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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Author Topic: Skills and Story Points  (Read 91104 times)

Megas

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Re: Skills and Story Points
« Reply #60 on: July 08, 2019, 02:39:07 PM »

@ SCC:  I have used those CP skills a few times when experimenting with carrier-only fleets during 0.8.  In 0.9, I have ran low on CP in big meat-grinder fights, and have full-retreated few times to reset not only peak performance, but also CP.

Yes, built-in mods seem more powerful than LD3, but only if you spend story points for it.  I bet the player will not have so many that he can put them on every ship and their replacements.  It will probably push the player to preserve a set of elite ships and use only those.  Extra disposable ships probably will not have those built-in mods unless player has effectively unlimited story points.
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Wyvern

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Re: Skills and Story Points
« Reply #61 on: July 08, 2019, 02:43:06 PM »

The original reason was that it's more accurate with carriers in some cases, which generally have less OP and don't take up as much of the OP allowance for weapons-boosting skills. Buuuut, looking at how all the skills turned out, that doesn't actually hold up well, and with these other mod-related problems in mind... let me experiment with this a bit. The numbers are a bit different - frigates have less deployment cost compared to their OP so switching to that might hit large ships too much. Still, the way things are structured, this would be pretty easy to try out, I think I'll give it a shot. Thank you for mentioning it!
Given that you explicitly called out in the blog post that you were looking at things to boost the value of frigates/destroyers in end-game, I'd suggest that's more of a feature than a bug?
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Wyvern is 100% correct about the math.

Alex

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Re: Skills and Story Points
« Reply #62 on: July 08, 2019, 02:45:27 PM »

One possible problem with relying on "Story Points" to power-up ships is it makes losing them in combat painful.  If you really want to keep the ship, that means some form of guaranteed recovery (like Reinforced Bulkheads), and even if you do keep it, it will take (D) mods.  If player does not want to pay huge restoration costs, that means much reloading in a difficult fight much like pre-0.8 games.

Hmm - one thought is to make losing ships with perma-mods give you bonus XP. Sort of like how losing ships used to do, but this time not something you'd really want to do on purpose.


The original reason was that it's more accurate with carriers in some cases, which generally have less OP and don't take up as much of the OP allowance for weapons-boosting skills. Buuuut, looking at how all the skills turned out, that doesn't actually hold up well, and with these other mod-related problems in mind... let me experiment with this a bit. The numbers are a bit different - frigates have less deployment cost compared to their OP so switching to that might hit large ships too much. Still, the way things are structured, this would be pretty easy to try out, I think I'll give it a shot. Thank you for mentioning it!
Given that you explicitly called out in the blog post that you were looking at things to boost the value of frigates/destroyers in end-game, I'd suggest that's more of a feature than a bug?

I mean, fair point! But it *could* be too much in that direction.
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: Skills and Story Points
« Reply #63 on: July 08, 2019, 02:51:47 PM »

I think the issue is more that some ships need a balance pass on OP. I just want the base ships to be good without this special bonus and that definitely doesn't seem true for all ships. Ships like shrike and doom struggle to fit things even with +10% OP and then ships like paragon didn't need OP bonuses at all (I would try to decide what superfluous hull mod I wanted to throw on). Also, special ships feeling like they need reinforced bulkheads kinda is another OP tax in some sense. Or you can just save scum all you special ships back to life :), but it doesn't seem like the mechanic should be designed around save scumming.
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Wyvern

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Re: Skills and Story Points
« Reply #64 on: July 08, 2019, 02:52:41 PM »

Just went looking through the blog post again, and... I have to ask, what's up with the variant on that Falcon in the first image?  Six LRPD and two light autocannons?  Just... why?
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Alex

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Re: Skills and Story Points
« Reply #65 on: July 08, 2019, 02:58:26 PM »

I think the issue is more that some ships need a balance pass on OP. I just want the base ships to be good without this special bonus and that definitely doesn't seem true for all ships.

That's relative, isn't it? If they're facing similar opposition, but with custom-made player loadouts and officers, how can they not be "good"?


Just went looking through the blog post again, and... I have to ask, what's up with the variant on that Falcon in the first image?  Six LRPD and two light autocannons?  Just... why?

Step 1: buy hull from black market
Step 2: autofit it with whatever is available so it stops showing the "unspent OP" nag

(In other words, this isn't from a "real" game.)
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: Skills and Story Points
« Reply #66 on: July 08, 2019, 03:06:30 PM »

I think the issue is more that some ships need a balance pass on OP. I just want the base ships to be good without this special bonus and that definitely doesn't seem true for all ships.

That's relative, isn't it? If they're facing similar opposition, but with custom-made player loadouts and officers, how can they not be "good"?
Im using good as a measure of how much I want them in my fleet not some objective measure of combat power. The 10% OP bonus takes some ships from unusable/bad to maybe good and it takes other ships from good to good+. Thats more the issue. I would not use a shrike without the OP bonus but I would think about it with one. I would happily take a paragon either way. The point is more that these extra OP have a very different effect on different ships, and some ships are really getting hurt by this change because there are OP thresholds that allow good load outs to work.
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Megas

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Re: Skills and Story Points
« Reply #67 on: July 08, 2019, 03:13:21 PM »

If I cannot fit a ship with a basic loadout, high vents, and ITU (and Efficiency Overhaul and, if no officer, Reinforced Bulkheads), I do not want to use it.  I do not care if the enemy is similarly low-powered, if I cannot mount the bare necessities or have a functional loadout on a ship, it does not get used.

Many carriers are hiliarilously OP starved if I use fighters bigger than Talons.
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Alex

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Re: Skills and Story Points
« Reply #68 on: July 08, 2019, 03:16:54 PM »

Im using good as a measure of how much I want them in my fleet not some objective measure of combat power. The 10% OP bonus takes some ships from unusable/bad to maybe good and it takes other ships from good to good+. Thats more the issue. I would not use a shrike without the OP bonus but I would think about it with one. I would happily take a paragon either way. The point is more that these extra OP have a very different effect on different ships, and some ships are really getting hurt by this change because there are OP thresholds that allow good load outs to work.

Thank you for clarifying, that makes a lot of sense!

I'd love to have some more detailed feedback about the various ships that might be in this position - just increasing the OP across the board doesn't make sense to me (because at that point, we're just moving what "normal" is), but if this is an issue for specific ships, then that's totally different. This probably isn't the thread for it, but if someone wanted to take a stab at it, I would greatly appreciate it.

(And, ahem, to discourage buffing everything: if the majority of ships were in the "needs more OP" category, that would probably be an argument for reining in the other ships...)
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SeinTa

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Re: Skills and Story Points
« Reply #69 on: July 08, 2019, 03:21:51 PM »

This blog post makes me happy, AI ships make me happy and the possibility of an AI war makes me even happier!

Any chance the gates becoming an "active" part of the story?
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Megas

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Re: Skills and Story Points
« Reply #70 on: July 08, 2019, 03:23:57 PM »

(And, ahem, to discourage buffing everything: if the majority of ships were in the "needs more OP" category, that would probably be an argument for reining in the other ships...)
Not if those high-end ships were the only ones with enough OP.

Something with lots of OP like Onslaught and Paragon, I can always find something to put on them (usually Augmented Engines).  With Shrike and several other ships, I am cutting corners here and there (undergunning mounts, no Reinforced Bulkheads) trying to squeeze a basic loadout.
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Shodan13

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Re: Skills and Story Points
« Reply #71 on: July 08, 2019, 03:45:43 PM »

Has it ever been considered to separate the combat skills from the strategic skills? Either have each level give you a point in the combat/command/practical skills and another in the campaign/colony/management skills so you don't "waste" your skill points or gate some stuff behind levels and leave all the skills to be cool/unique boosts rather than borderline required stuff.
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Alex

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Re: Skills and Story Points
« Reply #72 on: July 08, 2019, 03:58:36 PM »

Any chance the gates becoming an "active" part of the story?

There's always a chance :D


(I ended up changing the fleetwide skill calculations to use recovery costs, btw, and hullmod bonus XP is based on OP cost; 0% bonus XP at 40 op and above. Thanks again, Wyvern! Let's see how this holds up :))


Has it ever been considered to separate the combat skills from the strategic skills? Either have each level give you a point in the combat/command/practical skills and another in the campaign/colony/management skills so you don't "waste" your skill points or gate some stuff behind levels and leave all the skills to be cool/unique boosts rather than borderline required stuff.

I've seen it suggested before; not really a fan of the idea of having separate points for combat/non-combat skills. It feels too much like forcing the player to get both and diluting how much they can express a "character" by picking skills.

(I also think much of it comes from a misperception of combat skills not being viable/powerful, and feeling like you've got to pick fleet-boosting skills... but that's neither here nor there; the new system shakes things up sufficiently that it probably doesn't make too much sense to get bogged down in that.

Plus, there's more "cool/unique" stuff all over the aptitudes; having to go up through the tiers means that you *can't* pick just the boring/"required" stuff, if that's even a ting anymore.)
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Wyvern

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Re: Skills and Story Points
« Reply #73 on: July 08, 2019, 04:07:13 PM »

(I ended up changing the fleetwide skill calculations to use recovery costs, btw, and hullmod bonus XP is based on OP cost; 0% bonus XP at 40 op and above. Thanks again, Wyvern! Let's see how this holds up :))
Yay!  I'm helping!*

* Probably.  Hopefully.  Some caveats may apply.  Please see your doctor before...
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yourGMJack

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Re: Skills and Story Points
« Reply #74 on: July 08, 2019, 04:39:22 PM »

Quickly hopping in to say as a long-time Starsector owner that's only really played one or two campaigns, changing things to a skill tree is going to make leveling up a lot easier to swallow, and so I hope that's the same for most newer players, too. Thank you!

(I guess I should also chime in with the nitpick that the name "Story Points" also confused me, given that they sound like something "earned in the story", rather than as a meta-currency you can "spend to affect the story". I'm not losing sleep over it, though. Eclipse Points, maybe? Potential Points? Overclock Points? I'll stop. ^_^;)
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