Does this include marines, or only regular crew?
I also agree with the expressed concern over the increased crew cost and its implications for balance between the various ship types.
Marines are the same as before, and also the same as crew now. And yeah, something to keep an eye on.
Personally, I think it would be better if the Automated Repair Unit did not touch the logistics cost, but did impact the cost of CR regeneration, so that the repairs are completed more rapidly but at the same (or a slightly increased) cost. However, that's essentially all that the logistics rating of the ship is, now, so I guess that's how it will be for the time being. It might also help if the Automated Repair Unit were to reduce the time required to complete hull repairs, especially since the logistics cost is now to be associated with a ship's hull repair cost (if it already does this, sorry; I didn't see it mentioned in the description).
Right. And yeah, it now sports a 50% increase in hull/armor repair rate.
2) If a ship is either recovering CR or performing repairs, it'll consume its full logistics rating worth of supplies. So, repairs still cost supplies in this way, but a lot less and more gradually. Removed "supplies to fully repair" stat from ships.
3) If a ship is NOT recovering CR or performing repairs, the supply cost is 0. (Never liked the 10% rule much, anyway.) Doubled crew supply use instead.
I notice that this has impacted the ongoing costs for keeping certain types of ships in your fleet in a way that largely favors fighters and frigates. In particular, I notice that frigates and fighters are generally cheaper to keep in your fleet than they were, whereas cruisers and capital ships are generally more expensive. Note that I'm referring to the ongoing costs, i.e. the supplies that are used by the ship and its crew every day when at full hull strength and combat readiness. On average, frigates are 0.7 (at minimum crew) to 1.1 (at maximum crew) times as expensive to maintain in your fleet, destroyers are 0.94 to 1.25 times more expensive to maintain in your fleet, cruisers are 1.17 to 1.48 times more expensive, and capital ships are 1.28 to 1.56 times more expensive (these are averages across the types; I made no distinction between civilian and military, nor did I give any weighting to how likely one kind of vessel is to be used over another kind, nor did I consider the ability to halve the minimum crew requirement). Fighters average roughly 4.8 times cheaper to keep in your fleet if you don't count spare pilots as part of their cost and instead fold that cost under the cost of the carrier or other ships in the fleet.
While it would not appear from the information given that the deployment cost of a ship has not changed significantly (although it would appear that the cost of suffering damage to a deployed ship may have changed significantly, especially if hull repairs + CR recovery costs the same as just one or the other), that the ongoing costs have changed in this manner further emphasizes the use of lighter ships. I don't necessarily consider this a bad thing, but it's something to keep an eye on, especially with regards to how it affects the relative costs within each class. For example, at minimum crew, the Hyperion has become the cheapest combat frigate (tied with the Afflictor) to have in your fleet, while at maximum crew it is tied with the Shade for second-cheapest (Afflictor became the cheapest); formerly, the Hyperion had been about average in maintenance costs. I don't know if this sort of thing is intentional or not, but thought that I should probably mention it.
Hmm. If I'm going the math right, an Onslaught now costs 10 supplies/day, where before it would cost 1.5 + 5 = 6.5. Right... yeah, this may be a bit extreme, but let's look at the relative costs of maintenance vs deployment.
A typical frigate might cost 0.4 supplies/day for 20 crew, and ~2 supplies to recover from deployment - a 1 to 5 ratio.
The Onslaught costs 10 supplies/day for 500 crew, and 90 supplies to recover from deployment - a 1 to 9 ratio.
So, interestingly - if the deployment cost is representative of the combat power - then capital ships are still cheaper to maintain, for the same combat capability. But then, that'll hold regardless of what the crew upkeep multiplier is, so I suppose it doesn't really factor in. The more salient point is that the deployment cost dwarfs the crew upkeep for larger ships.
Really, I don't know that this was balanced enough in the first place to where a multiplier of 1.5 or so is going to break things as opposed to just change them. It's still good to keep track of, though, and I appreciate the analysis. Wasn't thinking of it affecting capital ships as much as it does; most of the testing was with cruisers and below, where the values just aren't all that noticeable.
A few more questions for you: One: Do high, mid and low tech ships all repair at the same rate or is it different?
Two: Are those values changeable?
Same, it only depends on size. Changeable, in settings.json, but only per-size, not per-ship. If you wan to change it per-ship (say, add a modded ship that repairs really quickly) a built-in hullmod would be the way to go.
Three: If I am reading this right, 150% LR is needed for the maximum repair speed boost. If this is true then what about the extra percentage beyond that? Is it wasted?
It caps out at 150%, yeah, and the rest is wasted.
Four: How fast is the "new" repair speed versus the old one at 150% LR?
It's an apples and oranges comparison, I really can't say. In the old system, you might be able to fully repair a frigate in under a day, if you had sufficient logistics. Now, it'd take 5-6 days or so, with high LR, but it'd also take 5-6 days to repair 10 frigates at once, since they're all doing it independently.
@Alex: I share some of the concerns mentioned here, but overall it seems like the pros of these changes would easily outweigh the cons.
Same, right. The good thing is those concerns seem to, so far, all be addressable by changing numbers around (crew reqs, crew upkeep mult, etc) rather than being a problem with the new system.
It'd just be a little weird for "suspend repairs" to conceptually encompass things like "treating injured crew".
May I suggest "Suspend Maintenance?" It's equally applicable to both armor and CR recovery without bringing to mind neglected infirmary patients.
Hmm. "Repairs" is crucially shorter than "maintenance" for one UI element. Also: I'm not entirely sure that "maintenance" as applied to crew is any better than "repairs", as both bring to mind androids
Author
Topic: Combat Readiness : how is the bonus applied? (Read 18519 times)