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Author Topic: Different branches for officers  (Read 2795 times)

DarkAlbino

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Different branches for officers
« on: July 27, 2017, 04:58:45 PM »

There has been some discussion about how officers should levelup and get which skills and so on.
I would like to see different "schools" for the officers.
Determining the focus of their skills would be basicly four different branches and one which overlaps two areas.
Combat, Administration/Logistics, Intelligence/Tech, Engineering/Salvaging and Carrier Command.
Now if an officer is of a certain school, he then mostly gets to choose from the spcific skills related to his area, but not only, as combat related skills should be available to everyone.
Personally, I surely would field engineering officers, as I tend to get much enjoyment from the salvaging part of the game.
And certainly I would sport an Intelligence officer to boost my ECM, ECCM, ECCCM, ...Scannerrange, etc.
Administratve officers could increase officer count, reduce amount of crew needed, give general performance boost.
I guess it could take away some frustration from the skill lottery when you can somewhat predict where your guy is heading.
I could elaborate my ideas about this topic, but I first wanted to hear if this is something worth considering.
I would like to hear other opinions on this matter.
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Midnight Kitsune

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Re: Different branches for officers
« Reply #1 on: July 27, 2017, 05:35:59 PM »

There has been some discussion about how officers should levelup and get which skills and so on.
I would like to see different "schools" for the officers.
Determining the focus of their skills would be basicly four different branches and one which overlaps two areas.
Combat, Administration/Logistics, Intelligence/Tech, Engineering/Salvaging and Carrier Command.
Now if an officer is of a certain school, he then mostly gets to choose from the spcific skills related to his area, but not only, as combat related skills should be available to everyone.
Personally, I surely would field engineering officers, as I tend to get much enjoyment from the salvaging part of the game.
And certainly I would sport an Intelligence officer to boost my ECM, ECCM, ECCCM, ...Scannerrange, etc.
Administratve officers could increase officer count, reduce amount of crew needed, give general performance boost.
I guess it could take away some frustration from the skill lottery when you can somewhat predict where your guy is heading.
I could elaborate my ideas about this topic, but I first wanted to hear if this is something worth considering.
I would like to hear other opinions on this matter.
Personally I would love to see officers be able to get "Entire fleet" level skills with the condition of fleet skills not stacking. Mainly because only the player can get them right now, which can maybe force unfun things. IE you can't take combat skills because all your SP is used in fleet skills, making actual combat suck for you. Endless Sky has as similar issue with boarding
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FooF

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Re: Different branches for officers
« Reply #2 on: July 27, 2017, 05:40:18 PM »

I'm for it but as of current, all officers are strictly combat officers. Once you start adding officers that have fleet-wide/campaign impacts, you get weird edge cases where you put a certain officer'd ship in storage and now all your ships have gone over their OP limit. Not saying that can't be worked around but it does add a few wrinkles to the campaign layer.

Personally, if there was any way to shove some of the player skills that have fleet-wide effects onto officers, I would. If Fleet Logistics, Navigation, Loudout Design, Surveying, and many of the Industrial skills were available to officers, it would free my flagship to be much more combat-oriented. Obviously the officers that are taking these skills would be less capable once in combat but it could definitely be worth it. The question that then comes up is: if you have more than one officer with Fleet Logistics, does the bonus stack, do you re-tool the skill for the officer, do you just make "one-and-done" no matter how many Logistic Officers you have...? etc.

The easiest way to handle this, IMO, is to limit the player to one officer per "school" so you don't have any stacking whatsoever. The other piece is that officers from "schools" are intentionally poor combatants so while they improve your overall fleet, the ships they pilot are lackluster in combat. Perhaps they only have access to a few direct combat skills or can't advance certain combat skills past Level 1 or 2. They could also be mandatory "Cautious" or "Timid" in battle. Ironically, in order to advance them, they have to be deployed and get XP but when they're on the battlefield, any ship they're in becomes a liability! Might have to work that one out... :D

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DarkAlbino

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Re: Different branches for officers
« Reply #3 on: July 27, 2017, 06:19:36 PM »

Yeah, I could think of a personal staff for the player with 2 or 3 positions for fleetwide skilled officers, but I really would like to be able to put my engineer on my salvaging cruiser armed with only a few combat skills and mainly increasing the ships benefits. Having similar skills as the player, but not fleetwide, only the ship they are commanding is totally fine by me. This is more roleplaying fluff than really necessary, I guess.
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xenoargh

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Re: Different branches for officers
« Reply #4 on: July 27, 2017, 08:31:06 PM »

Personally, I think what we need is Administrators (a tip of the hat to MOOII, which is a touchstone for this game design).

Basically, like Captains, but their skills are strictly fleet-wide for combat and they're also able to pick up Industry skills (once Industry has something to do with, well, Industry).
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Megas

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Re: Different branches for officers
« Reply #5 on: July 28, 2017, 07:14:01 AM »

About half of my SP is locked into fleet-wide skills (and prerequisite aptitudes) because they are practically mandatory, and only I can take them.  Like Endless Sky, if you want the most power, you need to delegate the fun stuff to your AI wingmen, while you get stuck with administrator skills only.  The only fun skill among those is Loadout Design 3 and maybe Officer Management (but the latter may be hampered by battle map size).  The rest is just keeping up with opposition.

I get tired of flying Bactrian in Endless Sky, but I need it for boarding.  Much rather pilot... the combat godship Pug Arfecta.  Failing that, something fast and powerful like Kestrel, Marauder Falcon/Leviathan, or Shield Beetle while playing in human/hai space.
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Schwartz

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Re: Different branches for officers
« Reply #6 on: July 28, 2017, 10:54:19 AM »

I'm cool with the skill selection and the levels they get now. I have some beef with the levelup mechanic and the narrow choices. Especially now that carrier skills are weighted more to appear in the levelup dialogue, it becomes damn hard to groom an officer into a particular role. What I encounter most of the time is that it's difficult to impossible to dodge the armour/hull skills.  For an officer who's meant to go into a shielded ship, this means another decent candidate I have to fire at some point.

Schools are interesting but I don't see the application with the number of skills in the game right now. Rather I'd want to see free choices on levelup, all skills available to pick from. The RnG was cute to start off, but now it's just an inconvenience when I don't get what I'm looking for.

In some future dimension it'd be fun to have player faction leaders who command a fleet each, given the same tech tree as the player. So you can groom a watchdog for your mining operations, a salvager, a trader (trade tax reduction as a skill, anyone?) and so on.
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Megas

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Re: Different branches for officers
« Reply #7 on: July 28, 2017, 12:09:43 PM »

Yes, I get tempted to ignore carrier skills until officer is near the level cap.  Carrier Command is good; just more of Fighter Doctrine.  Wing Commander 1 is good (for Warthogs), but I do not care about the rest.  Strike Commander is kind of lame except for level 3.  Sometimes, I just want Carrier Command 3 and Wing Commander 1 for fighter skills - no more.  If my officer gets a single carrier skill early, he is forced to max all three due to only carrier skills being offered.  Now, if I want officers with only the good carrier perks (minus Strike Commander 3), I need to wait until my officer is level 16 then get the carrier skills.  I like to have generalist characters that can do most or everything well, and that means avoiding the junk perks.

Quote
The RnG was cute to start off, but now it's just an inconvenience when I don't get what I'm looking for.
I ruthlessly save-scum and reload games to bypass that nonsense (or just ignore leveling up officers if I cannot be bothered to do that).  It would be nice to select any eligible skill like the player can.
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