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[Debido]

O4 Supply costs are too high

The supply costs are a two way street, with their current value they allow a player to earn credits very quickly and some play styles earn more money, on the other hand if they don’t tune their gameplay supplies can overwhelm new players.

A common solution is to have the cost of supplies in ‘Tutorial Sector’ different from the rest of the galaxy,

[Debido]

If you have a huge ship that you can not sustain - downsize.

Sell the ship, mothball it, scuttle it for supplies ... Tough decision but perfectly reasonable in my eyes

Ok I will have to disagree with you on the gameplay experience point here, it shouldn't always be necessary to scuttle a ship. Scuttling a ship is a desperate move if you can't get to storage in time. More often than not large and expensive ships are placed in storage and swapped out for smaller and more cost effective ships.

Having said that this also has to do with the current quantity and spatial distribution of enemy fleets. To sustain a fleet of large battleships you need to be continually pounding equally large ships, however they are not as common as mid to small sized fleets.

I'd have to start pulling out bell curve distribution graphs to visually demonstrate, but the current sweet spot for cost effective return is not defeating large fleets.

[PCCL]

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.
Subjective as all hell, sure Starfarer campaign has thus far just been able chasing stuff, so faster is always better, that has been the case in 0.54 as well. But let's face it, heavier ships are just not gonna be good in a pursuit scenario, that's not what they're supposed to be good at

but I still want battleships to be the pinnacle achievement and reward for playing the game.
Well... I don't... I just want a nice balanced fleet, making battleships OP is gonna detriment that.

If the game is going to make them cost so damn much they’d best perform to the expectation.
They perform to my expectation... If I have a battleship in my fleet, ain't nobody is gonna get past that particular green circle in the sector... I'm not sure what you expect from them

But no, not only are battleships fairly vulnerable lumbering beasts, their endurance is nowhere near as competitive.
Excuse me? Battleships are vulnerable? In which sector? What? (Again, buggy non-deployment battles aside). Unless you're talking about how they're vulnerable to agile strikecrafts and frigates, in which case I say that sounds about right and you should bring escorts

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.
The Paragon? She recovers from a battle in 8.75 days and is nigh unbeatable even without an escort (forlorn hope, anyone?). If you're bringing something THAT big out more often than once in 9 days, I'm pretty sure it's supposed to cost you

Fireball14 came up with 3 solutions
1)   Rounded fleet speed – viable, but he doesn’t like it either
ya, me neither

2)   Stationary targets – viable
the next step the game's going, I think. Stationary assets you have to defend and enemy ones you can force them to defend.

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.
Oh good, cuz my fantasy is having a fleet where ships have to support each other to be effective, not self powered monster ship hurtling through space

2)   Alternative to tugs is to have engine mounts or augmentations that cost credits, extra fuel, extra logistics.
Could work... We already have certain hull mods that increase burn speed....

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.
This I like, How about we can set the burn speed by clicking the speed gauge? Then we consume supply if we go overspeed just like if we go over cargo or crew or fuel? That sounds good...


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.
Well... Yeah... Big ships for killing big fleets, small ships for killing small fleets, that's kinda the point

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 fragile hanger queen that goes from ready to fight to degraded effectiveness after one brief fight.
But... Uh... That's what they are... It's been 205 cycles since anything has been invented... Like... At all. The Onslaught is a shambling mess of outdated metal and the Paragon is a delicate hangar queen that shines bright for homecoming, but then goes in her room and cries herself to sleep. Battleships aren't meant to participate in every other skirmish in the system, only the greatest battles where they and only they can make the difference that absolutely needs to be made

Bottom line, I feel CR is just fine. If anything it's the rest of the campaign's fault. As alex said, it IS a transitionary period, more campaign depth is coming soon. The fact that campaigns are little more than chase and kill means that faster ships are SUPPOSED to dominate. If battleships start dominating the hunter-killer role, frigates will have no room in the game.

inb4 i can't speak for the future of the game, just fix what's wrong now:
Except fixing all the complaints about CR is gonna take about as long as it would to implement the next campaign bit (that is to say, about 1 big patch worth of time). Fixing CR's status quo and making it work in this chase and kill world would be moving backwards in what starfarer is supposed to be (by alex's vision) whereas keep working on the campaign would be moving forward. I know which way I want him to go.

...this also has to do with the current quantity and spatial distribution of enemy fleets. To sustain a fleet of large battleships you need to be continually pounding equally large ships, however they are not as common as mid to small sized fleets.

This hit the nail on the head, I think. The problem is not inherently with CR, but how CR interacts with the current, incomplete, campaign.

[mendonca]

@debido:

I actually agree with you. Scuttling should only be an option when there is nothing left - but it is still an option and preferable to certain-death caused by repeated accidents.

Teaching the player about this is a different issue, I guess.

I wonder if part of the problem is that generally, all other computer games since 1999 have taught players that you CAN spend every red cent you earn; you get to KEEP everything you find; you WILL win if you just play for long enough etc.

Xenoargh mentioned it, but this games tone is supposed to be about erosion, a failing society bereft of hope, a slow death - not necesarily about heroes purging hell of all evil and emerging victorious.

[PCCL]

And, might i add, not about heroes riding alone into battle in a single battleship only to emerge victorious against bigger fleets and chase down smaller ones that have every right to be faster

[Debido]

So do you guys enjoy having to return to base to change fleet composition to match the threat?

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 fragile hanger queen that goes from ready to fight to degraded effectiveness after one brief fight.

But... Uh... That's what they are... It's been 205 cycles since anything has been invented... Like... At all. The Onslaught is a shambling mess of outdated metal and the Paragon is a delicate hangar queen that shines bright for homecoming, but then goes in her room and cries herself to sleep. Battleships aren't meant to participate in every other skirmish in the system, only the greatest battles where they and only they can make the difference that absolutely needs to be made

I understand where you're coming from using Lore as a means of justification...but Lore and gameplay experience are two different things. Lore is modifiable...weapons, hulls and all sorts of McGuffins that are a means to an end are modifiable. I would like a solution to the usability of larger and more technologically advanced to balance gameplay, how it's logically rationalised is up to the person writing the Codex.

[Reapy]

So I would somewhat consider myself a 'new' user though I have been around a bit...just I drop in and check out the game and play a bit from time to time without a huge investment in learning and playing for too long.  The CR patch I only put in about an hour with or so, I had been following the patch notes but found it somewhat confusing to figure out what was going on with everything as I didn't quite remember what does what.

My first thought was that really it is something that could be optimized and explained via UI improvements and a short tutorial somewhere, so no big deal about my confusion. Really the thing missing right now is a campaign context for everything. The game is still in a just dump you in a testing ground sort of state. I dislike the preliminary grind a lot, but I imagine a fleshed out game will allow me to kill a few buffalos and do some trading or join up with some larger faction base for some alternative start strategies.

I think honestly it is too early in the game to judge CR, as it can obviously be tweaked pretty easily, but really the good thing about it is that you have some mechanics to connect the two 'games' together as well as forcing support ships on fleets, which will add a lot to the diversity of fleet composition and introduce scenarios where you have ships that are liabilities floating around out there in the combat portion.

I think right now it just feels off because the only thing to do in the game is combat after combat after combat, and anything that slows that down or gets in the way of just doing that is going to make the game less fun. When there are more things to do, and combat is a means to some sort of end, it may be a bit more fun having to rejig your fleet for long range exploration or massive cargo hauling vs a pure combat campaign.

So some small tweaks that are going down to it are good, but CR and the numbers/things going into it can not be really constructed until more of the campaign and its focus are planned out and created. So it is really my belief that the anti-fun part of CR is really due to the game still being in development with many more gameplay systems still to go.

[Megas]

With all due respect to the lore writers, story is an excuse plot to play the game.  In this case, blast ships (at the moment)!  Doom's story, demons from Hell invading Phobos, and later Earth, sound more horrific than this, yet the first two games were really fun at the time, and the story did not get in the way of game.  Part of what killed most modern games for me starting with Half-Life and beyond is turning most games into a movie, except they lack the novelty of Dragon's Lair.

[PCCL]

The gameplay reason is that they are not meant to participate in every other skirmish and are only supposed to be used in the greatest fleet actions where you absolutely need them to make the difference

CR is not a lore mechanic, its meant to pave the way for campaign mode. This is not "lore getting in the way of gameplay

[Megas]

We can judge what we have now, complain about it if it is bad, and (hopefully) gets better before the finished product.

[PCCL]

Which brings me back to the last point: i think cr is the wrong thing to complain about

the current campaign doesnt work very well with cr (heck it doesnt work very well in general, just worse with cr), to fix this, we shouldnt be looking at fixing cr to work better with the campaign, we should be looking at introducing more campaign mechanics that will make cr more meaningful(which is what alex is planning)

As i said before, look to the future, not the past

[Megas]

Which brings me back to the last point: i think cr is the wrong thing to complain about

That is your right.  It is my right to complain about it if I think it is the right thing to complain about.  I am aware CR is here to stay, but I do not think it is beyond hope to salvage.  But, as it is, it is a fun killer.

As i said before, look to the future, not the past

I look to the present, because v0.6 is what we have to play.  I look to the future when a new update is ready.

[xenoargh]

the current campaign doesnt work very well with cr

Well, that does beg the question, though, folks: should CR have been put in now, or later?  

I think that's getting things backwards, though.  

I think that the main problem it's really highlighted is that the game's difficulty curve is inverted.  This has always been true, and we've just ignored it up until now, largely because until CR, I guess it wasn't hard enough to cause this kind of screaming and ragequit behavior, hehe


So correct the current difficulty curve by nerfing the CR system a little bit in the obvious places (fighter costs, Marine cost-effectiveness, etc.) ... then lower Supply costs a great deal, but make it so that players have to pay their crew weekly wages based on their experience level, perhaps also pay for the size of the fleet in FPs.  

I found that that one small change gave a non-inverted difficulty curve, in Vacuum; building the uber-fleet and keeping it supplied wasn't the problem... it was the wages being larger than income, if you wanted to have it both be uber and Elite that would eventually bring a high-end player back to earth.

Just a thought; that change would fix a lot of the difficulty-curve issues right away, wipe out the early-game death-spiral unless players were utterly stupid, yet give a real challenge to the vets who are generally not being all that challenged atm.

[PCCL]

Yeah, my point was that the campaign was bad already in 0.54a, cr just made its problems more apparent. And again, the campaign is unfinished and being worked on

Fighter and marine costs are getting rebalanced in 0.6.1a, so im not concerned about that. Wages i agree with, would be better than just pure supply comsumption from crew i think

[Dr.Noid]

Yeh but if my big ship will get some battle damage and i don't really have a good supply of money, i most likely end up in gameover loop.

Yap its fun recovering from your own mistakes, but mistakes made by you when playing a game, and not because some silly game rule says i have lose a game because i won hard battle.

The mistake was not because of some game rule. It was using a ship in battle you could not afford to repair. You can no longer spend all your money on ships, you also have to make sure you have money in the bank to support those ships. If you have a bad run, that might mean you have to temporarily revert back to cheaper ships, or in the future campaign, make money in one of the other ways.

Though that still has nothing to do with CR, but with the cost of repairs.