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Author Topic: Skills brainstorming  (Read 10553 times)

TrashMan

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Skills brainstorming
« on: September 11, 2017, 12:44:44 AM »

The current skill tree honestly leaves me wanting.

Some skills are near useless, others feel way too useful.
Technology skills are surprisingly dissapointing, in the end they don't unlock almost anything.

Leadership tree is just officer+fighters, again, feels lacking.
Industry is the smallest and poorest, but I guess that will change once station construction and proper merchant skills (YouWantToBeAMerchant is a good start).

So...Ideas?

I'd like to see a new Logistics skill - something like "Rigorous training" or similar.

1. Gunnery Drills: By implementing strict targeting excercises, your gunners skills can truly shine. These do require more ammo and maintainance.
+25% weapon accuracy, +1/2/3/4 supply per month per ship

2. Damage Control: Fast and efficient handling of battle damage on a fleet-level is a vital skill for any commander.
+20% general repair speed (hull, engines, weapons)

3. Formation Warfare:
Ship fighting with the Escort order have increased speed and manuverability. -50% friendly fire damage.
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TaLaR

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Re: Skills brainstorming
« Reply #1 on: September 11, 2017, 02:07:18 AM »

1. Gunnery Drills: By implementing strict targeting excercises, your gunners skills can truly shine. These do require more ammo and maintainance.
+25% weapon accuracy, +1/2/3/4 supply per month per ship

2. Damage Control: Fast and efficient handling of battle damage on a fleet-level is a vital skill for any commander.
+20% general repair speed (hull, engines, weapons)

3. Formation Warfare:
Ship fighting with the Escort order have increased speed and manuverability. -50% friendly fire damage.

1. This is net negative. Accuracy is of limited importance - some weapons are inherently accurate (beams), others already get enough from Gunnery Implants (+100%). Not worth using a skill-point and supplies on.

2. Meh. I suppose it could be a decent filler, if higher levels were excellent, but that's about it.

3. Game currently does decent job at avoiding such conditional bonuses created out of thin air. I'd rather not have orders that modify stats. Orders are for behavior.
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Grievous69

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Re: Skills brainstorming
« Reply #2 on: September 11, 2017, 02:31:19 AM »

Why is everyone hating on technology? Everytime I play, I spec into tech first, then go other ways.

''Technology skills are surprisingly dissapointing, in the end they don't unlock almost anything.''

10% more OP for every ship in your fleet, more capacitors and vents to put on, 25% less fuel usage, Transverse jump ability, +5 burn for SB, sensor buffs and reducing enemy weapon range the more ships you have. How is that nothing?

Although I agree that some skills are pretty meh, while other are too useful, *cough* some leaderships skills *cough*
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TrashMan

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Re: Skills brainstorming
« Reply #3 on: September 11, 2017, 03:20:26 AM »

1. Gunnery Drills: By implementing strict targeting excercises, your gunners skills can truly shine. These do require more ammo and maintainance.
+25% weapon accuracy, +1/2/3/4 supply per month per ship

2. Damage Control: Fast and efficient handling of battle damage on a fleet-level is a vital skill for any commander.
+20% general repair speed (hull, engines, weapons)

3. Formation Warfare:
Ship fighting with the Escort order have increased speed and manuverability. -50% friendly fire damage.

1. This is net negative. Accuracy is of limited importance - some weapons are inherently accurate (beams), others already get enough from Gunnery Implants (+100%). Not worth using a skill-point and supplies on.

2. Meh. I suppose it could be a decent filler, if higher levels were excellent, but that's about it.

3. Game currently does decent job at avoiding such conditional bonuses created out of thin air. I'd rather not have orders that modify stats. Orders are for behavior.

Feel free to come up with something better.

But skill level 1 was an entry - that supply cost is for ALL the training under that tree, not just gunnery. Though I guess for lvl 1 it could be + 1/2/3/4 supply per ship/3, then for lvl2 it would be /2.

The biggest problem with any passive skills is they add up. Bonus on top of bonus, and at high level you end up recieving half damage from everything, dealing double damage to everything, etc, etc...

Frankly, conditionals might be an improvement.
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Megas

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Re: Skills brainstorming
« Reply #4 on: September 11, 2017, 06:09:38 AM »

Combat is the one I am most disappointed on.  It gives small, generally insignificant bonuses to the flagship that probably either cannot force fights or too fragile to outfight the bigger and slower ships.  The times I tried a pure Combat skill character, they do not perform much better than an unskilled character.  Combat skills feel like they were designed for officers, and should be delegated to multiple officers, instead of the player wasting his skills on (most of) them.

Leadership is about as good as Technology.

Technology is probably the best tree in the game, having the best two perks in the game, Electronic Warfare 1 and Loadout Design 3.  It also has the best personal skills that should belong in the Combat Tree (i.e., Gunnery Implants and Power Grid Modulation), plus Navigation.

Industry has some gems, but due to lack of skill points, it is often a choice between those skills versus some others elsewhere.


The biggest problem I have with skills is they encourage the player who wants to optimize to build toward mastermind or exploration, not personal combat.  That is build your character to enhance your fleet as a whole in or out of combat.  If you really want to maul things personally, then it is best to grab a Heron or Astral, pump Leadership skills (and Helmsmanship 3), run away from everything, and let your passive homing weapons called fighters kill everyone.

This is not unlike Endless Sky where you may want to pilot your hot-rod Marauder Leviathan or Kestrel and blast things, but since only the flagship can board ships, you need a big, fat (relatively) slow ship that has high cargo and/or bunks, such as the Bactrian.  Leaving the fun combat work to your AI-controlled fleet.


P.S.  I am not fond of Electronic Warfare 1 because it feels like a tax that the player must pay to level the playing field.  A significant number (but not necessarily a majority) of enemy fleets have ECM and having -10% or -20% to shot range right off the bat hurts.  Also, having Electronic Warfare when enemies do not have ECM means I can ignore those silly Sensor objectives, saving CP for things that really matter (like Eliminate, Fighter Strike, or Retreat).
« Last Edit: September 11, 2017, 06:17:53 AM by Megas »
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Midnight Kitsune

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Re: Skills brainstorming
« Reply #5 on: September 11, 2017, 11:09:35 AM »

I have to agree with Megas here, the current set up basically encourages unfun builds (IE nothing that an officer can take), especially with the combo of the level cap, no skill aptitudes (especially since the officers don't have to pay them), and no respec option outside of mods
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lechibang

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Re: Skills brainstorming
« Reply #6 on: September 11, 2017, 12:09:51 PM »

I thin rolling 3 perks of the Combat Endurance skill into one is going to fix the trivial boost problem, for example you get +10/20/30% peak operating time (piloted ship), -20/30/40% chance of malfunctions when at low combat readiness (piloted ship) and +10/10/10% maximum combat readiness (piloted ship).
Also, I would like to propose a new skill in the Industry tree, that being Manufacturing Best Practices:
Applying latest improvements to manufacturing processes yields positive results
  • Level 1: 10% discount on LPC, mod chips and weapon purchases
  • Level 2: -30% chance of getting (D) ships when performing ship recovery
  • Level 3: All ship stats gets a 10% boost
« Last Edit: September 11, 2017, 12:21:57 PM by lechibang »
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canned Tomatoes

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Re: Skills brainstorming
« Reply #7 on: September 11, 2017, 04:24:58 PM »

What would it look like, if you would separate the skills into in combat skills and out of combat skills?
And then get a skill point every level for each category. Or give the skillpoints at different levels like every level up an out of combat skillpoint and every two or three levels a point for in combat skills.
 
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Tartiflette

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Re: Skills brainstorming
« Reply #8 on: September 11, 2017, 10:59:58 PM »

I would like to reiterate on my suggestion to allow limited respec past level 40. Every level beyond, you get to respec one skill point elsewhere. That would allow to slowly transition from one gameplay to another as you needs less Industry skills and more Logistical ones, or to switch from Combat to Technology etc. The "autofit" should be able to take care of any changes in ships OP.
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TrashMan

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Re: Skills brainstorming
« Reply #9 on: September 12, 2017, 01:13:49 AM »

Technology is probably the best tree in the game, having the best two perks in the game, Electronic Warfare 1 and Loadout Design 3.  It also has the best personal skills that should belong in the Combat Tree (i.e., Gunnery Implants and Power Grid Modulation), plus Navigation.

To get Loadout Design 3 you need to get 1 and2, which are IMHO worthless.

Elctronic warfare is the only technolgoy skill that seems really useful (-enemy weapon range). Then again, you have a combat skill that increases your weapon range.

The navigation skill is just there to cut the tedium of travel. Fuel is cheap so -30% fuel consumption is meh.

On the other hand, Leadership has -20% supply usage, which is big, since supplies are expensive.




Quote from: ichibag
    Level 3: All ship stats gets a 10% boost

That sounds OP.
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lechibang

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Re: Skills brainstorming
« Reply #10 on: September 12, 2017, 01:57:12 AM »

Maybe a 5% would be ok
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Althaea

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Re: Skills brainstorming
« Reply #11 on: September 12, 2017, 02:05:16 AM »

I have to strongly disagree with the notion that Combat skills are weak or have no serious effect. If anything, they are stronger than before. And I feel like have to provide some sort of counterpoint here, since no-one else has done so.

That being said, it is true that Leadership and Technology are better aptitudes. There's a few reasons for this; not only do these help improve the performance of the entire fleet, but they also help to improve the player's ship. Some of the fleet-buffing skills are not just considered bonuses, but outright essential - officers, carrier doctrine and loadout design most prominently. There are three skills in technology that are essential for a build oriented around improving the flagship, and between one and four in Leadership, depending on your spec.

So for a combat build you need to spec up to 3 in Leadership and Technology anyway. You can abstain from Leadership if you're not a perfectionist, don't care about the rest of the fleet at all, and won't miss 15% CR more than you would six skill points elsewhere. This, more than anything, is why high-combat builds are rare.

I have no idea how you'd solve this. I'm not sure it's possible without severely nerfing Tech- and Leadership builds or restructuring these three trees entirely.

Because combat skills are strong. Incredibly so. You can go faster, win the flux wars, quadruple your resistance to EMP damage and recover from broken subsystems twice as fast, penetrate heavy armour with ease, become incredibly resistant to damage even after armour is gone via stacking the minimum damage reduction with the reduced damage to hull, turn on a dime, and boost your damage to fighters and missiles much more than the durability of fighters can possibly be boosted, hit things much more easily via faster projectile and missiles, more maneverable missiles, and better autotracking from high CR. And if you don't have these things, then enemy AI officers have them and make you look bad by comparison. The player can have more of these skills and in a much more optimized layout than AI officers can, particularly enemy ones. Skill perks are a lot like free hullmods that stack with actual hullmod - another factor, incidentally, in how good combat skills are. Missile Expertise and ECCM Module combined are significantly better than one or the other.

A player-controlled flagship with high combat skills can absolutely control the tide of battle around a critical point much more efficiently than anything else, including even carriers with Thunders or whatnot (though Thunders are uncontested in terms of bringing support to smaller turning points in a more spread-out battle, as they are intended to be). I have never even remotely agreed with the notion that Combat is weak and does nothing. With Combat skills, you can chase down most enemies one by one and quickly and efficiently tear them apart, unless they're in a much better ship than you are or also have a high-level officer and fleet support. You can duel the most threatening enemies, control smaller enemies, and let your fleet tear them apart that way. Instead of supporting your fleet to help them defeat the enemy, the fleet supports you to help you defeat the enemy, providing pressure, distractions, and dealing with the stragglers and small stuff. High combat builds are actually really, really fun.

What is true is that a lot of very good Combat skills are available at level one, and that it's much easier to "dip" into Combat than it is Leadership or Technology, which tends to require three points to get the perks you were actually looking for - and which are necessary for an optimal Combat build anyway. And since you do need a fleet no matter what, Leadership and Technology looks better by comparison, and is certainly more reliable, since their effect isn't lost if you overextend and eat a couple of Reapers to the face or otherwise take a devastating flanking or enveloping assault, or if you conversely leave most of your fleet without your support and it gets taken apart piecemeal.

You can't fix this dichotomy by buffing combat (because it would still synergize with tech and leadership with how officers and OP counts work, and giving the fleet's admiral special snowflake bonuses could quickly get ridiculous), unless you do something fancy like make Combat the primary fleet-wide non-carrier combat aptitude (with secondary personal ship effects to keep officers relevant?) and do something completely different with most of Leadership and Technology, completely revamping with new, primarily non-combat focuses which relate to combat about as directly as Industry does.

In any case, you can't easily solve this by adding or removing a skill here or there or changing the numbers around. You'd have to change the paradigm in some fashion, either by making skillpoints more common, or changing how aptitudes themselves work.
« Last Edit: September 12, 2017, 02:15:57 AM by alguLoD »
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Grievous69

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Re: Skills brainstorming
« Reply #12 on: September 12, 2017, 02:54:27 AM »

I have to agree that a combat focused build can be really fun but you're missing a key point. Your officers can have all that skills that you spent your precious points on and you can still go into other skills to make your fleet better, so basically officers have their skills+your tech, which makes them pretty fuckin good. Yea sure, you can have your flagship be a beast, but it's one ship, and you can have 10 officers. And then officers are just copies of you with just combat skills but play worse since they're not the player.

I think Megas already said it's no longer possible to solo whole fleets with just one flagship, which would make combat really appealing then, but since having a deathball is so strong, no point in going combat unless you want to have fun or challenge yourself.
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Althaea

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Re: Skills brainstorming
« Reply #13 on: September 12, 2017, 03:07:35 AM »

Officers are not as good as the player. They're not as smart. They don't have as many skills. They require command points to micro. That's really the long and short of what I think of that. A 20:th level officer in an Onslaught will not have the same impact on the battle as a skilled 40th level player with a combat build in that same ship.

Were I to adjust anything about that it might be to reduce the maximum level of officers to dramatically reduce the number of skills they can max out. Or, alternatively, change the aptitude system in some way so that the player doesn't have to waste any points (compared to an officer) on those skills.

(For that matter, another alternative would be to have officer aptitudes, so that they are combat, carrier or technology-focused officers, and don't get to just boost everything to third level without paying the aptitude tax. Alternatively they could have up to four aptitude points. A few things that can be done here, certainly.)
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Grievous69

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Re: Skills brainstorming
« Reply #14 on: September 12, 2017, 03:17:46 AM »

And then officers are just copies of you with just combat skills but play worse since they're not the player.

Reading 101

And I don't get a tech-focused officer would function. Would it stack with your skills? If yes that would be crazy OP, if not there's only 2 skills that affect only the piloted ship, not much variety there. And having aptitude points for officers too is just needless complication. Maybe reducing their max level would be ok, but there's no need to make it work exactly like a player.
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