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[Debido]

I have analysed the mechanic of CR and found it wanting. In the 'Starsector 0.6a (Released) Patch Notes'  thread I posted a 2000 word description of the problem and potential solutions to the ease the burden of CR early on in the game. The concept of stamina is common amongst any game, in one hand it stretches gameplay and in another it prevents exponential growth of a fleet as follows:


(Numbers are indicative, not actual)

With the new Starsector release the gameplay is however looking more like this due to the way CR is stimmying fleet growth arbitrarily and selectively forcing certain gameplay types:



What I would like to see is a CR system that isn't so arbitrary trial/error. The current system is static and does not scale, it directly applies the same penalty to a small fleets or single ships as it does large ships and fleets. A more dynamic system should look more like this when played.



This would be a more linear growth until about a fleet size of perhaps 50 units, and then a slow tapering as fleet stamina overheads apply.

I would agree that because the industry part of the game is not yet implemented there is no industry to create supplies, which I assume it is intended to fill that roll. Is 0.6 balanced? No. Are there better ways of implementing an overall downwards pressure on fleet size that reacts dynamically to the players tactics and strategies? Yes - however it may be complicated to do so, simpler suggestions than mine will probably have a better effect. I'm grateful that Alex is actively engaging the community and listening to our suggestions, the more positive and constructive feedback, the better the game and it's mechanics will be.

[BillyRueben]

Fleet size doesn't equal progression. Some of us (like me) enjoy small fleets of advanced ships.

[Griffinhart]

The only real measure of progression in Starsector is your character's XP. The more you have, the better you are, regardless of what you field or fly; and the only way to get more XP is to kill more things.

-

As far as I can tell, all that CR's done is made the Leadership aptitude and Logistics skill actually relevant to the game.

Well, okay, that and it's made the early and mid game slightly more difficult in that you can (more) easily death-spiral yourself via starvation, but the solution to that problem is, basically, never setting out except to do combat, because any time you're out and about, you're burning supplies - so the only reason to ever undock from a station is to get more supplies. I imagine this will be alleviated in the long run when trading and manufacturing are implemented, that way the early game isn't so tightly focused on finding winnable engagements (and then winning them, of course) so that you 1) don't starve to death, and 2) can cash/XP-grind your way to a better ship (or at least a better logistical backbone).

The late game is basically unchanged, other than that you now need to invest in some freighters to haul supplies (and/or fuel).

-- Griffinhart

[Debido]

@BillyReuben: Absolutely, fleet size isn't a 'hard' rule that shows progress, it's how much you enjoy the game! That's the 'real' progress
@Griffinhart: The real measure of progression is your characters XP? Well I'd suggest it's one factor that it is indicative of how much time, effort and combat you've been in. Other factors are credits, human personnel, stored fuel, stored supplies, stored ships and parts etc. One major difference is that XP is a resource that you can build up, but cannot lose or trade.

The intention of CR is to be a means of artificially constraining players maximum or fastest ability to build up resources over time - XP is just another resource. What I'm trying to communicate is the overall effect CR has on gameplay, especially on people starting out. If that is the case, then here is another representation of the problem.



For any game publisher or developer that graph is awful feedback!

There is a fantastic post by Jon Brown on Gamasutra that delves into some of this http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JonBrown/20100922/88111/Difficulty_Curves_Start_At_Their_Peak.php

This post should probably remind people of this image...



I think the feedback being reported is similar to Eve: TSG

[Alex]

The intention of CR is to be a means of artificially constraining players maximum or fastest ability to build up resources over time ...

Well... the main goal of CR is to provide the player with a framework that lets them make more interesting decisions and leads to more interesting battles. If managed properly, I don't think it acts as a constraint on income, at least not compared to the previous release.

All in all, though, I generally agree both about the fleet growth curve and the difficulty curve. As I probably mentioned earlier, both of those need other mechanics in place (economy, trade, production, etc) before I can really delve into addressing them. I do want to do a few things to make it easier on new players in the short term, though.

[Dexy]

I had a close fight. I ran out of supplies. Bought more at the station. Ran out of supplies again while waiting for combat readiness to go up to the point where my ships could fight something. I ran out of money. I sold some ships and mothballed others to buy more supplies. My last two ships in the fleet are still eating up all supplies before reaching a point where they can fight anything.

I registered only to say this: combat readiness is currently horrible and only detracts from the good things in the game.

PS: I've sold everything I own to buy supplies but I never managed to escape the supply drain trap. Since selling my last ship is impossible, I now have to go out and lose it in battle.

A ship that runs out of supplies should always be able to fight.

PPS: I tried to lose my ship in battle, but somehow combat ends in a few seconds with my 0% cr ship. In the end, I lost the ship to an accident. I respawned in a Dram and went out searching for something to kill. Comically, I didn't find anything I could take on before running out of supplies. Now I'm just waiting for another accident so I hopefully respawn in a non-*** ship.

[Thaago]

Tip for respawning in a dram - just go to a station and sell the fuel. You should have enough money to buy a frigate (especially with selling the dram). Then hunt Buffalo's until you have some reserve cash BEFORE buying more ships.

[Dexy]

Tip for respawning in a dram - just go to a station and sell the fuel. You should have enough money to buy a frigate (especially with selling the dram). Then hunt Buffalo's until you have some reserve cash BEFORE buying more ships.

I respawned with 11 fuel, and the last ship in the fleet cannot be sold.

[Sordid]

Tip for respawning in a dram - just go to a station and sell the fuel. You should have enough money to buy a frigate (especially with selling the dram). Then hunt Buffalo's until you have some reserve cash BEFORE buying more ships.

There really needs to be some option to trade in one ship for another.
Game: "You can't sell your last ship."
Me: "But if I sell it, I'll have enough for this other, better ship! Pretty please with sugar on top?"
Game: "I SAID NO, GODDAMMIT!"
Me: "Okay..."  

[Frozen]

People keep whinging about the cost of supplies. Wait a minute, why are you buying them? There's a button after battles. It says "pick through salvage" Try it, you'll be rich!!!

Up your logistics and you'll use less supplies. It costs more to try and field more fleet than you can handle. I for one like the change, it means i don't have to worry about fleet capacity if i just raid traders like crazy. Atm I'm hooning around in an apogee cruiser. costs like 1.5 supply a day. That's chump change. Supplies are free unless you're a bad pilot. If it's that bad sell all but 1 of your fuel and use THAT to buy supplies. It's not like you spend that much time in hyperspace anyways

[Thaago]

Huh... you used to be able to trade sell and buy ships at the same time because it was one screen. Now that its two screens you can't. You also used to always start with the full 350 fuel in the Dram - guess my info is bad for this version!

[Flare]

I think you can still pick up the ships though, maybe if you pick one up and then click to the other screen will allow you to switch them simultaneously.

[xenoargh]

I think that the thing about the difficulty curve has a point. 

For the newbies, we need to bear in mind:  they don't understand the combat mechanics, they haven't bothered playing the Missions, they don't have skills yet.  Most of them haven't even bothered with the tutorial. 

I have a couple of ideas about this issue.

1.  Make a Mission that players need to get through at the start of play on a new playthrough that takes them through the Tutorial.  I think that a heck of a lot of players aren't bothering and are getting real, real frustrated when they're trying to climb the cliff all at once.  All of us who've been here a while just had to pick up the CR system and figure out what was UP / OP this time; for newbies, it was probably pretty crushing to buy this thing and find that there really is no easy intro and that death is just a few screwups in terms of buy-order away. 

The idea that players will find out quickly that they need to become Buffalo-hunters for quite some time and save up money isn't realistic; first-time players really do need to do a bit of learning about the economics behind the CR system, or it needs to be heavily nerfed until the other elements are available.

2.  I think that the death-spiral issue's a big problem, largely because the game's not giving players enough information about what's up or is presenting it in a way that's not quite easy enough to read.  For example, if the player's out of Supplies, the first time that happens, the game should go ahead and throw up a Dialog, saying something along the lines of, "Your supplies are exhausted, and time is running out.  Either Mothball your fleet and head to the nearest Station to buy Supplies at exorbitant rates or pick a fight with another fleet as soon as possible to gain their Supplies and save your fleet!"

3.  Lastly, one of the issues here that's been pointed out more than once is that, inadvertently or not, Supplies have become the de-facto currency in the game.

That's fine and dandy- survivalist gameplay is not a bad idea in and of itself - but if it's going to keep working like that, beyond the range of nerfs for 0.61a to simply make Fighters viable-ish, it needs to be much more emphasized as the game moves forwards, so that newbies understand, as quickly as possible, the core things all of us vets know:

A.  Big fleets <> powerful fleets.  Small fleets can defeat very large ones... if you're skilled.
B.  It is very unwise to build a fleet's size until you are quite sure you can keep it supplied.
C.  It is important at all times to keep supply use down in large fleets by using Mothball whenever possible.
D.  You gain some experience for anything you kill, but you also gain experience after taking losses. 
E.  Losing your fleet is not the end of your story.

[Histidine]

People who don't play an eight-minute tutorial shouldn't complain about being chewed up and spit out.

Other than that: yeah, I agree completely.
I'd generalize the death spiral problem to: the game doesn't warn you ahead of time about all the supplies you're going to be using.

One idea I had was to alleviate the problem was to add 200 supplies to the Abandoned Storage Facility as an "emergency stash" that newbies could raid if they somehow found themselves in a plunge. Aside from the problem of pointing players to it, however, I suspected that the kind of newbie who'd need something like that would just end up hauling it to the Hegemony station and selling all of it, buying a cruiser, and ending up in exactly the rut it was supposed to prevent.

[Midnight Kitsune]

People who don't play an eight-minute tutorial shouldn't complain about being chewed up and spit out.
Other than that: yeah, I agree completely.
I'd generalize the death spiral problem to: the game doesn't warn you ahead of time about all the supplies you're going to be using.
One idea I had was to alleviate the problem was to add 200 supplies to the Abandoned Storage Facility as an "emergency stash" that newbies could raid if they somehow found themselves in a plunge. Aside from the problem of pointing players to it, however, I suspected that the kind of newbie who'd need something like that would just end up hauling it to the Hegemony station and selling all of it, buying a cruiser, and ending up in exactly the rut it was supposed to prevent.

The thing is though is that there is NO tutorial about this CR stuff! That was the first thing I checked when I got the new update.
And I agree with the "emergency stash" problem. Maybe have them at 20 or 50 instead of 200? Or maybe have the stations repair you for free or amuch reduced price as long as you are under a certain level? I don't know