Remove Cruise Power Drain

[mjolnir]

It seems that the primary motivation for implementing this change was to eventually remove the cruising-in-combat rule, and to stop battleships from cruising into weapons range or cruising to catch up. Personally, I prefer the rules and the occasional sanction where needed over this power drain mechanic.

That's one of the reason yes. Another and much more important one is to stop bigger ships from cruising to 0 distance to a smaller ship at the start of the fight, which seriously affects any BS, Cruiser and GB combat.

Most notably you might remember how your carrier fared when a BHG BS started the fight by cruising next to it... yes it was dead before you could do anything.

The power drain hurts every class of ships, not just caps. Bombers have to wait a good 20 seconds to regen enough power to fire a single supernova after leaving cruise, and unlike some ships, bombers cannot fire their basic guns and regen energy at the same time.

What does force bombers (or fighters) to start the fight from 0 distance? This way with dropping from cruise a bit away at least they have more time to roleplay?


Transports

There are 2 places where pirating occurs:

a) Trade Lanes - travelling in them doesn't drain powerplant, so no change there

b) Open space - here the trader sees pirate from a distance and can stop cruising 9k off without problems, pirate can then cruise to him (loosing energy) or thrusting which will take quite some time If pirate and traders are both in cruise the neither of then has energy to fire guns.

Anti-cap missions in a cap - yes they harder to do with caps now, don't see that as a huge problem.

Heavy CM/Reinforced CD - yes those can't be fired when cruising now,they should like be changed over time. That said Heavy CM was never meant to be used on Transports, and mostly not on GBs either. It's only advantage is that it survives Nova/Cruiser missile hits. A transport hit by those looses all turrets anyway.

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Igiss says: Martin, you give them a finger, they bite off your arm.