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[gameslayer404]

I don't even know what it is exactly; is it morale? Supplies used for combat? Both?? Morale does make sense to have, but when your fleets combat readiness degrades even when you're winning, like I cannot tell you how many times I have engaged are far more numerous and deadly enemy, without a single loss or only a few minor ships, and then suddenly all my ships are being disabled/horribly hampered by combat readiness even though I was winning. Infact this just recently happened; I was going into a star to look for a derelict ship mission and a bounty, the star was a blue giant and I went into a jump point near the star. It said that there was a fleet that was nearby and could threaten my fleet, no big deal I told myself. Well I went into it and was pushed all the way towards the fleet that was coming towards me due to that blue giants corona. I thought it was gonna be a piece of cake since I thought I could outlast them since i've found 2 of these star screen mod things, I think one of them was solar screen which only protects the ship it's on, and i'm pretty sure the other one protected the entire fleet by like 75% in the corona. Also I don't even know what those mod things actually do, I just skim read them and absorb them as they are supposed to do something good for my fleet. Anyways I got into the fight and I was winning pretty good, hadn't taken one loss. I was pushing my enemies few, but large ships back, I was noticing that my fleets combat readiness was decreasing to around 30-40% at the highest, while the enemy still had like 60-70% anyways thinks quickly went sour for some reason, and my ships just started malfunctioning and going offline left and right. So I exited as it's not ironman. Anyways combat readiness doesn't make sense. They should of had around or far worse combat readiness as they were losing, and probably didn't even have any protection from the sun. What is combat readiness? If it's morale it has to fluctuate, not just in battle but also on the map. If you were losing but suddenly start winning and pushing them back it should increased drastically as your men get emboldened from success, if they are being pushed back when they were winning. It might make sense to get it lower, but not that much. Also if your ships are getting destroyed all around you, you would feel very scared wouldn't you. If you were facing off against a larger enemy you would be a bit scared, but since you have done it so much before, and are already strengthened from past successes, then you wouldn't mind. While if you are running low on supplies, money, and fuel you might feel a bit demoralized just from the fact you could suddenly start starving. If it's due to a lack of supplies. How much your combat readiness can start decreasing when you've barely faced off against the enemy? (talking about my scout phase ships)  or why not when your using tons of ammunition and getting your weapons and armour blasted off? That definitely wouldn't be good for supplies. Also why does it cost anything to deploy ships? It's not that big of a deal when I know I'll win and get enough supplies to recover from it. It just doesn't make sense if you can just bring the rest of your fleet with you, or have your entire fleet with you. Unless of course it is used to supply the ship with it's ammunition and such, but shouldn't it already be equipped? Could you not have it used when you make your ships momentarily retreat for ammunition? I think combat readiness is supposed to be a mix of both morale, and supplies available, but it just doesn't work. It's not because I don't play aggressively; I do, and sometimes it bites me back. It should be split into to separate things. Morale, and Combat supplies/supplies available. Morale fluctuates and depends on both combat and fleet wide (as in the overworld projection) situations; in combat it should also be about the individual ship and the entire fleet that is working. Is the ship being overwhelmed and demoralized, but then reinforcements arrive just in time to help? While the combat supplies should only go down when they are being utilized. They are essentially the ammunition for ballistics, and the repair metals or whatever is used to repair the ships guns and engines when they are damaged. That's the end of my rant guys ! ! ! ! 

[Morrokain]

Some general advice:

1) Take the warning displayed on the combat screen about decreasing CR very seriously (it also makes a notable horn sound effect). Retreat that ship immediately or if a lot of them are decreasing CR just mass retreat. It will save you CR in the long run and you can re-engage the remaining enemy forces which will set your CR timer back to full for each ship - with reduced max CR from the second round of deployment. Still a net benefit though and will solve this problem for you.

2) Engaging a fleet in a corona is a bad idea even with your protection. Avoid it if you can. The protection mostly just lets you retrieve stuff like a weapon cache or salvage a derelict in a corona more cost effectively. It's not really a "corona fighting" benefit, though it does let you evade enemy fleets by running into a corona. Iirc some enemy fleets won't pursue you there and you can more easily escape them.

3) It's not really morale but like you said a combination of combat stress to the ship, morale, ammunition, supplies, etc. The moral mechanic you suggest would probably be too confusing/complicated and would like exacerbate the very issues you are having right now.

4) It was tried in the past to make this two separate values and it did not work well. I forget the exact reasons but I know one was that it make reading the UI more difficult and was generally more confusing.

-----------------------------------

As a follow up suggestion regarding this, maybe make the warning happen when the PPT is *low* rather than when it runs out. That way it is completely possible to avoid any CR drain by a player paying attention to these alerts. Sometimes the annoying thing for me is that the damage is already done when the warning sounds by how long it takes the ship to retreat if it is, say, a frigate behind enemy lines.

[Megas]

If fighting in a corona is a must due to some bad enemy base spawn, get Hardened Subsystems on your ships!  Without it, you may have only a few seconds of time before PPT expires and CR drops like a rock!

As a follow up suggestion regarding this, maybe make the warning happen when the PPT is *low* rather than when it runs out. That way it is completely possible to avoid any CR drain by a player paying attention to these alerts. Sometimes the annoying thing for me is that the damage is already done when the warning sounds by how long it takes the ship to retreat if it is, say, a frigate behind enemy lines.

PPT time-out was not a problem in earlier versions, but now that fights got bigger, skills got weaker, and AI got more cowardly, not to mention Safety Overrides or campaign hazards recently introduced, something needs to change (to prevent most multi-round combat).  If fights will take longer, then PPT should be raised across the board instead of remaining at 0.6 times when the biggest enemy was Hegemony System Defense Fleet, equal to a mere 200k bounty.  Now we have capital spam (and it looks like next release will have officer spam).

Even with edge-camping, it still burns precious seconds to get the likes of Mora, Onslaught, or Astral to turn 180 and burn out.

[Yunru]

My eyes glazed over most of the wall of text, but to answer the "what is it?" question:
Exactly what it says on the tin; how ready a ship is for combat.

[gameslayer404]

Some general advice:

1) Take the warning displayed on the combat screen about decreasing CR very seriously (it also makes a notable horn sound effect). Retreat that ship immediately or if a lot of them are decreasing CR just mass retreat. It will save you CR in the long run and you can re-engage the remaining enemy forces which will set your CR timer back to full for each ship - with reduced max CR from the second round of deployment. Still a net benefit though and will solve this problem for you.

2) Engaging a fleet in a corona is a bad idea even with your protection. Avoid it if you can. The protection mostly just lets you retrieve stuff like a weapon cache or salvage a derelict in a corona more cost effectively. It's not really a "corona fighting" benefit, though it does let you evade enemy fleets by running into a corona. Iirc some enemy fleets won't pursue you there and you can more easily escape them.

3) It's not really morale but like you said a combination of combat stress to the ship, morale, ammunition, supplies, etc. The moral mechanic you suggest would probably be too confusing/complicated and would like exacerbate the very issues you are having right now.

4) It was tried in the past to make this two separate values and it did not work well. I forget the exact reasons but I know one was that it make reading the UI more difficult and was generally more confusing.

-----------------------------------

As a follow up suggestion regarding this, maybe make the warning happen when the PPT is *low* rather than when it runs out. That way it is completely possible to avoid any CR drain by a player paying attention to these alerts. Sometimes the annoying thing for me is that the damage is already done when the warning sounds by how long it takes the ship to retreat if it is, say, a frigate behind enemy lines.

I'm going to give my feedback to your feedback.
1-If I retreat my ship right as it starts to have CR drain, I will have less manpower on the field, and my other ships CR will drain even faster, and will get overrun faster. If I retreat my ship when it's at 10-20% CR it typically gets to the edge of the map but then it can't retreat due to having 0 combat readiness. Which shouldn't ever happen. I'll try to mass retreat if it does up my CR. Also another thing is that I should be able to retreat without completely eliminating my enemy while having a large fleet myself. I would like to be able to fight with the enemy a bit and destroy a few of their ships and be able to disengage despite having a large force myself. That would be more realistic in terms of how actual battles work, but then this is space combat and we have no idea how it will look like at all. This is secondary, and I just included that bit for the fun of it.

2-Even still my enemy should of had a reduction in CR even more then I did, but when my ships were failing they were at like 60%

3-That is essentially what I said, minus the combat stresses to the ship. What would that be? I do understand that the morale mechanic I talked about would be complex to add; especially as we don't have hyperadvanced AI that could interpret morale. It definitely wouldn't make my issues worse if it were to be implemented properly. Obviously you would have to tone down what I said, and make it a lot more simple.

4-I did not know of that. I have some doubts about that, but I don't think you'd lie. If you were to make the UI the same as what CR already is, but add the two seperate values to it, and maybe have like a hidden value for morale to change just so it doesn't clutter it up more. Either way you could try again, that was probably in the early stages of the game as I have not heard about it being talked about; I am new though. If the only problem is UI and it just being more confusing; then it could be more easily fixed then the system itself. It would stop people like me not liking the current system, and asking for change on the forums.

What i'm saying is not exactly what should be implemented, but I do believe CR needs to be changed. Thanks for what you've said though. I'll try to mass retreat then fight again if it replenished CR a little.

[gameslayer404]

My eyes glazed over most of the wall of text, but to answer the "what is it?" question:
Exactly what it says on the tin; how ready a ship is for combat.

Yes I know it's a massive ass wall of text. I was very surprised when I took a moment to look at it.

Either way I don't think that's actually true. If it is then it wouldn't make sense at all. A ship prepares for combat before it get's into combat. It doesn't lose it's ability to be ready for combat when it's in combat. As it literally already prepared for combat beforehand. Maybe combat readiness should be a mechanic to where you can prepare for combat and have buffed stats and/or up the stats that I suggested. It could be something you do right before combat, or maybe just on the overlay in which it costs a somewhat costly amount of supplies or whatever, but it can help in major battles.

[Terethall]

1-If I retreat my ship right as it starts to have CR drain, I will have less manpower on the field, and my other ships CR will drain even faster, and will get overrun faster.

That's not how it works. Retreating any given ship has no impact on the CR or remaining peak performance time of any other ships, allied or enemy.

Also another thing is that I should be able to retreat without completely eliminating my enemy while having a large fleet myself.

Yes, you can do this. Just retreat all your ships at any point; you don't have to eliminate the enemy to retreat.

2-Even still my enemy should of had a reduction in CR even more then I did, but when my ships were failing they were at like 60%

Your first post makes it sound like you learned some modspecs, but maybe never actually installed them on your ship. In the refit screen, do your ships say they have the Solar Shielding mod? If not, then there's no reason why the enemy would have had lower CR than yours. If they were running Hardened Subsystems, and your fleet isn't, they should have more CR than you did. Especially if you had been in a corona for a while before the fight, which drains CR very quickly.

3-That is essentially what I said, minus the combat stresses to the ship. What would that be?

There are lots of non-morale, non-damage things that the crew needs to do on a ship, which they can't do during combat. CR is partly the morale (in that morale goes down with extended fighting) but mostly the time it takes to keep the ship running at tip-top shape. Maintaining a ship costs supplies AND time. It takes time for the crew to reload the missile bays, scrub the fighter manufactory, eat a meal, recalibrate the ballistic targeting solution processor, de-irradiate the sensor array, replace spent fuel cores, QC the beam emitter fusion crystals for signs of harmonic phase degradation, re-magnetize the shield generator, de-polarize the flux vents, reboot the flux capacitors to check for stress fractures, etc. etc. They can't do this during combat, and it takes a little while to get to all these tasks. CR represents whether the crew has had out-of-combat downtime to get to these tasks. If they haven't, because they are stuck in combat, or because they are in hazardous terrain like a star corona, malfunctions start to happen. There's not really a morale mechanic in Starsector at all, much to the consternation of some of us.

4-I did not know of that. I have some doubts about that, but I don't think you'd lie.

Megas comes to these forums mainly to lie to newbies; it's great fun for us all to watch.

[intrinsic_parity]

1-If I retreat my ship right as it starts to have CR drain, I will have less manpower on the field, and my other ships CR will drain even faster, and will get overrun faster.

That's not how it works. Retreating any given ship has no impact on the CR or remaining peak performance time of any other ships, allied or enemy.

I think what he is saying is that when he retreats his ships, there is a period of time where those ships are not participating in combat, but the DP is also not available for reinforcements, so you fleet is effectively weaker. Of course there is not affect on other ships CR when you order a ship to retreat, but the loss of combat power is a problem that has to be solved.

To the OP:
You either need to gain enough of an advantage in combat before your ppt expires that you can win without your full DP to safely retreat ships, or you need to spend CR to finish off the fight. If you can't do either of those things, then your fleet is too weak to win the fight and you should have avoided it. If you are routinely running into this situation vs similar sized enemy fleets, you should consider using more aggressive loadouts/tactics/ships.

A side note: you can set your fleets AI behavior to aggressive which can help in these situations.

[Thaago]

I've always seen combat readiness as the combinations of all the factors that make ships ready for combat. Weapons, engines, and reactors tuned and not suffering wear, crew well rested, ammunition and other supplies ready to go, proper safety procedures being followed, nothing deactivated for maintenance or repair, no psychological issues from extended combat etc etc. In combat, combat readiness decreases when Peak Performance Time runs out: this represents the stresses of combat starting to cause problems. Despite being a game mechanic, this is much more realistic than other games where magically every piece of equipment can be run at combat power at all times and not suffer wear. Of course the time given is really short in real world time (5 minutes for destroyers) but its a game. Also, given that when we see battles from the outside (on the main map) they can take several days, I think its kind of implied that the combat actually takes much longer in "real time" than it does for us to play it.

As an example of PPT running out and CR ticking down in the real world: look at professional racing and pit stops. Its not just refuelling that happening in those stops, but new tires, tune ups, steering adjustments, etc etc. Cars that haven't had a pit stop in a while drive worse than those that have because of the stress of racing so hard.

Examples from the real world military are rather plentiful... if anything CR/PPT in starsector is too generous because you don't have to fly all the way back to a major starbase for new gun barrels after firing them too much (this was a very common thing), or from running engines at emergency combat power and degrading it through wear (looking at you, fighter planes and PT boats and destroyers and...).

As a game mechanic: it provides a strong incentive towards completing combat faster and building fleets to use aggressive tactics.


All that said, I have my own gripe about combat readiness: ships that consume less CR/deployment pay more for reduced CR. A lasher pays many more supplies per CR tick down than a Wolf does, which is very counterintuitive.

[Morrokain]

4-I did not know of that. I have some doubts about that, but I don't think you'd lie.

Megas comes to these forums mainly to lie to newbies; it's great fun for us all to watch.

That was me not Megas.

And though I might be mistaken or not remembering it correctly (and I did state that lol) I'm not lying, no. I should probably also clarify that the values were nothing to do with morale. I think that was probably a confusing part of the statement. I really just remember there being more values than there are now. I should have just said that.

---------------------------------

As a game mechanic: it provides a strong incentive towards completing combat faster and building fleets to use aggressive tactics.

And prevents infinite kiting - which prevents optimal supply consumption per battle at the expense of really long and mostly boring fights.

[Megas]

Megas comes to these forums mainly to lie to newbies; it's great fun for us all to watch.

Uh, no.

As a game mechanic: it provides a strong incentive towards completing combat faster and building fleets to use aggressive tactics.

Tell that to the enemy AI.  I would love it if the cowardly AI either retreated (for pursuit and auto-resolve) or became suicidal berserkers and rammed their ships at yours like a missile once their PPT starts to run out.  Currently, they cower themselves to death, hoping to drag your fleet down with them in a double KO.

This is a reason why I prefer capital fleet, in part for maximum PPT.  So if they play waiting game, I play too (if fighter spam is insufficient) and they lose!

[TaLaR]

Currently, they cower themselves to death, hoping to drag your fleet down with them in a double KO.

If it works, it's not stupid. Double KO is win for AI just as well.
But sure, it's annoying and I'd prefer enemies to retreat after PPT, at least when it's clear that player brought only long PPT cruisers/capitals and waiting for 0 CR would only result in player's victory anyway.

[gameslayer404]

1-If I retreat my ship right as it starts to have CR drain, I will have less manpower on the field, and my other ships CR will drain even faster, and will get overrun faster.

That's not how it works. Retreating any given ship has no impact on the CR or remaining peak performance time of any other ships, allied or enemy.

Also another thing is that I should be able to retreat without completely eliminating my enemy while having a large fleet myself.

Yes, you can do this. Just retreat all your ships at any point; you don't have to eliminate the enemy to retreat.

2-Even still my enemy should of had a reduction in CR even more then I did, but when my ships were failing they were at like 60%

Your first post makes it sound like you learned some modspecs, but maybe never actually installed them on your ship. In the refit screen, do your ships say they have the Solar Shielding mod? If not, then there's no reason why the enemy would have had lower CR than yours. If they were running Hardened Subsystems, and your fleet isn't, they should have more CR than you did. Especially if you had been in a corona for a while before the fight, which drains CR very quickly.

3-That is essentially what I said, minus the combat stresses to the ship. What would that be?

There are lots of non-morale, non-damage things that the crew needs to do on a ship, which they can't do during combat. CR is partly the morale (in that morale goes down with extended fighting) but mostly the time it takes to keep the ship running at tip-top shape. Maintaining a ship costs supplies AND time. It takes time for the crew to reload the missile bays, scrub the fighter manufactory, eat a meal, recalibrate the ballistic targeting solution processor, de-irradiate the sensor array, replace spent fuel cores, QC the beam emitter fusion crystals for signs of harmonic phase degradation, re-magnetize the shield generator, de-polarize the flux vents, reboot the flux capacitors to check for stress fractures, etc. etc. They can't do this during combat, and it takes a little while to get to all these tasks. CR represents whether the crew has had out-of-combat downtime to get to these tasks. If they haven't, because they are stuck in combat, or because they are in hazardous terrain like a star corona, malfunctions start to happen. There's not really a morale mechanic in Starsector at all, much to the consternation of some of us.

 Okay on the first thing I meant that when I retreat one of my ships, I lose that ship which could've been very valuable for me. I also thought that whenever you have less ships/quality available compared to the enemies your ships that remain lost their CR faster

Also I literally cannot retreat, atleast not until I destroy almost the entirety of my enemy; which typically outnumbers me. Just because my fleet is past this one number.

I did. I didn't put any on my ships as most of them weren't available. So I assume that most of the blueprint type things applied to my fleet immediately. Things that said "a collection of notes that teach so and so skill" or whatever. I was fighting against pirates so they shouldn't have I don't think. Unless they do idk. Also why are pirates so easy? Is it just me or what?

What you said about CR is days, weeks, months before the actual battle. While of course they can degrade in battle, but they would do so very slowly, and not within the few minutes of battle. Though like what another commentor said, battles seemingly take longer then what they seem, though this isn't put onto the actual calender. Maybe the devs will? I know it would definitely be hard to do. Either way with the advance tech that's available, especially the use of nanotech definitely voids any arguments of the wear of protracted engagements of a few days. Especially when a lot of the ships are many years old and still hold up perfectly fine under good management. You definitely won't lose that just immediately in a few days of combat. You can you store supplies, and metal, and use your nanotech to literally turn it on the spot into something else for combat. I think something should be done to prevent boring ass kiting, but CR is not the way too go.

[gameslayer404]

oops made my entire text into a quote. Don't know how to use quotes...

[Thaago]

...

As a game mechanic: it provides a strong incentive towards completing combat faster and building fleets to use aggressive tactics.

Tell that to the enemy AI.  I would love it if the cowardly AI either retreated (for pursuit and auto-resolve) or became suicidal berserkers and rammed their ships at yours like a missile once their PPT starts to run out.  Currently, they cower themselves to death, hoping to drag your fleet down with them in a double KO.

This is a reason why I prefer capital fleet, in part for maximum PPT.  So if they play waiting game, I play too (if fighter spam is insufficient) and they lose!

It sounds like there is a strong incentive towards you completing combat faster and building a fleet to use aggressive tactics. Part of that is the ability to hunt down stragglers.

oops made my entire text into a quote. Don't know how to use quotes...

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