O1.2/O3 CR Recovery time/Big Ships CR Recovery times has been described as a framework to make interesting decisions leading to interesting combat.
In practise the result has been to skew the gameplay experience away from FUN(er)* gameplay experience. Sure StarSector is still fun, but CR is detracting from that fun by promoting lots of cheaper faster units such as frigates, carrier groups and the occasional destroyer for good measure.
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In real life the battleship quickly faded away with the emergence of carrier groups supported by smaller ships (such as frigates/destroyers). Carriers had the ability to project their power via Fighters, Bombers and Torpedo bombers from afar with little to no chance of reprisal from battleships.
Due to the ineffectiveness, low accuracy, high capital and operational expense - battleship production stopped.
To this day carrier groups are the most effective way a country projects “kinetic diplomacy” from afar.
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Ok so what if history support the death knell of battlships: we can talk about speed, limited speed, limited range damage output vector vs multi-highspeed input damage vectors for a large surface area, and realism and so on – but I still want battleships to be the pinnacle achievement and reward for playing the game. If the game is going to make them cost so damn much they’d best perform to the expectation.
But no, not only are battleships fairly vulnerable lumbering beasts, their endurance is nowhere near as competitive. If you’re a high technology battleship forget it, these things require a return to base after every engagement to recover the CR quickly enough.
[My apologies for the long post, please feel free to take a tea break before continuing]
Fireball14 came up with 3 solutions
1) Rounded fleet speed – viable, but he doesn’t like it either
2) Stationary targets – viable
3) Faster perusing fleet – viable but noted difficulty and poor experience for new players
Now I’d suggest
1) Get rid of tugs, this things are so emasculating. I’m a big bad battleship and I need to be tugged between battles so I can pull my big guns out? (humour intended). You’re trying to represent the additional cost of burn speed for large ships, tugs ruin the fantasy of self-powered hurtling through space.
2) Alternative to tugs is to have engine mounts or augmentations that cost credits, extra fuel, extra logistics.
3) Allow the player to push engines beyond 100%, let a guy with big ships push the fleet faster at a cost of CR to model the engine being burned harder. This let’s a player have a tactical advantage in catching up to an enemy or fleeing to a safe area.
I believe Alex proposed a scenario where your base is under attack, and you have some choices in how to get there. In this case you can sprint there, sure your ships will have reduced combat readiness but they did get there in time when it mattered. Kind of like Sulu in Undiscovered country when the ensign says “She’ll fly apart” and Sulu is a boss “Fly her apart then!”
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You could also have it that always flying it at 200% results in ships occasionally receiving hull damage or in rare cases complete destruction.
Mission CapabilityAnother alternative is to modify CR cost. Before I being I want to make a differentiation between
• CR cost (in %)
• CR recovery time (% recovered per day)
• CR supplies used (supplies used per day per CR% recovered)
Al these elements influence the usage/mission capability of larger or more technologically advanced ships.
At the moment larger and more tech oriented ships have a low Mission Capable Rate (MCR).
I am not arguing that they can’t complete missions against large fleets, I’m arguing that their MCR and cost effectiveness outside of occasional defence fleet conflicts is significantly reduced compared to previous versions.I would be interested to see the effect of the following as larger ships are deployed
• Very low CR cost, 2%, 5% and up to 10%
• High relative CR recovery time (1 days for full recovery)
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Very high supply usage per CR% recovery, perhaps 100 – 1000 supplies for single deployment recovery depending on ship effectiveness/tech.
This would mean that you always have the option of deploying your battleship frequently to reflect a model that they’re a robust pinnacle of engineering – not a
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a fragile hanger queen that goes from ready to fight to degraded effectiveness after one brief fight.
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Now this potentially reduces its cost effectiveness, the cost effectiveness is now tied to the set supply usage cost which can tie back to actual credit cost.
I’m not saying it’s the best way but it’s certainly worth trying.
Combat DeploymentSomething else to increase the MCR of large ships in flee scenarios trying to chase smaller ships is simply allow them to burn longer up the left and right side until they get to the top, they can then turn around and approach from the top whilst fighters/frigates from from mid left/mid right and destroyers approach from the bottom.