I'm going to have to disagree with you about RNG. Randomness has the potential to make things interesting, but it can also be really, really frustrating. Just look at FTL- if you're properly prepared, you can handle any situation with varying degrees of difficulty. Any random event that can potentially cause loss of crew, resources, or hull can be avoided entirely. You might have to get into combat with another ship or run away, but as long as you understand the risks, you and your choices ultimately determine the outcome. It's very rare for the randomness to truly reach 'unfair' levels.
I'm not sure that's actually disagreeing
Almost everything in FTL is random to some degree, including most combat mechanics; the point is that they're all small random things, small enough that there are many of them and you get by on playing the odds. It takes heinously bad luck and a string of risks that didn't pan out for it to finally do you in. The key thing is that you did decide to make those gambles, which increasingly forced you to take bigger gambles, until eventually you found yourself all out of chances. But since you know how you got there, it's ok. It's not like the game blew up your ship after the first jump.
Likewise, here, getting to a point where you're
relying on malfunctioning ships to get the job done is going to take some conscious decisions and mistakes along the way. It's a desperate, last-ditch, near-failure state. Yes, malfunctions are harsh, but given what it takes to get to that point, I think it's warranted. If anything, the randomness actually enables success - where something like a 70% engine debuff wouldn't even allow for that possibility.
To top it off, as I mentioned above, you can actually manage it. For example, if you see some engine nozzles flare out, you can lay off the thruster controls and recover for a bit.
I think randomness gets an undeservedly bad reputation. What you want to avoid is a situation where a player that's aware of the random elements and is consciously maximizing their odds
still wins or loses largely on the outcome of the random rolls. Generally, this means that many small rolls work better than a few large ones. For example, Warcraft 2 had random ranges for damage. In practice, that hardly mattered at all since enough attacks were made where it evened out. Managing randomness is actually fun - while you're constantly dealing with something unexpected, but if you know the range of possibilities and prepare for the (perhaps several) most likely, you can still succeed in the long run.
If you're still going through with it, please at least give the option to disable CR, or certain aspects of it in the options menu.
I'm pretty much just not going to make a core mechanic disableable from the options menu
EDIT: If frigates still lose CR based on time in combat, they should at least have a major bonus to recovering out of combat. Major.
Well, at this point they
do have the fastest repair rates. I think you'll find that in many battles, they don't actually use up more CR than the standard deployment cost, though. It only starts to matter in large engagements.
What if when you reach low CR levels, the engines might visibly start to flicker, and if you push them too hard, they'll pop? Once it hits that point, perhaps the less CR is has, the less you can push them before they blow out. Once they get back online, you can use them normally for a time, then when they start flickering again, you decelerate or stop using them before they re-stabilize.
As for weapons something similar. Push them too hard while low on CR, there will be a visual indicator (sparks maybe?) and if you keep firing they might blow out for a few moments, depending on how low your CR is.
That makes sense. As I mentioned above, there are already effective "tells" for engines flaming out, but some additional feedback might work well. On the other hand, being able to avoid all malfunctions wouldn't necessarily be a good thing, as it might result in even more drawn-out kiting tactics.
Will be a hell of a balancing job, though.
Yeah, no kidding