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Suggestions / Combat Readiness: Supplies and Lore.
« on: January 23, 2014, 07:37:04 AM »
I never been an critic of CR or supplies, but lately I been having second thoughts.
Game play wise, supplies and CR make sense and works as system together pretty well. But, the more I play the game, the more it dont make sense and feels wrong. Then slowly, I start to understand why so many people complain about CR, from a different perspective.
We all know the intricacies, whats possible and not, of CR and supplies so I will not explain everything fully.
What feels wrong, is that after a tough battle, that even if you prepared and are well stocked for. If you happen to lose, you will quickly deplete most of your supplies simply on regaining CR, even if you turned off repair.
Then, if your fleet mostly consists of combat ships, you will basically start having major accidents before you can lug yourself back to the spaceport.
Also, say, I want to travel a long distance with no freighters, its possible well supplied, but when you are touched once, you will drain most of your supplies reserved for travel, on regaining CR. Then you have to again lug yourself back to a spaceport for supplies.
Then, when yo have a large fleet, what is starting seem to matter alot is comparing the battle effectiveness of certain ships with its crew requirements, and calculating that on to your logistics and your supply capability. A large crew count can have a major impact on passive supplies cost, while small crew count ships, have large CR costs so battles cost more supplies. OK, this still makes sense.
But when you put all these factors together, is where it starts to go wrong. Supplies has been simplified from: food, parts, and ammunition. This gives simplicity to not having to micromanage everything, cuz after all, SS is about combat.
But when we play, half of my time is on combat, a quarter of my time is on loading out and buying ships. The last quarter of my time is looking at supplies, cr, crew count, and cr recovery costs of my ships, while travelling or on stations.
With The introduction of CR on top of the current system of crew count, cr,
"hunger" and deployment efficiency, one resource for it all "supplies" instead of simplifying things, actually create an artificial obstacle: "that if one thing went wrong" "everything goes wrong"
------------
What I am saying is we need a few more features added ontop of the current CR system and change a few things.
Here are some Ideas, think about them... Details ofc is all up to Alex and co.
1. Crew no longer costs supplies to maintain. But rely on wages AND OR morale.
Ok, you may say waaaat? But lets face the facts here, spaceships if built, that have people on them, in all fiction or reality (ISS) are quite sustainable for humans. Basically, water gets recycled, and food (nutrient paste or other substitutes) can serve the crew for a VERY long time. And maybe what, in the future, we develop various bacteria and fungus that are easily cultivatable and dont require much space to sustain human development in an environment (food is also recyclable). If any of you have read decent sifi space books, when people start living in space, there would be almost no reason to live ON a planet, except to escape all the space radiation causing cancer and infertility.(but what are sifi shields for?)
But these are battleships not space habitats you say, and what I think alex is thinking also.
So an Enforcer might not have bacterial/fungal colonies for food, But I bet you it would contain enough food to lasts for months for its crew, or its just a bad design and no human would want to serve on one. Either we can go in to this, or we can just say players wont float in space doing nothing for literally hours so we can rule out food problem.
So what do crew need?
There are two options.
Morale - If morale hits epic low, crews might dessert taking ships with them. Morale can be gained by winning battles, or simply docking at stations (giving crew time off, or decent food), or add in luxry items that can be "consumed"
And other option mentioned but might not make as much sense since crew costs money to buy.
Wages - Crews costs money, and not paying crews every cycle causes them to not do battle (not counting as crews basically) and things like this.
The effects of this are since CR will always be more important than repair in 90% of the cases. Running out of "supplies" are okay, you will just fight with less and less CR untill you get more supplies. And veteran players might actually see AI or player ships malfunction.
2. Split Logistics, in to Leadership points and real logistics
Because honestly, with officers and stuff, one guy should not be worrying about the logistics of every ship in his fleet. Is not like if you dont personally remember to say give food to frigate A, people in frigate A will starve.
Also simply because a guy is a good leader, dont make a ship able to travel with 2x the cargo at less risk. Crew member who man the ship does.
Leadership points i will mention last.
3. Accidents happen with over logistics or Leadership points.
But tone down the severity of accidents than previous versions.
Right now, you either never see accidents, or you dont care since your out of supplies anyways and are heading back asap. Either way, its not intresting atm. But doing the mentioned above might seem like a step backwards (it was changed from this)
But the reason why it was changed was so that it gave players an option to go above the limit, temporarily, as long as they have "supplies". Again, tacky.
Tune down the severity of the accidents and people flying around with 200% logistics can still get home without everything falling apart, going perfectly fine, then suddenly EVERYTHING FALLS IN TO CHAOS VERY QUICKLY. Now, it will be some risk involved throughout the hole trip.
Also with the tuned down severity, going around with say, more ships then normal might seem like a good idea for players needing a large fleet to destroy a system defense fleet just once. For example, they dont need all the ships to be running 100%, since they are combat/tech in that case and they just need this one battle, so an accident happen and one of the ship is damaged and a few people die... ok NP. (or say, a mining operation is hauling back 2x the goods it should safely carry)
4. Over logistics dont reduce max CR.
This ties in with the two mentioned above. For one, this would make more sense as a crewed ship's cr should depend on the veterancy of its members not if the admiral is keeping an close eye on them all the time... Also, this allows for the above mentioned scenario.
With accidents punishing too much logistics, CR dont need to be effected.
5. Leadership points.
Leadership points are simply how many ships the player (commander) can have in his fleet without in subordination.
So what is Logistics, Supplies, Combat Readiness, Leadership points and Crew in the end.
Logistics is what the maximum the crew and ships is capable of handling materials wise: crew, supplies, and fuel.
Supplies is Ship parts and Ammunition used for ship combat, and ships working extra time (over logistics on crew, fuel, and supplies)
Leadership points, how many officers can you command effectively.
Crew is people living in spaceships that can sustain their life, and only require morale to live on space rations or fungus, so they dont go crazy. They also effect the combat readiness of the ship they are flying.
----------------------------------
So all in all, this is quite of bit of changes, and they all tie in with each other.
But matter of fact is, this creates more complexity, that is easier to manage and understand.
Or so I believe anyways, people always think different.
Edit: added bold text lol
Game play wise, supplies and CR make sense and works as system together pretty well. But, the more I play the game, the more it dont make sense and feels wrong. Then slowly, I start to understand why so many people complain about CR, from a different perspective.
We all know the intricacies, whats possible and not, of CR and supplies so I will not explain everything fully.
What feels wrong, is that after a tough battle, that even if you prepared and are well stocked for. If you happen to lose, you will quickly deplete most of your supplies simply on regaining CR, even if you turned off repair.
Then, if your fleet mostly consists of combat ships, you will basically start having major accidents before you can lug yourself back to the spaceport.
Also, say, I want to travel a long distance with no freighters, its possible well supplied, but when you are touched once, you will drain most of your supplies reserved for travel, on regaining CR. Then you have to again lug yourself back to a spaceport for supplies.
Then, when yo have a large fleet, what is starting seem to matter alot is comparing the battle effectiveness of certain ships with its crew requirements, and calculating that on to your logistics and your supply capability. A large crew count can have a major impact on passive supplies cost, while small crew count ships, have large CR costs so battles cost more supplies. OK, this still makes sense.
But when you put all these factors together, is where it starts to go wrong. Supplies has been simplified from: food, parts, and ammunition. This gives simplicity to not having to micromanage everything, cuz after all, SS is about combat.
But when we play, half of my time is on combat, a quarter of my time is on loading out and buying ships. The last quarter of my time is looking at supplies, cr, crew count, and cr recovery costs of my ships, while travelling or on stations.
With The introduction of CR on top of the current system of crew count, cr,
"hunger" and deployment efficiency, one resource for it all "supplies" instead of simplifying things, actually create an artificial obstacle: "that if one thing went wrong" "everything goes wrong"
------------
What I am saying is we need a few more features added ontop of the current CR system and change a few things.
Here are some Ideas, think about them... Details ofc is all up to Alex and co.
1. Crew no longer costs supplies to maintain. But rely on wages AND OR morale.
Ok, you may say waaaat? But lets face the facts here, spaceships if built, that have people on them, in all fiction or reality (ISS) are quite sustainable for humans. Basically, water gets recycled, and food (nutrient paste or other substitutes) can serve the crew for a VERY long time. And maybe what, in the future, we develop various bacteria and fungus that are easily cultivatable and dont require much space to sustain human development in an environment (food is also recyclable). If any of you have read decent sifi space books, when people start living in space, there would be almost no reason to live ON a planet, except to escape all the space radiation causing cancer and infertility.(but what are sifi shields for?)
But these are battleships not space habitats you say, and what I think alex is thinking also.
So an Enforcer might not have bacterial/fungal colonies for food, But I bet you it would contain enough food to lasts for months for its crew, or its just a bad design and no human would want to serve on one. Either we can go in to this, or we can just say players wont float in space doing nothing for literally hours so we can rule out food problem.
So what do crew need?
There are two options.
Morale - If morale hits epic low, crews might dessert taking ships with them. Morale can be gained by winning battles, or simply docking at stations (giving crew time off, or decent food), or add in luxry items that can be "consumed"
And other option mentioned but might not make as much sense since crew costs money to buy.
Wages - Crews costs money, and not paying crews every cycle causes them to not do battle (not counting as crews basically) and things like this.
The effects of this are since CR will always be more important than repair in 90% of the cases. Running out of "supplies" are okay, you will just fight with less and less CR untill you get more supplies. And veteran players might actually see AI or player ships malfunction.
2. Split Logistics, in to Leadership points and real logistics
Because honestly, with officers and stuff, one guy should not be worrying about the logistics of every ship in his fleet. Is not like if you dont personally remember to say give food to frigate A, people in frigate A will starve.
Also simply because a guy is a good leader, dont make a ship able to travel with 2x the cargo at less risk. Crew member who man the ship does.
Leadership points i will mention last.
3. Accidents happen with over logistics or Leadership points.
But tone down the severity of accidents than previous versions.
Right now, you either never see accidents, or you dont care since your out of supplies anyways and are heading back asap. Either way, its not intresting atm. But doing the mentioned above might seem like a step backwards (it was changed from this)
But the reason why it was changed was so that it gave players an option to go above the limit, temporarily, as long as they have "supplies". Again, tacky.
Tune down the severity of the accidents and people flying around with 200% logistics can still get home without everything falling apart, going perfectly fine, then suddenly EVERYTHING FALLS IN TO CHAOS VERY QUICKLY. Now, it will be some risk involved throughout the hole trip.
Also with the tuned down severity, going around with say, more ships then normal might seem like a good idea for players needing a large fleet to destroy a system defense fleet just once. For example, they dont need all the ships to be running 100%, since they are combat/tech in that case and they just need this one battle, so an accident happen and one of the ship is damaged and a few people die... ok NP. (or say, a mining operation is hauling back 2x the goods it should safely carry)
4. Over logistics dont reduce max CR.
This ties in with the two mentioned above. For one, this would make more sense as a crewed ship's cr should depend on the veterancy of its members not if the admiral is keeping an close eye on them all the time... Also, this allows for the above mentioned scenario.
With accidents punishing too much logistics, CR dont need to be effected.
5. Leadership points.
Leadership points are simply how many ships the player (commander) can have in his fleet without in subordination.
So what is Logistics, Supplies, Combat Readiness, Leadership points and Crew in the end.
Logistics is what the maximum the crew and ships is capable of handling materials wise: crew, supplies, and fuel.
Supplies is Ship parts and Ammunition used for ship combat, and ships working extra time (over logistics on crew, fuel, and supplies)
Leadership points, how many officers can you command effectively.
Crew is people living in spaceships that can sustain their life, and only require morale to live on space rations or fungus, so they dont go crazy. They also effect the combat readiness of the ship they are flying.
----------------------------------
So all in all, this is quite of bit of changes, and they all tie in with each other.
But matter of fact is, this creates more complexity, that is easier to manage and understand.
Or so I believe anyways, people always think different.
Edit: added bold text lol