Ah, okay, that's pretty much what I was hoping for. Honestly, I think it would be a bit more meaningful if the penalties and benefits were a bit more spread out, such as -+25% for peak and zero, but at the same time, make it so it's fairly difficult to be at 100% or absolute zero. But as you said, there's a ton of playtesting to do, so I'll leave you to make that decision yourself
It really depends. If you give a few 10% bonuses to various things, all of a sudden it can get really powerful - moreso than a 25% percent bonus to any one thing. But yeah, this needs a *lot* of playtesting.
Any chance of new skills that modify the combat readiness of ships?
Most likely. Right now, combat aptitude raises the max CR of the piloted ship. So for now that only affects the flagship, but should come into play more when officers are in the game.
One thing that's not quite clear to me: Is it common for (non-frigate) ships to loose CR during a battle, depending on its actions? Or is this something that happens generally after battle? Both mechanics seems to be planned, but how are they weighted?
As of now, only frigates lose CR during the fight. But the idea of EMP weapons knocking down CR (and eventually pushing a ship into the "malfunction" zone) is interesting. Might give that a try, though it may make EMP weapons too strong.
The frigate change is interesting, but narrows down their tactical diversity a lot. Is a frigate in a defensive escort role useless now? The obvious One possible answer would be frigate combat-maintenance on carriers. They are an easy target and their destruction interrupts any lone-frigate kiting, but they allow support frigates to stay active along with a big fleet.
Hmm. I get what you're saying about carriers, it makes sense mechanics-wise, but seems a little arbitrary - after all, the specialized equipment carriers have seems unrelated to, say, letting the power junctions inside a frigate cool off. It'd be tough to sell this visually in way that made it clear what's going on. Kind of reminds me of munitions ships, actually. Neat idea, but kind of clunky-seeming in practice.
Even if a frigate only gets several minutes of peak effectiveness, that's still not "useless". Once again, though, will have to see how it plays out. I think different tactics might emerge - for example, I can see switching out frigates in escort duty as a battle goes on, vs deploying them all at once early for a stronger skirmishing force. Assuming increasing frigate speeds more or less across the board works out, I think their tactical role will change rather than shrink.
That reminds me... there are actually some combat changes I want to talk about, too. But I'll save that for the next post
I love the tags of the post
Ah, someone noticed!
Sounds jolly clever indeed! Excited to see the final implementation.
Hopefully not *too* clever, though. Especially not by half
