardflux, effectively draining flux. This also generates flux on the logi ship inefficiently so you would be trading efficiency for effectiveness between the two.
The above mechanics could provide an interesting oportunity for players to have protracted fights while "paying" for it. it is more efficient to be out of a battle and let Supply repair and rearm your ships but you still have the option to repair in a battle by pay more per repair. This also lets players to play "the healer" and let AI fly the fleet while the player focuses on logistics (which ship to repair, which to rearm, which to deflux, etc...). Logi ships are also vulnerable since they don't usually feature any weapons aside from a couple of PDs similar to fuel tankers.
I am always the fan of emergent game mechanics that drive behaviour from the set mechanics rather than make mechanics to fix specific issues. I probably sound like i'm trying to teach Alex how to design games and i'm sorry it comes off like that (armchair gamedev yay) and i'm sure he already thought about this and has a reason to design it like that; i'm just sharing my opinion and how i feel. I also don't know the big picture and how the game is going to be in version 1.0. I'm just saying that i don't like CR and i would prefer the ships themselves to handle the problem CR wants to address (whatever it is).
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My Post:
I actually really like [combat refueling].
- Ammo-limits could be re-implemented
- Fuel capacity could be reworked into what CR+PAT currently do
- Tankers/Logi ships become absolutely vital, even in small fleets
- Kiting would remain a viable tactic, but it would come at a cost & large fleets could heavily counter it by fielding a large tanker/logi ship
- It also introduces a high-value target to both sides of the field and a whole new 'resupplying' mechanic, opening the way for a multitude of different tactics
- Lastly, it removes the 'gaminess' of combat-readiness
Only problem is it would require a MAJOR re-balance of pretty much everything.
-edit
Thinking on it, some ideas:
Fuel consumption in-combat vs on the world stage is a balancing act.
-If a single unit of fuel gives a lot of combat time, fights would last forever or you'd have to make everything only have 1-5 fuel capacity. Very bad for small fleets & the galaxy map
-If a single unit of fuel gives a scant amount of combat time, fights would end quick & the fuel cap would remain the same, but battles would be VERY expensive (if not in cost, in time spent going to ports & refuelling)
I'm thinking we could give ships an 'atomized fuel' value, in order to limit the amount of fuel they can consume in combat, keeping the battles short & campaign range high.
In lore-terms, we could say the fuel in the storage holds is highly-enriched/concentrated & has to be broken down for use in the core.
We
could get as complex as we want with this, with superfluous values for base AFuel available, consumption rate, and in-combat production rate (say with a fuel tank icon, giving a timer until the next unit is available and a gauge for how much burn you currently have from the previous atomized unit. 'You'd have to carefully consider when to run if you don't want to be stuck with an empty tank' sorta thing.).
