Fractal Softworks Forum
Starsector => Suggestions => Topic started by: TrashMan on September 11, 2017, 12:44:44 AM
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The current skill tree honestly leaves me wanting.
Some skills are near useless, others feel way too useful.
Technology skills are surprisingly dissapointing, in the end they don't unlock almost anything.
Leadership tree is just officer+fighters, again, feels lacking.
Industry is the smallest and poorest, but I guess that will change once station construction and proper merchant skills (YouWantToBeAMerchant is a good start).
So...Ideas?
I'd like to see a new Logistics skill - something like "Rigorous training" or similar.
1. Gunnery Drills: By implementing strict targeting excercises, your gunners skills can truly shine. These do require more ammo and maintainance.
+25% weapon accuracy, +1/2/3/4 supply per month per ship
2. Damage Control: Fast and efficient handling of battle damage on a fleet-level is a vital skill for any commander.
+20% general repair speed (hull, engines, weapons)
3. Formation Warfare:
Ship fighting with the Escort order have increased speed and manuverability. -50% friendly fire damage.
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1. Gunnery Drills: By implementing strict targeting excercises, your gunners skills can truly shine. These do require more ammo and maintainance.
+25% weapon accuracy, +1/2/3/4 supply per month per ship
2. Damage Control: Fast and efficient handling of battle damage on a fleet-level is a vital skill for any commander.
+20% general repair speed (hull, engines, weapons)
3. Formation Warfare:
Ship fighting with the Escort order have increased speed and manuverability. -50% friendly fire damage.
1. This is net negative. Accuracy is of limited importance - some weapons are inherently accurate (beams), others already get enough from Gunnery Implants (+100%). Not worth using a skill-point and supplies on.
2. Meh. I suppose it could be a decent filler, if higher levels were excellent, but that's about it.
3. Game currently does decent job at avoiding such conditional bonuses created out of thin air. I'd rather not have orders that modify stats. Orders are for behavior.
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Why is everyone hating on technology? Everytime I play, I spec into tech first, then go other ways.
''Technology skills are surprisingly dissapointing, in the end they don't unlock almost anything.''
10% more OP for every ship in your fleet, more capacitors and vents to put on, 25% less fuel usage, Transverse jump ability, +5 burn for SB, sensor buffs and reducing enemy weapon range the more ships you have. How is that nothing?
Although I agree that some skills are pretty meh, while other are too useful, *cough* some leaderships skills *cough*
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1. Gunnery Drills: By implementing strict targeting excercises, your gunners skills can truly shine. These do require more ammo and maintainance.
+25% weapon accuracy, +1/2/3/4 supply per month per ship
2. Damage Control: Fast and efficient handling of battle damage on a fleet-level is a vital skill for any commander.
+20% general repair speed (hull, engines, weapons)
3. Formation Warfare:
Ship fighting with the Escort order have increased speed and manuverability. -50% friendly fire damage.
1. This is net negative. Accuracy is of limited importance - some weapons are inherently accurate (beams), others already get enough from Gunnery Implants (+100%). Not worth using a skill-point and supplies on.
2. Meh. I suppose it could be a decent filler, if higher levels were excellent, but that's about it.
3. Game currently does decent job at avoiding such conditional bonuses created out of thin air. I'd rather not have orders that modify stats. Orders are for behavior.
Feel free to come up with something better.
But skill level 1 was an entry - that supply cost is for ALL the training under that tree, not just gunnery. Though I guess for lvl 1 it could be + 1/2/3/4 supply per ship/3, then for lvl2 it would be /2.
The biggest problem with any passive skills is they add up. Bonus on top of bonus, and at high level you end up recieving half damage from everything, dealing double damage to everything, etc, etc...
Frankly, conditionals might be an improvement.
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Combat is the one I am most disappointed on. It gives small, generally insignificant bonuses to the flagship that probably either cannot force fights or too fragile to outfight the bigger and slower ships. The times I tried a pure Combat skill character, they do not perform much better than an unskilled character. Combat skills feel like they were designed for officers, and should be delegated to multiple officers, instead of the player wasting his skills on (most of) them.
Leadership is about as good as Technology.
Technology is probably the best tree in the game, having the best two perks in the game, Electronic Warfare 1 and Loadout Design 3. It also has the best personal skills that should belong in the Combat Tree (i.e., Gunnery Implants and Power Grid Modulation), plus Navigation.
Industry has some gems, but due to lack of skill points, it is often a choice between those skills versus some others elsewhere.
The biggest problem I have with skills is they encourage the player who wants to optimize to build toward mastermind or exploration, not personal combat. That is build your character to enhance your fleet as a whole in or out of combat. If you really want to maul things personally, then it is best to grab a Heron or Astral, pump Leadership skills (and Helmsmanship 3), run away from everything, and let your passive homing weapons called fighters kill everyone.
This is not unlike Endless Sky where you may want to pilot your hot-rod Marauder Leviathan or Kestrel and blast things, but since only the flagship can board ships, you need a big, fat (relatively) slow ship that has high cargo and/or bunks, such as the Bactrian. Leaving the fun combat work to your AI-controlled fleet.
P.S. I am not fond of Electronic Warfare 1 because it feels like a tax that the player must pay to level the playing field. A significant number (but not necessarily a majority) of enemy fleets have ECM and having -10% or -20% to shot range right off the bat hurts. Also, having Electronic Warfare when enemies do not have ECM means I can ignore those silly Sensor objectives, saving CP for things that really matter (like Eliminate, Fighter Strike, or Retreat).
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I have to agree with Megas here, the current set up basically encourages unfun builds (IE nothing that an officer can take), especially with the combo of the level cap, no skill aptitudes (especially since the officers don't have to pay them), and no respec option outside of mods
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I thin rolling 3 perks of the Combat Endurance skill into one is going to fix the trivial boost problem, for example you get +10/20/30% peak operating time (piloted ship), -20/30/40% chance of malfunctions when at low combat readiness (piloted ship) and +10/10/10% maximum combat readiness (piloted ship).
Also, I would like to propose a new skill in the Industry tree, that being Manufacturing Best Practices:
Applying latest improvements to manufacturing processes yields positive results
- Level 1: 10% discount on LPC, mod chips and weapon purchases
- Level 2: -30% chance of getting (D) ships when performing ship recovery
- Level 3: All ship stats gets a 10% boost
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What would it look like, if you would separate the skills into in combat skills and out of combat skills?
And then get a skill point every level for each category. Or give the skillpoints at different levels like every level up an out of combat skillpoint and every two or three levels a point for in combat skills.
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I would like to reiterate on my suggestion to allow limited respec past level 40. Every level beyond, you get to respec one skill point elsewhere. That would allow to slowly transition from one gameplay to another as you needs less Industry skills and more Logistical ones, or to switch from Combat to Technology etc. The "autofit" should be able to take care of any changes in ships OP.
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Technology is probably the best tree in the game, having the best two perks in the game, Electronic Warfare 1 and Loadout Design 3. It also has the best personal skills that should belong in the Combat Tree (i.e., Gunnery Implants and Power Grid Modulation), plus Navigation.
To get Loadout Design 3 you need to get 1 and2, which are IMHO worthless.
Elctronic warfare is the only technolgoy skill that seems really useful (-enemy weapon range). Then again, you have a combat skill that increases your weapon range.
The navigation skill is just there to cut the tedium of travel. Fuel is cheap so -30% fuel consumption is meh.
On the other hand, Leadership has -20% supply usage, which is big, since supplies are expensive.
Level 3: All ship stats gets a 10% boost
That sounds OP.
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Maybe a 5% would be ok
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I have to strongly disagree with the notion that Combat skills are weak or have no serious effect. If anything, they are stronger than before. And I feel like have to provide some sort of counterpoint here, since no-one else has done so.
That being said, it is true that Leadership and Technology are better aptitudes. There's a few reasons for this; not only do these help improve the performance of the entire fleet, but they also help to improve the player's ship. Some of the fleet-buffing skills are not just considered bonuses, but outright essential - officers, carrier doctrine and loadout design most prominently. There are three skills in technology that are essential for a build oriented around improving the flagship, and between one and four in Leadership, depending on your spec.
So for a combat build you need to spec up to 3 in Leadership and Technology anyway. You can abstain from Leadership if you're not a perfectionist, don't care about the rest of the fleet at all, and won't miss 15% CR more than you would six skill points elsewhere. This, more than anything, is why high-combat builds are rare.
I have no idea how you'd solve this. I'm not sure it's possible without severely nerfing Tech- and Leadership builds or restructuring these three trees entirely.
Because combat skills are strong. Incredibly so. You can go faster, win the flux wars, quadruple your resistance to EMP damage and recover from broken subsystems twice as fast, penetrate heavy armour with ease, become incredibly resistant to damage even after armour is gone via stacking the minimum damage reduction with the reduced damage to hull, turn on a dime, and boost your damage to fighters and missiles much more than the durability of fighters can possibly be boosted, hit things much more easily via faster projectile and missiles, more maneverable missiles, and better autotracking from high CR. And if you don't have these things, then enemy AI officers have them and make you look bad by comparison. The player can have more of these skills and in a much more optimized layout than AI officers can, particularly enemy ones. Skill perks are a lot like free hullmods that stack with actual hullmod - another factor, incidentally, in how good combat skills are. Missile Expertise and ECCM Module combined are significantly better than one or the other.
A player-controlled flagship with high combat skills can absolutely control the tide of battle around a critical point much more efficiently than anything else, including even carriers with Thunders or whatnot (though Thunders are uncontested in terms of bringing support to smaller turning points in a more spread-out battle, as they are intended to be). I have never even remotely agreed with the notion that Combat is weak and does nothing. With Combat skills, you can chase down most enemies one by one and quickly and efficiently tear them apart, unless they're in a much better ship than you are or also have a high-level officer and fleet support. You can duel the most threatening enemies, control smaller enemies, and let your fleet tear them apart that way. Instead of supporting your fleet to help them defeat the enemy, the fleet supports you to help you defeat the enemy, providing pressure, distractions, and dealing with the stragglers and small stuff. High combat builds are actually really, really fun.
What is true is that a lot of very good Combat skills are available at level one, and that it's much easier to "dip" into Combat than it is Leadership or Technology, which tends to require three points to get the perks you were actually looking for - and which are necessary for an optimal Combat build anyway. And since you do need a fleet no matter what, Leadership and Technology looks better by comparison, and is certainly more reliable, since their effect isn't lost if you overextend and eat a couple of Reapers to the face or otherwise take a devastating flanking or enveloping assault, or if you conversely leave most of your fleet without your support and it gets taken apart piecemeal.
You can't fix this dichotomy by buffing combat (because it would still synergize with tech and leadership with how officers and OP counts work, and giving the fleet's admiral special snowflake bonuses could quickly get ridiculous), unless you do something fancy like make Combat the primary fleet-wide non-carrier combat aptitude (with secondary personal ship effects to keep officers relevant?) and do something completely different with most of Leadership and Technology, completely revamping with new, primarily non-combat focuses which relate to combat about as directly as Industry does.
In any case, you can't easily solve this by adding or removing a skill here or there or changing the numbers around. You'd have to change the paradigm in some fashion, either by making skillpoints more common, or changing how aptitudes themselves work.
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I have to agree that a combat focused build can be really fun but you're missing a key point. Your officers can have all that skills that you spent your precious points on and you can still go into other skills to make your fleet better, so basically officers have their skills+your tech, which makes them pretty fuckin good. Yea sure, you can have your flagship be a beast, but it's one ship, and you can have 10 officers. And then officers are just copies of you with just combat skills but play worse since they're not the player.
I think Megas already said it's no longer possible to solo whole fleets with just one flagship, which would make combat really appealing then, but since having a deathball is so strong, no point in going combat unless you want to have fun or challenge yourself.
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Officers are not as good as the player. They're not as smart. They don't have as many skills. They require command points to micro. That's really the long and short of what I think of that. A 20:th level officer in an Onslaught will not have the same impact on the battle as a skilled 40th level player with a combat build in that same ship.
Were I to adjust anything about that it might be to reduce the maximum level of officers to dramatically reduce the number of skills they can max out. Or, alternatively, change the aptitude system in some way so that the player doesn't have to waste any points (compared to an officer) on those skills.
(For that matter, another alternative would be to have officer aptitudes, so that they are combat, carrier or technology-focused officers, and don't get to just boost everything to third level without paying the aptitude tax. Alternatively they could have up to four aptitude points. A few things that can be done here, certainly.)
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And then officers are just copies of you with just combat skills but play worse since they're not the player.
Reading 101
And I don't get a tech-focused officer would function. Would it stack with your skills? If yes that would be crazy OP, if not there's only 2 skills that affect only the piloted ship, not much variety there. And having aptitude points for officers too is just needless complication. Maybe reducing their max level would be ok, but there's no need to make it work exactly like a player.
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Reading 101
Don't really think you can talk about that, given that I did already address your points in my first post already. I was not exactly "missing" that key point as much as I was dismissing it entirely. While the gap could perhaps be widened and in doing so enhance the gameplay, currently Officers are not really comparable to a high-combat player character.
And I don't get a tech-focused officer would function. Would it stack with your skills? If yes that would be crazy OP, if not there's only 2 skills that affect only the piloted ship, not much variety there. And having aptitude points for officers too is just needless complication. Maybe reducing their max level would be ok, but there's no need to make it work exactly like a player.
I'm admittedly presuming more combat skills for Tech being added in the future (as opposed to or in addition derelict-hacking or whatever).
And agreed on the aptitude points. Just throwing that out there in case an officer completely specialized in a given aptitude would be too harsh. Another alternative might be to have specializations limit officers to three points in one aptitude's skills and two points in the other aptitudes.
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While I agree that Officers are not as strong as combat-focused (or truth be told any) player, it's only due to better piloting and better skill selection for player.
Raw *amount* of ship-skills a player can afford without skipping fleetwide essentials is actually somewhat lower than what officers get.
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Some of the fleet-buffing skills are not just considered bonuses, but outright essential - officers, carrier doctrine and loadout design most prominently. There are three skills in technology that are essential for a build oriented around improving the flagship, and between one and four in Leadership, depending on your spec.
Carrier skills are useless to those that don't use carriers. Leadership tree doesn't really offer much (if anything) for no-fighter fleets.
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Combat skills today are nowhere near as powerful as they were in pre-0.8 because the bonuses are smaller. Also because player cannot be much faster than the enemy to overtake cowardly AI.
Yes, flagship with all personal skills is a bit stronger, but my flagship still struggles to punch above its weight, though not as much as an unskilled ship. However, all that extra combat power does little to fix the greatest obstacle - forcing fights! My combat boosted Paragon or other big ship has trouble against small ships because the AI refuses to engage until it has the numbers to swarm and kill my flagship. (Before 0.8, bonuses were big enough that a battleship could survive, but not today.) Combat skills merely delay the inevitable. If I pilot a smaller ship, the boosts are not enough to let it punch above its weight. I used to solo capitals with a Medusa, and solo cruisers and Onslaught with a Wolf, with pre-0.8 skills. I cannot do that today. Actually, cruisers are still tough opponents for Medusa even with Combat skills. (Also, Medusa has trouble forcing fights against some frigates.)
When trying to solo fleets, the best success I had for that was with a carrier flagship because most fighters are faster than frigates and force fights. To make the idea work, I need max carrier skills from Leadership plus Helmsmanship 3 from Combat so my carrier can run away with zero-flux speed while fighters are "Engaged". (I also have no assault weapons and add Unstable Injector so that my carrier is fast for its class.)
The greatest obstacle to soloing fleets is forcing fights against a cowardly AI that fails to perceive and exploit an overwhelming advantage. You can have all the firepower and defenses you want, but if one side or both plays coward, then the fight may come down to who runs out of peak performance/CR first. Before 0.8, with the combination of Augmented Engines and enemies charging in for the kill, there was usually no trouble forcing fights against the AI, and it was glorious.
All the discussion about flagship affecting battles, player can do that with an unskilled flagship too. Combat skills does not make your flagship significantly better enough to justify the cost of building a Combat specialist.
@ alguLoD: You cannot quadruple your resistance to EMP. Only the Resistant Flux Conduits hullmod offers EMP resistance. Before 0.8, Damage Control reduced EMP damage, and it was great. Probably so much that the benefit was removed in 0.8 so that ships cannot be immune to EMP today. Resistant Flux Conduits is a near-universal top-tier hullmod, nearly up there with ITU and Expanded Deck Crew.
I like to dip into Combat. I get Combat Endurance 1, Evasive Maneuvers 1, and Helmsmanship 3 minimum. Combat Endurance 1 is great when fights are decided on a timer, and they sometimes are given the AI's cowardice. I like to get Damage Control 2 and Defensive Systems 2 too, but lack of skill points make those choices hard - hard enough that I usually do not take them and leave points unspent. If I dip much into Combat, then I cannot afford luxuries like more officers in Leadership, Navigation in Technology, or any of Industry.
Aside, if I know for certain that my flagship of choice is not a carrier, the Gunnery Implants would be a no-brainer for me. However, if my flagship is an unarmed carrier (because they are the best at killing fleets), then all of those juicy weapon bonuses are worthless to me.
Thunders are glass cannons that take too long to regenerate (but they have the best offense for 8 OP). They are most useful for EMP if you do not have Claws to spare. Otherwise, more durable (or cheap) fighters tend to be more useful.
@ TrashMan:
I agree Loadout Design 1 is useless. Loadout Design 2 is useless without Loadout Design 3, due to lack of OP. Once player gets Loadout Design 3, he can often afford super-max vents and Loadout Design 2 becomes useful. However, even if 1 and 2 are useless, 3 is so good that it is almost always worth the cost for everyone. (Without Loadout Design 3, ships tend to have barely enough OP to afford the basics and none of the advanced stuff like Converted Hangar, bombers, and weapons more advanced than Open Market stuff.) It is that good. Only Electric Warfare 1 is a better perk because an automatic -10% to 20% malus to shot range to many late-game fights really hurts, and preventing that is great. (All carrier fleets are not as good as they should be due to AI faults, so having non-carriers to tank for carriers is a good idea.) #3 perk, probably Fleet Logistics 3, is a distant third.
Fuel is a big deal, maybe about as much or more than supplies. For some people, the tandem is too much, especially if they use slow pokes like Prometheus. (I would gladly take the +5 to Sustained Burn, since that is my default mode of travel even for pursuing enemies.) I really, REALLY want Navigation, but because Navigation has no use in a fight (unlike Fleet Logistics), I pass it up because I there are not enough skill points to get everything I want for combat.
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I'm not going to spend too much time on this - Internet debates are something I find exhausting nowadays, especially when results are unlikely. I disagree with certain commonly held notions regarding combat, and while I've seen a fair few others agree with me over Discord, they are not here in this thread, which was largely filled with negative viewpoints re; the power of the Combat aptitude. More trying to show that counterpoints exist than win a debate.
I will say, to be clear, that my bottom line is this: I agree fundamentally that Combat isn't as good as Technology or Leadership, even if I think it's good on its own, and certainly fun. I don't usually have a problem with the cowardly AI, but that might be simply because I use carriers in more of a support role and also make extensive use of LRMs.
@ alguLoD: You cannot quadruple your resistance to EMP. Only the Resistant Flux Conduits hullmod offers EMP resistance. Before 0.8, Damage Control reduced EMP damage, and it was great. Probably so much that the benefit was removed in 0.8 so that ships cannot be immune to EMP today. Resistant Flux Conduits is a near-universal top-tier hullmod, nearly up there with ITU and Expanded Deck Crew.
"Quadruple EMP resistance" is somewhat imprecise terminology, and my bad - my only excuse is that I was trying to keep my post flowing and readable. You can also halve damage received by weapons and engines (which includes EMP damage, AFAIK) and also increase the hit points of your weapons and engines. This means your systems last a lot longer before they go away and need to be repaired.
A lot of people seem to subconsciously filter out those perks because they don't have flashy effects - I've seen those levels referred to as effectively empty. But Ordnance Expertise 2, Evasive Maneuvers 2, Helmsmanship 2 etc. do have an effect that I never really appreciated until I tanked a Terminator drone's full ion pulser salvo to the side without deleterious effects.
Thunders are glass cannons that take too long to regenerate (but they have the best offense for 8 OP). They are most useful for EMP if you do not have Claws to spare. Otherwise, more durable (or cheap) fighters tend to be more useful.
Yeah. Thunders aren't very specialized fighters and lack raw power, with that high replacement timer being a considerable drawback on top of everything else.
It should perhaps be noted that I mainly use them on Drovers or (early on) Geminis. Reserve Deployment does marvels for their sustainability. Then they become useful for when you hit up the tactical map and send them off to give a nasty dose of EMP and kinetics against troublesome but isolated enemy ships.
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I like Helmsmanship 2. I would get that for any ship I pilot. I probably would have passed on 3 until I learned that Engaged fighters put flux on the carrier, and getting zero-flux speed bonus on a carrier is great because squishy wizard carrier can kite enemies now. Because carriers are a dominant power in 0.8, even those with built-in drones (e.g., Tempest) or Converted Hangar, I consider Helmsmanship 3 a must.
Combat Endurance 2... I generally want my ships off the map instead of bleeding CR until it is zero. This is a case where I want that skill in Industry that halves the CR threshold for malfunctions, but have trouble affording. Ordnance Expert is nice, but not enough to justify the points for my character. There are not enough points for me to take it. It may be a good skill for officers.
As for engines and weapons, I like Damage Control 2. When combined with Automated Repair Unit, they repair so fast that getting knocked out does not matter much. Even Damage Control 2 alone is good. (Damage Control 3 may be good too, but I cannot afford it due to lack of points.)
Reserve Deployment is a very powerful ship system. I certainly abuse it.
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I think the thing about Combat skills is that they're quite nasty if you have multiple Officers tapped out at level 29, their absolute limit, and a bunch of Officers; they make a pretty big difference... if the Officers have some of the must-haves, like Helmsmanship, Gunnery Implants, Ordinance Expertise, etc.
I think that the problem here is largely that the game's approach to player leveling isn't working well; a player can stack up to become a decent individual killing machine, but only at the cost of hurting the fleet's performance so significantly that it's not attractive, because of the "entry fee tax" of having to put three points in (and 12 to get into all the skill trees).
I usually have to skimp on Combat skills to take only the most powerful skills, which make a difference but aren't exactly heroic.
So, one fix is to simply give the Player more points to use, or lower the leveling thresholds and the soft cap, so that progression is faster and leads to more points being available before the (nearly) endless grind hits.
Another fix, probably a better one, would be to give the Player larger bonuses for the personal skills than the Captains get. It's not that complicated; the Player's the central actor in the story we're telling as we play, and there's nothing wrong with that, so long as it doesn't lead to the Player soloing everything with ease. I'll probably try that approach in the next version of the Rebalance Pack.
Then there are a bunch of minor "filler" bonuses that don't mean much unless you have a lot of skills. It might be better to distribute them across the three levels, like they used to be. Not sure what's the right answer there; while each one of those bonuses is pretty weak in isolation, they're still pretty strong in combination.
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Also, player does not specialize by skill tree, but by what role he wants to do, and the best roles need to cherry pick the most relevant skills from at least three trees.
If you want to be a carrier specialist, you need Combat 3 for Combat Endurance 1 (because some carriers always lose peak performance regardless of ship size; e.g., Astral loses peak performance even when an enemy frigate is present) and Helmsmanship 3; Leadership 3 for Fleet Logistics, at least two fighter skills, and maybe Command & Control (if abusing Fighter Strike); and Technology 3 for Loadout Design (because carriers are very OP hungry, even more than other OP hungry ships).
If you want to be a generalist, you probably want Combat 2 or 3 for Combat Endurance 1, at least Helmsmanship 2 (preferably 3 if you spend much time in a carrier); Leadership 3 for Fleet Logistics and Fighter Doctrine (because Fleet Logistics is good and fighters dominate 0.8 ); Technology 3 for Loadout Design 3 and probably Gunnery Implants 3 (and also obligatory Electronic Warfare 1), maybe Navigation 3 because of fuel discount and campaign quality-of-life; and maybe some Industry for combat, looting, or surveying.
About the only character I can think of that might not spend so much on empty aptitudes is the Combat specialist who want to try to win with only personal skills, and that is clearly sub-optimal because it ignores Loadout Design 3 (more OP) and ECM (less shot range really hurts), and it does not help the fleet at all.
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So, one fix is to simply give the Player more points to use, or lower the leveling thresholds and the soft cap, so that progression is faster and leads to more points being available before the (nearly) endless grind hits.
I would like to pick one skill from each tree, preferably a must-have for everyone, and make that an aptitude. Combat Endurance gets restored to the aptitude it used to be. Pick one among Command & Control, Officer Management, or Fleet Logistics for Leadership aptitude (probably Fleet Logistics). Make Loadout Design the Technology aptitude because everyone wants more OP. Pick something for Industry.
Even with this, we probably need more skill points when we get more skills to fill out the skill trees, like maybe outpost management when that feature is ready.
Higher level cap, like 50, would be nice. I hit level cap of 40 before I make it to endgame and obtain my first capital.
Another fix, probably a better one, would be to give the Player larger bonuses for the personal skills than the Captains get.
I like this too. If player sacrifices fleet competence by focusing on personal skill, he better be a monster that can force fights and/or punch above his weight like he used to before 0.8. On the other hand, that might just exacerbate carrier flagship power (with faster speed, more peak performance/CR, and fighter bonuses) meaning player can kite even better and wipe out things with fighters more easily.
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Yeah, agreed on those points. I think that wasting 12 points merely getting into the Skills is a large part of the problem. That's pretty easy to fix; I could just write some code setting all those to filled at start and see how that effects things. I suspect it's the difference between feeling like we're squeezed into the perfect cheese-build and feeling like we're allowed to generalize enough to matter.
One of the things I'd like to see, long-term, is for Industry skills to be something we can put on Outpost Commanders, or for them to be another type of Mercenary Captain we could buy- one that splits between Industry and Combat, so they're not-so-great as pure-combat Captains, but they can contribute to areas the player doesn't want to spend points on.
Perhaps a way to go about this would be to:
1. Make Technology all about fleet-wide improvements; move Gunnery Implants into Combat and put a few new things in Tech to keep it very attractive, like unlocks for a few neat power-toys. I think people will tend to get in there anyhow for the OPs. I'm glad that there are no longer any fleet-wide buffs in Combat, too, but I think that the top-end buff from Ordinance Expertise (less OPs per gun) would be welcome back in Tech.
2. I think Leadership is finally relevant-enough that it doesn't need more cheese, other than my OCD desire to see all of the Skill bars be filled. I'm actually quite happy that Carrier-centric builds are so competitive; that's a welcome change!
3. I don't think Industry should get touched; there's no point talking about buff / nerf there yet, until we know what its implications will be.
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I suspect it's the difference between feeling like we're squeezed into the perfect cheese-build and feeling like we're allowed to generalize enough to matter.
"Perfect cheese-build" sounds funny, but that is how I feel. If I want to build anything from a cheese specialist to a generalist competent at everything, I feel squeezed into the one perfect cheese-build (for that role) with little variation and no room for campaign luxuries like Navigation or Surveying.
1. Make Technology all about fleet-wide improvements; move Gunnery Implants into Combat and put a few new things in Tech to keep it very attractive, like unlocks for a few neat power-toys. I think people will tend to get in there anyhow for the OPs.
All of my characters would go Technology just for Loadout Design 3 (for more OP) and Electronic Warfare 1 (for ECM defense). They are the best two perks in the game for everyone, and Technology will always be very attractive as long as those two perks stay as they are and no other perk becomes universally vital.
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Someone may have mentioned this idea already, but if not, here goes...
* Eliminate current aptitudes because they eat skill points for no benefit and officers do not need to get them.
* Collapse effective aptitudes down from four to two: Personal skills and Management skills. Personal skills are everything officers can take and affects the ship only. Management skills are fleetwide or campaign skills that only the player can take. (Reasoning: Nearly every best build cherry-picks from three or four aptitudes, and Leadership and Technology at 3 are practically given.)
* Player gets a pool of points for each aptitude. With two, he has two pools of points. At max level, player has as many points in his personal pool as officers get for personal skills, and player also has similar amount of points in his Management skill pool. (Reasoning: Why must player who wants to be the best be delegated to buff-bot while AI officers get all of the fun and exciting powers. If I want to be a warrior leader, I want to be heroic paragon that can lead and fight, not a wormy puppet-master or wimpy mascot or nurse good only for boring but practical powers.)
This way, high level player gets the must-have fleetwide skills and enough of the fun personal stuff officers can enjoy, unlike today where player must get empty aptitudes, fleetwide stuff, and maybe a few fun personal things or quality-of-life features with leftover points.
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Someone may have mentioned this idea already, but if not, here goes...
* Eliminate current aptitudes because they eat skill points for no benefit and officers do not need to get them.
* Collapse effective aptitudes down from four to two: Personal skills and Management skills. Personal skills are everything officers can take and affects the ship only. Management skills are fleetwide or campaign skills that only the player can take. (Reasoning: Nearly every best build cherry-picks from three or four aptitudes, and Leadership and Technology at 3 are practically given.)
* Player gets a pool of points for each aptitude. With two, he has two pools of points. At max level, player has as many points in his personal pool as officers get for personal skills, and player also has similar amount of points in his Management skill pool. (Reasoning: Why must player who wants to be the best be delegated to buff-bot while AI officers get all of the fun and exciting powers. If I want to be a warrior leader, I want to be heroic paragon that can lead and fight, not a wormy puppet-master or wimpy mascot or nurse good only for boring but practical powers.)
This way, high level player gets the must-have fleetwide skills and enough of the fun personal stuff officers can enjoy, unlike today where player must get empty aptitudes, fleetwide stuff, and maybe a few fun personal things or quality-of-life features with leftover points.
You want to be both a great leader AND A great front-line fighter?
I'd say no. You simply want the player to have everything. What is the point of picking skills if you'll get everything in the end? There is no choice or point to it.
I might as well just give myself all the skill points trough cheats.
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You want to be both a great leader AND A great front-line fighter?
I'd say no. You simply want the player to have everything. What is the point of picking skills if you'll get everything in the end? There is no choice or point to it.
I might as well just give myself all the skill points trough cheats.
Max-skills officer is endgame baseline. Officer-less ships are fodder. Piloting fodder-ship or being below baseline is just not fun.
And not "getting it all" can be implementing by making both personal and fleetwide skill pools significantly larger than whatever amount of points a player/officer can get. Which means you will still need to specialize in piloting certain kind of ships and specialize overall fleet composition.
I also like point-by-point re-spec after max level idea, that was already mentioned in thread. This keeps choices important, but allows some flexibility. Unlike current situation of having to pick only skills that are perfect for endgame, with no right to error.
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@ TrashMan: I never mentioned getting everything at the end. I want at least enough skill points to get as many personal skills as a level 20 officer plus enough skills to get fleetwide essentials and/or some campaign quality-of-life. Currently, I need to pick mostly fleetwide essentials then pick either a few personal combat skills or campaign quality-of-life stuff with relatively few leftover points.
Player has 42 skill points max. 9 to 12 will be eaten by empty aptitudes, so let us say 30 for skills in worst case scenario. Compared to officers you have 8 or 9 more points than them. That means if you want to spend as many as an officer on personal skills, you have three max skills for fleetwide stuff, which is not enough. This means if you want to be optimal, you are forced into a buffer or force multiplier role like a cleric or bard. If you want to spec yourself into a warrior role because it is more fun, you lose potential power and shoot yourself in the foot.
I have tried characters with nothing but personal skills. They are fun to use, but unfortunately do not perform significantly better than an unskilled character (because enemy still kites like an trolling coward until they have an overwhelming advantage), unless those personal skills are fighter skills (which are in Leadership, not Combat) and I am married to Drover, Heron, or Astral in the game. If I use a carrier, then I need to run like a dirty coward until fighters passively kill all. Either way, my fleet suffers because I have no points to make them better.
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I've been taking a look at the issues; it's a little harder to resolve than I thought, because it's hard to get back to the PersonAPI and determine whether the person's the Player or somebody else, but it looks like it can be done.
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I also like point-by-point re-spec after max level idea, that was already mentioned in thread. This keeps choices important, but allows some flexibility. Unlike current situation of having to pick only skills that are perfect for endgame, with no right to error.
That could work for personal skills, but not campaign skills. With re-spec, I would take Surveying and Salvaging skills, drain the Sector dry, then re-spec those now useless skills away for other useful skills, probably something for combat if personal and campaign skills are still mixed together.
P.S. Removing empty aptitude prerequisites would give max level player roughly double the points officers have, and player can go roughly equal on personal and fleetwide skills (or unbalanced distribution like all combat and no campaign stuff).
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How bout instead of putting points into aptitudes, putting a point in any skill in an aptitude increases the aptitude level?
So if you a total of 3 points into combat skills, you'd have combat 3.
If you put 5 in technology (lets say Electronic warfare 2, Optical Targeting 2 and Navigation 1), you have tech 5.
That would not only remove pointless points, but also allow finer limits - for example, you can have a certain level as requirement for a skill. So you need Combat 6 or more before you can take Missile Warfare 3
EDIT: I wrote tech 3, should have been tech 5
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How bout instead of putting points into aptitudes, putting a point in any skill in an aptitude increases the aptitude level?
So if you a total of 3 points into combat skills, you'd have combat 3.
If you put 5 in technology (lets say Electronic warfare 2, Optical Targeting 2 and Navigation 1), you have tech 3.
That would not only remove pointless points, but also allow finer limits - for example, you can have a certain level as requirement for a skill. So you need Combat 6 or more before you can take Missile Warfare 3
That's kinda the old system
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So if you a total of 3 points into combat skills, you'd have combat 3.
If you put 5 in technology (lets say Electronic warfare 2, Optical Targeting 2 and Navigation 1), you have tech 3.
That is effectively the same as no aptitudes, if skills remain ungated as they are.
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How bout instead of putting points into aptitudes, putting a point in any skill in an aptitude increases the aptitude level?
So if you a total of 3 points into combat skills, you'd have combat 3.
If you put 5 in technology (lets say Electronic warfare 2, Optical Targeting 2 and Navigation 1), you have tech 3.
People are misunderstanding this post, look at the last line in the quote, it's not 1:1.
I actually like this, you can't just go instantly for the super duper mega ultra cool skill, you need to pick some extra skills in the aptitude first, kind of like in payday 2 where you gotta spend a certain amount of points in a tree before unlocking the next tier of skills.
Also, this model would actually benefit the player in terms of points, since in the game you need 2 points for a level 1 skill(1 ap 1 skill), then 4 points for a level 2(2 ap 2 skill) and then 6 for a level 3(3 ap 3 skill), while with this system you save the ap point from level, and while you spend the same amount of points to get a skill to level 2 or 3, those points are spent in other skills.
Honestly i really support this idea, it allows for more skills to be viable(for example just dropping in 1 point in a spec you don't really want to get just one skill(*cough* Electronic Warfare *cough*) instead of having to spend 2 character points or simply just making it so the player has to choose more skills, so more get used.
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My apologies, I didn't explain it well.
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
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Oops, looks like i also misunderstood, lol.
Yeah it's actually an even better idea than before.
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I came here to suggest point-by-point re-specs in exchange for excess XP (either always or only at max level), but apparently someone else already did it.
So consider this my approval of the idea.
Putting the mandatory skills right into the aptitudes seems like an obvious improvement, too.