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[Andy H.K.]

Starsector 0.6, released a month ago, introduce "Combat Readiness" (CR) as a mechanism to tie-in Campaign level logistics and combat. Since then the forum has seen a good deal of heated discussion. The purpose of this post is to summarize some of the common criticism on CR, present my observation and make some suggestion on this matter.

But first let's see what CR is all about. With CR also comes the new logistics system, where everything is tied to supply consumption. CR connects combat and logistics in the following way:

1. deployment in combat cost CR
2. CR is recovered over time in the campaign map, consuming supplies as it goes

Unfortunately, it seems a lot of people are finding the whole mechanism as an annoyance. Some of the criticisms are as follows:

1. It takes too long to recover CR, prohibiting consecutive combat
my comment: Since the scope of this game is more than about combat, and I find it leading to a lot of interesting decision making process: Who to engage? which fleet to take on among a dozen? When/where to engage? Can I come out without being swarmed when I finish this one fight? I feel this is working as intended.

2. It makes the beginning too hard
my comment: To me, the beginning of a campaign has always been a bit harsh even before CR. CR made it worse because it cost supplies to enter combat, meaning the starting fleet has a tight timer to race before it starve. It also make the first few battle much less affordable to lose. Unfortunately until we have ways to generate income other than combat, things will probably stay the way it is.

3. CR recovery cost too much supplies
my comment: I think the player should take responsibility for their own decision to a certain degree. In fact we have all the information available in the codex. As I've said in the other thread, to help players make proper, informed decision, we need a "campaign tutorial" to teach players about CR and logistics promptly.

4. CR deployment cost doesn't take activity into account
my comment: From what I see, the current logistics system is a very abstract system - there's only ever one resource to take into account. Likewise, the CR system is pretty abstract. One key point is that deployment cost per ship are mostly predefined and static. I think such abstraction is one big reason a lot of players are so repulsive to CR: deployment always hit CR as much whether the fight is a steamroll or hard-fought. Players fail to suspense their disbelieve on such issue and then find the system "bad".

So I think we need more details. the CR cost should be divided into two parts: A. Base cost, covering engine power re-routing, shield/phase activation, mental stress on sounding of battlestation etc. B. combat-depended cost, accounting weapons fired, flux taken, ship system usage. Wear and tear on the gun barrel should be different between one fired 1 shot and another having fired 100 shots. A prolonged fight is likely to be much more tiresome than a turkey shoot. The new active performance timer for frigate is pretty neat, in fact I think all other ships should have such gauge measuring how hard a ship is being pushed, and have CR deducted as appropriate, in-combat or not. An ideal would be where A+B would be about the same as the current static CR cost in a balanced fight.

I think 0.6 is a milestone for this game, where it start to become more "complete" and expand its scope beyond combat. The current CR system, while crude, present an interesting way for balancing. With all said, I look forward to the refinement and polish this system will receive.

[Cosmitz]

Just going to comment on the last point, but a great indicator of how 'hard fought' a battle can be simply a counter of flux gained. Both through weapons or shield damage, in cap-and-vent setups and regenning setups, flux is a good indicator of how hard the ship was pushed. You might say 'what about armor ships' and 'what about missiles?', but since high tech ships are the ones that use shields and energy-hungry weapons, and they're the ones that need balancing, i see no reason why repairing armor and missiles should be factored in. In the end making a pure armor ship that fires just missiles is horribly inefficient in vanilla and even though you can field it for almost nothing, i don't see it as being a viable tactic enough to give concern. The flux-gained works even for fighters and can be supplemented or exchanged with the number of fighter hulls lost.

[Giangiotto]

This doesn't address the point I made about ships being able to fire at least part of their guns and use their shields at 0%.

Also

The new active performance timer for frigate is pretty neat, in fact I think all other ships should have such gauge measuring how hard a ship is being pushed

It does not make much sense for large ships to have performance timers.

[Andy H.K.]

This doesn't address the point I made about ships being able to fire at least part of their guns and use their shields at 0%.

Truth be told, if a ship isn't combat ready, it shouldn't be allowed to be deployed period. But then of course you've got no choice in pursuit scenario, in such case I do agree that even 0% CR ship should be allowed to fight back when we already have all the malfunctioning to mess things up.

But seriously, I advice against getting fights at such low CR level....

Also

The new active performance timer for frigate is pretty neat, in fact I think all other ships should have such gauge measuring how hard a ship is being pushed

It does not make much sense for large ships to have performance timers.

I'm not saying every single ship should have an in-combat CR degradation timer. What I'm saying is that the CR deduction after the fight should have a portion determined by in-combat activity.

[Giangiotto]

Truth be told, if a ship isn't combat ready, it shouldn't be allowed to be deployed period. But then of course you've got no choice in pursuit scenario, in such case I do agree that even 0% CR ship should be allowed to fight back when we already have all the malfunctioning to mess things up.

Yeah I'm mostly thinking about the escape scenario.

I'm not saying every single ship should have an in-combat CR degradation timer. What I'm saying is that the CR deduction after the fight should have a portion determined by in-combat activity.

Never hurts to force an extra clarification on this sort of thing, lest we end up taking away the advantage of endurance-based vessels.

[Unfolder]

People who hate combat readyiness may want to strongly consider putting their initial points into the "Combat" branch, which raises max CR and lowers deployment CR for your flagship. Three points in this at the beginning will make those lean early frigate fights a lot more forgiving. Hardened subsystems in the refitting bay also helps.

[Wyvern]

I'm not saying every single ship should have an in-combat CR degradation timer. What I'm saying is that the CR deduction after the fight should have a portion determined by in-combat activity.

I disagree.  Because one of the goals of CR is to encourage the player to deploy as little as they need in order to win, and making CR not a flat cost undermines that goal.  Specifically, it becomes less "what's the smallest deployment I can use?" and more "what's the cheapest deployment I can use taking into account required in-combat activity?" - and the latter is much less likely to have any sort of clean or predictable result.  Before, you might have thought "Hey, I can take this entire fleet with just my Apogee."  After, you'd have to ask "But if I deploy a few other things, the battle will be shorter, which might make it cheaper, but is that enough to offset the cost of deploying more things?" - it'd just get annoying.

[miljan]

There are few big problems with CR.

-First, it focuses to much on doing nothing, to regain CR. If you play this game for fighting you will need to wait, that is very big flaw in the gameplay change with this, that does not add anything to the game.
-Second, CR makes every battle a loss in a way. You do not get rewarded, if you use to big force to attack a fleet, you will lose a ton of CR, but even if you use a small force you will still lose CR, not as much as in first case, but still a lose that will lead to boring doing nothing.
-Third, it is too much abstract. New logistic does not help.

My suggestions:
-Remove lose of CR if you win a battle where fleets are similar in straight. Before battle comp will show you how many deployment points you can use for the fight to be balanced, so you don't lose any CR. This will fix both my first two problems. You will not need to wait for CR if you play good, and win battles that are balanced. But if you want to use more forces over smaller enemies than you will still lose CR.

-implement new resource, something like repair supplies, or reserve parts, that will only be used for repairing ships. Supply will be used for everything else as now.Splitting the resources in two from only supplies now, will make it easier to understand a little. Break problems in simple tasks is the way to go

-Bring back fleet points (or how was it called). Logistic doesn't show very good how much ships you can have in fleet without making problems, as it depends from a lot of factors.

[Gothars]

On the topic of waiting for CR regeneration (which is IMO a very valid concern), I'll just quote an old staement from Alex that convinced me it will work out:

One thing nobody mentioned yet is the danger that CR introduces prolonged waiting periods. At the moment you can go from battle to battle as long as you don't mess up and have to repair. Will I have to run or hide after every medium battle now, so my CR can regenerate? How is that not a bad thing?

That's a good question, and I don't think it has a simple answer. I think it will work because of a combination of the following:

• There will be time pressure to get things done (i.e., you could wait for optimal CR or you could go and save your outpost)
• There's a maintenance cost to simply flying around, so it's not as "appealing" (in quotes because it's never actually appealing)
• The pacing of encounters will be different, i.e. longer natural delays between fights
• You'll be able to fight a few battles before CR became a pressing issue
• There may be TOP SECRET emergency means to boost CR at a cost

The first one is the most important, though. As long as time has no meaning, any kind of delay is a pain; hence the insta-repair option at the current Oribtal Stations. But when time actually causes things to happen, managing those delays will become a strategic consideration. For example, supposing CR took a really long time to regenerate, you might set things up so that you could work in a trading run while it did. Or, if there's a pressing danger, you might decide that you have to go for it with low CR, and damn the torpedoes.

Managing what ships you actually deploy vs how much CR it costs/how long it takes to recover is part of it, too. If you don't pay attention to that, you would be likely to run into CR and supply problems.

[Midnight Kitsune]

I have an idea: Why not make a short CR timer for the larger ships that immediately starts deducts from the "deployment pool" and if the pool is emptied then you just lose the full deployment cost. BUT if you are good and fast then you can save some CR. This would also make hardened subsystems useful for all ships.

Example: You deploy your paragon and the battle ends with half of the timer remaining so you only lose half of the deployment cost. But let's say the next battle runs over; then you would only take the full deployment cost but unlike the frigs, you DON'T lose additional CR

[Unfolder]

I have an idea: Why not make a short CR timer for the larger ships that immediately starts deducts from the "deployment pool" and if the pool is emptied then you just lose the full deployment cost. BUT if you are good and fast then you can save some CR. This would also make hardened subsystems useful for all ships.

Example: You deploy your paragon and the battle ends with half of the timer remaining so you only lose half of the deployment cost. But let's say the next battle runs over; then you would only take the full deployment cost but unlike the frigs, you DON'T lose additional CR

YES! Also, maybe taking damage or engaging weapons could cause the timer to degrade faster, so even if a battle only lasts 10 seconds, during that 10 seconds the paragon happens to eat a face full of harpoons, then CR damage will be maxed automatically.

[BillyRueben]

The point of the deployment cost is to keep players from hitting the "Deploy All" button at the start of every engagement. If ships that didn't work as hard didn't lose as much CR, then we would again be right back to hitting that "Deploy All" button. Besides, if your ships aren't working that hard, you probably deployed too much anyway.

EDIT:

1. It takes too long to recover CR, prohibiting consecutive combat
2. It makes the beginning too hard
3. CR recovery cost too much supplies
4. CR deployment cost doesn't take activity into account

1. This arguement has some valid points, but I still think the system is fine the way it is.
2. Incomplete thought. Since CR has forced the supply cost to increase, I find that the beginning is easier. For those that enjoyed the early game before the patch, the beginning is easier than ever.
3 & 4. If there wasn't a large cost for deploying your ships, you wouldn't need to think about what to deploy; you would just hit your "Deploy All" button every time and be on your way. The costs associated with deploying a ship now forces you to deploy enough to get the job done, and no more.

[Andy H.K.]

The point of the deployment cost is to keep players from hitting the "Deploy All" button at the start of every engagement. If ships that didn't work as hard didn't lose as much CR, then we would again be right back to hitting that "Deploy All" button. Besides, if your ships aren't working that hard, you probably deployed too much anyway.

EDIT:

1. It takes too long to recover CR, prohibiting consecutive combat
2. It makes the beginning too hard
3. CR recovery cost too much supplies
4. CR deployment cost doesn't take activity into account

1. This arguement has some valid points, but I still think the system is fine the way it is.
2. Incomplete thought. Since CR has forced the supply cost to increase, I find that the beginning is easier. For those that enjoyed the early game before the patch, the beginning is easier than ever.
3 & 4. If there wasn't a large cost for deploying your ships, you wouldn't need to think about what to deploy; you would just hit your "Deploy All" button every time and be on your way. The costs associated with deploying a ship now forces you to deploy enough to get the job done, and no more.

I absolutely agree that there has to be a baseline, minimum cost to ship deployment. As for whether player would always hit "deploy all", I think it depends on how high this base cost is set. Know that large ship already have higher maintenance cost, the system can scale this way: smaller ship take less initial CR cost (lower A), but degrade faster (higher B). Meanwhile, Cruiser or above require more crew coordination to be ready for combat (higher A), but is more sturdy in prolonged engagement (lower B).

The catch in my suggestion is that In any tough engagement, the CR drain could potentially be higher than what we have right now. I think the CR system could do well to reflect what actually happened during combat, and the current, rather static system isn't doing that. I believe this disparity is another reason why some players are so repulsive to the system: it only feels like an arbitrary limiter. While I believe the intention of such limitation is good, even integral to core gameplay, it would feel more "realistic" if it reflect what the player has been doing and not as forced.

As for the comment on the beginning, I was talking about literally the first battle of a new game - whether you win or lose could make or break you. but then you're all alone in space in a small vessel, I suppose one would be lucky to get back to civilization if one get shot down. Once again, until there's a way for peaceful progression, I'd say a new game would still feel challenging to survive in.

[BillyRueben]

I absolutely agree that there has to be a baseline, minimum cost to ship deployment. As for whether player would always hit "deploy all", I think it depends on how high this base cost is set. Know that large ship already have higher maintenance cost, the system can scale this way: smaller ship take less initial CR cost (lower A), but degrade faster (higher B). Meanwhile, Cruiser or above require more crew coordination to be ready for combat (higher A), but is more sturdy in prolonged engagement (lower B).

I could see that working, but I still think the current systems works well enough and is much more simple and predictable.

As for the comment on the beginning, I was talking about literally the first battle of a new game - whether you win or lose could make or break you. but then you're all alone in space in a small vessel, I suppose one would be lucky to get back to civilization if one get shot down. Once again, until there's a way for peaceful progression, I'd say a new game would still feel challenging to survive in.

Maybe it's just because I find the beginning of the game the most fun, but I feel like the challenge is right where it should be. Also, you don't have that much to lose that early anyway.

[Histidine]

My post on point #4 (and other CR stuff). TL;DR: I agree with Andy.

BillyReuben brings up an important point about not making "deploy all" be the obvious choice again; like Andy, I think it can be balanced, though.

3. CR recovery cost too much supplies

I'll say this again: compared to the amount of supplies dropped by dead enemies, CR recovery costs are mild at worst; it's the repair costs you really have to worry about. One Lasher drops about 50 supplies with the Salvage option; that's enough for 2.34 recovery cycles (including crew supply costs) on a Medusa; 4.44 for a Hammerhead, 7.07 on a Tempest.
This will likely need changing if loot supply drops become smaller, but I'm hoping supply costs will come down at the same time.