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[Janster]

The current way things are, if I run out of supplies, my fleet in matter of days falls COMPLETELY apart. This isn't very fun and say, if I manage to scrounge some supplies up from some node, I get like 50 supplies, but my 3 small ships consumes 25 a DAY to get back up to readiness.

This makes it very hard to get anywhere, and you are punished hard if you get into a scrap.

I would atleast reduce consumption a lot...but best would be to remove combat  readiness and supplies, as they are now, they are just not a very fun mechanic

Otherwise, great game

[Grievous69]

If you're that low on supplies, just mothball a ship or two in the fleet screen. It should give you a bit more time. That said, it's smart to stock up on supplies whenever you have the chance, and there's also a skill in leadership that reduces maintenance for ALL of your ships by 25%.

[sotanaht]

I find if I run low on supplies on my way back home, it's usually best to pause all repairs instead of mothballing ships.  Doesn't stop the flat monthly supplies, but most of my cost comes from hitting hyperspace storms

[mvp7]

I didn't feel the supply consumption was unfunny even though it is a major factor to consider in ship/fleet design and preparing for long range operations and exploration.

I was using a purposely low maintenance fleet with Apogees, Falcons, low upkeep frigates and support ships (many of them damaged) long after I could have technically afforded far better and bigger ships. I think this is much more interesting than being able to use huge amount of Capitals or high maintenance ships with zero consideration for the running costs. Basically, if supply (and fuel) consumption were so low that you wouldn't need to consider them, then why have them at all?

I pretty much maxed the various free-repair and salvage skills from industry tree early in the game which reduces major supply spikes and gives you more as salvage and loot. I never got the -25% supply consumption skill but the industry skills were pretty much enough for me to at least break even in most battles (don't forget to salvage after battle as well). I never ran out of supplies after very early game where I hadn't yet figured out how the supply works (and that you don't need to jump into the star from hyperspace...).

Supply is hardest to get in very early game. It will consume most of your money with the rest best invested in more ships. Supplies will become relatively smaller expense when you get a few more destroyers and start getting some proper bounties and trade missions. In late game it doesn't really matter what the supplies cost and you can maintain a large enough stockpile to no really worry about it outside of long range exploration.

[namad]

So running out of supplies isn't like... oh I needed 5 supplies today, I had 0, well, I'll have supplies later. Nah. You don't owe 5 supplies when you're 5 supplies down below 0. It's more like 50.

Running out of supplies is very bad, basically the worst thing ever. You need to predict that you will run out of supplies. That's why on the fleet screen you can see the number of supplies required to make all fleetwide repairs. If you cannot afford this, well, you'll want to turn repairs off for some ships. Now if a ship has very low CR and you turn off it's repairs, it will likely be destroyed. So what you do instead is mothball the ship. Mothballing's main drawback is the loss of transverse jump. (Also of course that all the supplies invested in that ship's CR are instantly lost). Still it's better to mothball half your fleet rather than end up losing the entire thing!

The first time you jump into a black hole or neutron star though? That's a really bad unfun surprise and I think the tutorial could do more to warn you about how bad it will be. It's a very save scum wary moment.


The entire point of supplies is to make it so you cannot simply field whatever fleet you want whenever you want. It forces you to be unable to deploy certain ships in certain situations. It also ends up making it so there are some very interesting decisions to make while exploring. Is this fight worthwhile, should I bother recovering this ship? Can I afford it? etc.

One example is the legion XIV you can find in deep space. It's a free capital ship. You can get it randomly at the very start of the game, but if you try to fly it you'll end up going totally broke and dying (or running out of supplies and having to throw away your fleet or most of your fleet). What you can do instead though is mothball it, fly home, leave it in storage at some random market/planet you like. None of these moments would be possible without supply. Ships like the hyperion are only possible because of supply. They'd be OP with no supply in the game. That's basically the gist. Supply allows another vector for balance that allows the game to feature "superships".


All of this said, if you don't want supply in the game? Just cheat!

https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=4106.0

Use console commands and cheat, don't play with supply, that's fine, it's a singleplayer game.

[Janster]

I get it, but if a run out, ship function drops dramatically, I find the drop too dramatic, you can't sail many days before you are pretty much toast.

[mvp7]

I get it, but if a run out, ship function drops dramatically, I find the drop too dramatic, you can't sail many days before you are pretty much toast.

I think it ratio or readiness decline is the same as rate of recovery. The idea is you can't "save" supply by running out of it. The amount of supply you fail to provide will be required later to restore the lost readiness. You should never really get into a situation where you run out. When it becomes clear that running out of supply is unavoidable you should mothball or even scrap ships to save supply.

My late game heavy fleet has daily supply usage of 14 units. I take at least 2000-2500 units with me when I go out exploring and I try to maintain at least 1000 even when I'm operating in the inner systems. I consider less than 500 supply critically low and getting more becomes my main priority no matter what.

In my closest call since the very early game I hit really poor constellation in my exploration and only had 150 supplies left when I returned to my Colony. That's about 10 days, one mediocre battle, or one unlucky hyperspace storm worth of supplies, nowhere near enough and way below safe limits.

[TJJ]

If supply consumption were more predictable, this would be less of an issue.

[Eji1700]

If supply consumption were more predictable, this would be less of an issue.

It's pretty predictable but it does take awhile under the current system to get used to.  An early game fleet should be mostly fine with a stockpile of 200-300 supplies on restock.  Later game you're looking at 500-1000+ depending on your composition (although i'll routinely store ships I don't need for my current goals to try and prevent this).  Also as you explore/fight you can often gain back supplies, especially if you went into the industry skills.

That said I think the bigger issue for a beginner is not understanding:

1. You MUST make money to survive.

2. How to be profitable.

You can take an early bounty or exploration, fly off and do just that, and be fine, but if you're not careful and start upgrading your fleet you can easily get to the point where the rewards you're getting (because you aren't surveying enough or fighting the right enemies) are lower than your upkeep, and that's a very non obvious problem.

I think smoothing out the econ curve and acquisition of ships might help with this.  You could luck into a legion in the first 10 min right now.  A good player catapulted instantly to the mid game, a new one likely looking at a supply nightmare in their future.

Even as someone who's played for awhile i sometimes botch the transition from early game fleet to mid game fleet and find myself going from having 600k to flat broke (upgrade a station, accept a contract, buy a ship, oops i'm low...., *** i'm really low.)

[Jorderon]

There are a few things that surprisingly consume a lot of supplies beyond repairs. Anything that reduces CR fleetwide, such as transverse jumping out of a system, emergency burn recovery (without the talent) or disengaging from battle, drop your entire fleet's CR. This dramatically increases your supply consumption until CR is restored and is completely independent from repair supply consumption. For example, a late game, max sized, fleet can take hundreds of supplies in CR recovery cost after a transverse jump.

There are also a few environment effects which greatly consume supplies, such as being in a corona, neutron star beam, solar flare, etc. This can eat hundreds of supplies per day in some situations, though being in an emergency burn negates the increased supply cost of these environmentally-driven supply sinks.

In order to keep your fleet more self-sustaining, consider bringing along some drone tenders or salvage rigs, as well as maxing out the salvaging skill. These dramatically improve salvageable supplies after a battle.

Don't over-commit to a fight. Bring the ships you think you need to win, and no more. You can always reinforce mid battle. When a ship's CR starts decaying, withdraw that ship and send in a fresh one.

One thing you can always do after a battle is salvage a few times until you start losing crew. This will recoup some supplies and keep your fleet operational a bit longer. Salvaging operations only cost the heavy machinery and crew you may lose during the salvage.

Supplies are definitely a tough system on the player, but once you start to understand exactly what is costing your fleet its supplies you can plan your expeditions and missions better.

[CommandoDude]

There are also a few environment effects which greatly consume supplies, such as being in a corona, neutron star beam, solar flare, etc. This can eat hundreds of supplies per day in some situations, though being in an emergency burn negates the increased supply cost of these environmentally-driven supply sinks.

I think the worst thing about these is that there is no audio warning you're taking damage. It silently drains your CR and supplies unless you know about them or know to look at the space hazard report line. This is particularly newbie unfriendly design.

Took me a LONG time to realize jumping into suns was a bad idea because of this.

[Alex]

I think the worst thing about these is that there is no audio warning you're taking damage.

Ahh, that's a really good idea, made a note.

[Agile]

Event Horizon aka jumping right into a black hole already gives a noise.

Maybe copy that noise and put it up for every other hazard? Its a nice "oh ***" sound, after all.

[From a Faster Time]

but my 3 small ships consumes 25 a DAY to get back up to readiness.

Are you sure your cargo or fuel cargo isn't overloaded? Cause those increase penalties, also repairing damage from a fight as well.

[mvp7]

A bit more visible (and/or audio) warning for too much fuel/cargo would be nice. The amount could be displayed in red when over the limit for example as it's pretty much impossible to tell whether you are tiny bit over or under the maximum from just the visual presentation.