Sustained Burn

Up to date for latest version, 0.98a.

	Switch the drives of all ships in the fleet to a mode suited for long-distance travel. The fleet has to stop briefly to make the switch-over. Increases the maximum burn level by 100%, at the expense of lower acceleration, especially in the direction of the fleet's movement. Also increases the range at witch the fleet can be detected by 100%. The burn level increase does not apply to flat burn bonuses, such as those from Nav Buoys or tugs.
–In-game description

Overview

Available by default.

Notes

• Doubles the base burn level of the fleet using the burn level of the slowest ship. Does not include fleetwide bonuses such as tugs, nav buoys or Navigation¹. The bonus from Bulk Transport is doubled.
• Essential for long-distance travel in sparsely populated areas or hyperspace; can be useful for running away from enemies (with a sufficient head start) or chasing fleeing fleets.
• Lowers the fleet acceleration and turning speed significantly; should not be used for riding hyperspace storms or pushing into star coronas.
• Alters sensor profile by +100% while active, even if the fleet is standing still.
• Has a wind down time when finished that reduces maximum burn. If you find yourself heading unavoidably towards a larger hostile fleet then consider immediately hitting Go Dark for a few seconds until your burn level recovers.
• The maximum burn level of the fleet cannot exceed 20; 30 after going through a hyperspace storm.
• You can quickly change direction in place while sustained burning by ending your sustained burn, holding your mouse in the new travel direction, and quickly re-activating sustained burn. You'll get to quickly accelerate in the new direction instead of having to slowly turn in a wide radius towards your new heading.

¹ - while the +1 Burn bonus from Navigation is not doubled by Sustained Burn it is not lost either when the ability is used, stacking with the +1 Sustained Burn bonus provided by the skill. This means Navigation still provides +2 Sustained Burn even though the bonus is calculated differently.

Changelog

Patch 0.9:  Now gives +100% burn instead of +10 Means that bonuses to ship burn level (i.e. Augmented Drive Field) are doubled While fleetwide bonuses (tugs, Nav Buoy, etc) are not Slightly increased arc in which it has the highest acceleration penalty Reduced charge up/down time to half a second (was: 2.5 seconds up, 1 second down) Goals are to 1) make burn level of ships mean more and 2) encourage turning SB off sometimes