Huh, would you believe I ended up thinking about the exact same thing some time after making my previous post? Even down to details like basing "battle time" on deployment points and getting less of it for reinforcements. Talk about "great minds think alike" Ahem.
Ha! That
does speak for the logic of it, doesn't it?
Another advantage is that it would stop the flood of warnings you sometimes get about your ships losing CR. That could get really obnoxious if all ships contributed to it.
What about capital ships? Do they start ticking down as well? I suppose there could be an "if this ship is in play, battle time doesn't tick down" rule; possibly made clear via built-in hullmod, similar to the Hyperon's "high maintenance". Alternatively, capital ships could just tick down as well.
Mh. I don't see the justification for extra rules here. What would be the advantage of caps stopping BT?
It might force caps in a somewhat defensive role, since it would be viable to outlast numerically superior non-capital enemies. Maybe for something like the Paragon, since it is in that role anyway, and powerful computers would fit the ship.
selling the lore on this seems like it will be difficult
Electronic Warfare
Hmm. That could make sense, but the feel of it is weird - like, all of a sudden, the "real" fight is taking place on a playing field you don't have access to.
Mh, I like it. Most fights will be ended via physical weaponry long before BT has run out, so I would not call that the "real fight". Otherwise you could argue that your crews maintenance battle against the failing of the ships systems is the "real" battle now.
And you
do have access, although limited, via the amount of ships - or processing power - you deploy. This could easily be thematically expanded.
As Wyvern said, hullmods would be renamed to something more fitting. A BT expansion skill for solo ships could be cyber warfare training. You could introduce officers who are expert hackers and have related skills. You could clearly explain it in he BT tooltip. Or introduce slow moving mainframe ships that can interrupt BT/hasten enemy BT until destroyed, acting as a major target that has to be protected (like a carrier).
The main reason PRT/CR-decay in-game reason is not well understood is that there are hardly any hints about its intended meaning in the game. It
is hard to communicate, sine the concept is relatively unique to Sector. Electronic warfare on the other hand is a major scifi-battle trope. In Sector it is subtly hinted at by things like the ECCM hullmod, but most players are probably not aware of that. I think expanding on that could actually enrich the game lore and make it
easier to imagine.
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In the meantime, I ended up trying something simpler: "transfer command" now reduces the peak effectiveness time of the new flagship by the spent peak effectiveness of the old flagship, and further docks the new flagship for 10% CR. (Changing the command structure in battle is serious business!)
This seems to address pretty much the same things, with the virtue of being a small change. Peak performance can then continue to tick down as it does now - i.e. if any enemy is in visual range, or if the ship is doing something - without any extra rules about "strength" etc.
That works nicely against chain deployments, but... I don't see how it addresses the problem of comprehensibility and clear UI presentation. Wasn't that the bigger problem here? BT is a new concept for us, but I think for a new player it would be
way more intuitive. That ships have a timer that runs only under certain conditions... it's just not as neat. A lot less work of course, so only you can prioritize here.
@ Gothars: (A bit tired myself at this posting...) If I over-deploy with your idea, do I still recover more CR for a specific ship than if it fights alone or with only minimal support? The main reason why I over-deploy is to recover more CR for my flagship so that CR costs do not break my flagship after two or three fights. Credit costs mean less after I accumulate lots of wealth late in the game and become more interested in chain-battling and powerleveling.
No. If you over-deploy the combat stress for each individual ship will be less. I don't see that as a problem, as you're willing to pay more for it. More an issue of general finance balance and the worth of credits.
I think your math is backwards... Shouldn't the cost equal the percentage, and the amount saved is the remainder?
So for the frigate, 72 cost : 28 saved.
But by the math, vs. the battleship it would cost you nothing, since you would save 100% by standing down. Saving 90% would be fine, but 100% is not.
If you deploy less than the enemy, then you gain supplies out of nowhere, since (8 - 10) * .9 = -18%
Math seems correct to me. Maybe you confused percentage with supplies?
If you have less BT than your enemy the mechanic will of course not apply. The whole point of standing down is to recover from over-deployment, after all.
How do you explain a timer that is meant to show the "battle stresses" on the ship's systems suddenly hitting zero just because someone new came abroad? And before you start explaining that it is the "shock" of a new captain or command crew taking over, in the lore you have linked the CR timer to the reactor core.
I doubt that any frigates will have no PRT now that even cruisers got it. So old lore justifications don't apply.