Combat readiness
Combat Readiness (CR) is a general measure of a ship's ability to engage in combat. It is an abstraction of various factors such as crew fatigue, short-term wear & tear, availability of spare parts, and so on. CR ranges from 0% (completely unfit for battle) to 100% (absolute peak performance) and is normally 70% for a well supplied ship with no pertinent bonuses or penalties.
Usage and effects
Ships use CR to be deployed in combat, with the amount needed ranging from 9% for the Gemini to 40% for the Hyperion. The deployment cost is removed from the ship's available CR after each round of engagement. CR deployment costs tend to be lower for small and low-tech ships and higher for large and high-tech ships.
Ships with more than 70% CR have improved speed, maneuverability, damage reduction, damage dealt, autofire accuracy, and fighter refit time; conversely, ships below 50% CR suffer penalties in those stats. The bonuses and penalties scale linearly from 70% → 100% CR and 50% → 0% CR, respectively:
- Maneuverability: +/-10%
- Damage taken: -/+10%
- Damage dealt: +/-10%
- Fighter refit time (for ships with a flight deck): +/-10%
A ship with 40% CR or less will experience temporary, random malfunctions in combat that take weapons, engines or the shields offline. These malfunctions increase in frequency as CR decreases. Additionally, ship that enters combat for the first time with CR below 40% may have its missiles not fully loaded.
A ship with 20% CR or less will suffer critical malfunctions upon deployment and in combat, which will disable a weapon for the entire battle or disable an engine for a long time, and can also cause hull damage. Engines disabled by critical malfunctions do not count for inflicting flameouts.[1] The last weapon on a ship will not be permanently disabled by a critical malfunction.[2]
At 0% CR a ship will no longer be able to use its shield or phase cloak, as well as its system. Also, fighter replacement rate will immediately drop to 0. The ship can still fire its weapons and use any fighters that have already been deployed.
Fighters launched from the ship do not experience any negative effects themselves.
Peak performance time
All ships have a limited peak performance time after which their CR starts to degrade. This counter only decreases when there are enough enemy ships within the ship's sight radius: for instance, a cruiser's timer will tick down if the enemy force in sight includes at least one cruiser, or two destroyers, or four frigates. Once this timer expires, CR is reduced by 0.25% per second. As before, low-tech and midline frigates have a longer peak performance time than their high-tech counterparts; also, larger ships last longer. The Hardened Subsystems hullmod will increase peak active performance time and reduce degradation rate.
Strategic effects
If a fleet makes contact with another, hostile fleet on the strategic map and tries to run, the enemy fleet may harry it in place of attempting to pursue, which reduces the CR of each ship in the fleeing fleet as if it had been deployed.
A ship can be mothballed. A mothballed ship's CR is set to 0. Mothballed ships consume no supplies.
During a pursuit battle, the escaping fleet can "crash-mothball" low-CR ships to prevent them from suffering malfunctions during the chase.
A non-mothballed ship at 0 CR that is not being repaired (either because the repair is disabled or because the fleet is out of supplies) may take damage, causing crew loss on the strategic map. This damage can completely destroy the ship.
Refitting a ship without being in a dock at a planet or a station causes the ship to lose CR.
Clicking on the CR bar in the top-left of the Refit Screen sets the CR of a ship for simulations.
Recovery
Ships will expend supplies to recover CR and repair hull damage after a battle, at a daily rate calculated from the ship's CR/deployment, CR recovery/day and supplies/deployment values given in the codex. The listed Recovery cost (supplies) stat is how many supplies it costs in total to recover from a single deployment i.e. if a ship uses 20 CR per deployment, recovers 10% CR per day (takes 2 days to recover) and has a recovery cost of 20 supplies then it consumes 20 / 2 = 10 supplies per day while recovering. Different ships recover different amounts of CR per day, with such smaller ships, in general, recovering faster. CR recovery and hull/armor repair are done in parallel, so there is no cost for taking sufficiently minor damage. Ships that are already at full hull/armor integrity and maximum CR will only drain supplies at their supplies/month value.
The repair function at stations instantly restores the CR of all ships in the fleet for the same cost in supplies as passive regeneration.
After each round of engagement in a battle, the winning side can automatically recoup some of the CR spent on deployment at no supply cost. The amount of recovered CR depends on a hidden battle total called "hard fought". This total is lower if you deploy more DP, but kill less DP, and higher if you deploy less DP, and kill more DP. [3][4]
Maximum CR
The base maximum CR for a ship is 70%. Player and officer skills can increase it, up to a maximum of 100%.
- An officer (player included) with the Combat Endurance skill increases maximum CR by 15% for the ship they are on.
- Player skill Crew Training raises CR of all combat ships by up to 15%. This increase is at maximum when affecting 240 of less DP worth of ships.
- Player skill Hull Restoration raises CR of all ships by 15%, minus 5% per d-mod (minimum 0%).
Automated ships have a -100% maximum CR penalty that may be partially or fully compensated by Automated Ships skill, depending on the number of automated ships in the fleet and AI cores installed into them.
Maximum CR will be reduced proportionally for non-automated ships if the fleet does not have enough crew for its ships. For example, if your fleet has 50% of total skeleton crew required, all your ships' CR will be halved.
Strategy and tactics
Proper CR management reduces fleet operation expenses because CR usage directly increases the usage of supplies, which must be bought or plundered. The ways to lower your supply problem include:
- Deploying only as much firepower as necessary to win the battle (without taking losses or incurring excessive repairs).
- Use low-tech and midline ships, which have lower deployment costs.
- Deploying frigates with multiple d-mods, which might have a miniscule cost to deploy.
Buying a ship only once its added supply costs are covered for the short term prevents downward spirals wherein plundering desperately needed supplies and money too greatly reduces CR. Excessive ships could be stored, mothballed, scrapped or sold.
References
Change History
0.8a
- Removed crew experience levels
- Base CR for ships is 70%
- Stat improvements start at above 70% (was: 60%)
- Changed when ships have a chance to suffer an accident
- Was: 0% CR and not mothballed
- Now: less than 10% CR, not mothballed, and repairs suspended or fleet out of supplies
- Removed CR reduction for hull damage taken in combat
- Added status indicator for when peak performance time is not going down due to nearby enemy presence being too weak
- Ship refit now only degrades CR when something is removed. I.E. adding weapons or hullmods will not reduce CR unless something is removed to make room
- Mostly applicable for recovered ships - spending their free OP will not tank their CR
- In-flight refit: adding weapons/hullmods will again reduce CR, but not below the malfunction threshold
- Still makes outfitting recovered ships mostly free as they can't start with more CR than that
- Prevents some potential exploits