I mean... nothing stops you from doing it other than the supply cost. If you have the supplies to do it... just do it? There's plenty of 'fun' things in games that are not exactly optimal. Committing crimes in TES games like Skyrim? Probably not optimal, but plenty of fun. Is that what the game is about? No.
That's technically true, you can do that, but then you run out of supplies way quicker and have to go buy more. Or you have to take skills that increase the loot you get, at the expense of skills that enhance the core combat gameplay. So while playing in a way that the dev doesn't approve of is possible, the game does penalize you for it, and that's just not nice.
To borrow an example from one of my favorite games, Dark Souls does absolutely nothing to enforce 'optimal' play. You can use your Megasword of Genocide +15 to turn basic zombies in the starting area into fine paste as much as you want, and the game never goes, "No, no, you're doing it wrong, I'm going to penalize you by making your sword lose durability faster, so that you have to take more frequent breaks to go repair it." That would be stupid, yet in Starsector people defend it? And it works the other way around as well, Dark Souls never makes it impossible to overcome any given challenge just because you're using a 'sub-optimal' build. You can finish the entire game with a level 1 character using nothing but bare fists; people have. Sure, having a good build with good gear helps a ton, but it's not necessary. Good luck killing [redacted] or [super redacted] with nothing but a Hound. And yet I'm sure you'd agree Dark Souls is not a simplistic or shallow or easy game. I wish Starsector was more like Dark Souls.
There's been a lot of mitigation around the cost of losing a ship so that even if you guess wrong, the punishment isn't so severe. Ability to passively remove D-mods, ability to build your own ships, more ability to recover own ships, etc. Yeah, I'd love if the AI was a bit smarter at times, but fixing that issue is a very difficult problem. The punishment for losing a ship is not nearly as bad as it used to be. Is good now? Debatable.
Eh... yes, it's been mitigated somewhat, but that d-mod removal skill is quite deep into that skill branch, not to mention that I have no clue if it's even worth taking. "A chance to remove a d-mod every two months"? How much of a chance? 90% 25%? 1%? The game doesn't say, and I'm sure as hell not about to invest four skill points and spend several in-game years to collect a big enough sample size to be able to figure it out. Even if it was guaranteed, 2 months is too long. If it was "remove a d-mod every week", yeah, I'd spend 4 skill points to get it.
As for dumb AI, the other way to mitigate the issue is to make the player stronger so that their AI allies play less of a role. I've been advocating that for some time now.
This is just wrong, you get DP back when you retreat a ship.
Yes, I realized and removed that part of the post. I could swear I've had battles where that didn't happen, though. Maybe I'm just misremembering.
Yeah, but at this point, it's no longer in the scope of this discussion and more about 'what issues still exist in Starsector?'. Late game balance isn't great right now. I agree there. The junker strategy needs better balance than "here's some unkillable ships because reasons." But CR and spending supplies is not really a lategame problem unless you want to talk about chain battles, which seems to be a Nexerelin issue more than a vanilla one (how many times do you really get forced into more than 2 back to back battles in vanilla?)
The thing with supplies is that it's not just the in-game currency cost that's the problem; you're right that that disappears as you progress. It's also the real-world time and annoyance cost. Having to go back to resupply is just tedious and annoying, especially because you have to deal with unresponsive, rubberbandy fleet controls and hyperspace storms that bounce you around like a pinball. If I was in charge, those would receive a major overhaul. The overworld map gameplay has never been fun in this game; from the very first version it got implemented, I considered it nothing but padding between the fun bits. The Hyperdrive mod helps a ton, but even that can only do so much to mitigate the underlying issue.
As for back-to-back battles, I don't need to be forced into them. I
want to fight them. The less overworld travel I have to do to get from one battle to the next, the better. The issue for me is that the game mandates taking those breaks and doing that travel, or at least a lot more of it than I think it should.
At the end of the day, you are always going to want more features, more options, more everything, but there's only so much that can be done, especially with such a small team.
No, I've been asking for the exact opposite. Like I said, I think the dev is like a writer without an editor, and as a result the game is in dire need of trimming all the fat. He's created a wonderfully clever, complex, and interconnected system, but unfortunately that doesn't make the game more fun when all those mechanics just serve as restrictions against playstyles he doesn't like. I don't want more, I want less.