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[Gothars]

After picking the game up again recently, this turned out to be quite annoying. Frigates almost always run out of CR in bigger battles, but they do so one after the other. The "command frequency open" feature fires back here, since it kinda forces you to check all your frigates for low CR (or other reasons to retreat them) any time one of them needs to go home, lest you waste CP by dong it shortly after. This takes a good 10-20 seconds each time, and really takes me out of the fight. Which to avoid is, afaik, the express purpose of the hands-of tactical layer.


I would suggest to make retreat free if a ship is past Peak Readiness Time. I really don't feel this is an interesting use of a CP, it's almost always an automatic decision. If anything, ordering them to stay past PRT when they want to retreat could be interesting. In general, I would prefer for all ships to auto retreat with low CR/HP. That would a) save on boring micromanagement, b) feel realistic and c) would present a chance for officer personality types to be further differentiated - the more aggression, the later the retreat. To avoid situations were ships retreat before you notice/can stop them, they might even just idle at the retreat border as long as no enemy is close. They'd already stop losing CR there, after all.
Then for super intense battles you could have an "Hold the line!" option in the standing orders section (under full assault!/full retreat!) that basically sets the current behavior of no auto-retreats.

But if that is too much, I can think of several other ways to address this:
- When issuing a retreat order, highlight all ships that are low on PRT/HP. Could be framed as them asking for permission to withdraw.
- In any case, it would also help to show (low) PRT on the tactical screen. Little clock symbol?
- Slow the PRT timer on frigates while they operate close to a bigger ship (that still has PRT). One main purpose of the tight time limit on frigs is stop them from kiting, which they can't really do with such an "anchor".

[Grievous69]

Big support for highlighting ships with very low PPT. One of those things you do mechanically but one day realize how much time you waste doing that.

[SteelHeart]

What I think might be best is the ability for the player to set a few conditions for the AI of their ships to follow. The big ones I could think of is a slider for what % CR they retreat at, a slider for what % hull integrity they retreat at, and a toggle for auto retreat if missiles or fighters are completely spent.

Reasonable defaults would probably be 50% for CR and hull with the toggle for spent missiles off. 50% CR is when we star seeing things go wrong with our ships and some level of care would need to be taken to make sure that a ship with a random sabot on it and a dozen other regulars guns doesn't run scared when it shoots it single shot missile. Not too sure when to consider hull.

Actually it might be best case to let the player set a default fleet wide and then set up specific overrides for certain ships. That would probably work best especially for dedicated missile boats.

[Schwartz]

Generally yes, some automation around frigate retreats could be awesome. An auto-retreat button up there next to "full assault" maybe that lets all ships with CR below 40% (and falling) to turn back to retreat.

It could also be cool, since you mentioned them STAYING being a special occurrence, that the player could pay a CP to give a ship a little bit of extra peak time.

I think any timer changes while they're next to big ships is already getting too convoluted for the player to comprehend. Right now it's just "near enemy or engaged = timer on" if I understand it right. It could also be gamed with early escort orders for all frigates. They can still shoot and pull their weight, then later when you "de-couple" them they have full time.

[Megas]

I probably would want auto-retreat for most ships regardless of size.  I had cruisers and even capitals run out of PPT sometimes.

For slow ships, phase ships (with faster CR decay), or any fight near a black hole (more faster decay), start retreating at the 30 second warning.

For non-SO ships, retreat when CR starts decaying.

For SO ships that rely more on slow CR decay from high CR instead of PPT, retreat when CR decays enough.  For Hyperion, 20% maybe.  For anything else, maybe 50%.

In any event, auto-retreat should apply especially to the enemy side.  They should not stay until they are dead in space and taunt the other side to do the same for a possible loss by stalemate player cannot retreat from.  The only exception is AI fleets that do not retreat (like Remnants), in which case, they should go berserk, charge into the enemy, and should not backpedal (and teleport in case of Lumen or Radiant) under any circumstances to do their cowardly behavior.  If anything, they should ram their enemies for big collision damage.

[FooF]

I’d prefer granular control at the fleet level vs. auto-retreat. I.e. “Retreat when below X CR or Y hull”.

Likewise, if a ship is under X CR or Y hull, the UI should distinguish them somehow. Flashing name, exclamation point over the sprite, something that yells (visually) this ship is in trouble. The battle chatter mod actually has the idea for combat cues but visual cues would also be helpful.

[gG_pilot]

Current messages about CR are not helpful. In fact they are most annoying part of combat.
Rather than add  even more  flash lights, blinking and other Christmas tree feature peppered by "game_play_itself" feature  as auto retreat for all, here is another  idea:
Use The Reinforce screen as "fleet command and review" panel. When player is in the reinforce  screen, combat is paused, then it perfect place to show all the  details and let player do the choices based on brain activity.
Improve/re-design  the Reinforce screen as fallow:
- Show current values of CR and hull (armor?) (for player and opponent)
- show player active fleet (include reserve) AND  show opponent active fleet (include reserve) < this will ad a sort of poker moment, when player should think what ship is better to call in to counter enemy
- add  one button to switch sorting of ships sort by DP OR sort by CR (switch change  sorting for player  and opponent ship list)
- add retreat and direct retreat button on Reinforce  screen, so player can easy see and command ships on one screen (yes it means retreat command dont need to fit into command  timer)
- allow mark many and command feature (Shift+click; Ctrl+click same as in Windows explorer file operations) to allow easy controls for more ships

[Alex]

(Finally got to this; made ordering an out-of-peak-time ship's retreat not cost a command point or open the command frequency! Being able to see current peak time more easily would be useful, too; just slightly more of an undertaking.)

[Brainwright]

Could exiting the tactical map not close the command frequency?  There doesn't seem to be much point to it, and I often need to see what's going on to make decisions.