Yeah, they are kinda a hard sell as they are. Sure, you can view them as spending a point to "unlock" access to a higher tier of goodies but that is still pretty darn weak. Even if it was just something real minor like 1/2/4% increase to all damage done for Combat and 3/6/10% faster Command Point recover for Leadership, that'd be nice.
I wanna say I heard Alex mention he was gonna look into giving them something more awhile back, but I dunno what his stance is these days.
Disagree. System as is is both realistic and more strategic wrt gameplay. Realism: In real life, before you can learn engineering or medicine, you need to study "useless" mathematics and biology. Strategic: in-game this system means that you can't just pick and choose skills from any tree. A generalist will have less points to spend than a specialist, but can choose from more skills. Which creates an interesting trade-off.
But as the skill tree will be filled out more skill points will become more precious, and that issue should fix itself.
Out of curiosity, what would the general consensus be on being able to earn a few Aptitude Points (i.e. can only be spent on aptitude) through missions or some kind of story-arc? Would it become mandatory in every play-through or would you say "eh, not worth it" after awhile? Just thinking outside the box for a moment.
I see it the other way round. As Jay2Jay said, Sector is part RPG, and in my opinion the right way to handle character skills in RPGs is to force them to specialize. To play a god-character is nice once in a while, but when you end up in that state every time and any other approach is just transitory, the game becomes boring much quicker.
If the current number of skills were final, I'd argue for higher aptitude costs. It's still quite easy to get all the "must-have" skills, and most of the very good ones. From what I read people usually max out three of the four aptitudes, and then get all the best skills these aptitudes. So the system is clearly not harsh enough to force real specialization.
But as the skill tree will be filled out more skill points will become more precious, and that issue should fix itself.
Aptitudes are good. The fact they do nothing is bad. It's a strange problem too, because it was solved in previous versions, when Aptitudes had small but worthwhile effects in themselves. Having them be dead points feels awful and there's simply no reason for it.
They could at best have a token, symbolic bonus, which, too me, would feel kinda dishonest.
I feel like aptitudes ought to have a non mechanical bonus, like passive skill checks for story/RP purposes. Like if you have Combat Aptitude 2, another dialog option becomes available in a hostage scenario where you shoot the captors before they can react. Or something.
The stated motivation for empty aptitude points was balancing, so that a skill would have to be twice as good as any other skill to be a "must get" - but that's not actually how it works out. Getting a single level 3 skill from a third tree means passing on an 11th and 12th skill from the first two trees, so it's not actually setting the bar all that much higher... Particularly since all of the trees have skills that are useless to certain?play styles. I definitely think some of the tech skills are "must get", so we aren't getting the benefit that's supposed to make up for the not fun-ness of empty aptitude points.I agree with this.
Disagree. System as is is both realistic and more strategic wrt gameplay. Realism: In real life, before you can learn engineering or medicine, you need to study "useless" mathematics and biology.
The issue with that is it leads directly to something that Alex wanted to AVOID: "standing on a fire trap, taking damage and healing to build up skills"
...previous versions, when Aptitudes had small but worthwhile effects in themselves.
I'd just like to mention that I do like the way aptitude points work and don't think they should be changed much, if at all. They serve a purpose; they're a penalty for spreading your skill points between too many areas, and encourage specialization. The fewer aptitude areas you skill into, the more effective skill points you have. However, people tend to be happier with perceived gains rather than perceived losses, even if the net effect at the end is exactly the same. I'm not exactly sure how to apply this principle to this situation, but if you do change the way aptitudes work, I'd suggest making it so the more you spend in an aptitude the further your points go, somehow.
+20% capacitors is bad?Many on the forums favor vents over caps because one decreases vent time while the other can potentially increase it. And with the lack of OP due to the loss of three of the four OP boosting skills, vents are more important than caps.
I favor capacitors over vents, although I do try to keep both of them fairly even.
If anything, most of my ship designs max out their caps and vents before I consider adding mods beyond a range upgrade.
Most of the mods are unnecessary when compared to flux upgrades, which make or break a fleet.
+20% capacitors is bad?Yes, it is if I need to pay a skill point for it. Some capacitors are generally good, but normal max is usually more than enough, let alone super-max. A problem with too many capacitors is it takes ages for the ship to vent if it lets flux get too high. Also, I almost never have enough OP to max capacitors once I accumulate enough hullmods and weapons to outfit my ships.
I feel like aptitudes ought to have a non mechanical bonus, like passive skill checks for story/RP purposes. Like if you have Combat Aptitude 2, another dialog option becomes available in a hostage scenario where you shoot the captors before they can react. Or something.
It is a cool idea, but would demand a lot of additional dev time to create the extra content. Which, in my opinion, could be better used for other parts of the game.
Alex is super anti-talent tree, though. Something about them breeding "cookie cutter" specs.
If the answer is "character progression," i.e. a game-y carrot-on-a-stick to do campaign stuff and unlock things you couldn't do before, aptitude points are necessary evils. They are essentially gate checks so that you don't outpace the content. If you were too powerful, too quickly, there would be no risk and that leads to boring gameplay.No such thing as outpacing content. If anything, it is fun in part because there is less grinding. Grinding is a tool for those who want players hooked on a game as long as possible.
Pick something for Industry.
Right now, "better flagship" is generally best left to officers, while player who wants the most power should focus on "better fleet" or "better campaign", even if it is less fun than "better flagship".
- To avoid overwhelming the player, At low level, there need to be very few choices. It needs to be a simple case of: A, B, or C. Ideologically, something like: 'better flagship', 'better fleet', or 'better out of combat'
- Every skill should be impactful. A few % here, a few % there, is supremely dull.
What I mean is that you don't have aptitude points, you just have skill points, and the total number of points spent in a tree would be the aptitude score.
So if you start the game with 3 skill points, if you put all 3 in combat, you have combat aptitude 3.
If you put 2 in tech 1 in combat, you have Tech Aptitude 2, Combat Aptitude 1.
Then you get a level and get 2 more points. In you put those point into combat skills, you will have Combat Aptitude 5
This means that aptitudes can have much higher values, are tied to skills (so no wasted points) and Aptitude value can be used as a limiter/requirement for skills. It can even use CROSS-TREE requirements
For example, a skill might require Tech Aptitude 2 and Combat Aptitude 3
2) The player's skills are 1.5x / 2x as powerful as the ones on the officers (ie: officer gets +10% flux vent, player would get +15% / +20% flux vent instead) [this can also be accomplished by nerfing officer skills]While bigger bonuses for fleet commander would help with direct combatants, that might push unarmed carriers over the top. More top speed, faster and more durable fighters, carrier can kite-and-snipe (with fighters) like in pre-0.8. They already do, but this will make them better at it. That said, I like the idea (which was brought up before from elsewhere).
You can't just pick and choose skills from any treeYou can, after burning 9 to 12 points on empty aptitudes that every optimal character will take, which is bad because if you want as many personal skills as a level 20 officer, you have too few points left to get fleetwide essentials. If you get the fleetwide essentials, you are as low-skilled as a low level officer in combat, and that is no fun.
1.) Officer-piloted ships are almost always more powerful than you.This sums up my greatest complaint with the skill system, and this is caused by too few skill points, which is caused by empty aptitudes and too many must-have fleetwide skills.
What this means is that I can exploit the system. Pouring points into my flagship means I skip out on many of the fleet-wide bonuses and end up gimping my overall power. So, I turn my flagship into a D-modded junker ship that is totally expendable and transfer command to a Level 20 officer that is piloting the ship I actually want to fly. Instantly, I have a ship that is more powerful in my hands than the AI and has combat perks that are too expensive to get otherwise. I "lose" an additional ship piloted by an officer but it's a fair trade to me. This shouldn't be the case.A complaint I have with Combat Endurance 3. It is cheaper for me to level up Officer Management, which is one of those skills I may sacrifice to get another skill I want more, once and get two officers with Combat Endurance 3 and more than it is to spend two more points in Combat Endurance for 3 for my flagship. (Combat Endurance 1 is one of the few Combat god-tier perks useful for everyone, especially for carriers.)
We also have to take into consideration the number of points available to the player over 40 levels if we lost aptitude. Most players would stand to gain anywhere from 6-9 points, depending on the number of aptitudes they typically max out (I doubt many people max out all the aptitudes, but 12 points is possible).Without empty aptitudes level 40 player has almost as many points for fleetwide/campaign skills as he and level 20 officers have for combat, which sounds fair. The current way with empty aptitudes are bad (or unfair) because the current way pushes player away from combat and toward leader/campaign skills. Being reduced to decrepit puppet master like Master in a Master-Blaster symbiosis is unfun. Being Blaster is much more fun. Pen may be mightier than the sword, but being the sword in a game that centers on sword is more fun.
...act as gates to keep the player from outpacing early content...