It was a very interesting read and I'll be looking forward to how "combat readiness" will impact the way Starsector unfolds. Very clever way of tackling the frigate superiority problem indeed!
P.s I'm glad I decided to give Starsector a go, the frequent updates and patches really helps keep up confidence in this project among us supporters
Thanks, glad you found it interesting!
I love the idea behind the mechanic, it definitely creates an excellent bridge between the campaign and combat. However, some of the combat-side effects concern me slightly, namely the effect this has on frigates: about how much time would it take for a frigate to go from its peak readiness to "totally absolutely useless"?
Actually, let me rephrase this and ask a more general question: how do the various levels of CR translate into combat effectiveness? Would 100% correspond to a ship being manned by completely elite crew with full supplies and HP? And how ineffective will ships with 0% CR be? Totally useless, or just significantly impaired?
It's subject to playtesting etc, but at the moment (i.e. almost guaranteed to be different by release):
A 100% CR ship is roughly 10-15% more effective than baseline (speed, damage taken) and has elite-level autofire aim.
A 0% CR ship is about 10-15% worse than baseline in those stats, can't aim very well, and has serious malfunction issues. The malfunction issues (which currently kick in at 20% CR) are what has the most effect on performance.
As to the impact of malfunctions, let me put it this way: a 0% Vigilance has a tough time taking down a wing of Talons 1-1, though it can do it. So, not totally useless by a long shot, especially in larger ships where the randomness of malfunctions is mitigated by large numbers of weapons and engine nozzles, but definitely very impaired.
(More detail on malfunctions: it's a % chance, checked on average once every second a weapon is firing/cooling down or an engine is "on" (turning doesn't count). At 0%, it's something like a 10% chance for weapons and 5% for engines. Again, exact values will almost certainly change.)
Right now, it takes a bit over 10 minutes to go from "peak" to 0 if starting at 100%, which feels a bit too long. An important point is that it stays at its starting CR for a few minutes before it starts dropping, and the CR cost applied after battle is the higher of the deployment cost or the actual amount of CR used during the battle. Will have to see just how it shakes out, though.
This is all modifiable per ship, though right now I painted it with a pretty broad brush and those particular stats are the same on all frigates. I suspect the Hyperion is going to end up losing CR much faster than other frigates, for example.