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[harperrb]

that's a fair point...

speaking of which, will there be a way to stop CR regeneration to conserve supplies for accident aversion and such?

I had this same thought.  I'm imagining a Victoria 2-style Army Supply Slider per fleet. That is, a % bar that will limit ships in a fleet to only resupply to the set limit. Allowing for control on longer missions with limited longterm supply

[harperrb]

So i can technically defeat a big fleet with one ship by just retreating and challenging every time now?

Take a another look. Retreating from battle will take a CR hit on top of deploying. So a single ship wlll run out of CR before a larger fleet, assuming the fleet has more ships with greater combined CR than the single ship.

Secondly, if your single ship is not faster than the fastest ship from the fleet, they can "Harry" you and cause a third CR hit.

I think i got that right.

[Alex]

Alex, you hit a high note each update.

Can't wait.

OT:
I quite like the new combat mechanism, and I can't wait to play it.
It seems every time I see a new blog post, my anticipation for the next update increases tenfold.
Anywho, I can't wait for v0.6a, and I wish you the best of luck with your production of this game.

Thank you guys

Well, we knew the rough outline from the patchnotes but the details sound good, too  The choice between acquiring additional supplies and getting back CR sounds interesting. Is there anything to make sure that I get more supplies with "salvage" than restoring the CR with "stand down" would save me? Or at least, is there some kind of indicator that shows me when that would be the case? I can imagine that "salvage" could easily have the higher supply loss if I over-deployed against a weak enemy, and that would be kinda false advertising.

Good question. I'm actually considering whether CR recovery should consume much in the way of supplies at all and instead just take a much more appreciable amount of time. Regardless of that, "salvage" is almost universally better for supplies. I suppose if you deployed 3 Onslaughts against a Hound, it might reach a tipping point...

On a side note: Maybe use some other word than "harry", I had to look it up, too. "Hamper" the retreating fleet? Or just use harass again, the two options (harass and harry) seem to do the exact same thing.

Hm, maybe "harass". "Harry" is a pretty common word afaik, though, and it's used in a military context, so it's a good fit.

Does this mean that there is a chance of multiple fleets or being able to have convoys that can drop off supplies directly to different fleets, because that would be very cool!

Totally expecting a lol

One thing about engagements that has always bothered me. When you attack another fleet, they become your destination on the campaign map. After the battle, you have to accelerate again from a stop. What if there were other fleets chasing you? You'll likely get caught by them before you can get up to full speed. I think that a fleet that successfully escapes from a battle should receive a large boost to acceleration and maybe even top speed for several seconds after a battle. If you've escaped, you're already running away at top speed and already have momentum. To go from that to nearly stationary on the campaign screen is both stupid and has the potential to compound your problems by immediately encountering another fleet. At the very least, perhaps an escape could increase the period of invincibility where you can't engage another fleet.

Going to revamp some related mechanics, likely soonish. I will say that stopping after battle is intentional, though. Tried it keeping the fleet's velocity and it just didn't feel right, like a battle wasn't of enough consequence to even slow a fleet down. Conceptually, when you escape you've just started accelerating up to travel speed, so being stopped at the campaign level makes sense, but whether it does or not isn't a really a major consideration, I think. Other fleets being able to catch you in that state is also intentional, meant to be another consideration to what a good fight to take is. But, again, campaign movement mechanics could use a revamp, so I'm not sure it makes sense to delve too deeply into the details of their current workings.

that's a fair point...

speaking of which, will there be a way to stop CR regeneration to conserve supplies for accident aversion and such?

I had this same thought.  I'm imagining a Victoria 2-style Army Supply Slider per fleet. That is, a % bar that will limit ships in a fleet to only resupply to the set limit. Allowing for control on longer missions with limited longterm supply

Haven't gotten to implementing this, but my thoughts have been going in a similar direction, with something to control maximum supply consumption.

So i can technically defeat a big fleet with one ship by just retreating and challenging every time now?

Take a another look. Retreating from battle will take a CR hit on top of deploying. So a single ship wlll run out of CR before a larger fleet, assuming the fleet has more ships with greater combined CR than the single ship.

Secondly, if your single ship is not faster than the fastest ship from the fleet, they can "Harry" you and cause a third CR hit.

I think i got that right.

Right. The bigger fleet could also "stand down", leaving the single ship with a double CR hit (deployed, retreated) vs no hit at all on the larger fleet.

[Luftwaffle]

Two questions, will character skill levels (specifically those dealing with fleet tactics and maybe industry for salvage) increase the effectiveness of these options?

When reputation is implemented as well, will that have an affect? I'd love to have enemies cower in fear even though they're stronger

[Thana]

I must say, I love it when games (and fiction, for that matter!) operate on the paradigm that there's more to war/conflict than just the battles. Not only does it help with immersion and grounding the action into a narrative with depth, it also helps give an added dimension to the proceedings. I heartily approve.

At first I read the reference to travel drives at the end of the blog post to imply inter-system travel, but then I realised it was just the intra-system travel being discussed.

Finally - and I know this is not a plausible scenario - I'd love it if you, Alex, were to teach the big gaming studios on how game design is supposed to be done, because you'd have a lot to teach them, I think.

[RawCode]

is logic implemented as plugin (default event handler) or will be hardcoded?

[harrumph]

On a side note: Maybe use some other word than "harry", I had to look it up, too. "Hamper" the retreating fleet? Or just use harass again, the two options (harass and harry) seem to do the exact same thing.

Hm, maybe "harass". "Harry" is a pretty common word afaik, though, and it's used in a military context, so it's a good fit.

In a military context, "harass" and "harry" are near-perfect synonyms. As is so often the case in English, one comes from French (harass) and one from German (harry—it has the same etymological root as "Heer," actually).

—your local English major/copy editor/etymology nerd

[theSONY]

maybe "intercept"
because intercepting is cool as it sounds ;P

[Wyvern]

Huh.  I find "harry" to be a perfectly valid word given the context - posting this mostly just as a "There exist other opinions on this" so we don't only see a vocal (possible?) minority.  That said, if there really are people who don't recognize it... well, I'd be 50/50 on "Change it so people don't need to reference a dictionary" vs. "Hey, you get to learn a new word!  How cool is that?"

[silentstormpt]

Huh.  I find "harry" to be a perfectly valid word given the context - posting this mostly just as a "There exist other opinions on this" so we don't only see a vocal (possible?) minority.  That said, if there really are people who don't recognize it... well, I'd be 50/50 on "Change it so people don't need to reference a dictionary" vs. "Hey, you get to learn a new word!  How cool is that?"

I'll Harry that fleet any day and no, its not what your thinking 

[Gothars]

Huh.  I find "harry" to be a perfectly valid word given the context

There's no doubt that it's fitting. But given that a good portion of  Starsector's players know English only as a second language, I think it is not a bad idea to eschew words that those players are very likely to not know. Of course my only measurement of that likelihood is the fact that this is the second word on the game I had to look up (first was entoptic, which just sounds cool), so it doesn't have to mean anything.

I've also got some vague ideas about encounter options (perhaps unlocked by skills) that would allow a smaller fleet to isolate a portion of a larger one to fight against. It's not something I want to start out with, though, but something I'm going to keep in mind in case the campaign shapes up in a way that makes adding something like that desirable.

That sounds like fun, and like it would be a great gift for players who plan to run with small fleets. If you connect it to the leadership aptitude those options could also make the aptitude interesting again for those players. At the moment you have practically only two aptitudes with a small fleet play-stile.
I imagine it would be especially thrilling if you have a timer running down, after which the main fleet joins the battle.

[Gothars]

Also: Ohhh, new screen borders (look at the picture in the blogpost). Supplied by TRIPAD?  

[Alex]

Two questions, will character skill levels (specifically those dealing with fleet tactics and maybe industry for salvage) increase the effectiveness of these options?

When reputation is implemented as well, will that have an affect? I'd love to have enemies cower in fear even though they're stronger

Two answers: maybe and maybe (That is to say, not something I'm prepared to discuss in detail.)

Finally - and I know this is not a plausible scenario - I'd love it if you, Alex, were to teach the big gaming studios on how game design is supposed to be done, because you'd have a lot to teach them, I think.

Much as I appreciate the compliment, I wouldn't call myself an expert game designer, and I definitely don't want to put down the folks working in AAA game studios. They have an entirely different set of challenges, and I'm sure there are plenty of extremely bright people working there. There absolutely *have* to be, to make something as complex as a big-budget title come together! As with indie games, there are successes and failures. The difference is, we get to hear about the AAA failures and dissect them in great detail.

is logic implemented as plugin (default event handler) or will be hardcoded?

That dialog is implemented as an InteractionDialogPlugin. All the logic is at the moment moddable, except for some AI decisions about what to do (which could also be modded by putting it in the dialog rather than calling into the AI to get its choices).

In a military context, "harass" and "harry" are near-perfect synonyms. As is so often the case in English, one comes from French (harass) and one from German (harry—it has the same etymological root as "Heer," actually).

—your local English major/copy editor/etymology nerd

Speaking of nerding out on etymology, my favorite site ever: http://www.etymonline.com/

I'd be 50/50 on "Change it so people don't need to reference a dictionary" vs. "Hey, you get to learn a new word!  How cool is that?"

That sums up how I feel about it. Personally, I love when games teach me something new. But, I suppose there's a fine line here, between "making something iscrutable" vs "dumbing it down".

I've also got some vague ideas about encounter options (perhaps unlocked by skills) that would allow a smaller fleet to isolate a portion of a larger one to fight against. It's not something I want to start out with, though, but something I'm going to keep in mind in case the campaign shapes up in a way that makes adding something like that desirable.

That sounds like fun, and like it would be a great gift for players who plan to run with small fleets. If you connect it to the leadership aptitude those options could also make the aptitude interesting again for those players. At the moment you have practically only two aptitudes with a small fleet play-stile.
I imagine it would be especially thrilling if you have a timer running down, after which the main fleet joins the battle.

Right! I was also thinking it could be an interesting means of checking the player's fleet size if it was used against them. It could also make smaller fleets suddenly become a threat regardless of how huge your fleet is. This is all handwavy musings about a potential future, though

Also: Ohhh, new screen borders (look at the picture in the blogpost). Supplied by TRIPAD?  

A wholly-owned subsidiary of the Tri-Tachyon Corporation.

[Astyanax]

I like the idea- it sounds more interesting than using a straight crew calculation, but maybe some hybrid might work more "realistically"?

In terms of CR deployment loss, would it be feasible to base it on the proportion of fleet points of both fleets?

For example, if a 30-point fleet squares off against a 10-point fleet, the 10 point fleet would take 3 times more CR than the 30-point fleet, which would sort of reflect the psychological state of the smaller fleet ("Why am I committing suicide?").  Perhaps it could be partially mitigated by crew experience- green crew are cowed by everything and take full CR reduction, but elite crew are hardened and take only some portion of the CR loss.

For CR loss after combat, maybe it could be based on amount/severity of damage taken? A fleet that is nearly annihilated would be nowhere near combat ready, and ships that suffered engine shutdowns and multiple disabled systems would similarly be less ready.

For recovering CR, in addition to using supplies, maybe there could be travel modes where a fleet travels at some percent of it's full acceleration/speed to increase its rate of CR gain.  Faster fleets might be able to regain CR faster than pursuing fleets, which could reflect a "harrying" situation, where the harassing fleet could force a larger fleet to consume its supplies at a greater rate and eventually force it to retreat to resupply?  This all might be needlessly complex, however.

[K-64]

Don't see what the big fuss about the use of harry is for this. If people don't understand it, they'll come here and be taught about its use being proper, meaning that Starfarer is fun and educational. And everyone knows that a game that is both fun and educational is just awesomesauce

Note: It may look sarcastic, but it isn't. I just like the pink text