That frigate can kill everything so I don't have to think about how to counter the enemy fleet, and I don't have to spend time developing loadouts for those ships, either.
You could do that if you wanted to, I guess. I wouldn't. You say you don't want to use that playstyle, so what exactly is your argument here? That you have so little self-control that you'd switch to a playstyle that you hate just because it uses a bit less fuel (which is even cheaper that supplies in the current version)? I don't buy that for a second and I think you should stop underestimating yourself.
The fact that people are coming into this thread to actively say they enjoy the resource management aspect of the game is clear evidence that this change would hurt other peoples enjoyment of the game. It's fine if you don't care for that aspect of the game, but at least acknowledge that other people do...
I do acknowledge it, my point is that that aspect of the game would not be lost. Unfortunately, not a lot of people seem to understand that. I have yet to see a well-thought-out argument, all I'm getting so far are knee-jerk reactions.
Every game in existence? No way. Maybe a significant portion of action/combat games have some element of this. But even in those games, there is an effort to actively design them to prevent strategies that trade IRL time for success, even if that is unavoidable to some degree. Just think about how much people hate turtling/camping/defensive play in most games. Many strategy games have no element of this at all, i.e. they are not real time and cautious and aggressive play take the same amount of time, and are differentiated by risk/reward factors.
Okay, maybe that was an exaggeration, but the only exception I can think of is the recent Doom remake. That does go out of its way to encourage you to play aggressively. The key word here being "encourage". One of the general overarching issues Starsector has that I've been harping on here is that it doesn't encourage anything, it shapes the player's experience predominantly by punishments and penalties.
And no, not even turn-based strategies are immune to the choice I described. On the contrary, they are far more susceptible to cautious play than real-time games, since you can spend hours mulling over your moves in a single turn. Unless there's a time limit on turns, but as I pointed out earlier, those tend to be optional in games that have them.
Sure but there are a lot of different ways games can be challenging. For me, fun games present a mental challenge, like solving a puzzle. I don't find games where the challenge is in the perfect execution of simple but difficult task to be compelling. I like the parts of starsector that make me think, and I find that most of the thinking I do revolves around solving/optimizing logistical challenges, and solving/optimizing combat challenges by choosing ships and loadouts. CR creates those challenges for me to solve. The enjoyment I get from piloting/combat is only one part of why I like the game.
I understand optimizing combat challenges, but logistical challenges? What logistical challenges are there? "Out of supplies -> buy some supplies" seems to be about it as far as I can tell. If anything, removing CR and therefore not having to deal with resupplying would leave you more time to engage with those far more complex and interesting combat challenges. Even from your point of view and for your playstyle it would be a net positive.
CR was implemented to prevent grindy gameplay, where you spend hours in a single frigate slowly killing capital ships, so claiming that removing CR prevents grinding makes no sense to me.
That's not what I said. It wouldn't
prevent solo frigate battles, but it would remove any mechanical incentive to use that playstyle. The issue with CR is that it threatens to punish you if you don't use as small a force as possible and then punishes you for using a small force (because a small force takes a long time to chew through the enemy fleet, so it runs out of CR). It's damned if you do, damned if you don't, and that just doesn't feel good. Which is a problem in an
entertainment product. With no CR, you'd have no reason to ever even try solo frigate other than curiosity and self-imposed challenge.
It's not like fighting those fleets in a single superpowered frigate would be faster.
Which is exactly why I wouldn't do it and why I don't believe you would either.