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« on: January 06, 2023, 10:28:54 AM »
I think, with regards to S-mods, Alex is on the right track to find some way to give choice as to what to S-mod into ships because it does tend to turn into your top 3 OP-cost mods that you'll always keep on because the benefits are so strong you'd be crazy not to. Everyone already know that Heavy Armor is almost a freebie for Low-techs like Dominator, Onslaught, Legion, or Mora, and then you slap on EMR if it has so much as has a couple Medium missiles or greater because you're getting the most OP to firepower bonus in the game with that. If you're high-tech, you'll hardly ever go wrong with stacking Hardened Shields on them and ITU was almost always guaranteed because range is so key despite actually being on the higher end of OP cost. The only thing holding those back *were* those expensive OP costs and the sacrifices you'd need to make for them, but now the sacrifice has just become an SP or two, and the slots you get to put them in so its more of a competition of which of the most-expensives do you want to permanently benefit from.
As an idea, instead of giving the S-mods benefits or debuffs based on what it is (thereby adding more hidden effects on enemy ships even more so as there's already a problem with not knowing *exactly* what hullmods listed on ships in the pre-combat screen *do* which will only be exacerbated with this. It'll be a real fun surprise getting nuked in my wolfpack run by a ship that just so happened to have a built-in that gave it +damage to frigates when *no other bonuses in the game give +damage against frigates* and I didn't know this) what about adding or subtracting OP based on the mods cost? When I was trying to figure out what to put in as my third S-mods on my ships I was trying to balance out something I'd want permanently that was also higher in cost, but what if say building in something Expensive like the incredibly bulky HA permanently "reserved" some of your OP for it, but was still cheaper and something cheap and lightweight could add to your total OP instead and the difference was just based on the average cost of hullmod as, for capitals, a fair number of them hover around the 15, 20, 25 range? This way Heavy armor isn't necessarily a given because it'd still cost OP, just less, and be expensive relatively whereas if you always wanted say Accelerated Shields so that they always raise on time as you need it, then it can add some OP your way such that every S-mod guarantees a strict X amount of additional OP regardless of cost.
Edit: Also, as an aside a large thing I do enjoy about the refit screen is being able to build around a situation to counter an opponent and a lot of examples can be seen here with respect to builds centered around countering the doritos and Zig. Other examples include slapping on Solar Shielding against Tri-tach and the remnants, Piranhas when going to assault a base, Hellbores and HILs when dealing with the Hegemony or Church, or even ECM when dealing with the League. All options you can and might want to think about including for specific situations, but wouldn't want all the time like ECM against pirates/pathers that never use it, or Hellbores against Tri-tach's weak PD and armor. Built-ins run counter to that by making you want to slap in permanent bonuses and so focusing on something almost always generalized for any situation you might want to refit.