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[rex]

Isn't a pursuit an extremely common situation where frigates are especially useful given their speed and flanking ability?

That is another problem.  As your fleet gets stronger, you pursue more and fight fewer standup battles.  You need frigates to catch up and kill your fleeing chunks of XP and supplies.  Eventually, you need frigates for everything that does not involve hauling loot.  For that job, you need one or two Atlas and several Oxen.

I wonder how that will change once harrying gets it's rebalance. Alex has stated this is a goal, and this might not be as much of a thing once you can no longer grind the enemy fleet totally out of CR. (Which is what I am assuming you are doing, cause it certainly is what I do).

[Aratoop]

You can always just go to a friendly station to get 100% CR. Even as solo. So after every few fights, go to a friendly station and get higher CR. It's simple as. The whole point of CR is to prevent you from being able to fight many, many fleets one after another with no break or trip to a station. You just need to think logically about what'd happen if you tried to pull a stunt like that in real life.

[Megas]

I need to go friendly station after every encounter (which usually consists of two fights), and my favorite thing to do in the game once I am powerful enough is make enemies out of everyone so I can fight more.

I do not play Starsector for reality.  I play Starsector and few other similar games for gratuitous space battles or otherwise rampage like Godzilla.  Earlier versions of Starsector, despite some problems, did this well.  The campaign is a nice touch as long as it does not wreck the core of the game - combat.  What I want to do in Starsector, after the campaign gets done, is build up an army then unleash war in the whole sector until my side is the last one standing.

[Silver Silence]

CR and logistics are laying the foundations for what will become other core staples of the game. The trading and such. Combat will not be the only thing to do in-game and I fully expect that like X3, it may even be inadvisable to jump straight into combat on some if not many starts.

[Histidine]

I really don't understand half of these objections...

* Frigate stamina - either you are strong enough that it does not matter, or you are not and it cripples your ships.

So frigate-heavy fleets have an "effective loss" condition, and expect you to be able to defeat the enemies you commit to action against. How is this different from anything else in the game? Why is it a bad thing in itself?

Isn't a pursuit an extremely common situation where frigates are especially useful given their speed and flanking ability?

That is another problem.  As your fleet gets stronger, you pursue more and fight fewer standup battles.  You need frigates to catch up and kill your fleeing chunks of XP and supplies.  Eventually, you need frigates for everything that does not involve hauling loot.

Are you seriously complaining that enemy fleets don't charge you to their deaths any more? Or that you run out of people to fight once you're vastly stronger than anyone else?

[K-64]

I need to go friendly station after every encounter (which usually consists of two fights), and my favorite thing to do in the game once I am powerful enough is make enemies out of everyone so I can fight more.

I do not play Starsector for reality.  I play Starsector and few other similar games for gratuitous space battles or otherwise rampage like Godzilla.  Earlier versions of Starsector, despite some problems, did this well.  The campaign is a nice touch as long as it does not wreck the core of the game - combat.  What I want to do in Starsector, after the campaign gets done, is build up an army then unleash war in the whole sector until my side is the last one standing.

That's just it though. The game isn't going to be just about combat. It's just one of many ways to eke out a living in game, once those other ways are fully put in. The reason the combat was done so completely first was so that us, the players have something interesting to play about with rather than having a spaceship truck simulator.

[Silver Silence]

I need to go friendly station after every encounter (which usually consists of two fights), and my favorite thing to do in the game once I am powerful enough is make enemies out of everyone so I can fight more.

I do not play Starsector for reality.  I play Starsector and few other similar games for gratuitous space battles or otherwise rampage like Godzilla.  Earlier versions of Starsector, despite some problems, did this well.  The campaign is a nice touch as long as it does not wreck the core of the game - combat.  What I want to do in Starsector, after the campaign gets done, is build up an army then unleash war in the whole sector until my side is the last one standing.

That's just it though. The game isn't going to be just about combat. It's just one of many ways to eke out a living in game, once those other ways are fully put in. The reason the combat was done so completely first was so that us, the players have something interesting to play about with rather than having a spaceship truck simulator.

I dunno, I've invested about 80 hours into Spaceship Truck Simulator X3:AP.

[rex]

Isn't a pursuit an extremely common situation where frigates are especially useful given their speed and flanking ability?

That is another problem.  As your fleet gets stronger, you pursue more and fight fewer standup battles.  You need frigates to catch up and kill your fleeing chunks of XP and supplies.  Eventually, you need frigates for everything that does not involve hauling loot.

Are you seriously complaining that enemy fleets don't charge you to their deaths any more? Or that you run out of people to fight once you're vastly stronger than anyone else?

I think is point is that you can harry people to death, rather than ever having to fight them, which would cost CR.  You get a big fast fleet, harry medium fleets to 0 cr, and the decimate them in a boring pursuit against non-combat ready fleets.  Which is probably going to be fixed.

If they were to just fight, forcing you to spend CR, then the swarms around the hidden base would be a huge threat. Now, they are still just lunch meat.

[K-64]

I dunno, I've invested about 80 hours into Spaceship Truck Simulator X3:AP.

That's the thing, X3 is a finished product. At version 2.whatever. Starfarersector is still very much in development. As a parallel, look at the demo for X Rebirth. It's pure combat as well, but we know it's going to have a hell of a lot more to it when it hits the shelves

[Megas]

The problems at the (later) stage of the game when most battles are pursuit are thus:
* Deploying bigger ships to take out weakened and/or non-combat ready ships is an unnecessary drain on supplies and CR, unless it has a flight deck (e.g., Atlas, Odyssey) and you use fighters.
* Bigger ships often cannot catch up to the smaller ships that are fleeing, those enemy ships most likely to survive a previous melee.

Frigate swarms, when powerful enough collectively to kill everything, including defense/security fleets, within two or three minutes, while taking minimal casualties at worst, are useful for fighting everything.  Bigger combat ships are useful only for fighting ever-decreasing number of larger battles and/or flight decks.

In previous versions, frigate swarms were viable, but were very hard to kill defense fleets without taking casualties (unlike cruiser or battleship spam), and they could not take as much loot as a fleet of bigger multipurpose ships.  In 0.6a, enemy defense fleets without a Paragon in them are easier than before, and all frigates need to do is kill enough to "defeat the fleet" and hit [Esc] if the survivors are ready to finish off one of your wounded frigates or the stamina clock times out.  Then the swarm can mop up survivors in the follow-up pursuit battle, when some of those deadly bigger ships become non-combat ready and sitting ducks.  As for loot, with so much from salvage, only freighters can have enough space for it all.

[K-64]

The problems at the (later) stage of the game when most battles are pursuit are thus:
* Deploying bigger ships to take out weakened and/or non-combat ready ships is an unnecessary drain on supplies and CR, unless it has a flight deck (e.g., Atlas, Odyssey) and you use fighters.
* Bigger ships often cannot catch up to the smaller ships that are fleeing, those enemy ships most likely to survive a previous melee.

Bigger ships are impractical to clean up the battlefield after a big fight. Who would've thought? If you're going after weakened/non-combatready/retreating ships, then you just field the smaller, faster ships that are capable of outrunning them. I... don't see why you see this is a bad thing. It's simple logic

[Alex]

I think Megas' point is that frigate swarms are great at everything, marginalizing bigger ships in the end game.

(Not saying I agree or disagree at this point; don't honestly have a well-formed opinion on that.)

[Megas]

Unless I max out Leadership (in my case, favoring Combat and Technology, not going to happen unless I cheat/godmod), I only have enough Logistics to support one capital ship, maybe two and no other ships if I have 60 Logistics.  I tried two capital ships for fights, but the supply drain was too great, and I could not catch fleeing ships.  I find the most optimal fleet configuration so far, excluding freighters to haul loot, is one battlecruiser/battleship, as many wings of fighters as flight decks, and the rest frigates.

Edit - Yes, Alex, you understand well.

I tried destroyers and cruisers, but they are not nearly as effective as capitals at eliminating or withstanding focus fire from bigger threats, and not much better than two or more frigates at dealing such threats.  Losing a frigate or two hurts less than a destroyer or cruiser.

[Alex]

Ah - thank you for the details! You know, that actually sounds pretty good to me; for a long time the idea has been that capital ships should be the centerpiece of a fleet rather than something that gets flung around in large numbers. It's nice to see that finally taking shape in some way.

You might still get a few cap ships together if you're trying to achieve a specific campaign goal (say, glass a Hegemony core world), but that'd be something more circumstance-driven rather than the "standard" fleet. It could also be something that you do more often if you had more points in leadership, though that aptitude needs a lot of work to be more appealing.

[Wyvern]

My solution to "everything fleeing" is to field a fleet that looks weak, but really isn't.  At the moment, I have one Apogee, one Vigilance, and two tugs; I've just maxed out combat aptitude, and will be starting on tech next.  I field the Apogee for the main fight, and use the Vigilance to run down anything that managed to escape.  Most of the larger pirate fleets - the ones worth fighting - are more than happy to pick a fight with a nearly-solitary cruiser.  And, well, I have maxed combat aptitude and an Apogee with a plasma cannon; the pirates don't stand a chance.