Fractal Softworks Forum
Starsector => Suggestions => Topic started by: fededevi on May 12, 2017, 05:20:28 AM
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My suggestion is to remove all player's piloted-ship skills and let the officers replace them. The player tree should have only fleet-wide/global skills. What I mean is that the ship controlled by the player should have an officer like all the others, and the officer will provide the ship-specific skills.
Why (I think) is this good?
- You will be able to switch from different types of ships without wasting all the combat specific skills (missile/shields/armor/fighters). E.G. If you have Missile Specialization you do not want to pilot a ship without missiles.
- The player will not have to pilot a sub-par ship if it choose to specialize into industrial tree. The fleet will be weaker overall but it is not specifically the player's piloted ship that will be weak.
- Switching player's ships in combat or before combat will be painless since the ships retains the skills of the officer (including max CR).
- The current system "forces" the player to use only a subset of the available ships that are optimal based on the selected combat skills which you cannot change.
-The skill system will be easier to understand and straightforward: Player-> Fleet wide skills, Officer -> Ship combat skills.
-The player ship will not be potentially stronger than AI ships because they will share the same combat skill "tree" and points.
Why is this bad?
Let me know.
Oh yeah... also, let me choose the officer skills freely.
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Seems like pretty a solid idea! Could make skills even easier to balance, and we, as captains, can choose our first officers. Best of all, when the ship goes to autopilot, we could have worked something out that compliments our first officer's personality.
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Already been suggested, and Alex has explained the purpose of player pilot skills (http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=11477.msg209320#msg209320) (alternate playstyles, small, lean and efficient fleets vs large fleets). Having things work off the same system (officer and player skills) also feels more cohesive.
The current system is fine, it's only numbers that are imbalanced. Giving piloted skills level 3 fleet-wide effects (http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=12168.msg207139#msg207139) for example can make them more enticing for players without unnecessarily buffing officers. In some ways this is essentially making all player skills fleet-wide, but without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
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Did not notice that thread but my suggestion is actually much simpler than what have been suggested there.
My suggestion is to completely remove player ship-skills and replace them with an officer skill-set (Which is pretty much the same anyway (or exactly the same??)). It is not like the officers will become more powerful or important than before, you just need one more for your ship.
While at first sight it may seem like this is like "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" (I had to search what it means on wikipedia :D) I do not think it is because you will still have access to the same skillset as before, but with separated progression and the ability to change part of it.
Of course total/maximum skill points of the player should be reduced based on how many skills are removed/replaced.
A couple of questions:
Why are you saying that officers will be buffed? Officers would stay the same as they are now.
Why should this prevent you from specializing the fleet? I know this will prevent player ship from becoming stronger than the AI and I personally think this is a good thing but I can see why someone thinks it is not. Personally I think the AI is easy enought to beat as it is without the need of adding buffs to the player ship only.
Sorry for my english. ::)
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As noted, I've suggested this (http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=12176.0) before.
The current system is fine, it's only numbers that are imbalanced. Giving piloted skills level 3 fleet-wide effects (http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=12168.msg207139#msg207139) for example can make them more enticing for players without unnecessarily buffing officers. In some ways this is essentially making all player skills fleet-wide, but without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
I don't think that's a good idea - you'd end up with combat skills also promoting having a large fleet to leverage those fleet-wide bonuses as much as possible, and that's pretty much exactly the opposite of what we want.
This is true, but presumably at some point there'll be more of a reason to have a more compact but more powerful pound-for-pound fleet. That's already true to some extent - fuel and logistical costs, deployment costs, etc - so combat skills, while technically weaker in terms of total fleet power, do make you more efficient.
Presumably. At some point. And even if or when that happens, you'll still get a much stronger fleet by picking up another six officers versus taking combat skills yourself; if sensor profile is an issue, stick them on phase ships; if supply or fuel usage is an issue, add a freighter or tanker.
If the intended goal is to make a more compact fleet plausible, then what needs to happen is that the combat skills available to the player (and, presumably, to enemy fleet flagships) need to be significantly more potent than those available to officers.
And even if we did make that change, it still doesn't fix some of the other issues this idea addresses, like how boring it is to deploy only AI-controlled ships when you're trying to efficiently deal with a small enemy fleet & get some XP on your officers.
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like how boring it is to deploy only AI-controlled ships when you're trying to efficiently deal with a small enemy fleet & get some XP on your officers.
Am I the only person who's never done this? If there's a fight, I'z gotsta be innit
I presume with the OP's suggestion, if the ship you're piloting has has an officer, both you and they will gain experience. That officer would essentially lend you their combat skills, at the expense of overlapping a player-piloted ship with an officer-piloted one. It sounds reasonable to me.
Buffing the player's combat skills wouldn't be unwelcome, but unless they were ridiculously powerful I still don't think I'd take them over the fleetwide bonuses which overall benefit you a lot more.
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Before 0.8, the combination of powerful skills, asymmetric use of Augmented Engines and ITU (not many stock ships used either), AI's overreliance on shields for defense, and more reckless AI made soloing easier and AI wingmen too vulnerable to mistakes.
Now, taking all the personal skills, you still end up weaker than an unskilled clunker fleet. Unless I want to build a battlestation killer Paragon (which will be patched), I prefer to take skills that either make my whole fleet better or give major quality-of-life features (like Navigation).
Also, the best pilot-only skills are in Leadership (carrier skills) or Technology (Gunnery Implants and Power Grid Modulation), which have fleetwide skills too, unlike Combat. (That said, I really want Helmsmanship skills to feel good.)
Take Combat Endurance. It would be more efficient to get more officers (if it is a choice between either and cannot afford both) and changing into officer's ship. Only thing that might be annoying is the constant switch, despite stronger fleet overall.
Unless Combat skills get much better, the OP's suggestion makes perfect sense. I was thinking something similar, and the OP beat me to it!
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If the combat aptitude is too weak, just buff it a bit. Other aptitudes arguable have some skills that are (designed to be) better than the rest. Leadership has Fighter Doctrine and Officer Management, Technology has Loadout Design and Navigation. Combat has no such stars (just a flop in form of Advanced Countermeasures).
It just needs one or two very good skills that are not attainable for officers, and all is good.
A big part of the power of the combat aptitude should come from the players direct piloting, not from raw numbers. These two things can amplify each other, after all.
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At the end of the day, all this idea really does is force about half of the skill points into player-only combat skills. You'd have to reduce the global skill points by half to accommodate the change, which then limits what a "global" player is able to do.
I don't think it's a bad idea but it drastically increases the rate of progression of the player and unnecessarily distinguishes between player and global skills. The only meaningful decisions to be made are the order in which you get skills, not whether or not you will get them. I think that's a step backwards for longevity.
I'm currently playing a clunker fleet setup that has a grand-total of 4 points in player-only skills. I don't feel my flagship is gimped in the slightest. It would be *nice* to have a stronger flagship but I valued global skills more this time and I can live with that decision. On other playthroughs, I've gone heavily into combat and feel the strength of it.
I think this is a "have your cake and eat it too" type idea. Having more skill points or raising the level cap would do essentially the same thing.
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I think this is a "have your cake and eat it too" type idea. Having more skill points or raising the level cap would do essentially the same thing.
Having more skill points would just encourage the player to finish out the rest of the non-per-ship skills, further decreasing viable player choice.
You'd have to reduce the global skill points by half to accommodate the change, which then limits what a "global" player is able to do.
Absolutely correct; making this change without adjusting the skill points available to a max level player would be a bad idea. (Although cutting skill points in half might be overkill. But they'd definitely need to be cut. And some adjustments to the leveling curves might also be a good idea.)
At the moment, a player can acquire all but four of the fleet-wide skills; if we ignore salvaging and surveying skills (which, if we're trying to be efficient, we probably should), then you can get all but two.
If you ignore the industry aptitude entirely (also not unreasonable - the stuff in there is nice, but once you're at end-game and money is no longer a problem, there's no particular reason to run with D-mod ships at all), then you can get all of the other fleet-wide skills with nine points left over for per-ship (or industry) skills.
In other words, if you aren't inclined to deliberately gimp yourself by overspending on either combat skills or skills that only help in the early game, then we're already in the situation where "the only meaningful decisions to be made are the order in which you get skills". Which is, as you say, not a good place to be.
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If the combat aptitude is too weak, just buff it a bit.
Even though we just said good riddance to an overpowered combat tree, yep. A slight buff is going to hurt way less than removing the choice between ship and fleet skills for the player.
I still don't think it needs a buff just yet.
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Having more skill points would just encourage the player to finish out the rest of the non-per-ship skills, further decreasing viable player choice.
Agreed on all points but this one. I think there is point of diminishing returns with the global skills. The difference between Level 2 and 3 Coordinated Maneuvers, Electronic Warfare, Officer Management, and maybe one or two more isn't all that significant compared to the bonuses you get from going from Level 2 to 3 in some of the Combat skills. At a certain point, the intra-competitiveness of certain skills win out over others. +5% speed for the fleet or 0-flux Speed Boost? 5% less enemy range or +15% range for my ship? Etc.
Hypothetically, if I had another 5 skill points to spend and I had already nearly maxed out the global stuff, a lot of those combat skills would "win out" even if I was going for fleet stuff.
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While I agree with almost everything that has been written I think a crucial point have been ignored which is that piloting skills will force the player to always use the same ships.
For example if you get strike commander and wing commander you will forced to pilot only carriers to not waste your 6 (+ aptitudes) skill points, or at least I do.
Or, in anorther way, I will never get those 2 skills because I don't want to be forced to always use a carrier.
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+5% speed for the fleet or 0-flux Speed Boost?
This one is mostly false choice. Only carriers and flux-positive beamboats can make effective use of it due to 1% flux limit. If you are not specced for carrier, it's rather useless.
For example if you get strike commander and wing commander you will forced to pilot only carriers to not waste your 6 (+ aptitudes) skill points, or at least I do.
Or, in anorther way, I will never get those 2 skills because I don't want to be forced to always use a carrier.
Yep, that's why I never pilot a Carrier in campaign.
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For the player, there are a few pilot-only carrier skills that are nice at one point even for casual carrier use (such as using Legion or Astral as possible flagship during endgame). One skill reduces crew causalities - nice for Talon spam (or at least less need for Recovery Shuttles hullmod). Another one speeds up fighters by 25%. Great for bombers, that is almost like a +25% to damage (because they take less time moving).
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As noted, I've suggested this (http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=12176.0) before.
The current system is fine, it's only numbers that are imbalanced. Giving piloted skills level 3 fleet-wide effects (http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=12168.msg207139#msg207139) for example can make them more enticing for players without unnecessarily buffing officers. In some ways this is essentially making all player skills fleet-wide, but without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
I don't think that's a good idea - you'd end up with combat skills also promoting having a large fleet to leverage those fleet-wide bonuses as much as possible, and that's pretty much exactly the opposite of what we want.
That assumes piloted skills will be as good as fleet skills at conferring fleet bonuses. They obviously won't, the idea is to make combat skills more balanced against fleet skills for the player without making officers, who use the same combat skills, more powerful.
If you really want to focus on fleet you would probably want to take dedicated fleet skills, since combat skills won't be as good at fleet bonuses. On the other hand if your fleet is small enough that the player has a lot more sway over the battlefield then taking skills that boost yourself (while also giving your allies a slight boost) may be more efficient, not to mention fun.
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Giving piloted skills level 3 fleet-wide effects for example can make them more enticing for players without unnecessarily buffing officers. In some ways this is essentially making all player skills fleet-wide, but without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
You'd end up with combat skills also promoting having a large fleet to leverage those fleet-wide bonuses as much as possible, and that's pretty much exactly the opposite of what we want.
That assumes piloted skills will be as good as fleet skills at conferring fleet bonuses.
No, it really doesn't. Adding a fleet-wide effect promotes having more ships to benefit from it. That it's a poorer investment than a dedicated fleet-wide skill doesn't change the gameplay result you get from taking the skill.
If you're going to buff the per-ship skills that a fleet admiral (i.e. player rather than officer) has access to, I'd rather buff the actual per-ship effects and let the player make their flagship better, rather than adding fleet-wide effects.
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That assumes piloted skills will be as good as fleet skills at conferring fleet bonuses. They obviously won't, the idea is to make combat skills more balanced against fleet skills for the player without making officers, who use the same combat skills, more powerful.
If you really want to focus on fleet you would probably want to take dedicated fleet skills, since combat skills won't be as good at fleet bonuses. On the other hand if your fleet is small enough that the player has a lot more sway over the battlefield then taking skills that boost yourself (while also giving your allies a slight boost) may be more efficient, not to mention fun.
No, it really doesn't. Adding a fleet-wide effect promotes having more ships to benefit from it. That it's a poorer investment than a dedicated fleet-wide skill doesn't change the gameplay result you get from taking the skill.
If you're going to buff the per-ship skills that a fleet admiral (i.e. player rather than officer) has access to, I'd rather buff the actual per-ship effects and let the player make their flagship better, rather than adding fleet-wide effects.
The problem with buffing per-ship effects is it makes officers more powerful too. At that point you may as well go with OP's suggestion and go full separation of player and officer skills, which is what we're trying to avoid.
There's a continuum here, it's not black-and-white. A skill with a large piloted effect and a small fleet effect does not automatically switch from favouring solo (as in the previous patch) to favouring 100-ship fleets. Example:
Skill A boosts the player's ship by 100% and all ships by 10%.
Skill B boosts all ships by 20%.
By numbers alone:
You would prefer skill A if your fleet has 9 ships or less (+190% effectiveness vs 180%)
You would prefer skill B if your fleet has 11 ships or more (+220% effectiveness vs +210%).
Obviously this is an insulting oversimplification but you get the idea I'm trying to convey.
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You're missing the point. Yes, clearly skill B is better. However, if the player for some reason takes skill A instead, then the bonus to all ships component incentivizes using a larger fleet (and eventually the player will realize that they made a mistake and shouldn't have taken skill A.)
Secondly, skill A is already different between the player and an officer, as the officer doesn't get the "all ships by 10%" part. If you're trying to avoid separating player and officer skills (and why would we be trying to do that, anyway?), then you've already failed. And besides, that wasn't the OP's suggestion; giving the player (and AI fleet admirals) access to stronger per-ship skills than a regular officer would get is completely different from removing per-ship skills and allowing the player (and AI fleet admirals) to assign an officer to their flagship.
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I prefer to play as a combat freighter pilot who incidentally happens to be owner of a fleet and delegates the tasks of Admiralty to others while he pilots ships into combat, and if Alex made me unable to do that I'd riot
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You're missing the point. Yes, clearly skill B is better. However, if the player for some reason takes skill A instead, then the bonus to all ships component incentivizes using a larger fleet (and eventually the player will realize that they made a mistake and shouldn't have taken skill A.)
??? But Skill B is not clearly better. Skill A is superior for smaller fleets, skill B for larger fleets. Remember this is an "insulting oversimplification" and adding more ships to the fleet is not always better due to logistic costs and efficiency/player preference/fun (going to back to what Alex is saying here (http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=11477.msg209320#msg209320)).
Plus if I'm not mistaken, you're saying you want (for example) for skill A to be buffed from 100% to 200% for the player only. The result of this then would be:
Skill A is better for fleets with less than 9 ships (200% vs 180%).
Skill B is better for fleets with more than 11 ships (220% vs 200%).
... The end result is the same for which skill is better at which fleet sizes. The difference is my suggestion allows Skill A to scale, so in fleet sizes with less than 9 ships you're still encouraged to have a few wingmen rather than going solo. So what makes your idea The Solutiontm and mine Terrible(c)?
Secondly, skill A is already different between the player and an officer, as the officer doesn't get the "all ships by 10%" part. If you're trying to avoid separating player and officer skills (and why would we be trying to do that, anyway?), then you've already failed. And besides, that wasn't the OP's suggestion; giving the player (and AI fleet admirals) access to stronger per-ship skills than a regular officer would get is completely different from removing per-ship skills and allowing the player (and AI fleet admirals) to assign an officer to their flagship.
Ah, but Skill A is different between players and officers in the same way it already is now! As it is certain combat skills unlock hullmods for the player to use for the entire fleet, whereas officers having the same combat skills don't. So there's precedence and cohesion is maintained!
With that in mind I think your idea of giving player version of piloted skills a stronger effect than officer versions is valid too, but I prefer mine for thematic reasons ;D: you're ultimately a fleet admiral, and you already have the option to be a stronger combatant than your officers by taking more combat skills than they can.
EDIT: also by separation of player and officer skills I mean having the two draw from entirely different pools with no overlap, essentially splitting one system into two systems... which is what OP suggested.
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A couple of comments.
I do not think the player should be able to get more skills than the AI, the AI is weak enough as it is. In my opinion the efficiency of having a small fleet comes from the fact that the player is much better at piloting than the AI and the logistic system itself. I do not see the need of additional player skills that make the player ship OP (subjective).
I do not see how removing personal skills would prevent you from using a small fleet. You still have most of the benefits: reduced logistic cost, most ship have an officer, more % of the fleet is piloted by you so -> more efficiency.
Also, again: if you are going to specialize into combat + small fleet, you will want to really exploit those skills you have chosen instead of the overall better fleet-wide skills. And this means you will be locked to a couple of optimal ships to use, usually with similar play-style, and this is BAD and boring.
The more player-centric your skills are the more hull-specific skills are a bad idea.
But on the other side, plain "+damage", "+speed" are quite boring. Note that a "+shield" skill would already start to be hull-specific, even a "+ship damage" would be sub-optimal for a carrier.
If hull-specific skills are bad and non hull-specific skills are boring the solution is to have hull-specific skills interchangeable with officers (or some other mechanism), hence my suggestion.