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[gG_pilot]

Some quotes of yours which touch the root:

4-5% on both damage done and damage received is a pretty large boost in terms of winning the flux war.

Guilty as charged when soloing.  What else am I going to do with 8 officers who don't have ships.  I have no issues with using all options available in a personal challenge fight.

Playing the game well, doing the most powerful thing, should not be unpleasant.

Sid Meier once famously said that good gameplay is a "series of interesting decisions"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Meier
When game offers decisions which are pure poison but they help achieve the main goal of game, then it is the problem.

Support doctrine, also  Missions  "Deliver a secrete package to a  guarded planet" = both suffer same flaw (by design).  Offers a series of unpleasant  decisions. A heap of mindless clicking back and forth.
Get noticed my  suggestions  how to fix Support doctrine, also contains option simply remove Combat endurance to remove poison. e.i. I am not asking an plain skill power creep, but remove  the poison.
For the same  reason, remove poison, I would recommend Alex, remove Missions  "Deliver a secrete package to a  guarded planet" or make it so I can split one ship by one click (few clicks) while leave rest of my fleet wait on orbit somewhere. That way, game would offer me an interesting options, I can do secret missions and get fun. (without hunderds clicks of  inventory shuffling)

[Jackundor]

Get noticed my  suggestions  how to fix Support doctrine, also contains option simply remove Combat endurance to remove poison.

ah yes, we should significantly nerf a skill bc it's unfun having to cheese it. not like we could just not do that. bc we can't possibly sacrifice some combat power for not having to do tedious ***

[Alex]

My take on it is that the principle is absolutely correct - you really don't want something optimal to be unfun!

But also that this is pretty far from optimal in a vast majority of the cases, and fixing it with a shotgun is likely to be a case of "cure is worse than the disease". Basically what Hiruma Kai said. That said, a small/elegant fix for this would not be a bad thing at all.

[Ruddygreat]

Sid Meier also said that "given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game", which is what I think you've done here.
Frankly, I'm impressed that you found this "exploit", I wouldn't be surprised if you're the only player to ever do it- I'd never thought of using support doctrine like this till reading the thread.

And this brings me to the second half of the quote I mentioned - "one of the responsibilities of designers is to protect the player from themselves."
I broadly agree with FooF & BCS; there is no problem to fix here, you can either just not care (because seriously, 4.9333...% extra damage is meaningless) or achieve the same result through different means (crew training, combat endurance, hull restoration + smods, etc), you've just found a perticularly tedious way to get there.
any changes to any of the mechanics here would be meaningless, at worst they'd be getting rid of an interesting strategy- using an officer to get the +ammo from missile spec without taking the skill yourself, you have to decide if that boost is worth losing out on an extra officered ship - & at best they'd be so carefully specific that they'd be fixing exactly one "problem" that (as far as I know) only one person has ever encountered.

and don't even get me started on "playing optimally" - arguably there is no such thing as optimal play in starsector because there's no set end goal.

though I do agree with you on the mission side of things, a few types of missions (particularly spysat deployments) are just permanent no-takes for me because they're basically always targeting planets that are a PITA to get to undetected; they deserve a looking at.
... but I don't think that your solutions actually offer any interesting decisions (for the mission and skills), they mostly just add extra steps to things that are already doable.

[Schwartz]

The idea that players will scam themselves out of all the fun has come up before. Frankly, I think that's one of those things that sounds like a neat theory but hardly anyone does it. It's true for a small subset of players who have a certain powergaming mindset, and even then savescumming again and again surely has to eventually result in a realization like "What the hell am I doing with my time?". This exploit is a good example. It's valid; it can give a player more CR if he is willing to engage in some tedious time waste before every battle.

When there's a lot of pressure through difficulty, say Dark Souls, players will discover and use way more exploitative strategies because playing the game straight is itself a painful activity. I consider having to learn every enemy pattern and then play accordingly to beat them to be close to the mind-numbing chore of Dance Dance Revolution and those kinds of games. The game says "Do it exactly like I tell you or suffer".

Starsector is not like that. The player learns its systems in a much more relaxed and general way and is not severely punished for ignorance - in most cases. The need to optimize his own fun out of the game just to be able to play the game is simply not there. Reloading to beat combat engagements (which I know are beatable) is as far as I'm personally willing to go.

[Wyvern]

My take on it is that the principle is absolutely correct - you really don't want something optimal to be unfun!

But also that this is pretty far from optimal in a vast majority of the cases, and fixing it with a shotgun is likely to be a case of "cure is worse than the disease". Basically what Hiruma Kai said. That said, a small/elegant fix for this would not be a bad thing at all.

The thing is, yes, the OP's case is pretty niche.

But the issue in question, of Combat Endurance's bonus CR being tied to the specific hull rather than the officer? That's a real and annoying issue, and has been since Combat Endurance was introduced. Even if you're not trying to use it for niche optimizations, it's still a nuisance that swapping officers around can cost supplies.

Fortunately, there is a simple and elegant fix to that; see my suggestion.

(Missile spec... yeah, the fix I suggested there is less simple or elegant. I'd still prefer to see some change to make the skill's benefits completely tied to the officer, but leaving it alone for now would be fine too.)

[Alex]

But the issue in question, of Combat Endurance's bonus CR being tied to the specific hull rather than the officer? That's a real and annoying issue, and has been since Combat Endurance was introduced. Even if you're not trying to use it for niche optimizations, it's still a nuisance that swapping officers around can cost supplies.

Hmm - I'm seeing this pretty differently, to me swapping officers around is kind of a pain and something that discourages this mechanically is a positive.

[Wyvern]

But the issue in question, of Combat Endurance's bonus CR being tied to the specific hull rather than the officer? That's a real and annoying issue, and has been since Combat Endurance was introduced. Even if you're not trying to use it for niche optimizations, it's still a nuisance that swapping officers around can cost supplies.

Hmm - I'm seeing this pretty differently, to me swapping officers around is kind of a pain and something that discourages this mechanically is a positive.

Kind of a pain in what way? If you mean the UI, that seems fixable; put the officer list on one side, put the fleet display on the other side, and allow drag-and-drop rather than the current 'click on one specific ship, pick an officer off the list, close the officer UI, click on the next specific ship'.

(Edit: The current officer UI is about right for when it's accessed from the ship refit screen, where, by context, you really do care most about 'what officer goes on this one ship'. But it's awkward from the fleet view.)

[Thaago]

I think the suggestion (from Wyvern, where they went into a bit more detail) to have the CR boost from the skill be instantaneous and raise the max/min/current fixes things, right?

If the ship is at 70% CR and the skill is applied, the ship goes to 85% CR right away (this also fixes the "oops picked a skill and now I'm out of supplies!" issue that Crew Training can cause!). If the skill is removed, the ship loses 15% CR immediately. This means that hot swapping officers has no beneficial effect and there is no wasting of supplies from moving an officer around.

In terms of in combat swapping, I think its justified to have CR lower by 15% if a player without the skill swaps to a ship that had one. 'Combat Readiness' contains a lot of things including soft factors/training, and having the normal captain booted out for one that doesn't understand Combat Endurance and runs the crew badly giving a CR hit seems fine to me. Its not like missiles where ordinance evaporating would be very immersion breaking.

[Grievous69]

this also fixes the "oops picked a skill and now I'm out of supplies!" issue that Crew Training can cause!

Man the first time this happened to me I was so confused and mad. Until I figured out what happened and why I now actually pay attention where on the map I am where I pick such skills.

[Thaago]

I lost a good chunk of ships to it the first time! Was running a bit too close to danger coming back from exploration, got a skill point from discovering something, picked the skill, then didn't realize I was draining to put the ships on 'no repairs' fast enough!

[Alex]

I think the suggestion (from Wyvern, where they went into a bit more detail) to have the CR boost from the skill be instantaneous and raise the max/min/current fixes things, right?

Hmm, maybe? I'm not crazy about the case of the ship getting a minimum CR of 15% (or 30% if Crew Training and Combat Endurance combine). It's rather non-trivial to implement, though, with the in-combat officer switching handling, the places where the game expects 0% CR to mean something specific, etc.

Kind of a pain in what way? If you mean the UI, that seems fixable; put the officer list on one side, put the fleet display on the other side, and allow drag-and-drop rather than the current 'click on one specific ship, pick an officer off the list, close the officer UI, click on the next specific ship'.

Just more generally - it feels to me like "what officer is this ship assigned to" ought to be a more long-term decision and that shuffling officers around to optimize for a specific encounter - no matter how clean the UI - is just fundamentally annoying. This is, of course, subjective.

(... actually, this makes me wonder if going through officers might not be a nice way to bring back a different take on crew veterancy. Having the officer gain XP *on that ship* along a separate track, with some kind of basic bonus to ship performance... hmm. And you'd lose it/it'd take a hit when the officer is swapped out.)

[FooF]

Re: Officer swapping

I tend to leave officers on a ship and tailor the officer to the ship, rather than the other way around, but an XP system that incentivizes long-term attachment would have to account for acquiring a plain better ship. An officer tailored to an Enforcer is going to work really well for a Dominator and I shouldn’t feel like I’m losing something by moving that officer to a superior hull. If the benefit is fairly minor, no big deal (and I doubt you’d go over board with it anyway).

That being said, I really like the idea of officer “veterancy” improving basic ship function. That could be a way of increasing CR without it coming in “chunks” via skills. Heck, you could replace the +15% CR from Combat Endurance with something more interesting and just make having an officer (over time) achieve the same result via experience. Skills could also improve veterancy gain or veterancy benefits rather than fleet wide buffs (looking at you Crew Training).

[BaBosa]

My take on it is that the principle is absolutely correct - you really don't want something optimal to be unfun!

But also that this is pretty far from optimal in a vast majority of the cases, and fixing it with a shotgun is likely to be a case of "cure is worse than the disease". Basically what Hiruma Kai said. That said, a small/elegant fix for this would not be a bad thing at all.

Just limit the high CR bonus to the maximum CR. So if a ship has 100% CR but its max is 85%. Just give the 5% damage, speed … bonuses and not the full 10%. They still get an extra minute of time with high CR but that’s such a small bonus that it’s not going to be an issue even for the OP.

[Grievous69]

Similar thoughts and experiences as FooF. My main concern is that any sort of potential veterancy mechanic doesn't become a chore. Either taking up too much time so it's a grind, or the effects being too good.