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Suggestions / Hullmod thoughts
« on: February 05, 2020, 07:54:11 AM »
At the start there are too few hullmods. For instance you can struggle to fill the Ordnance Points usefully for the Cerberus and Hound, which are commonly used only in the early game, especially if you have Loadout Design 3 before you have accumulated the right modspecs. For instance adding Capacitors for those ships feel a bit pointless as they don't have innate shields, though they can be useful for being able to fire guns for a longer time without pause depending on the weapons. However it is unlikely the player would want to put the rarer flux hungry weapons on this ships. So I propose that either Makeshift Shield Generator or Heavy Armor should be added as hullmods know at the start of the game, as both can be useful to both ships. Armored Weapon Mounts and Advanced Turret Gyros can aslo be known at the start of the game as they too aren't sufficiently complicated customisation that would require a Modspec and can be assumed to be rather easy to customise without requiring a collection of notes and guidelines and practical examples that modspecs represent in a universe where customisation is widespread.
I would suppose a counter argument would be that these early beginning ships are supposed to be easy kills for the player, but I suppose it can be coded in that ships meant to be easy kills simply wouldn't use those hullmods. Depending on gameplay vision, it could be seen that these ships are not meant to be more powerful for the player to be able to use.
I feel like there are too many hullmods and there can be a cull of some of the more unnecessary ones or ones which present discordant gameplay design. Suggest to remove or merge/change some of these to make space for more exciting hullmods and reduce the scrolling needed. The suggestion of the removal of hullmods from the refit screen allows ships which have the built in to remain built in.
Blast Doors - can be removed as there are other hullmods which provides a greater Hull Integrity like Reinforced Bulkhead which provides +40% as opposed to +20%. Insulated Engine Assembly also provides +10% Hull which is almost as cost effective (83%) in Ordnance Points as Blast Doors for increasing hull. As sad as the worth of human life is, crew casualties from hull damage is normally not a concern. It's benefits of hull increase and crew casualties can be rolled into Reinforced Bulkead or Insulated Engine Assembly instead. A problem would be that there is less granularity in increasing Hull integrity.
Recovery Shuttles - Crew loss is not normally a monetary concern and if it is a matter of storing crew a better solution is to obtain crew logistic ship. An alternative is to reduce crew loss by 75% instead to make them worth having.
ECM Package or Nav Relay. Can be a bit situational. Normally used for support ships. Clashes with thematically with the skills that automatically gives these hullmods in that you already are deploying these sensor jammers and nav bouys. If not from your ships already, where are they being deployed from? Though it can be argued that the hullmod is for much more dedicated ships, that requires hullspace like on the Omen. Alternatively, they can be merged together.
Solar Shielding - benefits of operating in a corona and in storms is only as useful proportional to the amount is is applied to the fleet. The effect be much better placed as a fleetwide skill rather than a specific hullmod. The reduces energy damage by 20% aspect is awfully discriminating towards energy damage and begs the question of other damage types. This type of rock paper scissors hullmod is not gameplay that works well in this type of game I feel. In theory against a fleet of energy damage it would give disproportionate benefits and against a fleet of no energy damage that fleet would be worse off as well as creating an impetus to change hullmods beforehand to match the fleet you are facing.
Unstable Injector - feels a bit odd when Safety Overrides exists as an option. Though I suppose it can be used on Capital ships. I mostly use it for logistical ships in the early-mid game in case of a pursuit.
I feel that Augmented Drive Field takes up a very large amount of OP for a very high burn increase. It is better off halved for a +1 benefit in burn speed for half the OP cost instead. If +2 burn speed is preferable, perhaps it can be able to be applied twice or a new hullmod that is half of Augmented Drive Field be created instead.
The relationship between Militarized Subsystem and Insulated Engine Assembly is a bit conflicting in that applying Militarized Subsystem provides the same benefit of reducing sensor profile by 50% by removing Civilian-grade Hull, thus implying this is done by applying the Insulated Engine Assembly innately but without the hull integrity increase. But Insulated Engine Assembly can be applied again. A solution would be to remove the +10% hull integrity aspect. Another solution would be to reduce the cost of Militarized subsystem and remove the benefit of removing the sensor profile by 50%, but that clashes with the removing of Civilian-grade hull aspect. Or perhaps Civilian-grade hull should not increase sensor profile by 50%, or that you cannot apply both Militarized Substem and Insulated Engine Assembly together. However, it's not really much of a problem as it is not too breaking of a discrepancy.
I would suppose a counter argument would be that these early beginning ships are supposed to be easy kills for the player, but I suppose it can be coded in that ships meant to be easy kills simply wouldn't use those hullmods. Depending on gameplay vision, it could be seen that these ships are not meant to be more powerful for the player to be able to use.
I feel like there are too many hullmods and there can be a cull of some of the more unnecessary ones or ones which present discordant gameplay design. Suggest to remove or merge/change some of these to make space for more exciting hullmods and reduce the scrolling needed. The suggestion of the removal of hullmods from the refit screen allows ships which have the built in to remain built in.
Blast Doors - can be removed as there are other hullmods which provides a greater Hull Integrity like Reinforced Bulkhead which provides +40% as opposed to +20%. Insulated Engine Assembly also provides +10% Hull which is almost as cost effective (83%) in Ordnance Points as Blast Doors for increasing hull. As sad as the worth of human life is, crew casualties from hull damage is normally not a concern. It's benefits of hull increase and crew casualties can be rolled into Reinforced Bulkead or Insulated Engine Assembly instead. A problem would be that there is less granularity in increasing Hull integrity.
Recovery Shuttles - Crew loss is not normally a monetary concern and if it is a matter of storing crew a better solution is to obtain crew logistic ship. An alternative is to reduce crew loss by 75% instead to make them worth having.
ECM Package or Nav Relay. Can be a bit situational. Normally used for support ships. Clashes with thematically with the skills that automatically gives these hullmods in that you already are deploying these sensor jammers and nav bouys. If not from your ships already, where are they being deployed from? Though it can be argued that the hullmod is for much more dedicated ships, that requires hullspace like on the Omen. Alternatively, they can be merged together.
Solar Shielding - benefits of operating in a corona and in storms is only as useful proportional to the amount is is applied to the fleet. The effect be much better placed as a fleetwide skill rather than a specific hullmod. The reduces energy damage by 20% aspect is awfully discriminating towards energy damage and begs the question of other damage types. This type of rock paper scissors hullmod is not gameplay that works well in this type of game I feel. In theory against a fleet of energy damage it would give disproportionate benefits and against a fleet of no energy damage that fleet would be worse off as well as creating an impetus to change hullmods beforehand to match the fleet you are facing.
Unstable Injector - feels a bit odd when Safety Overrides exists as an option. Though I suppose it can be used on Capital ships. I mostly use it for logistical ships in the early-mid game in case of a pursuit.
I feel that Augmented Drive Field takes up a very large amount of OP for a very high burn increase. It is better off halved for a +1 benefit in burn speed for half the OP cost instead. If +2 burn speed is preferable, perhaps it can be able to be applied twice or a new hullmod that is half of Augmented Drive Field be created instead.
The relationship between Militarized Subsystem and Insulated Engine Assembly is a bit conflicting in that applying Militarized Subsystem provides the same benefit of reducing sensor profile by 50% by removing Civilian-grade Hull, thus implying this is done by applying the Insulated Engine Assembly innately but without the hull integrity increase. But Insulated Engine Assembly can be applied again. A solution would be to remove the +10% hull integrity aspect. Another solution would be to reduce the cost of Militarized subsystem and remove the benefit of removing the sensor profile by 50%, but that clashes with the removing of Civilian-grade hull aspect. Or perhaps Civilian-grade hull should not increase sensor profile by 50%, or that you cannot apply both Militarized Substem and Insulated Engine Assembly together. However, it's not really much of a problem as it is not too breaking of a discrepancy.
