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[itBeABruhMoment]

I get that the player should be put on a timer during fights, but why exactly do smaller ship classes need to have lower peak performance times. When fighting most singular fleets, any ship running out of CR usually not an issue, but if you need to fight two or more large fleets, fielding anything smaller than a cruiser becomes a liability due to CR, even if you stack every combat readiness bonus you can get your hands on. This forces the player to not use destroyers and frigates in long fights. Punishing the player for building a balanced fleet just seems weird. Additionally, combat readiness is a bad mechanic for balancing ships. Nerfing the CR of an overpowered ship just results in a ship that is almost just as overpowered in fights that aren't long enough for it to be an issue and unusable in fights long enough to drain it. Overall, low CR either has very little impact or makes a ship unusable depending on the size of the fleet you're fighting. For these reasons I think it would be best to give all ships similar combat readiness related stats and to balance ships through other means.

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

but if you need to fight two or more large fleets,

You never need to fight two or more large fleets.

[Genir]

if you need to fight two or more large fleets, fielding anything smaller than a cruiser becomes a liability due to CR

That's not necessarily the case. I use Safety Override frigates in stacked Ordo fights. The frigates can last through 1800 DP fleet battles.

[Grievous69]

I thought this was going to be about Zigg, the title of the post should've been PPT not CR. Anyways with frigates having capital level CR, what stops you from putting SO on every single frigate and facerolling everything? This is already kind of possible with Hyperion spam with maybe an Aurora on the side, but without CR problems you have zero downsides to that strat. The reasons current PPT times are like this are so that a group of frigates can't kite a capital to death and kill it with CR, and similarly so that early game fights don't become a huge drag. Small ships are fast and annoying, especially those with Phase Skimmer.

Also I hard disagree that anything below a cruiser is a liability. Every single playthrough I always have frigates with me and I never go for Wolfpack skill. Just put Hardened Subsystems if you plan to take them for endgame fights. If your frigates reach zero CR before you won, you're doing something wrong.

(Or this is someone trying to do a CapnHector style challenge and using frigates but obviously that isn't going to work.)

[Hatter]

All ships have the same combat readiness (CR) limit unless automated or dmod-ed. I think this is talking about the peak performance time (PPT).

If I remember correctly, PPT is used to balance mobility and range. It prevents ships- specifically carriers- from being able to kite indefinitely or do things like take out an entire pirate fleet in a player controlled tempest by picking them off 1 by 1. So smaller ship, being universally faster than the larger ships, have less PPT. PPT is also used to balance Safety Overrides.

PPT limits can be bypassed to an extent by retreating and re-engaging to refresh the PPT.
 Also, wolfpack tactics and other PPT boosting skills really helps frigate PPT. A Wolf (180 base PPT) with wolfpack tactics (+50% PPT), hardened systems (+50%) and combat endurance (+60 PPT) gives a PPT of 420 to 480- 7 to 8 minutes- depending on order of operations. An Eagle has 480 base PPT, for reference. Frigates can be boosted to match cruisers.

I've had the problem that frigates run out of PPT and due to the skill limits encouraging keeping the fleet to the bare minimum I don't have any 'backup' frigates. I also don't really use any PPT increases and generally engagements end before then, though.

[itBeABruhMoment]

Anyways with frigates having capital level CR, what stops you from putting SO on every single frigate and facerolling everything? This is already kind of possible with Hyperion spam with maybe an Aurora on the side, but without CR problems you have zero downsides to that strat. The reasons current PPT times are like this are so that a group of frigates can't kite a capital to death and kill it with CR, and similarly so that early game fights don't become a huge drag. Small ships are fast and annoying, especially those with Phase Skimmer.

You can already get a fleet full of SO ships and steam roll or have a singular wolf distract a quarter of the enemy fleet and those have no downsides in most regular fights. These are both over powered tactics that need nerfs but CR is a bad way of approaching it. Either the ship can still last through most fights and CR barely matters or it becomes so low it becomes completely impractical to use. I think a better solution to these issues would be decreasing the stats bonus of SO and improving the AI so it doesn't chase lone frigates across the map respectively.

All ships have the same combat readiness (CR) limit unless automated or dmod-ed. I think this is talking about the peak performance time (PPT).

I'm lumping peak performance and combat readiness together here. I'm most concerned with the amount of time a ship can operate before running out of combat readiness and how it shouldn't be used for balance.

[BaBosa]

As the others have mentioned. PPT/CR timer is mostly just there to prevent/nerf kiting strategies which is a deliberate design decision Alex made and a good one really. Unless you’re in a stalemate you should normally win or lose within PPT (excluding SO).

A possible alternative is to add another speed increasing hullmod like SO but without the dissipation and PPT effects.

[Megas]

The times were mostly calibrated back in 0.6a-era, when fights were smaller, AI did not cower as much, and skills (which was mostly player vs. unskilled enemy - no officers back then, but player had fleet skills) were far more powerful.  Would not mind more PPT across the board to account for longer fights and weaker skills of post-0.8a releases.