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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 91071 times)

Alex

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Re: Skills and Story Points
« Reply #255 on: August 12, 2019, 02:12:17 PM »

Maybe instead of tiered ladder(1st tier one from two, 2nd one from two, etc) we could get tiered pyramid?
Something like 1st tier you get 3 one from two choices but need spend 2 points to advance to 2nd tier that have 2 one from two choices and then you get the last tier with one from two choice(you still need spend 4 points to get into tier 3rd). Or something like 1st tier having 4(or 6) free to choose skills when 2nd tier have 2 choose one from two skills and 3rd tier have one from two.
That would allow player pass over some skills that are unfit for his playstyle or current RP avatar.

There's basically no way; the skills - as far as their effects are concerned - are designed for a "pick one of two" dynamic and would need to be redesigned.

How many of the skills/effects from the old system are in the new system? I assume you've recombined/reorganized a bunch of stuff but are all of the old effects/abilities still available in the new system or are some no longer available. I always though some of the skills in the old system would be better as rewards for story/quests, stuff like transverse jump or some colony benefits. I don't know if you've though about that at all?

It's hard to say. There's been a lot of recombining and skill renaming and so on. Most of the effects are probably still available, the main notable exception being Loadout Design's OP bonus. As far as Transverse Jump, I've got a note to make that (and Neutrino Detector) available from a quest, in addition to being unlocked by the skill (while you have the skill), so that it's not a major consideration when picking skills. Otherwise, the skill that has TJ is very hard to pass up.
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empirecitizen

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Re: Skills and Story Points
« Reply #256 on: August 12, 2019, 11:04:26 PM »

Awesome post as always.

I think this is a good direction. Lot's of people like to say they like a free skill system with as few restriction as possible. The thing is without restrictions like trees and tiering, player will min-max their way into the couple skills they think are the best. Not that skill trees would remove min-maxing but it gives developers more lever to balance skills appropriately.

I'm not sure if i missed some updates on the latest mechanics on how hullmods work to understand what's the advantage of 'permanent' hullmkd. Is permanent hullmod going to be OP-free? I see that you've been replacing the extra-op tech skills over the years. I agree that extra OP was too good and a generic must pick usually and this is a good way for player to still has that custom fit elite ship that is not possible normally.


Why do i still feel that the whole blog post is basically a trap to entice players into causing a massive AI rebellion?(especially after recently learning that using AI already can cause something to happen in the current version)
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Megas

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Re: Skills and Story Points
« Reply #257 on: August 13, 2019, 04:58:41 AM »

Permanent hullmods will be OP-free, but you need to spend a story point to make a hullmod permanently built-in.

My concern with this is, if story points take a while to grind up and accumulate, player may do everything to preserve the same ships (reload games if ship dies in combat or restore ships if player cannot be bothered to reload game) instead of shrugging them off and building new ships to replace the fallen.

As for AI, all the AI can do today is hug your colonies after they govern them long enough, which is exactly what you want if you use cores in the first place.  The biggest threat from AI is not AI themselves, but more babysitting caused by Pathers (if they were not bugged) and Hegemony inspections.  I would not mind decivilizing all of Hegemony worlds just to make the inspections (and expeditions caused by Free Port use) stop, but Pathers cannot be neutralized permanently.
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Grievous69

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Re: Skills and Story Points
« Reply #258 on: August 13, 2019, 05:49:46 AM »

I just want the ships to be balanced without these perma hullmods in mind. There needs to be enough OP for every ship so that a decent build can be fitted.
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Megas

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Re: Skills and Story Points
« Reply #259 on: August 13, 2019, 06:04:29 AM »

I just want the ships to be balanced without these perma hullmods in mind. There needs to be enough OP for every ship so that a decent build can be fitted.
I would not be surprised if the built-in mods replace LD3 and ships have the same OP as today.  If so, most ships will need built-in mods to have a decent loadout.  (Not looking forward to put built-ins on every Shrike to make them usable.)
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Alex

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Re: Skills and Story Points
« Reply #260 on: August 13, 2019, 08:01:06 AM »

I'm not sure if i missed some updates on the latest mechanics on how hullmods work to understand what's the advantage of 'permanent' hullmkd. Is permanent hullmod going to be OP-free? I see that you've been replacing the extra-op tech skills over the years. I agree that extra OP was too good and a generic must pick usually and this is a good way for player to still has that custom fit elite ship that is not possible normally.

Welcome to the forum! Yep, they don't cost OP.

Why do i still feel that the whole blog post is basically a trap to entice players into causing a massive AI rebellion?(especially after recently learning that using AI already can cause something to happen in the current version)

Hmm, I don't know, seems like baseless scare-mongering to me.


I just want the ships to be balanced without these perma hullmods in mind. There needs to be enough OP for every ship so that a decent build can be fitted.

I'll probably end up tweaking the OP on *some* ships, but for most ships I think they're in a decent place. Open to suggestions/opinions as to which ships really, really need it.
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Grievous69

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Re: Skills and Story Points
« Reply #261 on: August 13, 2019, 08:30:04 AM »


I just want the ships to be balanced without these perma hullmods in mind. There needs to be enough OP for every ship so that a decent build can be fitted.

I'll probably end up tweaking the OP on *some* ships, but for most ships I think they're in a decent place. Open to suggestions/opinions as to which ships really, really need it.

Yeah that's what I had in mind, I'm pretty satisfied with vanilla balance in general.
So as was mentioned a million times, Shrike. Even with LD3 it's hard to put a single hullmod without giving up on flux which you desperately need, and you require a Heavy blaster to be able to do anything decent in fights. Maybe raise OP by 7 or something for both the standard and pirate variant.
Odyssey did get more OP after it got an additional figher bay, but it still imo struggles to have a solid loadout which justifies its 45 DP cost. Yea it's fast and all with built-in hullmods but cmon Onslaught and Conquest are both 40 DP and they are imo more valuable.

Other than those 2 everything else is fine except carriers. Since fighters are so strong you basically have to get best fighters you can and steamroll but then the ship is almost barren. I think fighters as a whole should be a tad weaker and have their OP cost reduced so carriers can actually fit something on themselves and then make a choice what to put in bays. Right now it always ends up the same (at least for me). Also nerf Recall device please :)
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Wyvern

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Re: Skills and Story Points
« Reply #262 on: August 13, 2019, 08:34:09 AM »

I just want the ships to be balanced without these perma hullmods in mind. There needs to be enough OP for every ship so that a decent build can be fitted.

I'll probably end up tweaking the OP on *some* ships, but for most ships I think they're in a decent place. Open to suggestions/opinions as to which ships really, really need it.
Ships that absolutely need more ordnance points: Scarab, Shrike, Gemini (this one needs a lot more ordnance points), Gryphon, Astral.

Ships that need other adjustments:
Scarab (more flux dissipation & built-in pd lasers in those side turret mounts)
Vigilance (built-in expanded missile racks and maybe an increase to flux dissipation)
Wayfarer/Cerberus/Hound/Hermes/Mercury/Mudskipper/Shepherd (frigate freighters are severely under-tuned compared to larger freighters)*
Condor (needs more cargo/fuel capacity & built-in expanded missile racks)
Drover (needs less cargo capacity)
Medusa & Grypon (both of these need something beyond just more OP but I don't have any good ideas for what)
Venture (needs an open fighter bay slot in addition to the one that's locked-in with mining drones)
Colossus Mk II / III / Atlas Mk II (need increased cargo capacity - these converted freighters should have larger holds than similarly-sized dedicated warships, not smaller ones).
Astral (needs a recall device nerf - limit by charges maybe - in order for more OP to not be a bad call.  Alternatively, give it something like the Conquest's heavy weapons integration that just applies to all of its guns - and maybe change some of its medium energy turrets back to large energy or even built-in Paladin PD systems?)

* Frigate freighters being under-tuned.  Even ignoring the ship limit that would push you towards using larger freighters even for equal efficiency, a Cerberus (with no hull mods) gives you 100 cargo per fuel-cost and 25 cargo per supply-cost, while a Colossus (also with no hull mods) gives you 300 cargo per fuel-cost and 150 cargo per supply-cost.  The frigate is faster, sure, but even if you compare a Cerberus with efficiency overhaul and expanded cargo holds to a Colossus with Militarized Subsystems and Augmented Drive Field, the Colossus comes out ahead.  And the other frigate freighters are all worse off than the Cerberus is.
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Megas

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Re: Skills and Story Points
« Reply #263 on: August 13, 2019, 08:56:02 AM »

Like Grievous, I spend nearly all OP on fighters and hullmods on dedicated carriers, and they are mostly unarmed.  I tried to part-time warship with Heron and Astral by loading up on weapons while using Talons for fighters.  It was much less effective than loading up on high-end fighters (which eats most available OP) and hide the carrer.  The only ship that can brawl and carry fighters equally well is the Legion.  Odyssey does not have enough OP to use fighters effectively, and since it is designed to brawl up-close, perhaps the best fighters are Xyphos if Odyssey had enough OP.  Usually, I put mining pods on Odyssey because they are free and durable enough.  Modern Odyssey can lose fighter bays and still play much like it does (of burning in and pummeling ships with dual plasma cannons).
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Megas

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Re: Skills and Story Points
« Reply #264 on: August 13, 2019, 09:12:09 AM »

Medusa & Grypon (both of these need something beyond just more OP but I don't have any good ideas for what)
Medusa might be fine with more OP.  If not, lower DP cost to 10 or 11.  It is not better than Hammerhead or Sunder.

Gryphon needs better durability and flux stats.  In short, be as sturdy as a cruiser.  Right now, it is the only ship aside from Legion (XIV) that can use large dumb-fire missiles easily, but Gryphon is too fragile.  Gryphon pretends to be a carrier but fails badly under AI control by acting like a warship before getting popped.  Honestly, I would not mind Gryphon trading Missile Autoforge for Fast Missile Racks or generic combat system and evolve into what Aurora used to be before 0.7.2, a hybrid brawler/missileship.  If Gryphon stays as it is, at least add another ship that is not a joke (like Atlas/Prometheus 2) that can easily use large dumb-fire missiles, preferably sub-capital so we do not wait until endgame to have something to use Hammer Barrage effectively.
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Ishman

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Re: Skills and Story Points
« Reply #265 on: August 13, 2019, 10:30:51 AM »

The gryphon's weakness comes from the fact there isn't a suitable large missile for it in vanilla, and the best small slot option is sabots, for which it will only get a small number of uses out of, even with 4x base ammo pool. Also that the AI is bad with missiles and either refuses to fire them or is overly trigger happy (except with hammers).

The large HE seeking torpedo from Interstellar Imperium, the scorpio javelin, paired with sabot pods in the mediums, and the Voltigeur ASM's from Dassault Mikoyan Engineering in the small slots for more salvos to ward off frigate pressure allows the gryphon to destroy every capital in late game bounties if it can hide behind a ship threatening enough to keep burn/SO destroyer and cruisers off of it.

That's not to say that it couldn't use help, but that in my opinion, the biggest thing leading to its lacklusterness is the lack of fitting options for it in vanilla (besides the fact its stats are just awful and the only thing to its name is the weapon slots).

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Andele

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Re: Skills and Story Points
« Reply #266 on: August 13, 2019, 05:23:40 PM »

Core of having no levelups in individual types is good, but being just a binary choice seems slightly backwards. If anything id have thought that the current skills would be be broken down (as the blogpost actually gave as an example with shields vs phase unlike current general def systems) into more of them so that parts. High amount of "minor tuning" gives far more entertainment and replay value in the long run for any RPG, as WoW has proven (with any simplification returning in a few expansions each/talents first as artifacts then old glyphs as azerite).

It would also be good for some more minmax/removing dead points/some clutter; specially Fleet Logistics giving Damage Control 1 effect but better (making DC1 a dead kill point on PC if one wants its 2 and maybe 3 bonus; unless the nearly and almost mean its a flat % bonus which stacks, tho not that its easily noticed in that case) and having accessibility and its colony fleet bonus should/could be part government operations trade counterpart skill or maybe industry tree skill like colony management (tho if it stays on FL, it would be really cool if it were bumped up to 33% and worked on all fleets thus gave you access 40 ships... or hell in line with less upscaling with efficiency and super skills, it would then upgrade/branch into a increase deployment points/reduced deployment cost based on ship size by 2/1/-/-skill) and Missile spec and Electronic WF giving ECCM.

If its shrunk down to 15+5~7ish probably super skill upgrade options, could one more story point option then be (up to a cap and with diminishing returns/weaker distribution in certain cases or past a value like the example in the blog) be used to buff up a specific part of a skill/essentially put more points in 1/x effects in it. E.g. spending 1 point on current missile spec 2 part of the effect to make the bomb part of it go from a 50% bonus to 63% or 75%? Or each skill can have 1 part of it unlocked at the cost of a levels worth of story points as long as the skill itself is "unlocked"/was or is available to be picked (it itself not allowing one to pick the next tree/that would still require a skill point put in that branch, tho maybe letting one if the tree is maxxed out skip that part for the repeat/rerun of it, as to not have to pick up e.g. 3 skills one cant use due to being the specialization ones just because the build wants both bonuses on the 4th tier)?
« Last Edit: August 13, 2019, 05:31:52 PM by Andele »
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SonnaBanana

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Re: Skills and Story Points
« Reply #267 on: August 16, 2019, 11:13:36 AM »

Hmm, between the new Alpha core benefits and new Commerce, it looks like players are going to have so much credits. Are player faction fleets (related to the currently unused Orders tab) the main creditsink? Or are there other creditsinks planned?
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Wyvern

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Re: Skills and Story Points
« Reply #268 on: August 16, 2019, 11:43:53 AM »

Hmm, between the new Alpha core benefits and new Commerce, it looks like players are going to have so much credits. Are player faction fleets (related to the currently unused Orders tab) the main creditsink? Or are there other creditsinks planned?
Not really?  If anything the Commerce change is a nerf - keep in mind that, one, new Commerce still occupies an industry slot, and two, it *replaces* the current bonus income from high stability.  In other words, if you don't build Commerce, you'll see a massive drop in colony profit - and if you do build it, well, that's one fewer industry you can build.
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: Skills and Story Points
« Reply #269 on: August 16, 2019, 12:36:07 PM »

It's likely that the industry that you're replacing with commerce would have also made money, so there's a question of how often it will even be worth building for income. If I can just build refining or fuel processing or heavy industry and make as much if not more money, why would I build commerce? I don't know how much more money commerce makes but those industries with the right items can make a lot of money so commerce will have to outperform them to be useful.
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