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[Temstar]

30 fights is way too many, might as well get rid of CR altogether. I feel that the current CR restriction is about right. Large player fleets hunting Armadas, Security Detachments and SDFs have to wait for them to respawn so you have plenty of time between major battles for R&R. Smaller, faster fleets have lower cargo carrying capacity so they're heading back to station after each fight anyway so CR recovery is moot either way.

I feel that some of the problem people have with CR has to do with the kind of ships they keep in their fleet. I'm a fan of mid-tech so my fleet consists of mostly cruisers like Eagle, Heron and Apogee with most of them having 12% CR per deployment. Apogee tops the list at 15% CR but since Apogee is the flagship it has a deeper CR pool to start with. If you're a fan of all late tech then you're going to have to pay the price in CR. Most late tech ships have 20% CR per deployment which translate to less deployments and more down time in between fights to service their more complex components. It's the admirals job to make sure he's got a balanced fleet and not a fleet of hanger queens. And in the event that he has to have a fleet of hanger queens he has to work around that specific weakness of his fleet.

I do feel that cargo capacity could get a look at. Of course supplies are just falling out of ships like they grow on trees these days so if you don't take all that supply you could easily hang out in deep space forever and never need to head to a station to offload. What I would like to see is more auxiliary ships that could make some use of the over-abundance of supply. Say an Underway Replenishment auxiliary, something like a Construction Rig, but instead of repair it burns extra supply to speed up CR recovery.

[Megas]

Ways I see of mitigating CR:

• Don't use "hangar queens"
• Don't use green crew (but that's all player can afford when starting a game...)
• Get max Combat (flagship only, mid or late game only)
• Get max Leadership/Fleet Logistics, and many ships (mid or late game only)
• Deploy everything after defeating enemy then stand down (needs big fleet/high Leadership to work)
• Use all elite crew (late game only)

I used to favor high-tech ships (mostly due to unlimited ammo), but have abandoned most of them due to excessive CR costs.  I will keep one or two for use as flagships (namely Odyssey and Hyperion), since Combat 10 plus elite crew greatly extends stamina in 0.6.2, but the rest of my combat ships would be Lashers or other strong low or mid-tech ships.  I mention "would" because I devote much of my Logistics to Atlas ships to carry loot.  The Logistics I have left is enough for one battleship or a modest frigate squad of Lashers led by a high-tech flagship.

Several high tech ships should not cost much as CR as they do.

Omen is a joke ship, but costs 20%.  The only things it can do is spark stuff with EMP (not as good as simply killing things with high DPS) and shield bash things (Monitor is much better at that).

Wolf is not as good as a Tempest, or a well-equipped Lasher for that matter, and had its CR cost raised in 0.6.2.  Was 35%, now 40%/2=20%.  There is no reason to use this ship anymore, except maybe as the starter ship in Normal difficulty.  Tempest outperforms the poor Wolf, and the Wolf has nothing over Tempest other than cheaper retail price.  But if price is a factor, Lasher is the better buy.  Wolf either needs lower CR cost (say 15%) or some of its stats buffed.

Tempest costs 20%, but it is very good for its class.  Somewhat annoyed at its CR cost, but it is probably justified.  Fast as a Hound, and (with extra OP) can support two blasters for high DPS.  The only thing it cannot do is kite (blaster range is short), but its agility and small size can compensate for that.

Hyperion's superior performance is well known; enough said.

Medusa's only strength is its speed, particularly burn speed.  It is good, but not noticeably stronger than other combat destroyers.  20% feels excessive.

Aurora has the best killing speed out of all cruisers (thanks to point blank Reaper and blaster spam) except perhaps the Dominator, but is otherwise inferior to the Apogee (which is no slouch), and the Apogee has more reasonable CR cost (15% vs. Aurora's 20%).

Odyssey is the only carrier that does everything well.  It can devastate fleets, but not as efficiently as battleship Onslaught/Paragon.  Its CR cost of 20% is obnoxious, but it is powerful, and no other ship can do everything like it can.

Paragon got its CR cost raised like the Wolf, but it is borderline overpowered in battle.  It can devastate fleets and tank damage.  if 20% is good for the Odyssey, it is good for the Paragon too.

Astral is very powerful now, but it's CR cost of 15% seems okay.

All the phase ships are low or mid-tech ships in high-tech clothing (universals are great for ballistic spam or torpedo/AM blaster strike), and they have acceptable CR costs.

[Debido]

Mmm ok fair enough. How about if
A) high tech ships cost half the CR% of mid tech ships to deploy, but the supply cost of CR recovery is much higher. Frankly the excuse that high tech ships require more maintenance is BS.
B) high tech ships cost no more CR% to deploy than mid tech ships, but still cost more supplies per CR% recovered reflecting the higher cost, but better performance of high tech ships.

[Temstar]

Frankly the excuse that high tech ships require more maintenance is BS.

Why? Makes perfect sense to me. I mean look at the space shuttle, it was an extremely capable manned spacecraft compared to all other other ones around but required an army of people and month of down time between each flight for maintenance.

[Flare]

I don't think high tech necessarily means that all the qualities of something is necessarily better than something more simple. One could engineer something that performs better in one area, but makes it such that it suffers in another area.

Think of the tanks of WWII. The German tanks were some of the most sophisticated tanks of the entire war, they did however require more and specialized maintenance than say a Russian one. One of the reasons for this is that they were not using standard parts. One way to engineer something to be better in one area than its competitors is to design whole new parts entirely instead of rely on standard parts that could be far more easily replaced. The TriTacs might be running a similar show.

[Temstar]

All this talk of technical "superiority" remind of of a certain short story by Arthur C. Clarke, particularly relevant in our case since it talks about the dangers of applying cutting edge technology to space battle:
http://www.mayofamily.com/RLM/txt_Clarke_Superiority.html
This story by the way is required reading for industrial design courses at MIT.

In my view what makes CR brilliant is that it is a perfect reflection of this "wunderwaffe" vs "stubborn conservatism and complete lack of imagination" dilemma. Hyperion for example is exactly what you would call a "wunderwaffe". When it works (that is, when it's freshly refitted from a station) it is a frighteningly effective weapon. But once its blown its load, for the vast majority of the time it just sits around eating up resource. On the other hand we have the old rust bucket known as the Enforcer with terrible shield and breathtakingly boring design. Yet you can count on this junk pile to rumble into battle every time (thanks to its low CR per deployment cost) and smash face without fan fair.

[Megas]

Hyperion is fine.  It is very expensive, but its overall power among frigates and destroyers is unmatched.  Tempest is also superior to most other frigates.  The other high-tech ships either fulfill a specialist role (e.g., phase ships, Omen, Astral) or are simply shiny but less practical alternatives (e.g., Wolf, Aurora, maybe Paragon) to other ships.

Enforcer is a very good ship, probably better than Medusa in combat.  If Enforcer had a base burn of 5 like the Medusa, it would be my no-brainer pick for destroyer class.  Enforcer is the best small ship at kiting in the game, better armed than a Hammerhead, and burn drive makes it fast for reaching objectives.

EDIT - 40% cost for Hyperion seems like a lot, but it is an improvement over 0.6 in practice.  It can be deployed twice with normal crew (yellow level malfunctions are insignificant with teleport), and max Combat plus elite crew really eases its cost.  I would not mind a slight base cost reduction to 35%, however.

EDIT#2 - CR would be alright, if all ships did not break down after one or two fights.  The means to extend their endurance are not available until late in the game, and only if player takes mid to high Leadership, making Combat and Technology only build too hard.  Of course, the excess loot needs to be fixed too.

[Debido]

@Temster

The space shuttle is a very unique example, and although I get the whole link to the fact that it is a real space craft, it doesn't hold a a rule for everything high tech. Only four of those were ever built for space, and they were USA's first attempt at a re-usable spacecraft - ever.

You could also point to something like the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer as a piece of high tech ship that can put a cruise missile through your window from 1300km away, it is a long time between maintenance. Much like the Nimitz class carrier that only comes in for major maintenance, refueling and upgrade once every 25 years.

Sure there are other high tech examples that are hanger queens, look at the B2-bomber. For each hour a B2 bomber flys it requires 120 hours of maintenance, the B1-B requires 60, and the B-52 requires 53. Still fairly damned high.

But comparing different types of tech in this manner isn't really being productive, as each is in it's own performance envelope and each are in their own class. With the space shuttle it has one of the most demanding performance envelopes of them all, and there is absolutely nothing to compare it to on this planet.

I mean I could say the most high tech thing there is, is the CPU inside your computer. How often does that fail or require maintenance? It's one of the most sophisticated and fragile machines ever made by mankind and yet it requires no maintenance.


Anyway my vague point is that performance is related to heat, friction and the materials used. Heat and friction cause the need for maintenance, the materials used can allow a higher performance envelope or allow longer times between maintenance.

And yeah, the tech Germans developed during WWII was amazing but in it's infancy. The V2 rocket was ahead of it's time, but for delivering explosive payload? The B-17 could out strip it many times over.

[Intaka]

So in my own modded version of the game, here is what I thought was annoying enough to merit changing:

1) Higher Base (game start) Fleet Logistics. This allows the player the choice of more combat ships to rotate out for CR purposes, or room for a few real combat ships plus an Atlas and a few Tugs. In MY ideal game, I have a large and varied fleet, but individual ships take a long time to repair between engagements. This requires me to rotate out ships for a given series of battles. The CR mechanic can work for these purposes, if fleet logistics values were high enough, and instant base repairs didn't exist. Furthermore, due to the limited ship hull supplies at bases... in the early game this would encourage players to utilize and experiment (or at least endure temporarily) the use of many different hull types and weapon configurations in engagements. Disclaimer: you don't want to force players to sit and watch fleets regenerate. That's no good. It's all about the balance of repair time vs the depth of your available ships for rotating into combat, balance wise.

2) Faster Base "Dedicated Freighter Speeds" (which included a combat nerf to the mule for balance purposes, but could easily simply exclude the mule. Thus giving a choice between combat freighters vs faster noncombat freighters). This allows fleet burn speeds to be (mostly) determined by the combat makeup of the fleet.

3) A fully repaired fleet requires minimal Supply Usage. Preventing the "you've run out of supplies" death spiral while looking for prey.

4) Since salvage supply drops are determined by fleet repair costs (in supplies), it seems to me that if you just changed the ratio of supply drop to repair cost (e.g. reducing the current supply drops by a factor of 4 (for example), but maintaining current repair costs) you would fix several problems at once. Less cargo space would be required, supplies would be more scarce which would reduce cash income, and a bad engagement might require a cash expenditure to BUY supplies from a base if you didn't have a cushion built up in storage. I didn't make this change, but only because I don't know where this variable lives yet.

5) I'm not really a fan of the Navigation skill. It feels required, which means it's pointless since everyone feels they HAVE to get it to play the game. I'd fold it across several different end perks, and adjust the "nearly never taken anytime soon" skills to be more viable. In my game, I buffed the crew xp % skill to be 20% per skill point spent (vs 10%), improved the missile speed bonus per skill point spent, and a few other small changes to attempt to make these skills have some sort of choice parity with the ubiquitous "must get navigation speed and OP point boost" skills.

I know I'm not a forum veteran, but I've played iterations of this game for over a year now, and these are the things I would change in the base game, if I had the creative feedback clout of you mighty 7000 post posters.

[Aeson]

2) Faster Base "Dedicated Freighter Speeds" (which included a combat nerf to the mule for balance purposes). This allows fleet burn speeds to be (mostly) determined by the combat makeup of the fleet.

Just how much faster are we talking? Destroyer-scale freighters will only slow a fleet if the slowest non-freighter in the fleet is a Medusa or a frigate, and the Atlas's lack of speed is its only significant drawback if you have an acceptable fleet to back it up. And if you really want a faster fleet, there are several frigates that make acceptable stand-ins for freighters, and the second-best of those (from a logistics per capacity perspective) is the fastest ship in the game.

3) A fully repaired fleet requires minimal Supply Usage. Preventing the "you've run out of supplies" death spiral while looking for prey.

A fully repaired fleet already requires minimal supply usage, as defined by the game's standards (one-tenth of the hull logistics rating plus 1% of the crew total plus 2% of the marine total plus 10% of the cargo/crew/fuel carried beyond capacity). What you're suggesting sounds like you want there to be no supply usage for fully repaired ships (note that I consider CR recovery to be part of whether or not a ship counts as 'fully repaired'; if you meant otherwise, say so), which I would think to be a rather significant change to the game economy.

4) Since salvage supply drops are determined by fleet repair costs (in supplies), it seems to me that if you just changed the ratio of supply drop to repair cost (e.g. reducing the current supply drops by a factor of 4 (for example), but maintaining current repair costs) you would fix several problems at once. Less cargo space would be required, supplies would be more scarce which would reduce cash income, and a bad engagement might require a cash expenditure to BUY supplies from a base if you didn't have a cushion built up in storage. I didn't make this change, but only because I don't know where this variable lives yet.

If I'm not mistaken, this particular aspect is due to change when the game becomes more feature-complete. I'd wait and see what happens before really getting into how this should be altered.

[Intaka]

Just how much faster are we talking? Destroyer-scale freighters will only slow a fleet if the slowest non-freighter in the fleet is a Medusa or a frigate, and the Atlas's lack of speed is its only significant drawback if you have an acceptable fleet to back it up. And if you really want a faster fleet, there are several frigates that make acceptable stand-ins for freighters, and the second-best of those (from a logistics per capacity perspective) is the fastest ship in the game.

It is possible that my lack of expert experience in the game is showing through. It seems counter intuitive and clunky to me that one would stack up combat frigates for their cargo capacity, whether or not the spreadsheets say that this is optimal. In my game currently, the Atlas has a base speed of 40 (from 25), and the Tarsus has a base speed of 60. It makes sense to me that one would use cargo carrying ships to gain cargo capacity. Even in a fast frigate fleet.

I would prefer not to get into a lore discussion on whether or not a ship which doesn't carry guns or defenses has room for engines or not... It's really a matter of whether the design makes sense from the perspective of classification for me. If it's job is to carry cargo, and every fleet is required to carry cargo for the currently large supply reserves required to operate in space for more than 5 minutes at a go... then cargo carrying ships shouldn't be the limiting factor in fleet burn speeds.

As for the maintenance supply costs of a fully repaired fleet...   as you increase base logistics at the start of the game (and thus total logistics over the course of the entire game) to embrace a rotate ships through combat philosophy, clearly the daily maintenance cost of the fleet will increase. And thus, logically to me, one would want to lower the daily maintenance costs to prevent excessive bleed down of supply from merely operating in space with a larger fleet, when only a portion of it is typically wielded at one time.

Also, if you take a look at the total daily supply operating cost of a capital ship to a frigate, there is currently a double markup in operating costs, due to the higher base supply cost per day and the additional unproportional crew size increase. Which is, of course, why so many people are gravitating towards fleets of frigates. Due to the double dipping imbalance. Is this the vision of the game? Or just a balance issue? We can't really know for certain without discussion. I for one, can't imagine that those ships weren't meant to be used as part of a balanced fleet. Which they would be, if there was a better balance of supply cost per day.

As a disclaimer... I understand that many people really and truly love the game, and thus there will be many strong opinions. That's a great thing. A passionate community helps keep the project moving forward. However, my feedback is just intended to be exactly that... feedback. My perception is that in the current iteration of the game, the changes I have made to my own version would make the base game better. I believe that Alex will revisit supply salvage ratio when the next patch goes out, or whenever he feels is appropriate. However, I was just pointing out that the adjustment of the ratio to salvage to full repair cost will address many issues simultaneously in with respect to the current state of game balance. Which is all we can really provide feedback on, unless we're Alex of course.

[xenoargh]

It is possible that my lack of expert experience in the game is showing through. It seems counter intuitive and clunky to me that one would stack up combat frigates for their cargo capacity, whether or not the spreadsheets say that this is optimal.

I think that mainly this points out something that's been pretty obvious for a while now; there aren't any "dedicated freighters" in the Frigate class at all, so Alex has been forced to make the Hound into the "Flying Locker" that it currently is.  

This is something that could be fixed fairly easily; a quickie kitbashed new ship like this one would do just fine, art-wise:



That said, it's all a bit of a crutch; relative fleet speeds are and will continue to be a major balance issue.  It's hard issue to deal with yet; until the Player can split his / her fleet to gain more speed when it's critical, we're left without any really good ways to address this atm.

[Megas]

Hermes is the frigate-sized freighter, and it is comparable to destroyer-sized freighters if you have enough of them.  Problem is even with Oxen, the Atlas is the best freighter by far, in terms of capacity per Logistics.  I need two or three of them to loot one supply convoy or defense fleet.

[Alex]

Just wanted to say thank you all for your feedback. I wish I had a bit more time to respond in detail, but I've got to get back to doing some design stuff for the next release. I have read everything here, though.

... if I had the creative feedback clout of you mighty 7000 post posters.

That this sort of thing doesn't matter at all. It's what you say that counts


(Nice mini-Atlas, btw. Also: the Hound was always meant to be a tramp freighter. But, anyway, I wouldn't read too much into the current cargo capacities and salvage amounts. I'd expect both to change quite drastically.)

[xenoargh]

@Megas:  I think that the problem there is that if players aren't forced to get an Atlas for efficiency, they aren't ever going to buy them, period.

Another way to solve that problem, however, is to improve the relative efficiency of all of the freighter types vs. combat types (nerfing OPs a bit if needbe, but frankly most of the freighters are already not go-to combat ships), but make the gap in total storage greater per tier.  

That, or just wait a bit for the other mechanics to arrive; right now, it's kind of a non-issue if you're base-hugging all the time.

The Hermes is still kind of a joke, though; I'd rather buy a Hound, which can fight in a pinch, and fights pretty well with ITU if stacked right.