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[burnerlurkerwhatever]

recently had a battle where 90% of my fleet was wiped aside from two heavy cruisers, ide say about 70% of fleet crew capacity was lost. after the battle, all 20ish ships were recoverable thanks to reinforced bulkheads, however the fleet was crippled since all the crew died beyond the remaining crew capacity. this despite the entire fleet having blast doors and winning the fight.

not sure if this is intended behavior or not, if it isn't, maybe move this to bug report. if it is intended behavior...uh...blast doors is pretty much useless if you take an excessive amount of ship destruction, not saying you shouldnt be punished in some way for losing a lot of ships, but my fleet is gimped from all having blast doors in terms of combat power, so i expect compensation in strategic resilience. and considering that reinforced bulkheads works even if most of your fleet is wiped (that is to say, the whole fleet rises from the dead as long as a few ships remain after the battle and you win) im not really sure what the logic is - you can recover the fleet but not the crew?

otherwise, blast doors is worthless unless you only take a light - moderate amount of casualties in terms of ship losses - i supposes this could be mitigated by having a civilivian crew transporter with a lot of capacity that doesnt fight - but of course that raises the obvious question - why bother with blast doors at all then? the discrepancy between reinforced bulkheads and blast doors behavior is a real problem here

[Alex]

Hi! Hmm. What I'd like to avoid is having the fleet be extremely over crew capacity post-battle, though admittedly that shouldn't come up too much.

However, what you can do is have a personnel carrier in your fleet - a Nebula or a Starliner - to let you recover crew that you'd otherwise lose in this type of situation. If you're taking casualties on the regular, you need some spare capacity and extra crew anyway, right?

(I did fix a bug where in this specific situation no crew recovery was happening, but it wouldn't be a major difference, just a fraction of the losses. But still.)

[burnerlurkerwhatever]

Hi! Hmm. What I'd like to avoid is having the fleet be extremely over crew capacity post-battle, though admittedly that shouldn't come up too much.

Any excess crew can be left behind in cryo pods for later retrieval or just left out there for someone else to find. This already occurs in canon often right?

However, what you can do is have a personnel carrier in your fleet - a Nebula or a Starliner

this is true - but there's a problem with this answer - if i am going to have a nebula or starliner with a large berth of crew - there is no point of blast doors at all right? the blast door mod is a very bad mod, compared to flux or some other mod - its real bad. i would never use it except for the convenience and more importantly - having blast doors allows all 30 ships to fight - i dont need to waste a slot on a nebula or a starliner which are combat worthless. the whole point of reinforced bulkheads and blast doors - as i understand it - is to trade tactical power for strategic power - even though the blast doors is just fat to be chewed off in combat - if you survive and win the blast doors allow your crew to dust themselves off and keep going. except the problem is it doesnt actually work - if you take a lot of casualties the crew all dies regardless of blast doors - its like they arent there at all

basically the min max answer is - never use blast doors and have 5000 spare crew in a starliner - thats the correct answer - using blast doors is dumb, wasting several hundred ordinance points on fleet wide blast doors is bad and dumb - unless the blast doors function the way reinforced bulkheads do - saving the crew the way reinforced bulkheads saves the fleet. you have already designed reinforced bulkheads to function this way - im just asking for the same game design principle to be applied to blast doors. 

again - no one would ever use blast doors and reinforced bulkheads if they didnt provide strategic resilience - theyre arguably the worst mods in terms of combat power - in fact, definitely they are, so im just asking for blast doors to function as they are intended - save the crew

for the record, this problem im discribing also makes crew saving skills worthless as well if you take too many ship casualties - it doesn't matter if you have safety procedures or whatever its called if theres no space left for crew to be rescued into - which is absurd, especially since you IMMEDIATELY regain the space with reinforced bulkheads restoring the fleet

[Alex]

Hmm, I don't think that quite checks out? If you have blast doors and are regularly losing some ships - let alone most of your fleet - you'll still dip fairly quickly into "not enough crew" territory, so you need some transports to carry extra crew, just not as much as you would otherwise.

So blast doors and other things that save you crew matter, but not to the point of negating the need for some logistical support. Most of the time they're not a great investment, no, but for some ships or builds they can be.

which is absurd, especially since you IMMEDIATELY regain the space with reinforced bulkheads restoring the fleet

(Yeah, that's fair, but it's an annoying one to sort out due to the order in which things happen.)

[PsychoThruster]

Might it be simpler to replace blast doors with "escape pods" and simply spawn some crew in a loot container after the battle?

[Megas]

Invictus has a lot of hull.  I used one of the hull boosting mods on Invictus because Heavy Armor does diddly-squat for 10k armor.

[Sly]

In this patch, and in patches previous, I place Blast Doors on all combat ships as a rule. It's a head canon thing, like Recovery Shuttles on all carriers with human pilots. I like to imagine it raises morale, increases loyalty, and most importantly, it does actually save lives.

It's unfortunate that most of your fleet was disabled. I lost a wing of frigates carelessly just the other day while I was distracted. Whether or not you're committed to using Blast Doors, I highly recommend having a Nebula (or two) or a Starliner in your fleet with built-in Additional Berthing, depending on your crew requirements. Ideally, if you're expecting heavy casualties, you will need to cover at least 75% of your combat ships' total crew requirements in the space your personnel transports provide. That is to say, you do not need to have that space filled with replacements, just available to host survivors while ships are recovered.

As you are no doubt aware, it is still helpful to have replacements available in case of a mass casualty event. But, do not be tempted to fill your berths to their limit if you are using Blast Doors, or the overflow will be lost.

Good luck on your next engagement, Captain.

[tomatopaste]

I like the idea of s-modded blast doors giving a slight CR boost of maybe 5%

[Farya]

In this patch, and in patches previous, I place Blast Doors on all combat ships as a rule. It's a head canon thing, like Recovery Shuttles on all carriers with human pilots. I like to imagine it raises morale, increases loyalty, and most importantly, it does actually save lives.

It's unfortunate that most of your fleet was disabled. I lost a wing of frigates carelessly just the other day while I was distracted. Whether or not you're committed to using Blast Doors, I highly recommend having a Nebula (or two) or a Starliner in your fleet with built-in Additional Berthing, depending on your crew requirements. Ideally, if you're expecting heavy casualties, you will need to cover at least 75% of your combat ships' total crew requirements in the space your personnel transports provide. That is to say, you do not need to have that space filled with replacements, just available to host survivors while ships are recovered.

As you are no doubt aware, it is still helpful to have replacements available in case of a mass casualty event. But, do not be tempted to fill your berths to their limit if you are using Blast Doors, or the overflow will be lost.

Good luck on your next engagement, Captain.

Exploration ships like Apogee or Venture also have a decent crew capacity for extra crew. And Venture with Bulk Transport skill is a very good addition to early fleet anyway. I personally prefer to s-mod Solar Shielding on every single ship. It fits roleplay wise and it's useful in general.