Fractal Softworks Forum
Starsector => General Discussion => Topic started by: Sutopia on April 27, 2021, 08:50:12 AM
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Every player that was here prior to .95 release probably would think the skill is unholy. It’s essentially three times effective HP just by 75% chance of meh-ing hull damage, not to mention other useful perks. It dwarfs field repair easily and is the only skill in industry tree that is actually useful in late game.
So how would you like to “fix” it? I know it costs three points of skill tax to get it but that’s the topic for another day. Assume you can get this skill on the get-go.
A popular proposal is to make it similar to old d-mod related skills, for example, half the d-mod effects and reduce the upkeep cost.
My personal proposal would like to add another perk to the above proposal. I think it can be interesting to cut the deployment point by 10% per d-mod, up to halving the dp. They’re not as effective as a pristine ship after all so giving them a deployment discount should be reasonable. This of course applies to enemy, making pirate and pather fights more intense in late game.
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This applies to the enemy... More precisely, to the explorarium drone bounties your contacts can give you.
I think Industry in general has an issue, where it doesn't really help late game, unless you want to spam Paragons from your colonies or something.
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Industry does not help in spamming Capitals. If anything, that would be Space Operations in L5L.
Industry is all over the place, 1 and 3 are pack rat/mule skills, 2 is combat, 4 is pristine or DC, and 5 is colonies.
My gripes with Industry is Field Repairs does not remove d-mods fast enough, and Industry 5 does not seem to give enough.
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Less crew lost to combat damage, less upkeep costs for d-modded junk, less negative effects from d-mods, d-modded ships count as less DP for skill limit calculations (but not actual deployment!).
I think zombie fleets should be about not caring about ships blowing up and drowning enemies in endless reinforcements. They shouldn't be better DP-per-DP than pristine ships.
Also, less DP for deployment purposes is broken. You are insane if you think 5 d-mods on a capital makes it "as good as a 20 dp ship".
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Less crew lost to combat damage, less upkeep costs for d-modded junk, less negative effects from d-mods, d-modded ships count as less DP for skill limit calculations (but not actual deployment!).
I think zombie fleets should be about not caring about ships blowing up and drowning enemies in endless reinforcements. They shouldn't be better DP-per-DP than pristine ships.
Also, less DP for deployment purposes is broken. You are insane if you think 5 d-mods on a capital makes it "as good as a 20 dp ship".
Capitals are already suffering from target analysis, I think it’s proper to make their life a bit easier if player so desires. 20DP is still easily bullied by three well equipped frigates because there is another unholy skill called wolf pack tactics.
I really just want to blow up more altlas mk2 simultaneously.
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If capitals are bad, they should be adressed separately. It would be weird if the primary balance purpose of a zombie fleet skill was to make capitals viable.
DP discounts also bring back all the degenerate spam strategies. Carrier spam is dead, but how about 5 DP Condors? Or would you prefer 8 DP Falcons(P), 162 missiles each?
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Increase fleet limit to 40 and lower deployment cost for each D-Mod.
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How about "you can change between various d-mod penalties at will" using the magic of duct tape. Why yes, the structural bulkhead is indeed routed through life support, breathing is over rated anyway. ;D
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I wouldn't.
It's neat as heck and I'd rather see skills be more powerful at large and more like this than remove it.
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How about turning it back into what it used to be when it wasn't a combat d-mod thing? Not sure why so much combat is in the Industry tree now.
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How about "you can change between various d-mod penalties at will" using the magic of duct tape. Why yes, the structural bulkhead is indeed routed through life support, breathing is over rated anyway. ;D
Maybe each D-mod makes the ship just a little bit more suicidal. Cognitive Dissonance and all that.
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How about turning it back into what it used to be when it wasn't a combat d-mod thing? Not sure why so much combat is in the Industry tree now.
Because, as explained in the other thread, there needs to be big combat value on I4L to compliment the big combat value of I4R
Statements that changes to DP are bad I think are incorrect for similar reasons. In .95 the skill that made ships with D-Mods have lower maintenance meant you could more easily bring more ships to a combat because you could stack more and larger combat ships. This would increase your DP budget and decrease the opponents DP budget for flying the same maintenance fleet. And since maintenance is more or less your combat power (because you have to make a fight profitable and get back to the core with your fleet intact) this meant a large increase in real combat power.
I4L needs something similar. I am fine with it’s current implementation. But reducing the DP of ships with d-mods (by 5% or 10% depending on net balance) would also be a fine implementation.
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The one thing I absolutely want killed from DC is the RNG-based 90% hull damage reduction. An always-on 50% reduction (at five D-mods) would be more than acceptable compared to this.
i.e. this (https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=20034.msg310122#msg310122) should never happen
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How about turning it back into what it used to be when it wasn't a combat d-mod thing? Not sure why so much combat is in the Industry tree now.
Because, as explained in the other thread, there needs to be big combat value on I4L to compliment the big combat value of I4R
I4L has zero combat value, it has after and out of combat value. Only Derelict Contingent has combat value on that tier. I have no clue why you think they both do.
Faster repairs and some free repairs isn't combat to be clear.
Please explain if this isn't what you are talking about.
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I4L has zero combat value, it has after and out of combat value.
Well, depends on what you mean by combat value. Retreating and immediately re-engaging for free repairs is a strat you can do, and it does make certain fights easier. Agree with the overall sentiment, though.
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How about turning it back into what it used to be when it wasn't a combat d-mod thing? Not sure why so much combat is in the Industry tree now.
Because, as explained in the other thread, there needs to be big combat value on I4L to compliment the big combat value of I4R
I4L has zero combat value, it has after and out of combat value. Only Derelict Contingent has combat value on that tier. I have no clue why you think they both do.
Faster repairs and some free repairs isn't combat to be clear.
Please explain if this isn't what you are talking about.
I4L reduces and eventually eliminates the costs of losing ships in combat. This expands the effective lossless range that you can engage in and thus expands your fleet strength. I4L also makes ships in your fleet stronger, DP for DP, by removing D-mods (when acquiring ships and over time).
I4L also makes it easier to re-engage due to the automatic repair, which increases your fleets power.
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Honestly, all I would do is:
"A quote about robbing Peter to pay Paul, something, something..."
- Every month (or after being deployed in combat) there is a chance a d-mod will transform into a different one.
- No d-mod is ever permanent.
- Negative effects are reduced by 50%.
- Elite: Maximum d-mods is 5 -> 3.
- Elite: Supply cost to recover from deployment reduced by 20% -> 33%.
Compromised Armor
Compromised Hull
Compromised Storage
Damaged Flight Deck
Defective Manufactory
Degraded Engines
Destroyed Weapon Mounts
Erratic Fuel Injector
Faulty Power Grid
Glitched Sensor Array
Ill-Advised Modifications
Increased Maintenance
Malfunctioning Comms
Phase Coil Instability
Structural Damage
Unreliable Subsystems
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Any randomness is bs. Randomly swapping d-mod is worse than current meh-damage.
No fleet-wide skill is allowed to has elite effect iirc.
50% reduction is still too much (effectively double ehp). 30% at 3 d-mod would be reasonable.
I do agree 50% reduction for dp is excessive. How about capped at -30% (3 d-mod)?
Please don’t use falcon P as deterrent, it has its own issue outside of current discussion scope.
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How about turning it back into what it used to be when it wasn't a combat d-mod thing? Not sure why so much combat is in the Industry tree now.
Because, as explained in the other thread, there needs to be big combat value on I4L to compliment the big combat value of I4R
I4L has zero combat value, it has after and out of combat value. Only Derelict Contingent has combat value on that tier. I have no clue why you think they both do.
Faster repairs and some free repairs isn't combat to be clear.
Please explain if this isn't what you are talking about.
I4L reduces and eventually eliminates the costs of losing ships in combat. This expands the effective lossless range that you can engage in and thus expands your fleet strength. I4L also makes ships in your fleet stronger, DP for DP, by removing D-mods (when acquiring ships and over time).
I4L also makes it easier to re-engage due to the automatic repair, which increases your fleets power.
I accept the re-engage as technically valid. Feels kinda exploity honestly. But point taken.
As for the rest. I could argue anything that saves me money allows me to afford better ships therefor combat skill or extra money means restores therefor combat skill for the same reason you listed. Improving your fleet in combat prevents damage, saving supplies, therefor it's a logistics skill. The stretching required to make that connection has the reach to make everything combat or logistics skill.
Everything other then the re-engage is directly logistics.
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How about turning it back into what it used to be when it wasn't a combat d-mod thing? Not sure why so much combat is in the Industry tree now.
Because, as explained in the other thread, there needs to be big combat value on I4L to compliment the big combat value of I4R
I4L has zero combat value, it has after and out of combat value. Only Derelict Contingent has combat value on that tier. I have no clue why you think they both do.
Faster repairs and some free repairs isn't combat to be clear.
Please explain if this isn't what you are talking about.
I4L reduces and eventually eliminates the costs of losing ships in combat. This expands the effective lossless range that you can engage in and thus expands your fleet strength. I4L also makes ships in your fleet stronger, DP for DP, by removing D-mods (when acquiring ships and over time).
I4L also makes it easier to re-engage due to the automatic repair, which increases your fleets power.
I accept the re-engage as technically valid. Feels kinda exploity honestly. But point taken.
As for the rest. I could argue anything that saves me money allows me to afford better ships therefor combat skill or extra money means restores therefor combat skill for the same reason you listed. Improving your fleet in combat prevents damage, saving supplies, therefor it's a logistics skill. The stretching required to make that connection has the reach to make everything combat or logistics skill.
Everything other then the re-engage is directly logistics.
Well no. When you lose a ship you must salvage it. The reduction in D-mods for salvaged ships means you're highly likely to get your ship back pristine. This means that you have a larger "no loss engagement window". It does not just "save you money" it means you can fight another fight relatively quickly.
Re-engages are not as common as they used to be i will say that. At least in prior versions it was very much no uncommon for battles to be big enough that they had to be split in two.
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Well no. When you lose a ship you must salvage it. The reduction in D-mods for salvaged ships means you're highly likely to get your ship back pristine. This means that you have a larger "no loss engagement window". It does not just "save you money" it means you can fight another fight relatively quickly.
Re-engages are not as common as they used to be i will say that. At least in prior versions it was very much no uncommon for battles to be big enough that they had to be split in two.
It's 2 months between repairs, assuming you only had 1 d mod, that is not relatively quickly. It's a QoL thing, trying to make it into a combat skill via extra steps is a card trick. I clearly explained how adding additional steps allows everything to be considered anything.
I should point out that many d mods have zero impact on combat performance and pristine doesn't give bonuses. So that fuel injector damage being fixed isn't a combat bonus, it's QoL.
Also not losing ships in the first place means it does nothing for combat even accepting your logic.
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When you salvage a ship ships have a reduction in the amount of D-mods they have. Pristine ships that are destroyed in battle and salvaged have between 1 and 2 d-mods on them in general. With the skill they have between 0 and 1. (I am not actually sure they can spawn with D-mods after losing a pristine ship in combat)
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Every logistics/campaign skill is combat if you add steps. Why do I need to keep repeating this fact? This is not how combat skills are defined.
Unless you find a way to recover a ship during the actual fight then I'm not interesting and it's overreaching.
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Every logistics/campaign skill is combat if you add steps. Why do I need to keep repeating this fact? This is not how combat skills are defined.
Unless you find a way to recover a ship during the actual fight then I'm not interesting and it's overreaching.
Reducing/eliminating the combat penalty for losing ships is a combat buff because it allows you to take harder fights without effective losses. If you can fight harder fights without losses your fleet is stronger
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In one fight (against battlestation at Chicomoztoc), I lost three Dooms. All three were recovered without d-mods, thanks to Field Repairs. Normally, losing three Dooms would be a reload moment, but because they had no d-mods, I kept playing (and swiped the pristine nanoforge from Chicomoztoc) instead of reloading.
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I accept the re-engage as technically valid. Feels kinda exploity honestly. But point taken.
As for the rest. I could argue anything that saves me money allows me to afford better ships therefor combat skill or extra money means restores therefor combat skill for the same reason you listed. Improving your fleet in combat prevents damage, saving supplies, therefor it's a logistics skill. The stretching required to make that connection has the reach to make everything combat or logistics skill.
Everything other then the re-engage is directly logistics.
I'm gonna say that the cost savings from field repairs are large enough when you are taking regular losses that it does begin to enter a realm of its own on the logistics equals combat side of things. It can easily save you 500k-1 million credits after losing a capital ship by keeping one dmod from getting applied, and then later repairing the other one, so you don't need to restore. Especially with story point build ins making just buying a new ship a far less viable method of handling dmods, field repairs gives a very large boost in how many loses you can handle without it being a problem that just isn't equaled by other logistics oriented skills. Sure the dmod fall off takes a bit, but when half the time you don't even get a dmod on the ship in the first place, its just not a big deal. The dmods on my fleet never "build up" despite generally losing a ship or two every major battle, and occasionally losing as many as 7 in one go. Sure, I may have a fight or two with a couple dmods, but they always get back to zero eventually.
As for DC, I think it really ought to be brought back to the "dmods don't impact my combat performance as much and save me operating costs" angle than the "Dmods give me peerless durability" thing its got going on. You could scale back the level of buffs it gives for dmods, but it wouldn't fix one of the bigger fundamental issues I see it as having right now, in that instead of making dmods generally more tolerable, it makes it so that if you want peak combat ability you have to very carefully control what dmods your ships get with reloads so that you get as many as possible on the ship without getting ones that significantly impair combat performance, which is just... bad, and will always be a factor so long as dmods give combat benefits.
For making industry in general more impactful late game, I think giving tier 4 or tier 5s, or possibly both, a bonus to maximum ships in the fleet would be a good way to do it. Industry is supposed to be the "numbers over quality" type tree, and its just never really been able to bear that out once the player starts having a solid income stream and gets their preferred fleet composition. Giving a larger ship cap would really help sell that idea while also indirectly making the tier 4s more valuable, as more ships without officers means more losses and dmods.
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Reducing/eliminating the combat penalty for losing ships is a combat buff because it allows you to take harder fights without effective losses. If you can fight harder fights without losses your fleet is stronger.
You don't get to redefine campaign skills as combat because of what you are arguing. Many combats taking place across a campaign being impacted indirectly doesn't make it combat.
I have no clue why you are so hell bent on defining it as a combat skill when it's clearly a campaign skill, as if they aren't allowed to impact what you bring into a fight and what you have for the next fight.
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There is an example, like 2-3 posts above, of someone literally using this skill in order to win a fight that would have caused them to reload the game in the absence of that skill.
This skill directly increases the difficulty of combat encounter that you can engage in without effective losses. Logistics skills do not do that.
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A notable example of Field Repairs shining is Ziggurat at the alpha site. When I recovered it, it had two d-mods. I checked its Restore cost - 1.7+ million credits. At the time, I had a little over 2 million credits. No way I am spending nearly two million credits to fix the Ziggurat. With Field Repairs, the d-mods eventually disappeared, and I get to enjoy piloting pristine Ziggurat without breaking the bank.
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A notable example of Field Repairs shining is Ziggurat at the alpha site. When I recovered it, it had two d-mods. I checked its Restore cost - 1.7+ million credits. At the time, I had a little over 2 million credits. No way I am spending nearly two million credits to fix the Ziggurat. With Field Repairs, the d-mods eventually disappeared, and I get to enjoy piloting pristine Ziggurat without breaking the bank.
If an issue is solvable by credit alone, it's not an issue.
Colony can print infinite cash with minimum management if you know what you're up to.
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Well no. When you lose a ship you must salvage it. The reduction in D-mods for salvaged ships means you're highly likely to get your ship back pristine. This means that you have a larger "no loss engagement window". It does not just "save you money" it means you can fight another fight relatively quickly.
Re-engages are not as common as they used to be i will say that. At least in prior versions it was very much no uncommon for battles to be big enough that they had to be split in two.
It's 2 months between repairs, assuming you only had 1 d mod, that is not relatively quickly. It's a QoL thing, trying to make it into a combat skill via extra steps is a card trick. I clearly explained how adding additional steps allows everything to be considered anything.
I should point out that many d mods have zero impact on combat performance and pristine doesn't give bonuses. So that fuel injector damage being fixed isn't a combat bonus, it's QoL.
Also not losing ships in the first place means it does nothing for combat even accepting your logic.
There is dmods that make ships weaker. E.g. 20% less flux stats. Less armor. You also have 15% more combat readiness which is more dmg and more peak time if things go down to the wire.
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A notable example of Field Repairs shining is Ziggurat at the alpha site. When I recovered it, it had two d-mods. I checked its Restore cost - 1.7+ million credits. At the time, I had a little over 2 million credits. No way I am spending nearly two million credits to fix the Ziggurat. With Field Repairs, the d-mods eventually disappeared, and I get to enjoy piloting pristine Ziggurat without breaking the bank.
If an issue is solvable by credit alone, it's not an issue.
Colony can print infinite cash with minimum management if you know what you're up to.
By the end of the game, and perhaps using all of the items (enough to provoke Pathers and/or Hegemony), maybe.
I was not at that stage of the game with infinite credits when I did Alpha test. I had terrible planet generation, and did not have big colonies up and running until after I assembled an endgame fleet that could handle 300k+ bounties safely (which happened some time after I got Janus device). Also, I am avoiding Pather cells (and Hegemony inspections) at all costs.