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[CopperCoyote]

What if the reserve ships ticked down at a slightly reduced rate? That way you could trickle in ships and be a soloing master of combat, but have diminishing returns if you do.

[Midnight Kitsune]

@Alex: I can see a savy or skill player using a few disposable hounds (or other cheap to restore CR on) ship to "drain down" the enemy's reserves then come in with a cap and steamroll the enemy. Also it might confuse some newer players because their "combat time" is ticking down even though they are out of combat

[GenBOOM]

I don't claim to know a whole lot about mechanics or anything here, so this may be a bit out of the box, but this is an idea....

What if instead of a time limit there was a functionality limit based on how many supplies the ship is carrying at the moment?
Similar to how a ship has a minimum crew to operate, a minimum supply to function effectively during combat would make more sense to me.

-Each ships has a % of their supply dedicated to CR and ship functionality. Once that % of the supply is gone, due to repairing/reloading/managing flux (not based on time), the functionality of the ship begins to degrade rapidly.
-Bigger ships have more supply and can repair their ships more effectively for longer.
-Discourages fighting just anyone, because sometimes it won't be profitable to fight at all. Not all fights have to be profitable, but there would still be the benefit of eliminating your opposition.

Example:
100 supply total, 10 supply dedicated to CR and once that 10 supply is "eaten" during combat due to repairing/reloading/managing flux (not based on time), and you can't maintain CR because readying supplies for all these things takes time.

I think this would still encourage players to do all the right things without putting a definite number on combat time. Instead of creating a super massive fleet or an extremely modified all in one ship, it will be more about how well you manage your fleets logistics and how efficient you can make them as a whole.
This could make a lot more sense once industry is added into the game.

[Vind]

Current game play forces 1 vs enemy fleet battles. I see no reason to deploy any AI allied ships because - first they totally cant fly around without getting sorrounded and killed, second - cant attack in the allowed CR time and do something at all useful, third - they cost supplies for almost NO gain at all. Player must do all the fighting AND babysitting friendly AI from being killed. Enemy AI admiral is slightly better because it orders AI ships to be a blob escort fleet and fight with blob vs 1 target. It never works against player but friendly AI will get surrounded and killed without any problems. CR will butcher 1 vs fleet tactic and this leaves player with useless friendly AI and tons of wasted supplies for repairs afterwards. The kiting tactic CR was introduced to solve is actually not very useful as it is massively time consuming and it is better to fight 5-10 small battles instead. Whole system with cargo ships parked safely in alternate "reserve reality space" is not very useful and allows single ship take all salvage after battle not risking his slow and vulnerable cargo ships. If player want to battle for 1 hour straight, wasting time - why forbid this? Any mechanic will be used against AI more effectively by player. How about all ships will enter battle space sooner or later with timer after first deployment without magical reserve places and you will need to actually protect your freighters with cargo from enemy ships. You will need to protect them until they can jump out of battle area and be safe from enemy attacks and then attack the remaining enemy ships. With all ships required to be deployed you dont need to worry about kiting as lone frigate cant haul all loot back to base and freighter will be vulnerable to slow enemy attacks. Also removing control points in small battles gives kiting even more preference as enemy feet cant control points and receive much needed speed bonuses.

[Megas]

All ships losing CR would be VERY expensive.  It might be fine if the point of the game is to avoid fighting at all costs, but combat seems to be the main point of the game.  Why spend years developing a good combat engine only for the rest of the game to undermine it?

- *Player might be able to cheese the AI by hiding in a corner/otherwise avoiding combat in a performance-extended ship or perhaps a fast capital ship like the Conquest

Not to mention that capitals aside from civilians have enough firepower to mow down anything in their way.

This would certainly encourage all-capital fleets.  I would certainly take a capital, move it to a corner (and outgun anyone who tries to stop me), and wait in a corner to let everyone rot.  I would be highly amused by this at first, then become disappointed because I am not winning combat by shooting up stuff, which was why I got Starfarer in the first place.  On the other hand, I cannot stand winning without using the most optimal method, and if doing so involves rules trickery, like auto-resolving all fleets before 0.6 for powerleveling, so be it.

All of my ammoless ships by endgame have Hardened Subsystems because it is that good - it enables frigates that try to solo fleets kill more ships before they need to retreat.  (Ships with ammo limits do not get Hardened Subsystems because they run out of ammo first.)

I agree with Vind that the game encourages solo play.

• Enemies drop so little loot that it is a good idea to use a frigate or two so that you can loot more than you consume, regardless of bounties.
• Many enemies flee if your fleet is too large.  If you want to kill pirate scouts without repeated harrying, you fleet cannot have more than about 10 or so DP.  That means about two Wolves of similar.
• Player has very limited Logistics without Leadership.  However, Combat and Technology have most of the fun stuff, and if player ignores Leadership until he maxes Combat and Technology, he must fight with what little he has.
• AI is somewhat incompetent if outnumbered or outclassed.  Player is better off alone (or with his entire fleet if it is large enough).
• When hauling commodities, you really want to maximize your cargo, and to do that, you want every ship that is not your flagship a freighter (or tanker in case of fuel).  This is what I did in much of 0.62 due to excess loot, and I loathed it, enough to stop playing the game until 0.65.

[Megas]

About forcing civilians into battle:  Unless there is an arena trap to prevent escape, all the player needs to do is order them to retreat after they burn in, either wasting CP or (if out) use full retreat and finish the battle solo.  Before 0.6, if battle was small enough, everyone was auto-deployed, and the player scrambled to retreat every last ship unsuited for fighting (and your Tarsus would often burn drive ahead before turning around to retreat, if it survived its mistake.)

[Vind]

     Good idea would be be to permit exit from battle area for civilian or damaged ships once you have control of specific map point or have some other objective completed beforehand. Simply flying to top edge of the map is simple for many ships especially tarsus freighter with burn drive. Giving some control point requirement for ships to depart from top screen border while battle is not decided would be fun and difficult to achieve.    Right now AI undeployed cargo/civilian ships trick is really boring as it is required 2 battles to completely wipe out enemy fleet and double amount of CR for effectively boring shooting of auto-piloted ships. Then enemy deploys single fighter wing with 3-4 ships in reserve and you cant do anything about it - it is wrong on so many levels. If civilian ships forced to battle area and cant retreat from the side they deployed immediately it would be nice. In my opinion control points value must be upped giving them specific combat bonuses like allowing to retreat or allowing to increase CR of some ships in battle for fixed amount. Also fixed bonuses is good but much better would be a set radius for control point bonus around it.

[Megas]

Right now AI undeployed cargo/civilian ships trick is really boring as it is required 2 battles to completely wipe out enemy fleet and double amount of CR for effectively boring shooting of auto-piloted ships.

It also gives them total protection from player who does not want Vengeful relations.  I can harry civilians as much as I want, but they will never, ever stand their ground and fight.  If I pursue and fight, I will drop from -75 (hostile) to -80 (vengeful) and forever lose bargains and storage at pirate bases - not worth it.

[Gothars]

maybe sparking something related.

After thinking up countless flawed iterations, I have finally arrived at a solution that I like:

Each fleet gets a certain amount of Battle Time (BT), which is prominently ticking down, e.g. in the UI element on the upper right corner of the screen.

 It is a summation of the Peak Readiness Time (PRT, would be renamed) of all the ships a side deploys*. Ships don't have an individual clock anymore! Before the battle starts, the deployment dialog clearly shows the BT that would result from the deployment of the current ship selection. The player practically makes a bet how many minutes (and, as now, ships) he'll need to defeat the enemy. Betting too high leads to unnecessary deployment costs, betting too low to time pressure.
The opposing fleet would have its own BT too, likely a different amount, since it deploys other ships. I'd say you can see it only on the command UI, since you (hopefully) can't exploit it anyway.

*

Spoiler

Alternatively, BT is calculated depending on the deployment points of the ships a side deployed. DP already reflects combat strength, so civilian ships wouldn't contribute to BT so much.  It would allow to scratch the PRT stat. And skills could increase DP for a solo playstile. I suspect this is the better solution, but I haven't thought it trough yet.

[close]

Once the BT reaches zero, CR degradation begins (individual for each ship). Now, or at any time before that, reinforcement could be deployed to get some extra BT. Reinforcement ships would not contribute their normal PRT though, but only a percentage of it. Let's say a flat 50%. That does mean you can correct your initial time bet, but it's costly.

Benefits:
- This is very clear to present in the UI and easy to understand. Just one number, ticking down.
- Invalidates compulsive endurance-kiting. Any light kite-ship will have far less BT than its would-be prey. (Skills could re-enable it for people who want that.)
- Makes chain flag ship deployments uneconomical, since reinforcements will contribute reduced BT. That can be balanced by the percentage of reduction.
- Makes hiding on the map pointless. Either you're weaker than the enemy, then they have more BT and can outlast you. Or you're stronger and have enough BT to wait them out... but why would you do that if you're stronger anyway?
- Allows to make the stand down mechanic less exploitable (see below).

Problems:
- It's maybe a bit harder than before to sell the lore for this. I'd say that having the advantage in combat strength reduces the stress for both crew and ships systems. Also, something about fleet wide electronic warfare networks, firewalls holding only so long, time dependent on combined fleet processing power -> BT.
- I have been finding and fixing problems with this for hours now. I'm really tired and suspect I still missed some mechanical problems. You guys go wild.



Stand Down CR recovery could be calculated by subtracting the remaining BT of your enemy from you own. The resulting time would be converted back into the CR you spent on deployment with a fixed minus of ~10%.

Examples:

Spoiler

You deploy a battleship (effective supply cost=100) which grants 10min BT, the enemy a destroyer with 5 minutes BT. You beat it after 2 minutes. Makes 8min - 3min = 5minutes remaining, which is half of your initial BT. Subtract the fixed 10%, and you get back 45% of your deployment cost by standing down (cost = 55 supplies).
For a frigate with 2min BT that would be 72% (cost = 28 supplies).
For another battleship with 10min BT it would be 0% recovery.

Another example:  You over-deployed, say three battleships which grant 30min BT, the enemy is a destroyer with 5 minutes BT. You beat it after 1 minute. Makes 29min - 4min = 25minutes remaining. Subtract the fixed 10%, and you get back 67,5% of your deployment cost by standing down, which would cost you 97,5 supplies.

[close]

Effects:
- There's no point in over-deploying, you can never get back all your deployment costs .
- There's also no point in deploying reinforcements to save money, they are bad at standing down due to their BT penalty.
- The BT of your enemy (assuming it is shorter than yours) is the time you have to defeat him without further penalty to the amount of CR you can recover from standing down.

[Megas]

@ Gothars:  (A bit tired myself at this posting...)  If I over-deploy with your idea, do I still recover more CR for a specific ship than if it fights alone or with only minimal support?  The main reason why I over-deploy is to recover more CR for my flagship so that CR costs do not break my flagship after two or three fights.  Credit costs mean less after I accumulate lots of wealth late in the game and become more interested in chain-battling and powerleveling.

EDIT:

And skills could increase DP for a solo playstile.

Currently, I like to keep DP low for few reasons:

• 40 DP or less means no objectives (except in pursuits), which is great!
• The more DP you have, the more fleets will flee from you.
• Player cannot disengage from unwanted fights without a fight if DP is too high.
• Without increasing battle size (from 200 to 500), player will be prevented from deploying everything if fleet is too big.

[SafariJohn]

Stand Down CR recovery could be calculated by subtracting the remaining BT of your enemy from you own. The resulting time would be converted back into the CR you spent on deployment with a fixed minus of ~10%.

Examples:

Spoiler

You deploy a battleship (effective supply cost=100) which grants 10min BT, the enemy a destroyer with 5 minutes BT. You beat it after 2 minutes. Makes 8min - 3min = 5minutes remaining, which is half of your initial BT. Subtract the fixed 10%, and you get back 45% of your deployment cost by standing down (cost = 55 supplies).
For a frigate with 2min BT that would be 72% (cost = 28 supplies).
For another battleship with 10min BT it would be 0% recovery.

Another example:  You over-deployed, say three battleships which grant 30min BT, the enemy is a destroyer with 5 minutes BT. You beat it after 1 minute. Makes 29min - 4min = 25minutes remaining. Subtract the fixed 10%, and you get back 67,5% of your deployment cost by standing down, which would cost you 97,5 supplies.

[close]

Effects:
- There's no point in over-deploying, you can never get back all your deployment costs .
- There's also no point in deploying reinforcements to save money, they are bad at standing down due to their BT penalty.
- The BT of your enemy (assuming it is shorter than yours) is the time you have to defeat him without further penalty to the amount of CR you can recover from standing down.

I think your math is backwards... Shouldn't the cost equal the percentage, and the amount saved is the remainder?

So for the frigate, 72 cost : 28 saved.
But by the math, vs. the battleship it would cost you nothing, since you would save 100% by standing down. Saving 90% would be fine, but 100% is not.
If you deploy less than the enemy, then you gain supplies out of nowhere, since (8 - 10) * .9 = -18%

Bleh, I'm too tired to work out the correct math. But (PlayerBT - EnemyBT) * 0.9 will not work.

[Alex]

Huh, would you believe I ended up thinking about the exact same thing some time after making my previous post? Even down to details like basing "battle time" on deployment points and getting less of it for reinforcements. Talk about "great minds think alike" Ahem.

What about capital ships? Do they start ticking down as well? I suppose there could be an "if this ship is in play, battle time doesn't tick down" rule; possibly made clear via built-in hullmod, similar to the Hyperon's "high maintenance". Alternatively, capital ships could just tick down as well.

Yeah, as you point out, selling the lore on this seems like it will be difficult, and that's my main problem with it. I mean, some players are having a hard time conceptualizing why reduced CR leads to equipment failures until it's explained explicitly, and to me that's a much more natural connection to make. This is going to be a harder sell, even if it has the benefit of being simpler UI-wise and removing a stat from ships. IMO that's the real sticking point here. Thoughts?



In the meantime, I ended up trying something simpler: "transfer command" now reduces the peak effectiveness time of the new flagship by the spent peak effectiveness of the old flagship, and further docks the new flagship for 10% CR. (Changing the command structure in battle is serious business!)

This seems to address pretty much the same things, with the virtue of being a small change. Peak performance can then continue to tick down as it does now - i.e. if any enemy is in visual range, or if the ship is doing something - without any extra rules about "strength" etc.

[TaLaR]

In the meantime, I ended up trying something simpler: "transfer command" now reduces the peak effectiveness time of the new flagship by the spent peak effectiveness of the old flagship, and further docks the new flagship for 10% CR. (Changing the command structure in battle is serious business!)

While i support this idea in general, hitting new flagship for full spent amount + 10% seems just too much. This leaves transferring to a much larger ship as pretty much only non-punishing use of 'transfer command'.
Hitting for half of spent peak effectiveness on all previous ships + 10% would be already enough fix endless transferring (exact amount subject to balancing, but less than full), without making transferring completely useless for same size ships.

Also, i'm not sure i agree with infinite peak effectiveness for Capitals. They already mostly overshadow Cruisers (at least for me) buffing them further just doesn't feel right. I mean where Cruisers/Destroyers now have to consider Hardened Subsystems, Capitals don't.
Even Capitals can kind of kite (keep out of range of real threats like Cruisers/Capitals and swat smaller ones like flies) with high tech/combat.
In fact Shadowyards mod already has ship perfect for such tactics - Mimir (effectively super medusa).

[Wyvern]

Hm.  Only way I can see to "exploit" that is if you deploy something with a long timer and hide it in the corner while you go to town with your Hyperion.  But that still costs you deploying the bigger thing, so it might be okay?

Best lore explanation I can come up with is EW: Electronic Warfare - it's how long it takes for your opponent to start hacking into your systems and degrading performance / overloading power conduits / etc; makes sense that that's fleet-wide, otherwise how could you coordinate your ships / give orders / etc?  Then the "hardened subsystems" hull mod becomes "blanket ECM", and you could maybe introduce a counterpart hull mod that reduces the enemy's timer if it's deployed - perhaps as a built-in for specialist ships like the Omen or Shade.

[Alex]

Best lore explanation I can come up with is EW: Electronic Warfare - it's how long it takes for your opponent to start hacking into your systems and degrading performance / overloading power conduits / etc; makes sense that that's fleet-wide, otherwise how could you coordinate your ships / give orders / etc?  Then the "hardened subsystems" hull mod becomes "blanket ECM", and you could maybe introduce a counterpart hull mod that reduces the enemy's timer if it's deployed - perhaps as a built-in for specialist ships like the Omen or Shade.

Hmm. That could make sense, but the feel of it is weird - like, all of a sudden, the "real" fight is taking place on a playing field you don't have access to.

While i support this idea in general, hitting new flagship for full spent amount + 10% seems just too much. This leaves transferring to a much larger ship as pretty much only non-punishing use of 'transfer command'.

So the question here is, why shouldn't a late transfer of command be punishing?

You're either doing it because you lost your flagship, in which case it's a small price to pay, and if the ship you're transferring to was already fighting alongside you, the peak performance penalty doesn't mean as much since it's already ticked down for the target ship.

Or, you're chain-transferring to a newly deployed ship, in which case punishing is kind of the point.

Also, i'm not sure i agree with infinite peak effectiveness for Capitals. They already mostly overshadow Cruisers (at least for me) buffing them further just doesn't feel right. I mean where Cruisers/Destroyers now have to consider Hardened Subsystems, Capitals don't.
Even Capitals can kind of kite (keep out of range of real threats like Cruisers/Capitals and swat smaller ones like flies) with high tech/combat.
In fact Shadowyards mod already has ship perfect for such tactics - Mimir (effectively super medusa).

For modded ships specifically, sounds like the Mimir should just have a peak effectiveness time. It's not a hard rule that capitals don't have it. In fact, something like the Conquest might get it too if it's warranted.