Remove Cruise Power Drain

[Tenacity]

Everyone should know what the title and poll refers to - right now, with the recent update, going into cruise mode completely drains your powerplant. I've also experienced a 5-10 second delay on any energy regen after dropping out of cruise and sitting still.

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.

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.
Capships and transports are likely the most effected craft - Heavy Countermeasure Flares can no longer be used while cruising, and these are the primary CM type used by capships and transports. If a transport (or any ship for that matter) is disrupted out of cruise by NPC's, the ship must wait 5-10 seconds -minimum- before it can even fire in self defense. This alone has ruined transports against pirates entirely.

When attempting capship missions in a capship, the enemy npc's can only be seen/targeted at less than 2.5k distance. The standard method of doing these missions was to cruise up to 1k range and then start firing, but this is no longer possible. Now you either have to sit there with your thumb up your ass while your energy regenerates before you can defend yourself - all while 5 destroyers are pounding your hull with missiles, razors, and pulse turrets - or you have to stop outside of npc spawn range, regen energy, then proceed to the waypoint on thruster speed (which, again, leaves you travelling 2.5k at low speed while NPC's spam razors and pulses against you).

The meager advantages of this change do not outweigh the disadvantages, not by a long shot. The power drain from cruise needs to be removed, it never should have been added to begin with.

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[FooFighter]

<strike>Keep it, but remove CM energy drain. I like how it renders you unable of fighting for a little while, but I hate how it also makes running extremely hard.</strike>

Screw that. I've thought that while your energy is drained when you start cruising you will also regenerate energy when in cruise again. That's apparently not the case - thus, I'm highly in favor of removing or at least changing cruise power drain as well.

[Frazzer.]

Exactly what I was thinking. Please remove it.

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[Ash]

I was planning on starting a topic about a moment ago. It's rather annoying, yes ok it's realistic, but it's just plain irritating. It's effectivley made Traders evermore hopeless in pirate encounters. As if we weren't useless already.

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[Pinko]

Apply it only to Capital ships.

They're the one that cruise to catch up.

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I want to get off Mr. Igiss' wild ride.

[Tovig]

Remove it. Please. Tena explained everything.

[AJBeast]

Gawd yes, remove the bloody thing. Traders are absolutely defenseless against pirates now... And who the hell cruises into a fight anyways? According to the rules you have to RP first, not to mention that that tactic is useless as hell ( I know, I've tried it. Only way it is mildly useful was to fire my dual missiles at high speed)

[Tenacity]

Apply it only to Capital ships.

They're the one that cruise to catch up.

and only battleships at that, but I think a sanction report against those few people who do this is fine. I would rather take 15 minutes to upload screens and write a report on someone than be completely screwed over on all of my characters because some idiot thought a game mechanic to control lolwuts would be the better choice.

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[NonSequitor]

While Tenacity's tone isn't what you would call diplomatic, he does raise some good points. As do some others in this thread.

Hat's off to the dev team and especially to Cannon, the Coding Grand Master of the Known Universe, for their hard work and time invested. Much of what you folks have done for a very demanding playerbase is, believe it or not, appreciated.

However, from a player-perspective, this cruise-drain thingy seems to be a cure that is much worse than the disease.

Please remove it.

Edit: A united approach would be nice, as in, remove the whole thing from all ship classes. BS / Cap pilots are not the root of all evil.

[MarvinCZ]

While you would maybe prefer to spend 15 minutes of your time on writing the sanction, the admins would probably prefer not to spend their time on dealing with the accumulated sanctions for that rule. Think about that for a moment.