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[Dexy]

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.

That wouldn't help at all. You won't make it to the station in time before being attacked or losing ships. Besides, 200 supplies is nothing! I burned through way more than that.

The death spiral should not exist in this form. Combat should always be an option to get out of it.

[Dexy]

Besides my whining about the death spiral, I think there are some positive aspects to cr & supplies as well, but the negative ones outnumber them at the moment. Here's a comparison:

The good:
- not being able to fight many battles with no rest in between is good.
- supplies mattering is a requirement for an economy that matters

Undecided:
- cr dropping after some time in battle.

The bad:
- The aforementioned death spiral, ie. ships not being able to fight at all with 0% CR. The AI suffers from it as well, I see lots of pirate ships at 0% CR flying around.
- Too easy to win against larger fleets.
- High tech ships take forever to recover cr, which makes them terrible. Low tech vs high tech should not be balanced in this way.
- If we are to micromanage supplies, then the UI should help us do so. ie. a checkbox that stops repairing if supplies drop past a certain threshold.
- Repairs eat a ridiculous amount of supplies. A Medusa costs 18000 credits, and takes 240 supplies to repair fully. 240 supplies cost 28800 credits. What?
- Constant pressure to acquire more supplies is annoying. Which is yet another sign that supplies are consumed too quickly. Also they're probably gained too quickly. Supply gain and expenditure should be both slowed down.

[Musaab]

There is a setting that says "Damage taken by your ship" which can be set to Half or Full....it's default appears to be half.

Is it just self explanatory?  Have people finding things too easy try setting it to full?  Any difference?

[ValkyriaL]

AI does twice their damage (their normal damage AKA the same damage as you do with your weapons.) , but i barely notice any difference since i usually never get hit to begin with.

[Musaab]

So full really isn't full, but double, and half really isn't half, but normal???

[Dexy]

So full really isn't full, but double, and half really isn't half, but normal???

No, I think he's wrong. With half damage taken enabled, I can brawl down AI Lashers with my own Lasher before taking hull damage. Same with Hounds. The player definitely has a noticeable advantage. Without any skills.

[ValkyriaL]

Think you have it wrong, full damage is 100% damage, so AI will do their normal damage with full damage enabled, 50% is half their damage. so they will only hit for 15 damage despite the weapon they have normally does 30.

[Uomoz]

Oh god. Simple answer: half damage, the piloted ship takes half damage; full damage, the piloted ship takes normal damage.

[liq3]

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.

So another way of interrupting it is this: You didn't have enough money or supplies to get your fleet back up to a point where it could function in battle. There is no supply drain trap. Most ships in the game can carry enough supplies to deploy anywhere from 4-30 times. The average is about 11 excluding freighters. On the other hand, almost no ships can carry enough to repair themselves even once (from say 1% hull and no armour (aside from freighters)). This makes sense, since I imagine a 1% hull ship with no armour, is a ship so badly damaged it's a miracle it can even move. And people are hardly gonna carry around enough supplies to rebuild most of a ship.

If you make bad tactical choices, lose several battles in a row and fail to produce enough money to maintain your ships, then yes I'm pretty sure the consequence should be to die horribly in the cold depths of space while the engine breaks down and the life support fails (lucky they don't go that far eh?).

[Dexy]

If you make bad tactical choices, lose several battles in a row and fail to produce enough money to maintain your ships, then yes I'm pretty sure the consequence should be to die horribly in the cold depths of space while the engine breaks down and the life support fails (lucky they don't go that far eh?).

I won all battles you reading comprehension impaired moron.

[liq3]

If you make bad tactical choices, lose several battles in a row and fail to produce enough money to maintain your ships, then yes I'm pretty sure the consequence should be to die horribly in the cold depths of space while the engine breaks down and the life support fails (lucky they don't go that far eh?).

I won all battles you reading comprehension impaired moron.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhic_victory
2. I never said you lost your battles. Funny how people seem to notice their own faults in others.

[Dexy]

If you make bad tactical choices, lose several battles in a row and fail to produce enough money to maintain your ships, then yes I'm pretty sure the consequence should be to die horribly in the cold depths of space while the engine breaks down and the life support fails (lucky they don't go that far eh?).

I won all battles you reading comprehension impaired moron.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhic_victory
2. I never said you lost your battles. Funny how people seem to notice their own faults in others.

Right. You're just using weasel words to suggest that your example is relevant to the scenario I described.

[Gothars]

If you make bad tactical choices, lose several battles in a row and fail to produce enough money to maintain your ships, then yes I'm pretty sure the consequence should be to die horribly in the cold depths of space while the engine breaks down and the life support fails (lucky they don't go that far eh?).

I won all battles you reading comprehension impaired moron.

That is not acceptable language. I'll give you a warning for it, don't let it happen again.


Regarding your experience with the game: The CR recovery process is not as expensive as one might think, frigates cost about 5 and destroyers about 10 to 20 supplies to recover from one deployment. Here's a excel spreadsheet if your are interested.
What really is expensive are indeed repairs, so if you are low on supplies, suspend them. And don't forget that you can recover all your CR instantly at a friendly station if you have the supplies, no need to wait.

[Fireball14]

Hi ben playing this game for bit now(soft core player), and it was realy fun (especially playing lone ship), and now i dicidead to update to 0.6 and what did i got?
Lots of pain surviving constant stress of runing out of supplys, and in end no CR so i cant fight anymore -> cant get more money -> cant get more supplays -> cant get more CR -> Cant fight anymore! Anyway that was my first try.
Now on second playthrou i goten to BS and evrything was fine exept HOW DA***** I SUPPOSED TO ENJOY MY GAME IF I JUST SIT THERE DOING NOTHING!!!!! Realy devs, as good as it looks on drawing board - CR as bad for game. Basicly i waana game where i can go and have a fun fight whenever I WANT and play battle as i like it(its enough i cant go in battle cos of damage iv got). If you want that system implantet so badly then make it an option for hardcore players when thay start new game, or at least make mod option to disable this system completely(all ships always have 50% CR).

For now im back to 0.5 version and gonna stay with it until game stops being so hardcore. And sorry for my emotions, I just hate to see a good game going bad.

[Silver Silence]

^

"i kno this game is beta but it sux i cant kil anything and CR is ***. one battle and all my money is gone wtf???!!eleven!1!"

EDIT:
I guess I should probably drop this in here. It will reduce all supply/day costs on ships to 1 supply/day and ships will only lose 1CR to be fielded in battle. 'Course, this makes ships immune to the being-worn-down-by-harrying tactic that a lot of people are employing to get easier kills but it will mean you can keep up to date with mods and the like.