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[Techhead]

I think S-burn is in mostly an okay spot. If it needs modest nerfs, make it 2x burn instead of +10 burn by default. Keeps differences in ship burn level relevant, doesn't hurt the ability too much in the early game, and also means that the Navigation Perk doesn't give you a Burn 20 Onslaught.

Oh, and lockout the salvaging ability if it's not already.

[Gothars]

I think its too easy to cheese with this ability, especially catching fast fleets with it.

Possible solution: Make it impossible to initiate interaction with anything while S-burning. You can't engage someone, you can't dock on stations, you can't survey etc. before deactivating S-burn and slowing down to normal speeds.

[Az the Squishy]

I think its too easy to cheese with this ability, especially catching fast fleets with it.

Possible solution: Make it impossible to initiate interaction with anything while S-burning. You can't engage someone, you can't dock on stations, you can't survey etc. before deactivating S-burn and slowing down to normal speeds.

I think its too easy to cheese with this ability, especially catching fast fleets with it.

Possible solution: Make it impossible to initiate interaction with anything while S-burning. You can't engage someone, you can't dock on stations, you can't survey etc. before deactivating S-burn and slowing down to normal speeds.

I'd say that makes sense lore wise as well... A ship burning well past the standard speeds of most that isn't in an emergency state would likely be denied entry to a port or otherwise.
As far as salvaging, it'd be stupid to try salavaging going so fast I'd assume unless you were a lone, fast ship. (hound or kite thinking of it...)

So, yeah, I think those suggestions win out. 

As far as it goes currently. I find it difficult to dodge, but, I've occasionally cheesed it to avoid having my fleet stomped by the drone while exploring. Even then, sometimes it just pushes me into fire, so. ATM it's allright, but not so OP.

[nomadic_leader]

Is this an example of over engineering?

In other games a ship has a speed.

In starsector, we have:
1) the ship's speed in combat
2) the ship's burn speed,
3) the e-burn speed
4) the s-burn speed

And basically all these features have to be pulled out of a hat because there is a fixed goal for how gameplay must be (Combat is WWII in space) and it needs to play nice with other types of gameplay that are totally different (campaign), while in addition meeting philosophical design goalposts like the players must never be bored, nothing must ever be too tedious, there fleet should adhere to certain characteristics, they mustn't be punished for having slow ships, etc.

Look, everyone says surveying and exploration needs to be nerfed because it's a cash cow. What if the nerf is not having S-burn be in the game at all? Then the cost will be more time and more supply ships for those missions.

Yea, maybe some player's will get bored or find it tedious going on those long voyages; maybe they'll go off and do combat. Maybe others will find it atmospheric, and it will make the sector seem bigger and more mysterious and alien? Tedium can be good in some cases.

Honestly if it were me I'd say make every ship's speed in campaign be whatever its speed in combat is. There, done. But then it would be different, emergent forms of fleet composition and combat instead of WWII in space.

[Midnight Kitsune]

I think its too easy to cheese with this ability, especially catching fast fleets with it.

Possible solution: Make it impossible to initiate interaction with anything while S-burning. You can't engage someone, you can't dock on stations, you can't survey etc. before deactivating S-burn and slowing down to normal speeds.

When fast fleets stop cheesing with E Burn spam, THEN I will stop "cheesing" with S Burn
Also, the reason why the time speed up button wasn't just increased is because it would be much more strenuous on the Comp, as far as I remember
Also, burn speed is better than what we had before, trust me.
And if you find S Burn is too OP then why don't you just not use it and STOP trying to nerf the hell out of it. Or hell, why don't you just mod in the differences yourself?

[Megas]

Sustained Burn probably makes tugs irrelevant, if there is truly a casualty to ship choice, but that is okay.  Never liked having stat-stick ships or other civilians useless in a fight clogging my fleet slots and eating food, and tugs slurp more fuel than most ships (which is partly the reason why capitals are horribly expensive if you wanted to keep burn up with tugs).  The most fun fleet is one filled with nothing but dedicated warships.  (That does not mean I will not use civilians if I need them.)

[Dragon239]

Look, everyone says surveying and exploration needs to be nerfed because it's a cash cow. What if the nerf is not having S-burn be in the game at all? Then the cost will be more time and more supply ships for those missions.

If you want to nerf a specific thing, then nerf it directly. Don't do sideways slanting stuff with "I'll remove Y, and then maybe R will be better" - fact is, basically everything has to travel far. Trading, bounties, exploration. Hell, a lot of the bounties I see are just as far as most exploration. You remove S-Burn, you hurt that stuff too.

Yea, maybe some player's will get bored or find it tedious going on those long voyages; maybe they'll go off and do combat. Maybe others will find it atmospheric, and it will make the sector seem bigger and more mysterious and alien? Tedium can be good in some cases.

Let's just say I disagree here to such an extent that I consider this suggestion insulting. To me this reads as you suggesting to drag players down to your desired speed of play and "screen-staring" because you seemingly lack the ability to just not use S-Burn and thus now it feels small to you (?) There are surely better ways to increase "atmosphere" and to make it seem "more mysterious and alien" than legging everything.

To go with the first response, a "nerf" to create some "now the player has to wonder: do they want to sit there doing almost nothing for the entire time as their fleet explores to make cash money, or do they want to just do something actually interesting instead to make less space-creds?" decision is terrible.

Exploration/surveying and traveling as a whole would be better served with a dedicated topic discussing it, as IF it needs changes, it needs more than "Adjust S-Burn such that it takes a lot of player time."

Honestly if it were me I'd say make every ship's speed in campaign be whatever its speed in combat is. There, done. But then it would be different, emergent forms of fleet composition and combat instead of WWII in space.

Unless you drastically change burn speeds, you're risking putting all the ships at about the same speed. The Burn range is very narrow, with most ships being 8-10. You could put these at large jumps in ability (say an 8-burn is our current 90, and a 10 burn is our current 150, or whatnot), but if they're not significantly disparate, the differences become almost meaningless.
However, you lose a large amount of granularity in speeds, which will warrant some significant changes to ships (eg, 10-burn 180 speed hounds will suddenly be the same as the 10-burn 120 speed hounds, meaning they just lost some advantage) which means work to rebalance, which isn't exciting.
The idea itself doesn't seem too bad, as making numbers the same between modes of play helps to streamline it... but it will change the game a fair amount and require some work to do, and it isn't really necessary.

[SafariJohn]

Honestly if it were me I'd say make every ship's speed in campaign be whatever its speed in combat is. There, done. But then it would be different, emergent forms of fleet composition and combat instead of WWII in space.

Unless you drastically change burn speeds, you're risking putting all the ships at about the same speed. The Burn range is very narrow, with most ships being 8-10. You could put these at large jumps in ability (say an 8-burn is our current 90, and a 10 burn is our current 150, or whatnot), but if they're not significantly disparate, the differences become almost meaningless.
However, you lose a large amount of granularity in speeds, which will warrant some significant changes to ships (eg, 10-burn 180 speed hounds will suddenly be the same as the 10-burn 120 speed hounds, meaning they just lost some advantage) which means work to rebalance, which isn't exciting.
The idea itself doesn't seem too bad, as making numbers the same between modes of play helps to streamline it... but it will change the game a fair amount and require some work to do, and it isn't really necessary.

He meant the other way around, Dragon

[Dragon239]

Ah, crap. Yeah, you're right. Dunno how I flipped them. My bad.

Man, I think that'd make me hate using sub-100 ships even more, heh.

[ArkAngel]

Some potential changes would be to slow fown acceleration a lot, and lowercourse corrrction further. Maybe increase your own sensor rating if it doesn't do that already.

[Cosmitz]

Atm S-burn is literally 90% of my travel. I never E-burn, and i only switch to lower-normal speed when magic-scanning or not wanting to turn around in the Sburn. And it feels bad to use, between it getting interrupted by everything you do, and the spool itself.

I think all it really needs is a longer acceleration curve.

[Deshara]

Maybe we need a mod that makes a ring pop up on the minimal when you hover your mouse over the sburn to indicate how far something has to be to actually get there any quicker, in case a lot of the complaints are because of overuse

[nomadic_leader]

Let's just say I disagree here to such an extent that I consider this suggestion insulting. To me this reads as you suggesting to drag players down to your desired speed of play and "screen-staring" because you seemingly lack the ability to just not use S-Burn and thus now it feels small to you (?) There are surely better ways to increase "atmosphere" and to make it seem "more mysterious and alien" than legging everything.

I'm throwing ideas and appreciate the feedback; don't be insulted. Everything is tied in; sometimes you nerf a thing by nerfing another thing.

It doesn't seem right about s-burn (and even eburn) that you get to use slow ships without having a slow fleet; and the AI doesn't even have sburn (right?) so it's an admission that things are insoluble unless you give special abilities to the player, which doesn't feel quite right for a game like this (unlike a you vs the world game like Mario)

There are ways to balance slow fleets vs fast fleets (like having the AI use supplies so you can outlast them) and tweaking cargo space, fuel, supply levels etc.

If there was no s-burn/e-burn, slow, weak early player fleets couldn't escape attack. Ideas to mitigate:
-More safe systems in the game,
-let the player pay off pirates
-make pirates not so hostile to player at start.
-stealth/terrain mechanics emphasized more in tutorial
-tweaking sensor mechanics to facilitate hiding

If there was no sburn/eburn, big player fleets of slow warships couldn't catch small/fast AI fleets. Ideas to mitigate:
 -AI doesn't use supplies so they can run forever. Change that.
-Is this WWII in space? In real life (in the ocean) big ships are faster than small ones because they have bigger engines, but lower acceleration/maneuverability. Make that happen.
-Then bigger freighters wouldn't be sitting ducks but:
-Profitability/maneuverability issues would make big warships only useful for attacking other big fleets, not bullying little fleets.
-Piloting cap ships would require real skill (further balancing them), and/or feedback from the UI/HUD about how fast your ship can stop, and/or an AI helmsmen.

Another issue is the fundamental separation of campaign from combat. Even heavily armed super ships can't harm another ship unless their circle catches an enemy circle on campaign map. What could be done?
-Strategic ranged weapons in the campaign map
-Campaign abilities that can mess with other fleet
-Ability to separate a fast warship from your fleet of support tankers to chase a target. Etc

All this stuff might be awful, or it might be more interesting/weird/challenging than the  4-teir speed rating for the current campaign meta-combat where we're constantly pressing different buttons for different speeds to produce our desired combat engagements. Let's hope that we don't keep getting another kind of burn speed with each release anyway.

[Schwartz]

Fairly simple solution to the s-burn problem:

When you activate s-burn, the game remembers your orientation (or if you stand still, the first direction you move towards once the ability is active). You get to swerve ~20° in either direction to evade hyperspace storms. Any more than that, and s-burn automatically turns off and needs to be spooled up again. S-burn is now more or less a straight line.

[Ghoti]

Throwing my opinion's here:

* S-Burn is too easy to use for non travel related thingeys. I hear you can't interact with stuff with S-Burning in the coming hotfix? That's good, but you slow down so fast that this fix does not matter that much.

* The sector is big, you need S-Burn, or you need better fast-foward.

* The AI fleets do not use it, and the AI does not evade it correctly. If this was fixed, S-Burn would feel less powerful.

* I 100% completely hate cheesy rule patches like "must be at a distant waypoint" and "only 20 degrees right or left" or other things. I don't even think that's necessary.

Summary of opinions:

I overall like S-Burn, good addition. Yah, S-Burn be crazy, S-Burn stops too fast, Ai needs to use S-Burn to feel fair, no cheesy rule patches please please please.