Hey people!
This is in regards to the whole sustained/emergency burn situation that we appear to have here.
What if sustained burn is a perk only available to certain ships, for example, sustained burn is something commonly found on exploration or mercantile ships (they would also get e burn) whilst emergency burn is found on combat/hunter ships.
This would result in both player and npc fleets being focused around sets of ships, and in real life if it existed would be more realistic.
Something to note is that in this situation, it would make sense that sustained is a toggle on/off (sort of like switching entire engine systems on a ship), reduces manoeuvrability MASSIVELY, and provides a smaller burn boost than emergency (+5 for example). On the other hand emergency provides +10 to burn speed and huge manoeuvrability boost (sending normal engines into an overdrive mode) at the expense of a moderate amount of CR. Another addition to balance this would be that sustained burn could only be used in hyperspace, and increase fuel usage slightly, whilst E burn can't be used in hyperspace. The reason that combat fleets get e burn only is because they could sort of ambush mercantile fleets. Hence why mercantile fleets still get e burn, (possibly a degraded version).
Sorry for the awful formatting (I'm on mobile).
I recognise that this couldn't be implemented for 0.8a and that this should go in suggestions, but is a good long term plan. It would also require HUGE changes to the way in which ships interact with the campaign level ganeplay, but I feel as though this is a good solution for the NEXT patch (Jesus Endstone we've not even got this one yet) xD.
Feel free to move to suggestions if you feel this should go there