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Author Topic: Help with understanding the supply-cost of combat  (Read 3956 times)

Monochrome

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Help with understanding the supply-cost of combat
« on: February 04, 2021, 08:25:44 AM »

Hi everyone, is there a good explanation somewhere of how to calculate the supply-cost of combat?

Ships have a Recovery Cost,
AND they lose CR automatically just by being deployed (which costs supplies to restore),
AND they lose CR if they run out of PPT (which costs supplies to restore)?
Do I have that right?

There's some information here (https://starsector.fandom.com/wiki/Supplies) and here (https://starsector.fandom.com/wiki/Combat_readiness) but it is still quite vague to me.

Some very hypothetical examples:

Scenario 1:
  • Deploy 1 Wolf at 70% CR (Wolf has Recovery Cost of 5 supplies, CR cost of 20%)
  • Opposing fleet is 1 Wolf
  • Battle is won before PPT runs out
  • No damage was taken
How many supplies did that cost?
  • 5?
  • 5 + the supplies to restore the 20% CR? A total of 10?
Answer: 5

Scenario 2:
  • Deploy 1 Wolf at 70% CR (Wolf has Recovery Cost of 5 supplies, CR cost of 20%)
  • Opposing fleet is 1 Wolf
  • Battle is won but CR is down to 10% at the point where the battle ends (it was a long battle)
  • No damage was taken
How many supplies did that cost?
  • 5?
  • 5 + the supplies to restore the 60% CR? A total of 20?
  • Because CR was 10% at the end of the battle, and the CR cost of 20% is deducted after the battle, the CR is now 0% so 17.5 supplies are needed to restore the 70% CR?
Answer: 17.5

Scenario 3:
  • Deploy 1 Paragon at 70% CR (Paragon has Recovery Cost of 60 supplies, CR cost of 20%)
  • Opposing fleet is 1 Wolf
  • Battle is won before PPT runs out
  • No damage was taken
How many supplies did that cost?
  • 60?
  • 60 + the supplies to restore the 20% CR? A total of 120?
Answer: less than 60 (don't know exactly how much)

What else can affect the supply-cost of combat?
  • There's a mechanic where you won't lose PPT if you strongly outmatch the opposing fleet? Which means that you save some supplies?
  • There's a mechanic/skill where some CR loss is refunded to you, which saves you supplies?
  • Hull repair costs?
  • Armour repair costs?
  • Any other effects?
« Last Edit: February 06, 2021, 12:49:11 AM by Monochrome »
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Wyvern

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Re: Help with understanding the supply-cost of combat
« Reply #1 on: February 04, 2021, 09:50:55 AM »

The recovery cost is, specifically, the number of supplies needed to restore a single deployment's worth of lost CR.

Scenario 1:
Costs 5 supplies.

Scenario 2
We actually don't have enough information; that will run you either 15 supplies (to recover 60% CR) if the wolf was at 10% CR after the battle was over, or 17.5 supplies (to recover 70% CR) if the wolf was at 10% CR when the battle ended.
The difference there being that the CR cost of deployment is subtracted -after- the battle ends.

Scenario 3:
This runs into a special rule designed to prevent the player from cheesing the CR mechanics: if one side deploys a vastly larger force and wins the engagement, then their ships won't spend the full CR cost of deployment. There may be other requirements for triggering this mechanic; I usually only see it come into play when I deploy a single flagship, blow up as much of the enemy fleet as I can before my CR runs low, and then withdraw.
So the expected supply cost for this scenario is probably less than 60, but certainly no more than 60.

Other Effects:
Armor and hull damage can, in some cases, cost supplies to repair. ...And in other cases, it doesn't. The specific mechanic here is that armor, hull, and CR all take time to recover - but all of them also recover at the same time, and recovering more than one type of thing at once doesn't cost extra.

So if you take a bit of armor damage, and it takes one day of gametime to repair the armor, but four days to recover the CR you lost, then there's no extra supply cost for the armor damage.

If you take a bunch of armor/hull damage and it takes eight days of gametime to repair the ship (but the same four days to recover CR), then you end up spending supplies equal to twice the CR recovery cost.
« Last Edit: February 04, 2021, 09:55:18 AM by Wyvern »
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Wyvern is 100% correct about the math.

SCC

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Re: Help with understanding the supply-cost of combat
« Reply #2 on: February 04, 2021, 10:14:31 AM »

Scenario 3:
This runs into a special rule designed to prevent the player from cheesing the CR mechanics: if one side deploys a vastly larger force and wins the engagement, then their ships won't spend the full CR cost of deployment. There may be other requirements for triggering this mechanic; I usually only see it come into play when I deploy a single flagship, blow up as much of the enemy fleet as I can before my CR runs low, and then withdraw.
So the expected supply cost for this scenario is probably less than 60, but certainly no more than 60.
Wasn't this changed, so that only AI gets this mechanic, whereas the player always has to bear the full CR recovery cost?

Alex

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Re: Help with understanding the supply-cost of combat
« Reply #3 on: February 04, 2021, 10:31:10 AM »

Wasn't this changed, so that only AI gets this mechanic, whereas the player always has to bear the full CR recovery cost?

Definitely not. Generally speaking the game aims for symmetry in situations like this, where at all possible.
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Monochrome

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Re: Help with understanding the supply-cost of combat
« Reply #4 on: February 04, 2021, 10:38:26 AM »

The recovery cost is, specifically, the number of supplies needed to restore a single deployment's worth of lost CR.

Scenario 2
We actually don't have enough information; that will run you either 15 supplies (to recover 60% CR) if the wolf was at 10% CR after the battle was over, or 17.5 supplies (to recover 70% CR) if the wolf was at 10% CR when the battle ended.
The difference there being that the CR cost of deployment is subtracted -after- the battle ends.

I think what I meant was "when the battle ended"; I've edited my question accordingly. Yes, it makes sense that the CR cost of deployment would be deducted after the battle has ended.

--

Thanks for the info so far. So, it sounds like the total deployment cost (AKA the total recovery cost) is actually measured purely in terms of lost CR? (which then gets restored by spending supplies)
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Wyvern

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Re: Help with understanding the supply-cost of combat
« Reply #5 on: February 04, 2021, 11:10:20 AM »

In general, yes. As I noted under the 'other effects' category, extreme levels of armor/hull damage can make you end up paying more supplies than the lost CR would have cost you... but that's generally a non-issue.

(Hm, was there a mechanic where extreme levels of hull loss would cost extra CR once battle ended? I have a vague recollection of such a thing, but I'm not sure if it's real or my imagination or something that got patched out at some point.)
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RustyCabbage

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Re: Help with understanding the supply-cost of combat
« Reply #6 on: February 04, 2021, 01:10:39 PM »

(Hm, was there a mechanic where extreme levels of hull loss would cost extra CR once battle ended? I have a vague recollection of such a thing, but I'm not sure if it's real or my imagination or something that got patched out at some point.)
There are a couple of options for it in settings.json:
   "crLossMultForRetreatInLoss":0,
   
   "crLossMultForHullDamage":0,
   "crLossMultForFlameout":0,
   "crLossMultForWeaponDisabled":0,
   "crLossMultForMissilesFired":0,

But nothing by default, I don't think.

Monochrome

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Re: Help with understanding the supply-cost of combat
« Reply #7 on: February 06, 2021, 12:49:52 AM »

Thank you all for your help :)
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Gothars

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Re: Help with understanding the supply-cost of combat
« Reply #8 on: February 06, 2021, 02:03:44 AM »


(Hm, was there a mechanic where extreme levels of hull loss would cost extra CR once battle ended? I have a vague recollection of such a thing, but I'm not sure if it's real or my imagination or something that got patched out at some point.)

That was removed some updates ago.
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sector_terror

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Re: Help with understanding the supply-cost of combat
« Reply #9 on: February 07, 2021, 04:13:26 AM »

What was the cheese that the supply cost/CR refunds was made to fix? All I can think of is, maybe, sending only 1 frigate to be destroyed by the entire enemy fleet. Wouldnt the AI just not field it's entire fleet? Maybe I'm thinking too much to belief the AI judges your fleet's strength.
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Wyvern

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Re: Help with understanding the supply-cost of combat
« Reply #10 on: February 07, 2021, 09:05:32 AM »

What was the cheese that the supply cost/CR refunds was made to fix? All I can think of is, maybe, sending only 1 frigate to be destroyed by the entire enemy fleet. Wouldnt the AI just not field it's entire fleet? Maybe I'm thinking too much to belief the AI judges your fleet's strength.
Pretty much, yeah. It's kindof a series of design decisions.

Suppose the player deploys one frigate. If the enemy fleet deploys in reasonable strength for that, then their deployment gets ripped to pieces by, say, a player-controlled heavy blaster Tempest. So it has to overdeploy a lot, or it'll just get taken down piecemeal; even with it overdeploying, doing things like this is often a good way to soften up an oversized enemy fleet.

But once it's overdeploying, then the next clever player counter-move is to just deploy a cheap d-modded lasher, then retreat, costing every single one of the deployed vessels their deployment cost's worth of CR. Repeat that a couple of times and you've spent a small handful of supplies to force the enemy fleet's CR down to near-nothing where the fight's suddenly much easier. Thus the CR refund mechanic.
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: Help with understanding the supply-cost of combat
« Reply #11 on: February 07, 2021, 10:01:25 AM »

It was also possible that a single very powerful player controlled ship would actually be able to solo the entire enemy fleet, but it would take a while. Then the player is incentivized to win every fight that way (since it is the cheapest way with 0 risk of the AI dying randomly) and the combat becomes a major grind which is not desirable.
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Midnight Kitsune

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Re: Help with understanding the supply-cost of combat
« Reply #12 on: February 07, 2021, 09:30:19 PM »

It was also possible that a single very powerful player controlled ship would actually be able to solo the entire enemy fleet, but it would take a while. Then the player is incentivized to win every fight that way (since it is the cheapest way with 0 risk of the AI dying randomly) and the combat becomes a major grind which is not desirable.
This was actually one of the main reasons WHY CR was introduced in the first place
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Flying Dice

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Re: Help with understanding the supply-cost of combat
« Reply #13 on: February 21, 2021, 05:33:29 AM »

It was also possible that a single very powerful player controlled ship would actually be able to solo the entire enemy fleet, but it would take a while. Then the player is incentivized to win every fight that way (since it is the cheapest way with 0 risk of the AI dying randomly) and the combat becomes a major grind which is not desirable.
This was actually one of the main reasons WHY CR was introduced in the first place
^This.

It was entirely possible to use certain speedy frigates with the right weapon loadout to gradually wear down nearly any force before CR and max deployment times were a thing.
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