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[sdmike1]

True, that does seam like a beater idea.


sdmike1GoesToSleep(true, late.time(GoodNight(true)));

[CopperCoyote]

I feel that larger ships should lose CR during combat too. It feels like a strange gameplay and story segregation. Why wouldn't larger ships lose combat readiness as the fight wears on? Sure larger ships would have more space to keep the replacement bits and bobs, and they'd have more personnel to rotate through so they don't burn out. So it would make sense for them to lose CR slower, and maybe have a longer delay for CR loss.

As it stands now I balk at using frigs with any char that has points for larger fleets. The control point bonuses really add up. So if frigates are the only ones that burn out as the fight wears on there is little incentive to make them anything besides fighter popping fools that then immediately flee after the points are capped. Or just not use them.

How will fighters and CR interact? What if that was their "hat" so to speak? I love fighters for their multi-fight stamina now. If they always maintained a high level of combat-readiness in conjunction with a flight deck they'd be much better with little other changes. Presumably they'd run out of spare ships to use eventually, and their CR would begin to degrade.

I don't think it comes through clearly, but I'm really excited about combat readiness. I like balancing one aspect to another, and CR adds time as an aspect.
I guess the TL;DR is I like consistency; even if it isn't a constant. The ITU and the injector are good examples of that.

[FloW]

How about making it depend on the ratio OP/Cargo Space? Crew Fatigue could be separate and depend on Current Crew/Skeleton Crew.

Supplies are (to some degree) spare parts, so a ship with high cargo can carry around more spare parts, which enable it to repair some of the damage.

Crew is usually working in shifts. Skeleton Crew is what is required to get a ship into battle, but I'm not sure if that involves several shifts (maybe minimal functionality with one shift during normal travel - 1/3 of Skeleton Crew - up to two or maybe even three shifts during full combat). Crew Fatigue sounds like something that is hard to implement though. Some ships have 100% spare crew, others only 25% or less, so will the spare crew travel to another ship to reduce the fatigue on this ship? I dunno, just an idea for later.

Something else I had in mind: Usually ships are designed for certain tasks. Some have a better threshold than others, but what if I use a ship with only 75% of its OP in use? That should give some room for additional CR. Maybe this (or something like this) should be implemented as a hull mod.

[DJ Die]

Very interesting feature Alex...
And i think it really makes sense because small ship crews usually have A LOT to do opposed to crews of large ones
thats mainly due to designated damage control crews as small ships often just dont have large enough complements....
so big ships should have only marginal drops in their CR in the battle itself BUT large weapons usually have much less tear while firing so they could be harder to bring up to full CR, not to mention bigger armor plates/large shield generator parts would probably be harder to replace

also elite crew should be much more resistant to fatigue because they are no longer thrilled by combat as much as green newbies facing it for the first time...

[Gothars]

I have to bring up frigates again.

So, the problem with them is that they are too fast, their speed allows them to kite indefinitely. True, that's problematic. The planned solution is to degrade their overall performance to the point where they should be retreated.

So I have to ask, why not specifically degrade the one stat that is the problem, IE degrade speed? That way the would loose the ability to kite, but stay useful in other roles such as escort or Objective protection.

A way to implement that would be this: Frigates above ~40% CR get a substantial speed bonus, due to their special high performance engines. Those engines loose stability, so the CR drops until they go offline at <~40%. Then it stops dropping further. The frigate is now slower, but still reliable.

That could even be easily communicated graphically: Either reduce the size of the exhaust flame gradually or (/and) deactivate some of the engines completely (many frigates have big and small engines, one type could be classified as high performance). I think it's more intuitively plausible than the whole ship falling apart, too.

/e  Maybe that concept could even be expanded to speed hullmods. That way you'd prevent players from building long-duration-kiters out of destroyers or bigger ships. Could for example be applied to a percentage based speed hullmod, but not to fixed value ones so slow ship can still be (hull-)modded reasonably fast.

[Gaizokubanou]

Hello Alex.  You mentioned that CR will hit frigates the hardest to a degree that CR degeneration will be noticeable in combat... does this mean starting ship will possibly be changed to destroyer, or are you planning on short hit & run type of combat with frigates (or just long drawn out fights with ship that's falling apart during latter half) to be the primary means of fighting for early phase of the campaign?

As overall feedback, I think CR is a very nice wraparound of whole bunch of potentially-headache-inducing-materials.  Also CR degeneration in mid-battle is a sound design and I hope it is to be exploited as much as possible, as crews will get tired and machines wear down (imagine endurance race cars vs formula one... certain machines are built to endure without maintenance, while some others are built for maximum performance but wears down very fast and needs lot more care to perform at its peak capacity).

Gothar, I think the reason for not just gimping frigate speed with CR is because either CR will be too speed focused (which is kinda awkward for mechanic that's suppose to represent everything about the ship) or would require whole another mechanic on top of CR.  Also I think state-of-the-art machines should require different level of care than say, workhorse level machines.  And diminishing CR in battle looks like a great way of showing that.

I just think that CR degeneration should be based on ship-by-ship basis.  It would be nice to see slow-low-tech frigate that's meant to be long lasting light support, and vice versa with fast-high-tech bigger ships of larger class hulls.

[DJ Die]

well some kind of CR degradation coefficient could be used to differentiate low and high tech ships probably indirectly proportional to shield efficiency

[mendonca]

If you ask me (which you didn't) I'm not sure it's sensible to completely deconstruct and rebuild the CR mechanic prior to it even making its way in to a playable version of the game.

Nevertheless there are a lot of seemingly reasonable suggestions in here, and I retain my enthusiasm that this will be an awfully interesting mechanic - in whatever final detailed form it takes.

[Modest]

Ha! Finnaly something that will make it harder to fight a battle afther battle with no real "rest" betwen them (repairing battle damage does not count - You may avoid this completly). It is something that I was missing, so I am very glad to see it I am a bit "scared" about loosing CR over time during battle (I hope it will not spread from frigates to other ships), but I do believe that if it will be implemented, it will be dome afther testing and ballancing and will work very good (as most new things implemented to Starsector so far).

And I have few questions (which are also a bit like suggestions) about this new mechanic. I hope that You don't mind

1. Will the size of fleet have any influence on speed at which ships are gaining CR betwen battles? (I can imagine small fleets being able to regain it faster than big ones due to much less betwen ships cargo and personel transportation, but on other hand I can imagine that every ship is a separate kingdom which is dealing with it's own problems using it's own supplies and personel so maybe it really should not have any impact at all)

2. Will it be possible for certian ships to improve speed of regaining CR betwen battles for other ships in a fleet? (having ship dedicated for cargo or personel transportation would make it easier for other ships in a fleet to deal with their problems - afther all they do not need to deal with those "good for nothing" marines which alweys get in the way of working staff, and do not need to waste time to take all suplies to cargo bay and secure it, because there are ships in a fleet that are dedicated to deal with those things. And even if they are unable to deal with all surplus of personel and suplies, they defienietly are making other ships' crew's life a lot easier)

3. And how about fighters/bombers and carriers? Will fighters and bombers be affected by this at all? Or maybe they will be affected, but not directly - each time they are landing on a carrier they are reducing carrier's CR?

[harrumph]

I like it! Anything that makes combat more dynamic—trying to fight with the minimum number of ships, swapping ships in and out as CR changes, having a skirmishing phase with frigates give way to combat between bigger ships—sounds great to me. Plus having another way to give different types of ships (high-tech vs. low tech, pure combat vs. multipurpose) new strengths and weaknesses is cool.

I see that others disagree, but I really like the idea of limiting the role of frigates (and maybe buffing the existing frigates/adding new ones to compensate). Having fighters be a fleet's long-endurance escort and strike tool and making frigates skirmishers and scouts helps clear up the blurring of their roles (and the perception among a lot of us, though obviously not all, that there's no reason to bring fighters when you've got a couple Tempests available). If you did want to preserve some frigates as dedicated escorts, though, you could also divide the class in two: frigates would be slower vessels with heavier armament, suited to escort or assault (Lasher, Wolf, Brawler); something else—corvettes?—would be the fast attack craft (Tempest, Hyperion).

Anyway, I hear this whole CR mechanic needs a lot of playtesting! When do we get to, uh, test this stuff?

kinda off-topic aside about FTL:

Spoiler

Somebody brought up FTL as an example of randomness done right; I personally think that randomness in FTL spoils what's otherwise a great game. It's true that later in a game, a skilled player can prepare for and deal with any random event. In the early stages, though, randomness is king. Not only is the player unprepared to deal with many random events, but every bad outcome snowballs into a worse one, which is not a problem inherent to roguelikes. The fact that you have a finite number of jumps means that the first few you make are ridiculously important. If your first two jumps result in damage to the ship and nothing gained for it, you might as well quit and start over. Not good design!

The CR-related randomness, which only crops up if the player willingly pushes a ship into action when its unfit, seems much better.

[close]

[Vind]

    To prevent frigate kiting AI must retreat if their fleet composition dont have fighters/frigates/fast destroyers to deal with enemy fast ships. Another point - in the hands of AI frigate ships will never be aggressively enough in combat to be useful in the time-window before they will lose their effectiveness. Player can make very fast destroyers/cruisers too so the frigate CR time-limit solution in not best at all. And if all ships will be with some sort of timer before losing CR better have some time-limit on combat time not CR of ships. To save CR of the fleet players will have to fight with smallest deployed fleet possible - at the same time frigates lose CR with time so it effectively writes them off the small engagements. It will make destroyers much more useful than frigates.
   Another possible exploit will be to wait until enemy frigates lose all CR and then deploy rest of your fleet to finish them.   

[Aratoop]

The only thing I'm worried about is this- what'll happen at the beginning of the game? You start of with a frigate, and it takes a while before you can afford anything more than frigates. And in the early game, there're a lot of frigate vs frigate +fighter/buffalo/frigate battles. Will these battles be affected by the CR speciality of frigates, designed for larger encounters?

Also, will certain weapons decrease CR a lot more? Say, if a salamander hits the engines, I can only imagine the havoc that would cause. Or if a couple of Plasma Cannon rounds hit your weapons, you're not gonna want to use them, right?

And one last thing, will low-tech weapons like, say, a Helbore Cannon (which only has a few moving parts) or an arablast autocannon or a flak cannon be better or worse with CR? I can see arguments for both sides, and I'm wondering what you think...

[Gothars]

If you ask me (which you didn't) I'm not sure it's sensible to completely deconstruct and rebuild the CR mechanic prior to it even making its way in to a playable version of the game.

Ah, but is now not the best time? Much less work is wasted if some good idea pops up now instead of after implementing and balancing a possibly sub-optimal mechanic.

[Andy H.K.]

CR degrading during combat with immediate effect is fine so long as CR degradation is directly related to activity. Think soccer game, a defender who see little action would retain more stamina as oppose to a forward who's been running back and forth. A frigate on escort duty should probably be less drained than one performing hit-and-run - before it see some action, that is.

I think a lot of people commenting here are worried that CR would just become a "timer" for frigates. This could be the case if in-combat CR degradation is too fast actually. I think the focus should be more about the long term effect - yes this frigate just kited a task force to death, but when can it do it again?

[Brainbread]

CR degrading during combat with immediate effect is fine so long as CR degradation is directly related to activity. Think soccer game, a defender who see little action would retain more stamina as oppose to a forward who's been running back and forth. A frigate on escort duty should probably be less drained than one performing hit-and-run - before it see some action, that is.

I think a lot of people commenting here are worried that CR would just become a "timer" for frigates. This could be the case if in-combat CR degradation is too fast actually. I think the focus should be more about the long term effect - yes this frigate just kited a task force to death, but when can it do it again?

So, giving Frigates a toggle for an extra say... 50 or 75 speed, that has a limited use and degrades CR? Would give them use at the start of the fight to cap points, then they can toggle off the Fuel Injectors and just use their engines within their normal limits.

Could also make them one use of Turn On and Turn Off, though I can see a player getting immensely frustrated at not being able to get their Fleet's frigates to save the engine boost for something important.

So personally, I'm more a fan of an extra frigate ability for the bonus. Sometimes Frigates can just be effective PD platforms, and we don't want to use them to cap points.