[This is a rambling about player/officer skills, combat readiness, and player's awareness of some mechanics. At the end of this post I have made a few naming/UI tweak suggestions. Please note I am not a native speaker, so some of the issues I point below may be due to misunderstanding on my part.]Reading a recent discussion about officer skills [1], I learned something I had completely overlooked (or forgotten?) about the "Combat Endurance" skill and the bonuses/penalties related to the combat readiness of a ship.
I guess one general issue for me is: Starsector has so much depth, it's easy to miss important information.
First let me say that in my mind the meaning of "Combat Endurance" is "ability to stay longer in combat". Let's check the in-game description:
Through experience and planning, a seasoned officer has the ability to extend the effective warfighting time of ship and crew during the extreme conditions of combat deployment.
Sounds about right. Right?
Also I am aware that a ship at low CR has degraded performance. As a player you get several notifications and other visual elements that tells you this. So every Starsector player is fully aware of this, right?
Having said that, ships at low CR is not that common in my fleets. Basicilly low CR is a non issue for me and thus for a long time I would almost never use CR increasing skills. I only started using level 3 Fleet Logistics recently after increasing the player level cap, but I would usually get it after level 40 because I would consider that low priority. And I would not even consider using Combat Endurance.
A minor issue for me is: the current player level 40 cap in version 0.8.1 is kind of low. The level 50 cap for version 0.9 sounds like a nice improvement [2] ! Sure, having the player choose some skills and bypass other skills - rather than take it all - is OK.
Now let's have a closer look at those skills.
Level 1 Combat Endurance is "
+25% peak operating time" -> indeed,
ship can stay longer in combatLevel 2 Combat Endurance is "
-50% chance of malfunctions when at low combat readiness" -> does not affect operating time, reduces one specific penalty when at low CR, so I would argue we are not really talking about endurance anymore, it's more about ship's reliability, in other words
the ship gets less degraded performanceLevel 3 Combat Endurance (and Fleet Logistics) is "
+15% maximum combat readiness" -> sounds like "
can stay longer in combat" again, because if CR starts at a higher value, it takes longer to get low, right ? ... but here comes the magic stuff ... when CR is higher than 70% (which now becomes possible using these skills), the ship gets many bonuses, in other words
the ship has increased performanceThe part I had overlooked for so long is: "high CR" = bonuses. Information was there in the game. And now I see it was explained in a 2013 blog post [3] and in the "Combat readiness" article on the wiki [4].
These are the main issues for me:
- Looking at the skills I was lead to think that having Combat Endurance and increasing CR would only translate into "ship can stay longer in combat"
- In several places in the game - especially battles - the fact that a ship currently has CR bonuses applied is not visible enough.
Suggestions for Combat Endurance:
- rename "Combat Endurance" skill to "Combat Peak Performance"
- change skill description to "Through experience and planning, a seasoned officer has the ability to increase the effective warfighting time and performance of ship and crew during the extreme conditions of combat deployment." (replace "extend" by "increase", add "and performance")
- change the level 3 description to "+15% maximum combat readiness, will increase ship performance while CR is highier than 70%"
Suggestions for Fleet Logistics:
- change skill description to "Making sure supplies and other materiel get where they need to be is not a glorious task. It is, however, critical - in dealing with emergencies, ensuring smooth day-to-day operations, and ultimately increasing fleet performance." (remove "both", adjust "and" and comma, add "and ultimately increasing fleet performance")
- change the level 3 description to "+15% maximum combat readiness, will increase ship performance while CR is highier than 70%"
Misc suggestions:
- add a tip on the main menu screen with a message like "Combat readiness of a ship affects its performance and reliability in combat : more than 70% means increased performance, between 50% and %70% means normal performance, less than 50% means degraded performance and reliability issues."
- any place CR is displayed during battle, have an obvious visual element that tells the player what's the current status: either increased performance (>70%), normal performance (50% to 70%), or degraded performance (<50%) - this is already visible for the player ship, but not other ships
Anyway, I will certainly consider level 3 Fleet Logistics and to a certain degree level 3 Combat Endurance high priority skills now.
[1]
http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=13739.0[2]
http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=13445.0[3]
http://fractalsoftworks.com/2013/02/19/combat-readiness/[4]
http://starsector.wikia.com/wiki/Combat_readiness