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[StarGibbon]

Yeah, the combat experience gain is too fast, something is wrong if you level up 3 times from a single battle.

Does this happen often? The only time I get this is when I win one of the good fights, where I'm piloting the starter Wolf with no skills and a few wingmen vs. like 4 destroyers with escorts. If I win that (and as low a level as I am), give me a couple of level ups.

Often? No. Occasionally.  Two-fers are more common.  Pretty much any meaningful combat engagement results in a level up, though, which is discouraging if you're a player that only plays to the level cap.

[Dri]

Alex needs to bring back the soft cap on levels.

Make it clear upon reaching level 40 that it's the intended "end point" but if you really want you can keep gaining levels at a much slower speed.

[StarGibbon]

Alex needs to bring back the soft cap on levels.

Make it clear upon reaching level 40 that it's the intended "end point" but if you really want you can keep gaining levels at a much slower speed.

Well, ideally the game will eventually have long term goals available that will provide appeal to continuing to play beyond the cap, with the building of facilities and influencing the galaxy and whatnot.  Nothing like that right now, of course.

[Megas]

I like the fast XP gain.  Recently, I went off and on with my one game since 0.8 release.  I just made it to the level cap and I am still in midgame.  If anything, I wish I had more skill points (higher level cap, abolition of aptitudes, and/or more skill points per level like 6 every 5 levels).  Building a hotshot pilot is too skill point intensive, so I will probably focus on officers and carriers because they are either the strongest combat power or most efficient.

[StarGibbon]

I like the fast XP gain.

There's nothing inherently wrong with fast EXP gain--it's fun to gain levels.  It only becomes a problem when it shortens the game (as it does now with the games currently limited campaign content), or diminishes player sandbox freedom by wildly favoring certain activities over others.

[Edit] Perhaps an increasing EXP curve like many games have would be better. That way you get an initial set of levels very quickly to "define" what your character will mostly be good at for most of the campaign, followed by a slower gain of incremental improvement.

[Megas]

We already have this, although today, player hits level cap before that happens.  In 0.65-0.72 player can hit about level 45 or 50 before xp really slows down.  Maybe up to 55 to 60 if player plays constantly or plays the same game for a long game (or plays with mods that support character transfers).

[StarGibbon]

We already have this, although today, player hits level cap before that happens.  In 0.65-0.72 player can hit about level 45 or 50 before xp really slows down.  Maybe up to 55 to 60 if player plays constantly or plays the same game for a long game (or plays with mods that support character transfers).

Not quite the same, and as you point out it's no longer true of the game now that it has a hard cap.  Im speaking of the gradual EXP curve in most games where the early levels come easily, but then start to taper off.

Problem with getting skill levels too easily, is it discourages making tough choices about specialization.  When you can pick up *most*of the skills you need to be good at everything in a relatively short time, there are no tough decisions. It costs a player little to spec in to industry early on, and then quickly pick up the skills to be a combat monster too. The earliest skills should define what you'll be good at for most of the campaign.

[SainnQ]

He DID release a combat simulator years ago. I think it was called Starsector or something like that.

Correction, the combat simulator was called Starfarer. That is all.

We aren't legally allowed to call it that anymore, because reasons.

Yeah, the combat experience gain is too fast, something is wrong if you level up 3 times from a single battle.

Does this happen often? The only time I get this is when I win one of the good fights, where I'm piloting the starter Wolf with no skills and a few wingmen vs. like 4 destroyers with escorts. If I win that (and as low a level as I am), give me a couple of level ups.

I think the problem is most that people are pretty good overall at playing the game, and coming to grips with the controls & systems made available.

So much so that given any ship with a decent level of versatility, they *** stomp the AI readily out of hand.

[Burlap]

Sorry I missed the question earlier in the thread. A good source of non-combat XP is making hugely profitable sales, which are recognized as XP events under some criteria. Buying black market weapons and running them to an ongoing conflict (Nortia is probably the eternal one? Haven't gone to look). I'm honestly not sure if there have been significant nerfs to this though, as most of my playtime has been the newer non-combat activity: exploration.

Discovering anything gives you instant XP, as you may have noticed, it's not a huge ton of XP. Surveying also gets you XP. When you go through exploring, reading all the text for clues and finding those well hidden big-hauls (motherships, big derilicts, stations), I found my space archaeologist was leveling up at a good rate.

I should qualify 'good rate' though. There are significantly fewer salvage and exploration relavant skills compared to combat skills. At level 16 I felt like I had everything I needed, and somewhere in the low 20s I had every skill that was remotely relevant. Basically all of the heavy XP requirement in the game that's left for me would involve combat anyway. Might as well have combat provide the XP.

[StarGibbon]

I should qualify 'good rate' though. There are significantly fewer salvage and exploration relavant skills compared to combat skills. At level 16 I felt like I had everything I needed, and somewhere in the low 20s I had every skill that was remotely relevant. Basically all of the heavy XP requirement in the game that's left for me would involve combat anyway. Might as well have combat provide the XP.

The industry tree is clearly under-developed at this point, as other trees have been in the past until they got more skills added. There will be more options for industry related skills as more of the industry related content is added to the game.

I'm aware of those non combat XP things you mentioned, but they take a lot of time. Combat ops are limitless, and you can harvest EXP from them at a massively faster rate, limited only by your ability to recover after a battle.

 Awarding the bulk of EXP through missions, combat or otherwise, would allow the game to control the flow rate of EXP to the player no matter how they chose to play the game, and eliminate the massive variability in game length. Players who dont want to do anything but fight would benefit in that they didn't have to worry about hitting the cap unless they wanted to, which isn't possible now because frequent combat will skyrocket you towards it, and players who enjoy taking more creative approaches to the game could find a greater number of things they want to do in the game be effective.

[xenoargh]

Simple idea:

The more of <insert combat-focused Stuff> you have, the lower the XP gain, coupled with some needed buffs to other ways to gain XP.  I also want to note that some combat focus is necessary, because of encounters with [REDACTED], especially when you're in Systems with lots of [REDACTED]!

Solves the whole problem of disparity and allows for combat-focused characters to still have a bit of superiority, in the sense that they can take on combat encounters the other character types largely need to avoid.

[StarGibbon]

Simple idea:

The more of <insert combat-focused Stuff> you have, the lower the XP gain, coupled with some needed buffs to other ways to gain XP.  I also want to note that some combat focus is necessary, because of encounters with [REDACTED], especially when you're in Systems with lots of [REDACTED]!

Solves the whole problem of disparity and allows for combat-focused characters to still have a bit of superiority, in the sense that they can take on combat encounters the other character types largely need to avoid.

Yeah, I want to reiterate that Im not advocating the game necessarily support a completely non-combat play-style. It's a dangerous universe, and combat is fun. But there's lots of opportunities for fleets to be built to specialize in certain types of encounters over other ones, as well as varying what percentage of playtime is devoted to it.  It doesn't always have to be about building to knock out enemy capital ship fleets in bounty missions.

My experience in my salvage focused playthrough as opposed to my carrier fleet bounty mission playthrough is night and day. I hit the level cap in that previous one before I even picked up an Astral or got any of my officers to max our their fleet skills.  In this one Im struggling to get the skills I need to be effective, without actively seeking out content my fleet isn't really built for yet. There should be a happy medium.

[WolfSkimmer]

In this, current EXP payouts for random salvaging/survey/trade could probably be left more or less the same, but the EXP gain for combat outside of missions should be greatly reduced.

1. Go into install folder Starsector->starsector-core->data->config->settings.json (Open with notepad or c++)

2. Alt+F Search xpgain

3. Lower the value to lower combat experience.

You have successfully lowered all combat experience for yourself and your captains

The experience gained from salvaging a derelict and discovering things like probes, mother-ships, warning beacons are unaffected.

I haven't tested it yet for trading, survey, or mission completion experience.

[TJJ]

If leveling up is going to be the progression model, then it does need to occur regularly, so decreasing the XP rewards isn't a satisfactory solution.
However solving it by Increasing the level cap will require more skills.

For the skills to be meaningful, you can't just spread out/water down the existing skills, you need more, new stuff.
That has implications for in-combat balance, power creep, and end game difficulty scaling.

[Megas]

If leveling up is going to be the progression model, then it does need to occur regularly, so decreasing the XP rewards isn't a satisfactory solution.
However solving it by Increasing the level cap will require more skills.

Since we have too few skill points (thanks dead aptitudes), increasing the level cap to 50 or more without any other changes should be fine.

I am tired of playing the fleet's mascot because I have too few points left after I grab the universal must-have skills to boost my fleet (and avoid penalties imposed by the enemy in case of Electronic Warfare).