So, I'll start with the big point.
I've discussed before how I don't like the way skills are split between personal combat ability & fleet-wide buffs and logistics bonuses. It feels bad to take skills that only affect your flagship, because you're missing out on all those fleet-wide bonuses that only you can take; and it simultaneously feels bad to focus on the fleet-wide skills and end up with officers that have stronger combat bonuses than you are. (Yes, I know: both paths are viable. But so is a no-skills run through the game. Yes, I know, player combat skills have the multiplying effect of the player being able to play more aggressively than the AI can. None of that changes the fact that it feels bad.)
This has gotten worse in 0.9. (Side-note: In my opinion. This whole thing is an opinion piece; when I say "X is true", please assume I mean "X is true for me" - I'm not going to add that disclaimer to every single statement in here, but it's an important disclaimer. Other people will have other experiences.)
Why do I feel that way?
Spoiler
[REDACTED] Battleships.
When I first found a red-warning system, the fleets in it were about how I remembered them - with the addition of an occasional fleet with one of the new battleships at its head. After a few experiments, I learned to just avoid those fleets; I could take them out, but it always ended up costing me more than I gained; I was lucky if I got out of that fight with both of my odysseys intact, and the odds of getting AI cores (of any sort, let alone the actually-useful beta or alpha cores) was low. ...And then the fleets scaled up. Now when I go into that system, it's a rare fleet that doesn't have -two- battleships in it. For a while, I just avoided red-warning systems entirely.
Much later, I got the blueprints for the Paragon. I had, by that point, a few million credits I could safely burn, so I decided to try an experiment. I requisitioned four paragons (...For some reason the game wouldn't let me put more than two paragons in the queue at a time?), cranked battle size to the max, backed them with a pile of assorted carriers, and headed out.
The carriers, it turned out, were useless in battle - fighters sent into the massed firepower of a [REDACTED] fleet just... melted. But their presence meant I got enough of the deployment point share to field all four paragons at once. And -that- got the job done.
But here's the problem: The AI is actually better than I am at flying a paragon in this sort of battle. It's better at using an omni shield to absorb specific attacks. It's better at flipping fortress shield on just long enough to absorb a spike in the incoming damage. It's -much- better at knowing when to turn shields -off- to avoid overloading. In short: The AI is very good at playing it safe, and that's exactly what this sort of fight needs. Any player ship I bring in inevitably ends up overextended - and with the amount of firepower the [REDACTED] fleets can bring to bear, it's pretty much make one small mistake and you're dead.
Now, the battles aren't completely non-interactive; sometimes I have to set escort orders to make sure none of the paragons end up completely unsupported by their fellows. Sometimes I have to take manual control of a paragon when a heavily wounded [REDACTED] battleship gets itself backed into a corner and my officers won't pursue them. But by and large, for this sort of battle, I'd be better off if I'd skipped combat skills entirely and focused everything on leadership and support skills. This... doesn't feel good. And it's not -just- fights against [REDACTED] that work out like this; they're just the worst offender. Taking on a Luddic Path station isn't quite as bad - I -can- be useful here - but it's a very similar feel of having to play very defensively, which, yes, the AI is generally -still- better at than I am.
Addendum: I think I'd actually prefer to make expeditions to an orange warning level system than a red one. But in my current game, I haven't found -any- of the tier two [REDACTED] systems, and there are a pair of tier three ones right near my main colony. So far, my quad-paragon expeditions have netted me one alpha and one beta core, so they -do- still drop. Just not very often.
* * * Other Points * * *
1: Expedition fleets start out too large. In my case, I had a pirate raid incoming at my fresh size 3 colony; yes, in retrospect, I could probably have stood up the defenses a bit faster... but I -did- start building a starbase before I got warning of the raid, and it -still- wasn't going to be online in time to help defend. The patrol base got online in time... and promptly generated a patrol fleet with a destroyer and a frigate. Not much help when the -first- pirate fleet had about eight cruisers; just pirate colossi, but compared to my one apogee and assorted destroyers... I was hopelessly outmatched. After much save scumming and more than a bit of luck, I managed to separate off and eliminate the smaller -second- pirate fleet - and for some reason that triggered a notice that the pirate raid had failed, and that first completely-overwhelming fleet promptly turned around and went away.
2: By contrast, I found the price ramp on bribing off expeditions to be reasonable; after my bad experiences with the pirate raid (incidentally, once I had the starbase up and running, the pirates never launched a raid again), I just paid off every expedition the major factions tried to send. Nowadays I get notice that my defenses should overwhelm the expeditions... but I still buy them off; why should I put my people's lives at risk when I do, in fact, have the credits available to go for bribes instead?
3: Speaking of expeditions, I'm very glad I read on the forum about how the Hegemony's AI inspections worked. Given the rarity of useful AI cores, bribing them becomes the obvious solution. After the first one of these launched, I stopped using alpha-grade AIs, figuring that they wouldn't inspect if I used beta-grade or lower. It's possible that that decision reduced the odds of an inspection... but it turned out not to completely stop them, so I've gone back to slotting alphas into my industries. (Honestly, I'd -like- to have some cleverer options; for example, pulling off alpha/beta cores and putting up a bunch of sacrificial gamma cores that I don't mind if they take. But from how I read the warning text, that probably won't work... and I see no reason to take the risk when I can just bribe them and be done with it.)
4: Gamma-grade AI cores don't seem to be useful, except in one instance: assigning one to the base population of a newly-started colony to reduce the amount of resources you need to have stockpiled to avoid shortages while the initial starport builds. There are probably some other corner cases - particularly if you take a commission or otherwise end up at war with some of the factions - but for my colonies, in my current game, I need beta-grade or higher to get any benefit once the initial starport is up.
5: Speaking of starports: is there any reason to -not- build one? I'd be tempted to increase the resource cost of starting a colony (say, 300 supplies and 200 food), give it a 15-day delay before you can do anything with it, and then just skip directly to "You've got a functioning starport that allows basic imports", with a side-order of "To increase accessibility, build a waystation & then upgrade that to a megaport." (Or maybe build a megaport and then upgrade that to a waystation?)
6: Luddic Path cells tend to be annoyingly far away, especially when they 're-establish support' after you blew up the closest base. Thanks to the intel screen I can actually -find- them... but if that's going away for 9.1, there needs to be some option to take its place. Also, I was expecting that my patrol fleets would have a chance of intercepting pather supply convoys, but that doesn't seem to be the case? ...Maybe because I can't set a 'transponder required' tag for my systems? Not that I ever see, say, hegemony patrols going after a transponder-off smuggler fleet...
7: Pirates, by contrast, tend to pretty predictably spawn their stations in nearby systems. In fact, for me, it's been the -same- nearby system every time. Well - same two nearby systems; I have colonies in two different places, now. Amusingly, the favored pirate spawn point for one of those is in a neutron star system. For some reason that pirate base never has supporting fleets when I come by to blow it up...
8: Station fights are interesting. However, the AI doesn't always seem to understand that the station core is there; it won't try to shoot through the central core, but it will try to shoot through, say, the three indestructible spoke-y bits of a low-tech station, and it will (sometimes) try to -fly- through that central core. Odysseys in particular have collision issues with stations (largely as a result of their mobility system), but I've seen a doom bounce off the central core as well.
9: The new plasma cannons are great! I am very pleased to be able to put a plasma cannon on a sunder again, and not have it be a terrible useless fail of an idea.
10: The new needlers are... not so great. They need their flux efficiency back; without that they're not worth the premium ordnance point cost. Needlers - both light and heavy, but not storm - were one of my mainstay weapons in previous versions. Now, every time I've considered using them, I've had to conclude that I'd be better off with something else.
11: We could really use a range 800 medium ballistic HE weapon, to pair up with heavy autocannons or heavy needlers. Right now I tend to end up with arbalests on my hammerheads, just because that makes the range bands match up better. (Well, that, and arbalests are flux-efficient, now. But the range thing is generally the deciding point.)
12: I have yet to find a case where I actually want to install the new Converted Hangar on a ship. Anyone have any examples of variants that make good use of this?
