You can argue that character skillsheets are all about tradeoffs and having varied playstyle, choices and power variables, and that's great when it's fun, but being weaker or cutting out flying entirely and missing that whole amazing gameplay experience is a bad outcome, very bad.
This isn't a "pick your class" issue at all, this is a "do you want to play a fighting game or an RTS" situation.You can argue that character skillsheets are all about tradeoffs and having varied playstyle, choices and power variables, and that's great when it's fun, but being weaker or cutting out flying entirely and missing that whole amazing gameplay experience is a bad outcome, very bad.
This comes up every so often. I think your observations are pretty much spot-on, but not the conclusions. The fleet skill points and personal flagship skill points are mixed in together in the same skill point pool so that the player has maximum flexibility in deciding where to allocate those points. If the player likes playing the game more like an arcade, then more points go into flagship skills. If the player likes playing the game more like an admiral, then more points go into fleet skills. This also changes throughout a playthrough; initially, I tend to take more flagship skills, but as my fleet gets bigger, I'll respec into more fleet skills, even though I'll generally always have between 4 and 7 points into flagship skills.
The whole point is that you can choose to go along many different paths, but you can only choose one at a time (or, technically, you can get up to 3 capstones, so that'd be up to 3 at a time). You can choose to be a fighter, or a cleric, or a mage, or a rogue, and play the game through that way, but you can't be a fighter/cleric/mage/rogue/artificer/bard/ranger/etc. all at once, which would make the player too overpowered and the game too easy. Each path needs to have something good, but also make you give up something good as well, so you can't do it all at any given time. That's how a lot of game balance works. If this game allowed you to do everything, i.e. say give you 40 skill points instead of 15, then a lot of the skills would have to be severely nerfed so that the game doesn't become too easy.
For a sufficiently skilled player, the flagship can generally do around 2x to 3x as much as the AI in that same ship. So the player's flagship is the single most influential ship in your fleet. That's why it may make more sense to put points into flagship skills rather than fleet skills.
It looks like your fleet is specializing in Best of the Best, Support Doctrine, and Hull Restoration. SD and HR are solid picks for the early game, but as you acquire and level up more officers, SD becomes less useful, and as your fleet gets more powerful and have less deaths, HR also becomes less useful. At that point it'll be worth respec'ing away from those skills and put your points elsewhere, such as flagship skills or other fleet skills, which will give you more points to put into the stuff you want.
Hiruma Kai also posted a 66 DP vs 814 DP player control run.And with a NL-AI combo, that I previously deemed useless (because AI Radiant is not that different from a humanly piloted one). I was wrong.
Nearly every build that gets posted has Leadership 5+That's also an issue, although it's a separate one. The player gets too many officers that are too strong, encouraging buffing them even more, at the expense of other skills.
Having more incremental skills might also alleviate the problem of having to specialize skills to a specific ship in a game loop that promotes randomized opportunities and thus random ship access. Such a system could also exclude the frustrating random officer skills as well.
The officer roster building is annoying. You spend time looking through the markets to find one, preferably with the starting skills you actually need, then you mentor them, go through 5/6 subsequent levels and still might end up without all of the skills you wanted, and now you either have to cope or look for replacement and do it all over again.For me, the main problem with officers is if I change the fleet significantly, all of those carefully raised officers are no longer optimal for the new ships, and they ought to be fired for new officers to work with the new ships, but those new officers need to be leveled up first. That eats too much time (leveling them up) and story points (without refund if skills were made elite). After I raise this new batch to work with the new fleet, if I want to change the fleet again, those officers get fired and yet another batch of fresh meat gets hired, wasting yet more time and story points.
Oh and there is also busted level 7 salvaged officers but with entirely random skillset. Considering officers are semi-permanent and you can't reliably store dozens of them to adjust on the fly I find it bizarre how many RNG layers are involved here.
Another possibility for combat skills more worthwhile in normal gameplay is to make them cheaper, one point invested in the combat tree could give you two skills, so you don't need to sink 6 points just to equal one of your trained officers.Also, make the combat capstones cheaper. Four points for first, and five for the second, just like Officer Training/Management in Leadership. That is still not as good as officers who can mix-and-match Combat/Tech/Industry to qualify for combat capstones.
Having more incremental skills might also alleviate the problem of having to specialize skills to a specific ship in a game loop that promotes randomized opportunities and thus random ship access. Such a system could also exclude the frustrating random officer skills as well.
The officer roster building is annoying. You spend time looking through the markets to find one, preferably with the starting skills you actually need, then you mentor them, go through 5/6 subsequent levels and still might end up without all of the skills you wanted, and now you either have to cope or look for replacement and do it all over again.
Oh and there is also busted level 7 salvaged officers but with entirely random skillset. Considering officers are semi-permanent and you can't reliably store dozens of them to adjust on the fly I find it bizarre how many RNG layers are involved here.
Having more incremental skills might also alleviate the problem of having to specialize skills to a specific ship in a game loop that promotes randomized opportunities and thus random ship access. Such a system could also exclude the frustrating random officer skills as well.
The officer roster building is annoying. You spend time looking through the markets to find one, preferably with the starting skills you actually need, then you mentor them, go through 5/6 subsequent levels and still might end up without all of the skills you wanted, and now you either have to cope or look for replacement and do it all over again.
Oh and there is also busted level 7 salvaged officers but with entirely random skillset. Considering officers are semi-permanent and you can't reliably store dozens of them to adjust on the fly I find it bizarre how many RNG layers are involved here.
Even so I would say that the current level cap of 15 feels way to restrictive, a level cap of 20 feels more reasonable as there are at least 5 skills in each of the 4 trees that are desirable. With just 15 we really have to abandon at least one tree, and pick and choose a bit too much.
B, be able to assign an officer to your flagship, and remove all combat skills from the player's own skilltree.Kite (s) does exist now. 30 op kite with no weapons, perfect for putting operations center in for command point bonus. Only 2 dp so it barely cuts into your deployed forces. You can sit in a corner and command your fleet.
I already know where these 5 spare skill points are going to for your average optimized player and it sure won't be industry logi-skills. That being said I wouldn't mind to have 4 total capstones across 4 skill trees, level 20 cap does sound nice.
-has a 400+ DP fleetEhh, mostly. BOTB needs to be swapped with Officer Management. Almost all builds either want OM or Support Doctrine, but not both. Whereas almost all builds using OM or SD need BOTB.
-the game is tedious without Industry skills
You're not supposed to lug around a giant death fleet, then suggest a level cap of 20 to make it a no brainer choice for yourself. Obviously the system works fine, you just need a smaller fleet.
Gunnery Implants, Energy Weapon Mastery, Ordnance Expertise, and Polarized Armor all need to be added to Teir 1 so Players that pilot their flagship don't have to waste a skill point on something they don't need.I think both Gunnery Implants and Ordnance Expertise are overpowered and worth almost two skills (more like one-and-a-half), so being tier 2 for them is fine, although like Combat capstones, I am jealous officers can get them more easily than the player.
I think both Gunnery Implants and Ordnance Expertise are overpowered and worth almost two skills (more like one-and-a-half), so being tier 2 for them is fine, although like Combat capstones, I am jealous officers can get them more easily than the player.
BOTB has too much. Third s-mod and 200 (or 50%) DP minimum. It is what a capstone should be, but none of the other capstones seem as powerful (caveat: no idea for Derelict Ops.) Currently, almost every build I see posted has it. Combat capstones get cheapened by officers getting them more easily than the player can.Gunnery Implants, Energy Weapon Mastery, Ordnance Expertise, and Polarized Armor all need to be added to Teir 1 so Players that pilot their flagship don't have to waste a skill point on something they don't need.I think both Gunnery Implants and Ordnance Expertise are overpowered and worth almost two skills (more like one-and-a-half), so being tier 2 for them is fine, although like Combat capstones, I am jealous officers can get them more easily than the player.
On the other hand, Energy Mastery is lame for beyond short-ranged energy users (beams, capitals with heavy weapons, Onslaught with TPCs) and should be changed, at least swap elite and basic so that long-ranged users are not robbed.
But I am not opposed to moving those skills, along with all tier 3 Industry skills (which do nothing for combat), to tier 1.
In particular, Industrial Planning should be tier 1. It is a huge opportunity cost for players not after an Industry capstone to get it at tier 3, and it is likely vital for those who do not want to use AI cores in their colonies. (Yes, almost everyone use alpha AI cores.) Commodity demands for colonies all seem to expect the +1 from Industrial Planning.
This is also why support Doctrine sees so little use, as it directly competes with BOTB, which is just flat out better, or you have to give up skills elsewhere. Which means OM fleets are always going to be better than SD fleets.The recent builds I have seen that have Support Doctrine also have BotB, those with Leadership 8+.
An alternative to this is to drop the required combat skills for the capstone down to 3 from 4, or count tech and industry combat skills towards the combat capstone.I would say do both because officers do just that. Human officers only need three for combat capstone #1 and four for capstone #2, and tech/industry skills count as much as combat toward combat capstones for them.
The most effective Officer Managment fleet loadout is the following.
5 combat skills, 4 + capstone. 6 leadership skills, three tier 1+ both tier 2 + BOTB. 3 technology skills, with the final being cybernetic Augmentation.
This leaves over exactly 1 skill point. If the player's ship needs Ordnance Expertise or Polarized Armor for the build to work, then the build can't work. If they don't need it, then they can grab another skill from the other skill branches, which will typically be Flux Regulation.
This gives 11 level 6 4 elite skill officers with three built in hullmod ships with one officer having the best piloting possible, which is the optimum loadout for Officer Managment.
An alternative to this is to drop the required combat skills for the capstone down to 3 from 4, or count tech and industry combat skills towards the combat capstone.
This is also why support Doctrine sees so little use, as it directly competes with BOTB, which is just flat out better, or you have to give up skills elsewhere. Which means OM fleets are always going to be better than SD fleets.
Likewise, don't even get me started on just how much of an ineffective meme Derelict Operations is outside of niche low DP builds.
Swapping out BOTB for anything else when a bunch of ships already have third s-mods means those excess s-mods disappear without refund. It is a huge story point cost to reinstall them back in when reassigning another time back for BOTB.
For the first question, mercenaries are a repeated skill point investment, and I frequently need those points elsewhere, even when I'm grinding ordos for skill points. Likewise, I frequently use 1 mercenary on a civilian grade hull ship to act as a reinforcement. What that ship is depends on the run.SpoilerThe most effective Officer Managment fleet loadout is the following.
5 combat skills, 4 + capstone. 6 leadership skills, three tier 1+ both tier 2 + BOTB. 3 technology skills, with the final being cybernetic Augmentation.
This leaves over exactly 1 skill point. If the player's ship needs Ordnance Expertise or Polarized Armor for the build to work, then the build can't work. If they don't need it, then they can grab another skill from the other skill branches, which will typically be Flux Regulation.
This gives 11 level 6 4 elite skill officers with three built in hullmod ships with one officer having the best piloting possible, which is the optimum loadout for Officer Managment.
An alternative to this is to drop the required combat skills for the capstone down to 3 from 4, or count tech and industry combat skills towards the combat capstone.
This is also why support Doctrine sees so little use, as it directly competes with BOTB, which is just flat out better, or you have to give up skills elsewhere. Which means OM fleets are always going to be better than SD fleets.
Likewise, don't even get me started on just how much of an ineffective meme Derelict Operations is outside of niche low DP builds.
Out of curiosity, why not just respec and take the skill point out of officer management, turn the 2 extra officers into mercenaries, spend a couple story points to keep them on every few years (just throw it on the pile of 88+ points already spent - 10 for mentoring, 40 for officer elite skills, 33 for triple s-mod ships, and 5 for elite personal combat skills) and take Ordinance Expertise anyways? I wouldn't really call officer management a capstone, given its benefit can be trivially duplicated with a minor story point expenditure already.
Capstone in my mind draws you down the tree for something unique which encourages a different playstyle.
Best of the Best encourages slow and tall. It of course works with other fleet compositions, but from a reward perspective, you get the most benefit for the least work if you're running something like five 40 DP capitals, to minimize story point costs, while also fitting under the 200 DP deployment limit, and thus doesn't need the support ships to grab comm relays or other locations quickly.
Support Doctrine encourages wide, reaching the ship cap, which means low average DP, which in turn means things like a lot of frigates and destroyers. Such a fleet doesn't really need the bonus deployment DP at the start, since it has options for fast captures. It also saves significantly on story points given you don't need to hire mercenaries, or mentor extra officers, or put a 3rd s-mod on the ships, although you do tend to want to put 2 s-mods on the larger number of ships.
Both of those feel like capstones since they draw you towards different fleet builds. Now we can argue the effectiveness, their actual and perceived power levels, of the skills themselves but I wouldn't want to see them moved or what kind of fleet they encourage changed.
As for Derelict operations, it is admittedly a late game skill, with very little benefit before you hit the 240 DP deployment cap, but it is the single largest buff to a 340+ DP fleet with 5 d-mods each. Paying only 70% of the DP to deploy is huge. It is not quite for every 2 enemy ships on the field, you have 3 of the same class, but with d-mods. Perhaps that is niche, but I think that is encouraging a different playstyle, as I think a capstone should.[close]
Gunnery Implants, Energy Weapon Mastery, Ordnance Expertise, and Polarized Armor all need to be added to Teir 1 so Players that pilot their flagship don't have to waste a skill point on something they don't need.You can already take other tier 1 skills to skip those.
You can already take other tier 1 skills to skip those.Tier 1 in Tech and Industry are campaign-only skills. (Field Repairs is useful for healing armor and hull between rounds in multi-round combat, though.) You need to take Navigation or Sensors for Gunnery Implants or Energy Mastery, and one of the three tier 1 Industry skills for Ordnance Expert or Polarized Armor.
Player needs a fleet unless he pilots the few overpowered cheese ships like some phase ships, but even those are not as optimal as a good fleet. Fleet should be boosted too.
For the first question, mercenaries are a repeated skill point investment, and I frequently need those points elsewhere, even when I'm grinding ordos for skill points. Likewise, I frequently use 1 mercenary on a civilian grade hull ship to act as a reinforcement. What that ship is depends on the run.
For BOTB, you need the 240 DP limit for fighting ~1,000,000 bounties and multiple ordos. The exception is five capital fleets specifically designed to fight at 200DP. Even then you can only fight two ordos max, or you need auxiliary ships to cap points.
Can a support doctrine ship handle double its DP in everything? As that is my requirement for good loadouts for OM fleets. From everything I've seen, the answer is no, losing the third s-mod, or paying 8 skill points kills fleet effectiveness.
Here we go.
DO costs five skill points, while this is fine for a capstone, and it is a capstone, but it is locked behind 4 skills, only two of which may be useful for a rather limited number of builds. While yes 340 DP deployed all at once is huge, it weakens the ships massively to the point where it can't handle 240 DP or more of enemy ships that have level 6+ officers and three S-mods, i.e. a ~1,000,000 bounty.
Which means on average you lose three skill points for it, in return for a fleet that is far weaker than SD or OM.
It's not worth it unless you are using 1 or 2 ships for niche story point farming builds.
About Support Doctrine, I think its biggest issue is that you start with 8 officers. You can avoid putting your officers on your biggest ships where they will have the most impact, but SD is not a good enough reason to do so. Your average officered ship only needs to be of 15 DP to comprise half of your force at max deployment cap of 240. If you use stronger ships, don't start with 240 DPs or have more officers, there's even less of a reason to use SD.
It's okay to play "sub-optimal" builds.I highly disagree with this if the player is not intentionally building a challenge fleet.
You pick a build that doesn't help you to fly the flagship at all and complain it doesn't help you to fly the flagship at all ...The problem is that if you don't need Ordnance Expertise or Polarized armor, you can get the optimal 11 commander fleet loadout. 5 combat, 6-7 leadership, 3-4 technology.
You could but you don't want to.
More accurately combat build encourage you to fly your flagship (unless you are terrible pilot), being significantly more effective. Fleet build don't.
Late game you start fighting near 1,000,000 credit human bounties from high importance contacts. Thier fleet comps are actually decent, frequently have 10 pure level 7 officers, and three s-mods on their ships. Thier fleet compositions range anywhere from okay, to very good. They're typically not as dangerous as the tesseract ordo, but sometimes are more dangerous. Also, for ordo hunting purposes.Player needs a fleet unless he pilots the few overpowered cheese ships like some phase ships, but even those are not as optimal as a good fleet. Fleet should be boosted too.
It's okay to play "sub-optimal" builds.
Or Are people all fighting 5x Ordos Fleet that they absolutely need the most optimal build? :-\
It's for the near 1,000,000 human bounties. I've only seen 960,000 personally, but I've seen other players fighting more. Most of them are around 240DP, ten level 7 officer, and three s-mods.SpoilerFor the first question, mercenaries are a repeated skill point investment, and I frequently need those points elsewhere, even when I'm grinding ordos for skill points. Likewise, I frequently use 1 mercenary on a civilian grade hull ship to act as a reinforcement. What that ship is depends on the run.
Fair enough. Everyone values story points different based on their in game goals.For BOTB, you need the 240 DP limit for fighting ~1,000,000 bounties and multiple ordos. The exception is five capital fleets specifically designed to fight at 200DP. Even then you can only fight two ordos max, or you need auxiliary ships to cap points.
Can a support doctrine ship handle double its DP in everything? As that is my requirement for good loadouts for OM fleets. From everything I've seen, the answer is no, losing the third s-mod, or paying 8 skill points kills fleet effectiveness.
Why do you need 240 DP and BotB to fight Tesseract bounties? I just slapped together a support doctrine fleet and beat one with only 220 DP deployed on the very first try (although, I did lose an Omen and a Medusa - on the other hand, they are cheap to restore). See attached screenshots. The fight was never in doubt, given 8 officered Monitors as the front line. Just base 8 level 5 officers with 1 elite skill (field modulation), plus player with 7 combat skills in a Doom (mostly for clearing the fighters at the end). Support doctrine is almost tailor made for frigate/destroyer wolfpacks. Although, I need to remember to change Doctrine aggression to 3 or 4 when using SO ships, since they defaulted to Steady in this particular fight, which is less than optimal for SO ships. But still worked fine.Here we go.
DO costs five skill points, while this is fine for a capstone, and it is a capstone, but it is locked behind 4 skills, only two of which may be useful for a rather limited number of builds. While yes 340 DP deployed all at once is huge, it weakens the ships massively to the point where it can't handle 240 DP or more of enemy ships that have level 6+ officers and three S-mods, i.e. a ~1,000,000 bounty.
Which means on average you lose three skill points for it, in return for a fleet that is far weaker than SD or OM.
It's not worth it unless you are using 1 or 2 ships for niche story point farming builds.
I'm pretty sure there are also examples of derelict operations fleets beating stuff here. CapnHector even has a derelict operation fleet with only 66 DP deployed killing a double Ordo. You can see it in: https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=27808.0. I'm pretty sure if you scale that up to 240 DP, it will have no problem farming a double Ordo or farming Tesseracts.
The game isn't so hard that you need the absolute strongest possible fleet to beat the end game challenges, at least in this iteration.About Support Doctrine, I think its biggest issue is that you start with 8 officers. You can avoid putting your officers on your biggest ships where they will have the most impact, but SD is not a good enough reason to do so. Your average officered ship only needs to be of 15 DP to comprise half of your force at max deployment cap of 240. If you use stronger ships, don't start with 240 DPs or have more officers, there's even less of a reason to use SD.
Well, that just makes it encourage fleets with less than 15 DP average per ship. Like destroyer/frigate wolfpacks, which you don't generally see otherwise, because of that base line set of officers. A high tech pack of Medusa, Omens, and Monitors will be well below that average, for example. But it is a perfectly workable setup with Support Doctrine.[close]
I feel like this is what Support Doctrine was designed for, no? Now it is possible support doctrine isn't strong enough to support this playstyle generally, but it doesn't strike me as that much weaker than an officer centric style.To be fair, you have to go against the intent behind the majority of the Leadership skills (which either buff officers specifically, or all ships (including officers)) to get the most out of SD. I also don't think relying on SD is as good as regular officer usage, simply because you get so many officers for free.
...
(in general coordinated maneuvers is too easy to max out imo)... Really?
It's okay to play "sub-optimal" builds.I highly disagree with this if the player is not intentionally building a challenge fleet.
It is annoying that Leadership is a must for a standard or conventional fleet (similar to what a human NPC faction might use).
Late game you start fighting near 1,000,000 credit human bounties from high importance contacts. Thier fleet comps are actually decent, frequently have 10 pure level 7 officers, and three s-mods on their ships. Thier fleet compositions range anywhere from okay, to very good. They're typically not as dangerous as the tesseract ordo, but sometimes are more dangerous. Also, for ordo hunting purposes.
Changing skill arrangements so that other fleet compositions are equally as powerful as my above response to you makes the game more fun for those of us that play well into the late game, and for those that mod their game to be harder as it opens up the number of viable builds. All while having either no effect, or beneficial effects on players that want to play with "sub-optimal" builds.
The current skill system was created with intention of discouraging people picking the "best" build and allowing more diversity. That didn't work. As expected, people who pick the "best" build would continue to do so.
Your build is suboptimal. It is like disagreeing with yourself. ???Yes, I played with suboptimal build before. No, I did not intentionally want a challenge build. If I wanted to get any Leadership like nearly every top-performing build posted, I need to dump either the high-tier special campaign skills (Tech/Industry) or flagship stuff (Combat). Combat/Tech/Industry is suboptimal, and I do not like it.
For some of the logistics skills like Makeshift Equipment (percentage maintenance cost reduction), Containment Procedures (percentage fuel cost reduction) and the leadership skills, I've got two thoughts:
Option 1: think it would be pretty convenient if those could be hullmods, or better yet built-in hullmods like salvage gantry's; there's already the Ox-class tug that gives a fleet-wide bonus to speed, so a dedicated logistics hull ship that affects things like that could be neat.
And a larger salvage-rig-like logistics vessel (a dedicated fleet tender vessel perhaps) that has a built-in hullmod which reduces your maintenance costs by a percentage, with hull-size and stacking considerations taken into account in the calculations.
Option 2: Logistics officers and Bridge Staff. Essentially officers you can have in your fleet who can pick those skills or variants of those skills, letting you spec into other things. Not sure if they should be part of the existing officer limit or have a different count though.
To summarise, moving those "affects your entire fleet tremendously and only you can do it" skills and de-centralizing them, so that if you still want those you have to invest in it somewhere else, freeing up your character to be the unkillable super god-warrior with all elite combat skills you dreamed of without being annoyed remembering your other character's Wish.com-tier maintenance costs.
I've looked at seeing if I can do Option 1 through modding (by looking at MakeshiftEquipment.java, and DriveFieldStabilizer.java to figure out how a hullmod affects campaign layer stuff), and so far the api seems like it might work, but I'm curious to see if there are any changes to the officer system before I throw myself into fiddling with it.
The current skill system was created with intention of discouraging people picking the "best" build and allowing more diversity. That didn't work. As expected, people who pick the "best" build would continue to do so.Between the way that officers and s-mods work, it appears it was based on long term planning. As in the player is supposed to look at what ships and skill are available and plan their build from the start. The issue is, some builds are flat out worse for no reason, my suggestions are all centered around making those worse builds better to bring them inline with the current optimums. That is how you actually allow more diversity.
I don't consider elite bounties or tesseract ordo a threat. They might kill one or 2 ships but they can't possibly win vs my fleet. On a good day, I don't lose anything.Right up until your fleet hits a 1,000,000 credit pure carrier bounty. You lack PD, and despite how powerful the monitor is, it's not going to be able to save your Medusas from fighter spam. The only real means you have of dealing with fighters is your flagship, and the Omens. Omens are poor PD even with officers due to their short range and poor hull and armor, and you can't be everywhere.
Another victory! My fleet is still standing, while theirs is gone. Hooray!
Since I don't see how it couldn't be done, it is not even a proper excuse.
How would players of non-optimized or sub-optimal builds win battle if the game doesn't allow other viable playstyle? A harder game doesn't mean a no in most cases.This is why I think you're trolling. I'm trying to increase the total number of viable or efficient builds, not decrease it. Likewise, I never said to make the game harder.
Right up until your fleet hits a 1,000,000 credit pure carrier bounty. You lack PD, and despite how powerful the monitor is, it's not going to be able to save your Medusas from fighter spam.
The only real means you have of dealing with fighters is your flagship, and the Omens. Omens are poor PD even with officers due to their short range and poor hull and armor, and you can't be everywhere.
The Tesseract Ordo you fought was an easy one, it lacked carriers, and it lacked a Radiant. Had it had either, you would have sustained serious losses, and had it had both, you probably would have lost or nearly lost.
This is what I'm talking about. There are major drawbacks in your fleet composition, and if you run into a well designed enemy fleet that counters them, you will lose or nearly so. You need every advantage you can get when going against such fleets.
Your skills are part of the problem, you require helmsmanship even though it's barely useful. If it wasn't required for system expertise, and or officer management and best of the best was swapped, you would be able to afford to get BOTB, s-mod one of you hullmods, and have enough OP for more PD, Hardened shields if the Medusas already don't have them, or reinforced bulkheads so that the monitors don't get instantly popped when their shields go down.
This is why I think you're trolling. I'm trying to increase the total number of viable or efficient builds, not decrease it. Likewise, I never said to make the game harder.
It could just be your grammar making me mistake why you're trying to say, however.
Yep sorry about that, his post was directly above your fleet post which when combined with him saying he already did it easily got me confused.SpoilerFor the first question, mercenaries are a repeated skill point investment, and I frequently need those points elsewhere, even when I'm grinding ordos for skill points. Likewise, I frequently use 1 mercenary on a civilian grade hull ship to act as a reinforcement. What that ship is depends on the run.
Fair enough. Everyone values story points different based on their in game goals.For BOTB, you need the 240 DP limit for fighting ~1,000,000 bounties and multiple ordos. The exception is five capital fleets specifically designed to fight at 200DP. Even then you can only fight two ordos max, or you need auxiliary ships to cap points.
Can a support doctrine ship handle double its DP in everything? As that is my requirement for good loadouts for OM fleets. From everything I've seen, the answer is no, losing the third s-mod, or paying 8 skill points kills fleet effectiveness.
Why do you need 240 DP and BotB to fight Tesseract bounties? I just slapped together a support doctrine fleet and beat one with only 220 DP deployed on the very first try (although, I did lose an Omen and a Medusa - on the other hand, they are cheap to restore). See attached screenshots. The fight was never in doubt, given 8 officered Monitors as the front line. Just base 8 level 5 officers with 1 elite skill (field modulation), plus player with 7 combat skills in a Doom (mostly for clearing the fighters at the end). Support doctrine is almost tailor made for frigate/destroyer wolfpacks. Although, I need to remember to change Doctrine aggression to 3 or 4 when using SO ships, since they defaulted to Steady in this particular fight, which is less than optimal for SO ships. But still worked fine.Here we go.
DO costs five skill points, while this is fine for a capstone, and it is a capstone, but it is locked behind 4 skills, only two of which may be useful for a rather limited number of builds. While yes 340 DP deployed all at once is huge, it weakens the ships massively to the point where it can't handle 240 DP or more of enemy ships that have level 6+ officers and three S-mods, i.e. a ~1,000,000 bounty.
Which means on average you lose three skill points for it, in return for a fleet that is far weaker than SD or OM.
It's not worth it unless you are using 1 or 2 ships for niche story point farming builds.
I'm pretty sure there are also examples of derelict operations fleets beating stuff here. CapnHector even has a derelict operation fleet with only 66 DP deployed killing a double Ordo. You can see it in: https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=27808.0. I'm pretty sure if you scale that up to 240 DP, it will have no problem farming a double Ordo or farming Tesseracts.
The game isn't so hard that you need the absolute strongest possible fleet to beat the end game challenges, at least in this iteration.About Support Doctrine, I think its biggest issue is that you start with 8 officers. You can avoid putting your officers on your biggest ships where they will have the most impact, but SD is not a good enough reason to do so. Your average officered ship only needs to be of 15 DP to comprise half of your force at max deployment cap of 240. If you use stronger ships, don't start with 240 DPs or have more officers, there's even less of a reason to use SD.
Well, that just makes it encourage fleets with less than 15 DP average per ship. Like destroyer/frigate wolfpacks, which you don't generally see otherwise, because of that base line set of officers. A high tech pack of Medusa, Omens, and Monitors will be well below that average, for example. But it is a perfectly workable setup with Support Doctrine.[close]
I really shouldn't comment on people's grammar before I quadruple spellcheck. Whatever, it's quoted now.
This is why I think you're trolling. I'm trying to increase the total number of viable or efficient builds, not decrease it. Likewise, I never said to make the game harder.
It could just be your grammar making me mistake why you're trying to say, however.
Disagreeing is not trolling. I consider falsely accusing someone of being a troll disrespectful and offensive, potentially defamatory and slander, my good sir.
I really shouldn't comment on people's grammar before I quadruple spellcheck. Whatever, it's quoted now.
I was partially assuming, and partially asking because it sounded like you were putting words in my mouth, but I wasn't sure due to not fully understanding what you were trying to say.
Given you didn't take the chance to clarify and ended your reply with "my good sir." I'm going to safely assume you're doing just little bit of light trolling. Carry on.
So I went and checked Rayan Arrayo (High priority contact) in my longest running test save, and turns out the next mission he had on offer was a 700k fighter focused bounty, so I guess we kind of are in luck for testing. It is not a full million credit bounty, but it is at least in the same family. 10 minutes later with Console commands and I had a support doctrine fleet setup, with only minor variations (tweaked the Monitor setup, removed the light mortar, switched to front shields, and 3 more vents).Fair enough, I was wrong. The failure point, if there was going to be one, was going to be due to the Medusas lack of full shield coverage and low armor. Basically, the fighters would chip them to death. At which point you wouldn't have enough firepower to continue the fight.
Decided to try it the dumb way, simply deployed 158 DP, grabbed waypoints, deployed full 238, hit full assault. No finesse, no orders, no trying to player tank the fighters, just see what happens in a giant furball.
Lost a single Medusa because we pushed the enemy fleet to the top, and a Legion, Mora, and Astral decided to deploy right on top of it.
Typical Medusa had 5-10 fighter kills, generally more with Heavy blaster than Ion pulser. Doom had 110 fighter kills with mines and another 25 with Ion pulsers and Burst PD combined.
So, I don't really see a failure mode against fighter spam.
Unfortunately, world seed only affects the double Tesseract fights, it doesn't affect the mid-game spawned Tessaract + Ordo fight.
As for substitutions for Monitors, I don't think there is one. On the other hand, you can't normally afford to stick your entire officer corp in them as you need some offense, so this is kind of a Support Doctrine or flagship focused only style.
Why do you need 240 DP and BotB to fight Tesseract bounties? I just slapped together a support doctrine fleet and beat one with only 220 DP deployed on the very first try (although, I did lose an Omen and a Medusa - on the other hand, they are cheap to restore). See attached screenshots. The fight was never in doubt, given 8 officered Monitors as the front line. Just base 8 level 5 officers with 1 elite skill (field modulation), plus player with 7 combat skills in a Doom (mostly for clearing the fighters at the end).
This idea is only half-baked but I wonder if Combat Skills wouldn't be more attractive if Fleetwide skills were less instantly effective. This ties into an idea I've had for awhile that is essentially a very much watered-down version of Starship Legends.I don't dislike the idea, but it feels somewhat wrong to punish fleetwide skills for officer abundance, when only 3 skills have much to do with them.
As for a substitute for the Monitor's distracting role, maybe a long-range laser Scarab build could work. I've tried short range builds in the past, the AI is too stupid to drop its shield for three seconds to use its system. While not as good as a Monitor's tanking, the ability to annoy enemies from 1650 range may work just as well.
@Hiruma KaiI like 360 shield Medusas with accelerated shields. For a 2 s-mod version, because of the skimmer, I like the 240 omni-shield version. My thinking was to leverage a free Combat Endurance on every ship the most, you go to safety overrides.
Cool fleet! I love 360 shielded Medusas, though I hadn't played around with SO ones too much, that looks neat.
I'm also a bit curious about the officers on the Monitors - do the officers significantly enhance their survival? I'm guessing its that elite field modulation skill interacting with their system to be utterly broken? It seems a bit of a waste of wolfpack compared to putting officers on Scarabs/Hyperions (though Hyperions are DP pricey enough to be cutting into the fleet concept). Then again I'm a heretic who doesn't play with monitors because I don't think they should be in the game. :p
Depends on your metrics. Also, changes to SO could also impacts its maximum tanking by a factor of 2. Monitors are literally zero offense, so they are in a weird part of the parameter space.Started a new save for a wolfpack playthrough. I can confirm a Scarab with five tactical lasers at 1,650 range with built in advanced turret gyros is pretty good. It never gets killed, and it outranges pretty much all cruisers, and stays at a safe distance vs capitals.
For many fleets which tank well enough already, adding a monitor doesn't actually make it better, as it slows down the killing speed. And things like Tempests can approximate it with long range beams and harassment orders, using speed and distance instead of much slower damage absorption, at least against conventional human enemies. They won't work against a Tesseract with a triple speed boost though.