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Author Topic: CR hits for campaign abilities/terrain: often meaningless  (Read 6905 times)

Alex

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Re: CR hits for campaign abilities/terrain: often meaningless
« Reply #15 on: December 11, 2015, 02:58:09 PM »

Trying to use it to avoid a fast-moving patrol is a trap, because, one, the increased sensor profile means you're just going to get that many more patrols looking for you, and two, the patrol is just going to spam its own emergency burn to keep up; unless you're willing to use EB on cooldown until you can get out of the system, you might as well just deal with the fight.  (Sindria is a minefield... of course, in .7.1, I don't care about the independent military market anymore, which means I can just avoid the place.)

Trying to use it to run down an enemy fleet isn't - in my experience - useful either; the fleets that are fast enough that I'd need it are also small enough for me to not care about running them down.  (Plus, the larger fleets I might actually want to fight tend to come to me anyway.)

It depends on how much you want to avoid a particular fight without reloading, I think. It can definitely get you out of a tight spot - either letting you get to a jump point, or to advantageous terrain, or to use the interval between when their EB runs out and when your EB runs out to gain enough separation so that going dark and veering off is a 50/50 escape chance. Or get you to a friendly patrol, or whatever.

It's not something you use super often, though. I might end up reducing the cost a bit more to make it more attractive.


Hm.  Combat Aptitude makes Emergency Burn more expensive right now, doesn't it?

It doesn't - it makes EB use less CR while costing the same amount of supplies.
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Wyvern

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Re: CR hits for campaign abilities/terrain: often meaningless
« Reply #16 on: December 11, 2015, 03:09:02 PM »

Hm.  Combat Aptitude makes Emergency Burn more expensive right now, doesn't it?

It doesn't - it makes EB use less CR while costing the same amount of supplies.
Ah, right, it's based on deployment cost, isn't it?  Forgot that.

It's not something you use super often, though. I might end up reducing the cost a bit more to make it more attractive.
Hm.  If you're looking at that, might also look at how easy it is to lure an enemy fleet into costing themselves some CR with EB; right now this feels a bit exploit-y.  Might be interesting if EB charged CR at the end of its duration, ended automatically upon getting in a fight, and its cost didn't stack with combat deployment?  Would make it feel a bit more like a fleet-wide "General Quarters!" call... Hm.  Might be a bit tricky to communicate to the player exactly what was going on, though.
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Wyvern is 100% correct about the math.

Zapier

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Re: CR hits for campaign abilities/terrain: often meaningless
« Reply #17 on: December 11, 2015, 05:07:48 PM »

Hm.  Combat Aptitude makes Emergency Burn more expensive right now, doesn't it?

It doesn't - it makes EB use less CR while costing the same amount of supplies.
Ah, right, it's based on deployment cost, isn't it?  Forgot that.

It's not something you use super often, though. I might end up reducing the cost a bit more to make it more attractive.
Hm.  If you're looking at that, might also look at how easy it is to lure an enemy fleet into costing themselves some CR with EB; right now this feels a bit exploit-y.  Might be interesting if EB charged CR at the end of its duration, ended automatically upon getting in a fight, and its cost didn't stack with combat deployment?  Would make it feel a bit more like a fleet-wide "General Quarters!" call... Hm.  Might be a bit tricky to communicate to the player exactly what was going on, though.

I kinda like that idea, that if the EB charged its penalty after the burn finishes. I like this for mostly a kind of immersive idea as Wyvern said, since it feels like going into an EB means a sort of 'all hands on deck' approach because you're going to do something that needs everyone at their post (which to me is what would drain the CR because you're wearing down the crew and the ship by pushing this EB) and for the second reason that I don't feel as penalized if I hit my EB too late to get away from a fleet and ended up losing a chunk of CR right before the fight even though I feel like the crew should be most ready for it right then.
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nomadic_leader

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Re: CR hits for campaign abilities/terrain: often meaningless
« Reply #18 on: December 11, 2015, 08:07:36 PM »

Uh guys using the EB when your CR is zero is still possible (I'm pretty sure I tried this last night and it kept working). But I guess this is one of the things Alex will change. And accidents will be tied to CR instead of supplies which is good. But I don't know, CR threads confuse me so much.

But seriously, now this really makes me want to rename CR to "energy level" or something. I'll bet it will be kinda confusing to new players that this thing called 'combat' readiness is involved in a bunch of non combat stuff and is actually more just the ship's reserve energy level. Just do a find & replace.


Think about it:

-Ships with low energy can't maintain sheild, systems, etc,so they  malfunction, or explode.

-When ships make contact with equivalent sized enemy ships they go into alert mode and start using more energy to keep weapons powered up etc.

-Better crew, skills, etc make the ship more efficient and give it higher energy level, and they fight better.

-Going into the sun drains energy.

-Using your fleet afterburner drains the energy.

CR makes sense now! You can replace every instance of "CR" in the game with a little icon of a cel phone battery :) Bang, the game got 30% easier to understand.
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Cik

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Re: CR hits for campaign abilities/terrain: often meaningless
« Reply #19 on: December 12, 2015, 03:31:06 AM »

but combat readiness is just general maintenance level and always has been.

you go into combat and things break, sensors fry under load, weapon capacitors rupture, ammo is expended, crewman die and must be replaced, soldiers, crewmen get tired.

without supplies to keep the ship running in top condition, things begin to break down. engines overload, parts cannot be found to fix anything.

corona diving burns through hull plates that need to be replaced, the radiation burns out sensor modules, fries wiring, EMPs course through the ship

energy makes no sense

basically keeping an enormously complicated ship of reasonable size from snapping itself apart from internal stresses is not an easy task. CR represents this. it has nothing to do with energy.
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Megas

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Re: CR hits for campaign abilities/terrain: often meaningless
« Reply #20 on: December 12, 2015, 06:17:46 AM »

Combat readiness should be renamed, if it gets tied to more non-combat applications.  Energy, flux, stamina, maintenance, whatever.
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nomadic_leader

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Re: CR hits for campaign abilities/terrain: often meaningless
« Reply #21 on: December 12, 2015, 08:25:14 AM »

Energy level makes plenty of sense. You need high levels of energy to maintain the standard particle and radiation shields to protect yourself from coronas, to maintain all the life support systems, to use the afterburner, to keep all the diagnostic and repair systems running, to be able to use your weapons at maximum efficiency, etc.

Either way, maintenance level or energy just describes more effectively and what CR does. Plus it sounds less mysterious and opaque.

"Combat readiness" brings to mind a bunch of proto-nerds in 1960 playing the first ever wargame about the American Civil War using slide rules and a bunch of charts.
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