If a ship with repair modules hits its cautious value and also has run out of repair resources, it will never try to return to the battle but will remain in a permanent retreat state.
Is there any point in having ships set to cautious if they have no ability to repair? If not, then cautious should no longer apply once the ship can no longer repair itself.
Don’t agree - cautious also pulls a ship out of the line of fire. I’d suggest adding a behaviour to cautious where if it can no longer repair and it hasn’t been shot at, it returns to battle as normal.
Maybe repair modules could regenerate their resources if they haven’t been used in a minute, say? -Edit- Actually, scratch that. I’ll just try and make a fleet that rotates armour-monsters in and otu of the front line with an escort chain. Eventually I’ll get it right, too. ;_;
Edit: Also, if/when ‘damage to a module reduces its effectiveness’ becomes a significant factor of gameplay for items other than armour, repair modules will become GOLD. (If a lucky hit reduces your crew module to 5%, a ship might almost stop working, for instance.)
That’s true, it pulls the ship out of the line of fire. But if it can’t repair then it leaves the ship beat up and stuck on the edge of the map. Waiting for the rest of the fleet to achieve victory or its painful death as the cautious remnants are mopped up. Actually, what happens if the ships on both fleets have all become cautious? Do they sit at both edges of the map in a stalemate? There needs to be a point where the cautious order will cancel.
a ship at the front of a pack of ships will take lots of fire. if it retreats, it can still lob missiles at enemies - while not being target-1. just because it’s retreated+beat up doesn’t mean it’s not doing anything! but being beat-up in the rear lines is potentially far preferable to being beat-up in range of a pack of vultures.
Just so long as they eventually come back to use their long range guns, and don’t hide in the corner for the rest of the battle, it should be fine.
I think Cautious would be better as:
Check range and direction of nearest enemy ship (fighters excluded).
Cross-reference friendly ships between that range.
Is a friendly ship between this ship and the enemy ship?
Yes. Continue fighting.
No. Move away.
This removes the ship from the front lines, supports allied ships and allows continued use of long range weapons.