- Frigates: "peak active time" will continue to count down while any enemy ship is within visual range of the frigate
- Reduced peak active time for frigates (generally by about a minute, less/more at the low/high ends of the spectrum)
- Halved deployment cost and CR recovery rate (i.e. supply cost and recovery time remain the same, more deployments are possible)
Not too fond of these changes, especially with the current supply system.
Edit: To clarify, I feel as if there is too much reliance on a single resource to do everything, and everything you do affect it. Instead of having crewmembers use a separate resource called "provisions" or something, they also consume supplies.
This is a pretty valid concern. However, I think it'll really come into play once industry is implemented; the player will be able to produce his own supplies, as well as other possible things like ores to trade away for cash, or perhaps to manufacture ships. You'll also likely be able to ship supplies to places where it's needed more, and is thus more valuable/gains you reputation with whatever faction needed it.
I'm fine with resources being in a single form. It simplifies things elegantly. I think the best way to address your concern is to make supply need a more long term thing. Make supply consumption lower, supply acquisition harder, and the punishment for low supplies more gradual.
For instance, you could make it so that you don't "run out" of supplies. When you run too low on supplies (the number of which can be determined by a myriad of ways; percent of maximum cargo capacity, or more likely percent of daily/weekly/monthly supply consumption) the fleet begins to ration supplies, at which point logistical percent starts slowly ticking down. Right now it's binary; when you run out of supplies, bam, that percentage just drops like a rock.
There needs to be more of a capacity to "make do" for at least a little while. Best case scenario, this would be done in the form of the player making intelligent decisions, getting more gameplay out of the logistical side of the game. However, I have no idea how to implement that, shy of an admittedly mediocre dialogue minigame where you try to decide where supplies should go. "Should we use this portion of supplies to repair this ship's turret gyros or its maneuvering thrusters?" And so on.