Ammo limit isn't micro for the sake of it. It's micro because it affects gameplay and makes sense, given that that IS what a ship captain would have to take into account.
I agree.
CR is too abstracted; unfun and unintuitive. An overreaction to a few savant players like Megas obsessively kiting an onslaught with a tempest then posting a lot (thanks for CR, Megas
). Then, not addressing the smaller issues such as:
How come ships can shoot energy weapons endlessly without running out of power? Why don't ammo-unlimited energy weapons draw off a common battery?
Why aren't large weapons even stronger / longer range than medium/small mounts to inhibit kiting? Otherwise, there wouldn't be big slow ships in the sector.
How come big ship doesn't retreat when it sees its being kited? Show the AI a graph of its own flux vs Megas' flux, see the same pattern repeating like a sine wave over 5 tedious minutes, and make it retreat.
How come, no matter how long you spend cheesing some big ship in combat, time in campaign doesn't increment, so you don't have to worry about anything else happening?
Why are big ships slower than small ones anyway? Even in the WWII navel combat which starsector is trying to recapture by way of Star Wars, bigger ships were faster than smaller ships (though not airplanes), because bigger ships have bigger engines. They just have bad acceleration/turning than small ones.
Also, there are times when a smaller, better ship is just going to be better than a big ship. Maybe that's ok?
It doesn't make sense to put this abstracted, tabletop-style mechanic into a twitch component of the game. On campaign, the play is more abstracted so CR feels less wrong. But not in combat.
Oh well, it's done. I do like Starsector because it is good world building and fun overall still (and complaining about it on the forums is also fun), but if it has one systemic flaw it's "overthinking": increasingly convoluted mechanics in order to 'simplify' micromanagement, redesign of economy 4 times and counting, etc. Honestly I have no idea how fighters work still, because i gave up on reading those academic blog treatises.