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[Thaago]

The upcoming release seems to be full of tweaks, so how about we talk about navigation again? The last thread, from before the latest update: http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=8246.0

My experience: My first two games on the new path were a combat specialist deathship (no technology), then a fleet commander (no tech or combat). Both were good fun. Then I played as a tech specialist... and the navigation skill + augmented engines made the game much, MUCH more fun. The wait times between doing things were drastically reduced because moving around was so much quicker! Not only that, but I was quickly able to outrun absolutely any fleet that could outfight me. For me I don't care about catching everything and killing it, but the quality of life improvements from going faster were huge.

I identify the problem as this: Slow ships are too slow and are much less fun to play with on the world map than quick ones. Meanwhile, the bonuses from navigation/engines are far too large.

So, here's my suggestion:

Change burn speeds:
Frigates: 16-17+
Destroyers: 14-15
Cruisers: 12 -13
Capitals: 10-11

And of course reduce how much actual speed the numbers represent, so that capitals aren't scampering around like caffeineated hamsters.

This new set of speeds preserves the current "can't catch me" advantage of small ship fleets without making large ships slow to the point of "unfun". Meanwhile, the augmented engines still make a big difference - you can outrun ships of the same class on the main screen - but they aren't the equivalent of an entire size class anymore.

Navigation needs to be changed to be more friendly for a 10 rank skill - at the moment there are lots of "dead" levels where you don't really get anything. So, for navigation, how about:

Per rank: +1% combat speed (all ships). -2% fuel consumption.
At 5: unlocks stars as jump points.
at 10: +1 burn for all ships.

I'm not as set on this, but I think it would be better than the current setup.

[Megas]

I do not even want to use anything other than frigates because Navigation 10 gives much more bonus to frigates (+5) than everything else (+2 or +3).  The slowest frigate in my fleet is Hyperion without Augmented Engines, at burn 12.  All other frigates I use have burn 13 to 15.  The fastest destroyer, Medusa, can get burn 10 at best.

[Squigzilla]

Reducing the difference between small and large ship burn speeds sounds like a very good idea. When my fleet is sufficiently large, I keep the fast-forward button held down almost all the time to counteract the painfully slow travel speed of capital ships. Frigates will still be faster than large ships and retain their ability to pick their battles, but slower ships will move between battles much more quickly.

The current system map speed scale, where frigates are two to three times faster than capital ships, doesn't make much sense to me. Frigates have excellent tactical speed, but I imagine their compact size leaves them with little room for interstellar travel drives. By contrast, slow capital ships would have powerful engines backed up by robust reactor cores that could accelerate to high burn levels outside of combat.

[Megas]

Per rank: +1% combat speed (all ships). -2% fuel consumption.
At 5: unlocks stars as jump points.
at 10: +1 burn for all ships.

I'm not as set on this, but I think it would be better than the current setup.

It seems okay.  The current Navigation progression is hideous.  Even five dead levels for frigates is five too many, and bigger ships have even more.

[TaLaR]

I think problem are travel times themselves, not burnspeeds - and it can be fixed by increasing max time compression from 200% to somewhere around 1000%.

Edit:
Then again changes to Navigation skill still seem not a bad proposition.
But strategic AI as it is will probably fail to properly exploit such small speed differences (i.e. it will be easy for player to catch/outrun faster fleets in most situations)

[Squigzilla]

On the subject of Navigation changes, do you think it makes more sense as a Technology or a Leadership skill? Conceptually it fits in either, but the skill bonuses seem out of place among the OP- and flux-boosting Technology skills.

[Megas]

The wait times between doing things were drastically reduced because moving around was so much quicker! Not only that, but I was quickly able to outrun absolutely any fleet that could outfight me. For me I don't care about catching everything and killing it, but the quality of life improvements from going faster were huge.

I missed this, but with much more traveling due to named bounties and trade events, burn speed is more critical than before.  Before 0.65, I would have been content with burn 6 or 7.  Now, no speed is fast enough, and the slowest I tolerate now, when I am not hauling tens of thousands of stuff in twenty Atlases, is 12, for Hyperion without Augmented Engines.  Sometimes, I will add Augmented Engines (and lower capacitors) to the Hyperion if doing so means it can go at burn 14 with the rest of my Wolf and/or Tempest fleet.  I only use slower combat ships when I need to kill an obnoxious enemy flagship, and I can grab one from storage nearby.

My core endgame fleet is two Hyperion and three Tempests.  I have lots of ships in multiple storage bases everywhere, and I grab what I need for the current job, then put them away when their job is done.  Between events, I zip through space in fast frigates at burn 12+.

[nand633]

I believe that all ships in a faction should share one top speed. Those ships are made to work in fleets. It doesn't make sense that one ship runs 3 times faster than aother does, which will be a totally waste.

Fighters and corvettes are faster. A capital ship's acceleration and turn rate is much slower than a destroyer but their top speeds are same in the void.

[Linnis]

Burn speed as a skill still seem to make too large of a difference, even if its even by 1.

There need to be a better solution 

[Hari Seldon]

Maybe higher burn speed always costs more fuel?  So with Navigation you could go faster but that would be more fuel and so more expensive.  But that might just encourage the player to always travel around in a shuttle whenever possible and make the player rely even more on ships that they store at the destination star system.  Example: hop around in a shuttle until you reach a bounty and then pull ships out of storage from that star system.

[orost]

Add a slider that lets you temporarily boost your burn level at the cost of exponentially (say, (2 - 0.05N)^x times fuel consumption and %CR loss per day, N being Navigation level and x the burn boost) increasing fuel consumption and CR decay. Make Navigation improve the effectiveness of that. Still very useful for chasing and running away, but not a complete no-brainer it is now since it costs to use.

Double base speed of everything (or make the shift button speed things up more) to reduce waiting times and compensate for the loss of permanent burn boost from Navigation.

[Midnight Kitsune]

Another thing that would help would be a set-able and toggle-able Speed up key. IE being able to set it to 4 or even 6 or 8X speed

[Baqar79]

I think nand633 comment is what I believe should happen if we consider the physics.  If a fleet start out at speed 0 then the ship with the fastest acceleration needs to reduce it's throttle so that slower ships can accelerate with it at the same time; otherwise we run into the issue in which the fleet is separated by millions of kilometers because those faster ships burned the accelerator at full speed.  In this case however there is no top speed (well perhaps the stellar matter will become a braking force at hugely high speeds, providing that micro meteroite collision that makes the energy released in a collision of the large hadron collider look as a AA battery to a nuclear reactor's full energy output, does not happen )

The problem with this is that in ship combat those slow capital ships could keep on accelerating to match the speed of the faster ships and those faster ships can reach speeds that turns them into rather large slugs to throw at other ships.  I'm guessing that there is already quite a bit of investment in making combat work as is and redoing it to take into account no top speed may cause too much extra work (Acceleration mechanic would be cool though, sure you can go fast, but can you stop in time?   )

I think that since we have speed differences between ships of different sizes, the space in this universe is more like the ocean/air, with a tangible friction force that works against the fleet as they go faster.  So throwing realism out the window (you really have to when looking at how fast say the dominator cruiser travels for example: assuming it is a couple of km in length; lets say for arguments sake it is around 5km in length it is probably travelling at around 5km/sec at full speed - that would take 30 years to travel the distance between pluto and the sun which isn't correct at all based on travel times in systems).

As an idea, consider a frigate needs to be fast in order to have any sort of advantage over a slower larger ship (well being smaller is also an advantage).  I would think that a frigate is close to as fast as it will ever be due to the design considerations in building it.  Adding additional systems to increase speed might help, but the effect of the additional weight and lack of space will work against it, whereas a larger capital ship has much more room to spare.  I propose 2 modifications to the Augmented engines hullmod: reverse the speed bonuses; something like 25/30/35/40 per class and also have the burn speed bonus based on the size of the ship it is installed into (+1 frigate, +2 destroyer, +3 cruiser, +4 battleship).  

It is already a pretty costly mod, but with this in place, most of the capital ships would have similar burn speeds (+6 burn) though at a fairly hefty cost.  I currently have augmented engines in my Dominator class and it still can't keep up with any ships in my fleet without the augmented engines (spamming 'F' Burn Drive to speed it along..minor collisions do happen).  Without those engines, it would take far to long to bring that ship into battle (I even have auxillary thrusters, that thing is SLOW).  Capital ships already have very poor manuverability and I don't think making the speed more comparable to other smaller ships is going to tip the balance too much in the heavier ships favour, as it is very easy for a more manuverable ship to move around it, forcing it to decelerate and turn affording that smaller ship ample time to get in some good shots.

[Megas]

Augmented Engines is so good I put it on everything (except Hyperion).  The suggestion from the previous post would make it even more of a must than it is now.

[TrashMan]

I think problem are travel times themselves, not burnspeeds - and it can be fixed by increasing max time compression from 200% to somewhere around 1000%.

Travel between systems shouldn't be too fast- after all, if it is, hyperspace interceptions, where pirates make a living, become almost impossible.

To little time to detect and intercept fleet if they move like lighting between systems.

Personally I'm a patient man so I never had trouble waiting for my fleet to reach it's destination. But then again, I always prioritize navigation and have ships with upgraded burn levels.