I hear what you're saying re: being close to the project and so on; however this is definitely a change that was driven by player feedback regarding what was actually happening in the game.
Yes, but for the most part that feedback has come from a very small group of players who've played the game for hundreds or even thousands of hours. I've played the game three times: once in 2014, again in 2016, and now once more in 2018. Each time, I played until I had a giant fleet, and at no stage of any of those playthroughs did I engage in frigate kiting, think about frigate kiting, or feel forced to frigate kite. Did I miss a short window of compulsory frigate kiting?
Just as a bit of proof that I'm not blowing smoke here:
Basically, that paragraph/section is a "don't take this as an absolute" kind of thing; less "summary" and more "disclaimer". The mechanic we're talking about here - infinite kiting - is exactly the sort of thing the rest of the article is about.
I disagree. I think that saddling the entire frigate class (and to a lesser extent, the destroyer class) with a sweeping universal disadvantage that doesn't practically affect cruisers or capitals except possibly in the most absurd and/or terminally end-game situations (fighting multiple large fleets back-to-back, battlestation fights) in order to address a single exploit—namely the possibility of a handful of frigate loadout combinations and strategies devised by veterans to efficiently kite—is just exactly what that disclaimer is talking about.
Yeah, okay, even a newcomer may be faced with a situation where the only way to win is to kite, but he could retreat, or (much more likely) just reload the game. In the simulator, I've tested some destroyer vs. destroyer loadouts and become bored to tears because neither of us could finish the other off. The AI's excellence at smugly and near-perfectly micromanaging its flux and shields can create those situations. It was just kiting and backpedaling for a good 4-5 minutes. CR or no CR, I'm leaving that battle one way or the other, and it's not going to be by kiting back and forth for an hour until I finally win, in the simulator or the campaign.
Of course, Starsector isn't the only game to see sweeping changes to its fundamental game mechanics in order to prevent kiting. Kiting is so well known as a concept that we all already know what it is, and need no introduction. Balancing around kiting prevention is not a philosophy I approve of in general, but at the same time, I acknowledge that it's a complicated issue with no easy answer. As someone who's never felt compelled to identify the most optimal and efficient strategy and then use it to the exclusion of all others, I realize that I'm an odd bird, and I have difficulty seeing things from that point of view. That doesn't mean I wallow in inefficiency on purpose, but at the same time, I don't obsess with identifying every little weakness and exploitable mechanic and then ruthlessly abusing them to the utmost.
Look, I knew before delving into this conversation that it was a losing battle. CR is here to stay, whether I like it or not. The game's moddable, though, so I suppose people who really dislike CR could make a mod that multiplies everything's peak performance by 10. The funny thing is, I had almost entirely stopped using frigates and destroyers without even thinking about what I was doing, and not even because of CR. They were simply obsolete. The fact that they beep at me and start to fall apart during extended battles (this was rare until the endgame) just adds insult to injury, and that's the point of this thread. Without this thread, I never would have thought twice about it.