Well, this is turning into a lively discussion
And while the motherboard on my dev PC is on the fritz, I have some time to partake in it! (Trying hard to find the bright side.)
Some random notes, responding to the points brought up:
It's not an arcade game, so trying to turn it into one probably isn't a good premise to start with. Frigate combat is a bit arcade-like, certainly, but it gets much less so with slower ships, and that's before we even start talking about the plans for the campaign.
So lets get one thing straight. No mater what i or anyone else say(even if we all say its bad) it wont change fact that CR system will stay. Most likely it will be rebalanced a lot but fact is a fact - new core system is here.
Correct on all points
Especially the one with it being rebalanced a lot. Given the feedback (and I have been keeping up with all/nearly all of it, even if I haven't had time to respond to everything in as much detail as I'd like), my takeways so far are 1) the system works in encouraging the kind of gameplay dynamics it was meant to and 2) it has some rough edges. So, right, will be working on that. Very much aware of the learning curve/early game trouble for new players, too.
Funny about the analogy with various level spells being available; was actually going to post something very similar. My comparison would have been spells with different mana costs - say, an expensive AoE vs a cheaper single-target spell. As all analogies, it's not 100% identical, but I think it's largely valid. What that does illustrate is that CR isn't something that limits progression. Well, no more than the mana cost of spells does. You still get more tools you can use, you still get more powerful and able to take on larger challenges, and that's before you consider progression along other axes - like character skills. And you can still overwhelm something weaker badly once in a while, just for the fun of it - or if it happens to be necessary for larger strategic reasons (not currently present).
You're not going to be able to nuke everything from orbit all the time, no. Even if it's the only way to be sure. If that makes the game less fun for you, my apologies, but I strongly believe that allowing that would be, all things considered, a very bad idea.
As far as CR costs of high tech ships being higher than low-tech and it evening the playing field: right, that it does. But that doesn't make ships the same, some are still more suited for different roles or playstyles than others. Besides, what's the alternative? If you have a few clearly "best" options, then that's what will get used. What CR does here is it expands the pool of viable options, *without* making them all the same in combat. The way it does it, of course, is through out-of-combat considerations.
-4b: The "hard-foughtness" of a battle (as used to calculate CR recovery from the stand down option) is based linearly on the DP value of enemies destroyed, which results in the "5 Hounds sent one at a time renders capital ship completely helpless" problem (it's actually way harder than that, and the AI will never realistically use it, but the fact that it's possible suggests a problem nevertheless)
More like 25+ Hounds. Just saying
The number is high enough where I don't think this is actually a problem.
Okay, (4a). This one's a real pickle, because while it's obviously "wrong" , it's also awfully easy to come up with a "solution" that makes things worse by promoting gamey behavior in order to minmax CR. Like the popular suggestion of using ammo consumption as a factor in the calculation; during 0.6's development, Alex actually came up with the idea of hitting ships with a CR cost for using missiles. Yeah... I think you can see the problem with that one. Damage taken on armor/hull, another popular suggestion, is already modeled by the current repair system.
Yeah, definitely. A more complex way of tracking it is both more difficult to explain and more prone to being gamed.
(Another point about damage taken on armor/hull being the main metric: ships that can avoid this damage would be effectively free to deploy. Not good!)
(4b) should be largely covered by the fix to (4a), but here's an additional idea. Currently the recovery factor seems to run from 100% at no kills to 0% at (killed DP value == own deployed DP value). You could add a constant to it, so it instead scales from (say) 100% at (KDP == DDP*0.5) to 0% at (KDP == DDP*1.5) - this establishes a minimum value to commit in order to whittle down a capital's CR with wave attacks.
Hmm. The exact formula is actually hidden from the player anyway, so making it a bit more involved wouldn't hurt. Haven't thought it through all the way- there may be some implications - but at first glance I like the idea. Thinking it through further, though... you could massively over-deploy to the point where your stand-down would be 100% effective, and get all your CR back, plus half the loot. Yeah, that's problematic, since now it's encouraging over-deployment.
Spoiler
Ok, here is another potential piece of the puzzle in improving CR and may help new players.
At the moment if you go above your logistics capability you're penalised on CR and supply usage. How about instead you get a boost if you're
under your logistics rating.
As a new user with a hound I start with between 20 and 44 logistics rating points depending on initial skills, and with the wolf use 3 points only. Let's start with a -1% deployment CR cost per LR rating, and +1% CR recovery per LR, -1% to CR recovery cost
Min. -14% CR Cost per deployment, + 14% to recovery rate + 14% less CR recovery supply cost
Max -41% CR per deployment + 41% to recovery rate + 41% less CR recovery supply cost
You can tweak these values as needed for balance. We could try to tweak it to be free as well. 2%
Min. -28% CR Cost per deployment, + 28% to recovery rate + 28% less CR recovery supply cost (not bad, nearly a third less)
Max -82% CR per deployment + 82% to recovery rate + 82% less CR recovery supply cost (this would avert a death spiral)
As the player grows their fleet they get less fleet logistic bonus and are eased into CR.
This would need to be play tested and tweaked, but I think it may help.
This bonus would certainly give an advantage to smaller fleets, but any small fleet still has the disadvantage of being small and unable to compete with larger ones. Another thought may be to give an extra 1 burn speed for each 10, 15 or 20 LR points unused. Or you get +1 burn at 10, +2 burn at 25, +3 burn at 40 (needs tweaking) So potentially an initial player could look at:
Min. +1 to burn speed, -14% CR Cost per deployment, + 14% to recovery rate + 14% less CR recovery supply cost
Max +4 to burn speed, -41% CR per deployment + 41% to recovery rate + 41% less CR recovery supply cost
What effect this may have on the game is
- Slowly eased into the game
- Smaller fleets are still competitive with larger fleets in terms of Return on Investment due to fast CR recovery and burn speed
- Player keeps larger ships at still kept at abandoned storage until needed to take on defence fleets (bad, micromanagement to change fleet composition all the time)
- Large enemy fleets will have more difficulty keeping up with your burn speed (good?)
- Effectively sets most efficient fleet size ROI fleet as less than 100 point LR fleet (bad? disempowering?)
Thoughts? Comments?
This is very interesting. I think a combination of increasing the CR recovery rate *and* reducing the deployment cost would be a bit much, since both of those end up reducing the total supply cost for a deployment. I.E. if you recover at twice the rate and deployment costs half as much, then it'll take 25% of the original supply cost to get back that CR. Probably using one of the two would be enough, though would have to be careful about how it stacks with the flagship deployment cost reduction from the Combat aptitude. Basically, my reaction to anything reducing deployment costs is to approach it very carefully, since that opens the door to easier overkill deployments.
Another potential problem is how this interacts with ship repairs - those use your logistics "headroom" as a bonus to the base emergency repair capacity. Could just say that while repairs or ongoing, any CR recovery rate bonus is lost, though - that seems acceptable. Also, as you mentioned, investing in logistics could still be a good idea for a small fleet. Not sure how I feel about that.
Still, this is a neat idea. It would make the early game more forgiving in a more organic/elegant way than, say a "50% CR" option. Kudos for coming up with it, whether it ends up being used or not
- Reduce supply consumption. Freighters (and Oxen by extension, due to freighters' slow speed) should be useful for trading runs or extended voyages or raiding parties, not required to pick up all loot from one fight without sending LR to 0%.
Yeah, that makes sense. I think while the relative costs may be more or less ok, in terms of how much a ship costs you to get on the field, the overall amounts of supplies - as they relate to the cargo capacity of the combat ships - might be too high. Will definitely have a look at that at some point; probably a bit further along.
- Some way to make more fleet configurations useful as in previous versions.
I think the main issue is that capital ships don't have as much of a job given the state of the Sector and the types of fleets you're running into, but that's totally unrelated to CR. Aside from that, I don't think the variety of viable fleet configurations has gone down any. If anything, non-combat ships now have more of a reason to exist. And you can still use capital ships effectively if you invest in Navigation/Combat and pick up some Tugs.