My idea for a skill revamp would be that instead of giving direct bonuses, most of them (except leadership type skills) would unlock a dedicated hullmod at level 1, and all subsequent levels would improve the efficiency of that hullmod. Then they could still provide significant bonuses, but since you'd have to spend OP and could not install all of them, that would prevent turning all ships in flawless murder machines.
That's an interesting idea, although the devil's certainly in the details. Personally, I'm not at all sure that coupling Hull Mods and skills was a great idea in the first place, especially when most of them are on Tech / Combat areas we'd get anyhow.
It made it so that a bunch of the Hull Mods don't even get used, if you didn't want to get XYZ path filled out because Grind, which just removes potential fun from the game. But since people can still mega-level by abusing trade, I guess that's all right...
Seriously, though, I think that ultimately, Hull Mods should be tied to missions given to you by Factions, where the power toys require pretty amazing heroics, rather than leveling. But that gets into later polish issues with the development of the game; I think discussion of this probably has to wait until Industry is Alpha and we can have a coherent discussion about the difficulty ramp in general.
Clearly we're thinking about this differently; what're your thoughts?
Basically, there's a vaaaaaast difference between rolling around with a couple of Frigates and Level-0 pilots and what I was rolling around with the last time I went to level 40+ on regular difficulty- a few Frigates for chasers and a mix of Medusas and Enforcers and Level-20 Captains with hand-picked skill trees (i.e., I just ruthlessly culled them any time they got a bad upgrade choice), backed up by my invinci-Cruiser, an Apogee kitted to shield tank.
The fleet could catch practically anything and fear nothing, and I could just sit back and watch. Practically no amount of anything less than Cruiser-sized could kill even one member of this fleet, frankly.
Certainly not anything Pirate(D), which is the only Faction where this dynamic happens all that often. But I could exploit that behavior and take out 30+ ships in a single fight that would be a reasonable payoff in Supplies / Fuel, if nothing else, by letting them get brave / dumb enough to "catch" me. Suckas!
Now... would that have worked vs. 200+ ships, because at that level, Pirates only spawn hordes? No, then I'd have had to individually pilot every one of those ships, most likely, and it'd have been genuinely dicey, because CR decay would've made it hard. But they don't, nor do they wait until it'd be actually
smart to engage.
Fact is, anything less than an Armada should not tangle with one player Destroyer backed up by another Destroyer and 3+ Frigates.
I think that the Fleet AI should get more exposed in the API; I'd be more than willing to write a smart one that takes player levels / power into account, calls reinforcements, etc.
On the whole subject of Skill power... it's not that Skills are OP / UP. It's that when you get past Level 20, you're just not seeing dangerous-enough opponents, because Markets are still spawning the same ol' same ol' and the Variants aren't dynamically adjusting to reflect what players+ allied Captains can do. SS+ largely addressed that, at least for Bounties, but it needs to be addressed in the base game mechanics; having the Markets strictly limit what the AI can field doesn't work well atm (which is exactly the same problem Mount and Blade had, which they resolved in the way I'm describing, by largely de-coupling Lords from the "real" economy).