This concludes part of of this two-part blog post! In part two, I’ll talk about:I want the first row seat to watch their demise! Less so because I want them gone and more because I want to see if you really are getting rid of them. Quite an upheaval.
- Colony skills
Derelict Operations only affecting ships with officers seems weird. You're looking to to run a fleet of trashy junk ships... and then you need to make sure they all have officers?
This concludes part of of this two-part blog post!I read this sentence 3 times and couldn't figure out what was wrong. Guess after a read like this people won't even notice the mistakes hahahaha. Anyways I'm really happy about the changes you mentioned, especially S-modded ships being always recoverable and less boring skills in general (I literally never picked a colony skill in any of my playthroughs). Oh yeah and the different structures certainly sound like a big improvement, hopefully it will help with the "I hate having to pick skills I don't like" problem. Can't wait to try all of them out.
Derelict Operations only affecting ships with officers seems weird. You're looking to to run a fleet of trashy junk ships... and then you need to make sure they all have officers?
The blogpost didn't mention anything about officers in the section about Derelict Operations, so assuming it's gonna work that way based on the current Derelict Contingent may or may not be accurate. vOv
I feel like I say this every blog post, but sweeet - really exciting changes! I don't even know which T5 skill / combination I'm looking forward to most, which is probably a good sign that they're roughly similarly appealing.
These look like great changes! One thing I like is that colony skills seem to be off the menu for this system, or at the very least bypassable. I suspect you may be underestimating the value of mixing Best of the Best with Support Doctrine, as in a late game fleet of mixed ship classes (ostensibly the intended fleet composition, rather than the meme-y “Three Paragon” setup) there simply aren’t enough officers to go around.
I suspect you may be underestimating the value of mixing Best of the Best with Support Doctrine, as in a late game fleet of mixed ship classes (ostensibly the intended fleet composition, rather than the meme-y “Three Paragon” setup) there simply aren’t enough officers to go around.
That brings me to my next point, though. Is anything being done to rein in AI fleets with more officers than a player fleet could field? It seems as though every Redacted fleet I run into has the Deployment Point advantage simply because they fit a core to every vessel, and even late game Hegemony fleets seem to have more than they ought. This undermines the parity of “anything the AI can do, you can do as well” — a fleet (or really, even a combination of several) should have a maximum number of deployment points it derives from officers, simply because having too many cooks in the kitchen shouldn’t help matters. The officers should still give their ship-sode benefits (though Redacted deathfleets still need a look at) but I’m tired of seeing smaller fleets “outnumber” me because they’ve managed to squeeze sixteen officers around their planning table, when mine only fits 8.
I like the changes around making officer-less ships more viable. Derelict Contingent is especially frustrating in that regard, and I'm pleased the new junkfleet skill is about bringing lots of random stuff to battle, rather than finding 8-10 elite-but-battered ships.
S-mods giving always recoverable status as well is pretty interesting, too.
Derelict Operations only affecting ships with officers seems weird. You're looking to to run a fleet of trashy junk ships... and then you need to make sure they all have officers?
Ooh boy, Neural Link is looking sexy. That has so much potential, and it feels like there would be a ton of different ways to make use of it.
Assuming there's no cooldown and no delay (so 50 and down), the skill ceiling on using it seems insane. I can't wait to try to pilot two SO Hammerheads simultaneously.
On the other hand, it means I don't need to focus as much on speed if I want to have a personal effect on battles, since we can now fly two ships to two different places, win one, switch, and have the other ship start getting to the next fight in the meantime.
Double combat skill capital ships also sounds funny. Good? I don't know. Funny? Oh absolutely.
The core changes, moving away from the rigid structure to one that better fits each aptitude, looks great.
I can't decide between combining it with more combat skills, or with Best of the Best. Which I'm sure is the point. Looking forward to trying it out.
Automated ship get support doctrine if I don’t plug a core in?
That makes gamma core seems very bad for what it does.
QuoteThis concludes part of of this two-part blog post!I read this sentence 3 times and couldn't figure out what was wrong. Guess after a read like this people won't even notice the mistakes hahahaha.
Anyways I'm really happy about the changes you mentioned, especially S-modded ships being always recoverable and less boring skills in general (I literally never picked a colony skill in any of my playthroughs). Oh yeah and the different structures certainly sound like a big improvement, hopefully it will help with the "I hate having to pick skills I don't like" problem. Can't wait to try all of them out.
EDIT: I've almost missed this "mercurial scythe of balance coming for your phase ships in part 2". You sly devil always teasing us in the tags tsk tsk tsk.
mercurial scythe of balance coming for your phase ships in part 2Hoping that is not going to be the story of how a Doom boosted by unbalanced skills managed to get every other phase ship nerfed straight into Drover-tier.
Very excited to be able to pilot a Radiant with the new Neural Link skill!
OMG I really like this new layout. It doesn’t sacrifice the decision making but also doesn’t make the entire design seem unnecessarily restrictive.
I’m however legit wondering how colony will be changed. I really hope I can make self sufficient organs without use of AI.
Derelict Operations seems like a bad design. Pervious version give junk ships straight buff, which is always userful. This one just let you deploy more ships, and they are a bit cheap to maintain... Untill the pick up certain d-mod. But with this strategy you will lose more ships in combat, which will turn into more spendings on repair, crew, fuel, etc.
And you also can pick Hull Restoration instead. So why even bother with this junk? Especially in late game, lol.
This looks very cool!
For Automated Ships, does that meant that 4 unofficered Radiants, and 1 Radiant with an alpha core, have the same number of points? I'm honestly a bit torn there, as combat skills are very powerful, but maybe not 4x poweful... but otoh, those 4 Radiants are a less efficient use of fleet points than 1 Radiant with an Alpha. But support doctrine would boost those unofficered ships (and give them more CR!), or I could put neural link on 1 and then have 3 others, or one neural link, one beta core... lots of possibilities!
Derelict operations requiring officers and lowering the deployment cost kind of implies that its best use would be to spam capital ships... so how does for example a 5 D mod Onslaught match up against a 28OP heavy cruiser? I think that really depends on the D mods, so I can see myself somewhat "fishing" for the "right" ones. Noncombat D mods for example would be amazing: something like increased maintenance becomes the most desired D mod, as it reduces deployment cost in combat for a small increase in money cost (for an Onslaught, 2k credits per month). Reduced crew capacity would be even more desirable. So the value of this skill as it stands seems to go up on recovering big ships with noncombat D mods, which is a bit odd.
Do reductions in deployment cost also apply to skills that are limited by deployment points? e.g. does pairing Derelict Operations and Automated Ships allow your fleet to maintain more AI ships, provided they have lots of D-mods?
The wording in the blog implies it does, but the screenshot of the Automated Ship skill says "deployment recovery cost" which implies it doesn't?
Quotemercurial scythe of balance coming for your phase ships in part 2Hoping that is not going to be the story of how a Doom boosted by unbalanced skills managed to get every other phase ship nerfed straight into Drover-tier.
I'm liking the direction this is taking, but I can't shake the feeling that this new(er?) skill system is still too restrictive in terms of having to choose a playstyle and sticking to it. I'm assuming there's separate skills that boost one of line ships/carriers/phase ships, with skill points being as sparse as they are is it at all feasible to have a mixed fleet without either dragging along nerfed ships or making compromises elsewhere?
Note: deployment points are now shown on the ship tooltip as a separate stat, to help make these sorts of things clear.Does this mean that deployment points and recovery cost are getting split up in ship_data.csv?
QuoteNote: deployment points are now shown on the ship tooltip as a separate stat, to help make these sorts of things clear.Does this mean that deployment points and recovery cost are getting split up in ship_data.csv?
If you put a Neural Interface on a ship module (on a ship added by a mod, presumably, since there are no player-ownable ships with modules in the base game), will you be able to control that module directly?
Blog post here (https://fractalsoftworks.com/2021/07/02/skill-changes-part-1/).Thanks so much! Very exciting.
I recall seeing a Twitter post of yours showing the process of removing Best of the Best. You didn't mention that process in your description of the skill, though.
Did you change Weapon Drills? I remember quite a bit of disappointed comments. Personally, I'd like to see the skill buffed in a way that buffs your marines.
They'll be fine, nothing that won't buff out. The Doom got a little bit of special attention, though nothing drastic at that - just via a range reduction to Mine Strike, and an improvement to how enemy AI handles mines.That's more than fair. Though how does the AI handle the old, tried and true "HE Doom mines behind you, 4-6× Anti-Matter Blaster/2× Reaper Doom right in front of you" situation now? Pointing omni-shields forwards instead of backwards would just be trading one problem for another, it seems like.
Hmm, I'm not sure I'm on board with calling ships that haven't been boosted to the max "nerfed". That aside, though, I don't see why it woudln't be viable. It's already viable without any skills involved. Compromises are basically the name of the game regardless, though, if you're picking some of the things, you're not picking the rest of the things.Eh...probably not the best word to use, admittedly, but it's the one I went with. Blame the fact I'm currently playing Nerfopolis: The Modpack while waiting for the next Starsector update ;).
Do you mean by modding? Or some way to cheese it in-game?Cheese - such like strike package s mod exploit.
Either way, the answer is likely "pretty prepared, but probably not quite enough" :)
They'll be fine, nothing that won't buff out. The Doom got a little bit of special attention, though nothing drastic at that - just via a range reduction to Mine Strike, and an improvement to how enemy AI handles mines.Star Fortress get less range on mines too, or do they have a different system (or something else) to offset reduced range Doom will get?
That's more than fair. Though how does the AI handle the old, tried and true "HE Doom mines behind you, 4-6× Anti-Matter Blaster/2× Reaper Doom right in front of you" situation now? Pointing omni-shields forwards instead of backwards would just be trading one problem for another, it seems like.
Even if they're still viable it just never feels worthwhile to use what you're not specced for. When I make choices(/compromises) I want to get the most out of what I got, and that means focussing on what I've made my strength. Why field carriers when I've chosen skills that boost line ships, or phase ships when I'm focussed on carriers, etc.
Cheese - such like strike package s mod exploit.
Shoving ship into storage with such mod/ sell the ship/ transfer the ship ownership but not dropping the mod/ dupe ship
Hm, maybe just make it not be able to built in and auto remove if it’s not in fleet should suffice?
Do a check on every ship transfer - from or to player fleet.
Sorry for dipping my fingers in the soup but I can’t help myself not to cheese.
Yeah, it's a tough spot. It'll just point shields at mines a bit later in that case. So: better, but unlikely to change the outcome.There's really no ideal solution, since you're looking at heavy HE damage on either side. I guess if you're going to die either way the best thing you could do is try and deal as much damage before inevitably going down, meaning you don't risk an overload by taking the Anti-Matter Blaster shots on the shield and instead use that flux to fire weapons? A Doom isn't the most survivable boat IIRC (dear word the amount of Atlus MK. IIs that straight killed me with their death explosion...).
Yeah, I get that. Some things you're not specced for can be better than more of the thing you are specced for, though, just due to providing something different and complementary. But a lot of this is a psychological/how it feels thing. Still, it'd take, what, two points to feel like you've got something going with carriers and phase ships? Provided you had some points in tech and leadership, anyway.I really need to do some testing with that after battle statistics mod, forgot the name, and try to figure out exactly what blank carriers/phase ships can do for a line fleet. Unfortunately two points cannot be spared while there's campaign QoL skills and necessary fleet logistics skills to be had, so base hulls it is.
Phase Command teleporter - assuming Player control od this ship and other ships from it is instant
- The only one of these changes that I disagree strongly with is putting the third S-mod in the Leadership tree. I get your reasoning, but it's pretty different from what I've come to expect from these trees. It may sound a bit arrogant to tell you what your own game's themes are, but FWIW, the impressions stuck in my head from previous iterations are that Leadership is about being the best at using whatever you've got, while Technology is more about making what you've got the best it can be. The latter is often my first priority; I usually want my individual ships to be as mechanically tricked out as possible. So, anytime I'm going deep into Technology, I will always want that third S-mod. I don't mind putting a few points into Leadership for good officers (gonna need respectable pilots who can handle my beast machines, after all!), but having to max it for the S-mod doesn't fit the ethos I'm after at all.
- Support Doctrine being where it is seems questionable to me unless there are changes coming to substantially reduce the power of high-end officers. As lots of other people have been saying in this iteration, unless an officer-less ship has some strong inherent gimmick (thinking of the support Omens I run, here), it's a disposable speedbump in high-end combat. So unless it's an intentional balance decision that we should avoid using un-officered ships without this skill, I would consider it a band-aid for the issue. I can deal with having a mandatory band-aid skill, but putting at the top of a tree feels unrewarding, and irritating to build around.
- Neural Link seems very gimmicky. I would typically want to use a skill like this defensively more than offensively- I don't want the AI potentially wasting missiles or whatever that I had planned for a particular purpose, during the times when I need to switch to the other ship. But limiting it to non-officered ships nixes most of its defensive potential, that of repositioning your most important ships to get them out of trouble, since anything really important is going to have an officer in it. It does seem like a great opportunity to make use of ships I wouldn't normally consider fast enough to work as a flagship, and bouncing between two capital ships could be strong as hell. I don't know, the biggest problem I have with it is that it feels, in light of my aforementioned biases, like it's in the wrong tree. It's a skill that's all about making you better at using a ship, instead of making the ship better for you to use- and yes, I'm skimming over the skill bonuses because they seem like a side benefit at best. One more "officered" ship but you can't choose the personality; that doesn't sound like the pinnacle of mechanical engineering. Meanwhile, the skill that literally is the pinnacle of mechanical engineering is over in Leadership.
And clearly has nothing at all to do with how much the ability reminds me of mind-jacking your Executors in House of the Dying Sun, no sir. :P
- Nothing but optimism for the Industry top-tier changes. Hull Restoration seems well worth going five deep in Industry for the technical elitist player, and I completely agree with your reasoning on Derelict Operations. It seems like it could still be very powerful, or even overpowered depending on exact numbers, while offering a playstyle that's a lot more unique than Derelict Contingent.
I really need to do some testing with that after battle statistics mod, forgot the name, and try to figure out exactly what blank carriers/phase ships can do for a line fleet. Unfortunately two points cannot be spared while there's campaign QoL skills and necessary fleet logistics skills to be had, so base hulls it is.
Sounds great, breathing more life into the low tech ships and expanding the skill point tree.
I am liking the Neural Link skill, being able to put to say a capital and a frigate to more personal use in the same battle is an interesting idea. No longer do we have to wait so long for our little shuttle to bounce between two ships XD
Would there be any interaction between the Operations Center hullmod and Neural Link?
I'm a bit concern at all that ai officers not contributing to battle points, they still do receive bonuses for officer skills right, like wolfpack?
Phase Command teleporter - assuming Player control od this ship and other ships from it is instant
*Visible happiness in having something close to a suggestion ( Neural link ) implemented in game*
Making the skill tree easily configurable and moddable still seems to be the best solution
Regarding changes, the root of the problem still stays - the skill tree mixes personal piloting skills (1), fleet commander skills (2), fleet technician skills (2) and colony government skills (4) while having too few points and too big of disparity between these groups, making players pick certain skills in certain order from (2) and (3), ignoring (1), while (4) shouldn't even be there.
If a certain skill is an absolute must-have, it shouldn't be a skill or shouldn't be optional and missable. So my personal view on the skill system is the same - I'd better mod it while having more types of officers for the fleet.
Regarding changes, the root of the problem still stays - the skill tree mixes personal piloting skills (1), fleet commander skills (2), fleet technician skills (2) and colony government skills (4) while having too few points and too big of disparity between these groups, making players pick certain skills in certain order from (2) and (3), ignoring (1), while (4) shouldn't even be there.
BUT as an fanatic Radiant user i have to say, I really dislike the changes on Automated Ships.
... The 60 % maximum CR of the current tree is the bare minimum, which actually feels usefull. ...
I'm not sold on Neural Link though, seems fun but without finer control of the AI piloting the other ship I can see a lot of problems with it. Ie. the AI wasting all your precious missiles. Also, is the delay for larger ships really necessary? Is that something that you think would really be broken? The appeal of the skill is to have instant control switch, I'd say let players have that regardless of the ships they like flying. I say that because piloting large ships is something that not all players like since they are slow compared to the more agile and, well, "fun" ships. Having a skill to switch between a fast ships and a big one seems cool and motivates direct control of those slow ships more, but if there is a delay between switching that's another matter entirely because you might need to take control of that fast ship quickly if the AI mis-positions it. It just seems unnecessary to have that, I don't think there are any obvious exploits here.
The capstone I am most interested in is Hull Restoration. Looks like a buffed version of current Field Repairs, with faster d-mod removal, less chance of d-mod acquisition, and more max CR per s-mod. If this changes acceptable casualties from none or minimal to half a fleet wipe, this would be a huge QoL feature (no need to reload if a two s-mod capital dies and acquires two or more d-mods that costs close to a million credits to restore). Who needs flawless victories to profit if player can laugh off minor to moderate casualties and fully resurrect after battle?
1) will my alter-ship (i m talking about Neural link, ofc) act like regular ally while i am piloting first one?
2) is it possible to add an order specially for alter-ship "stay exactly where i leave you, just keep shields up and fire at everything that moves"?
3) will enemy have any of top tier skills? I hope not, because i m pretty tired of enemies (especially Alphas) having literally every skill that matters in combat and infinite money/supplies.
Best of the best is... well... best of the best now? +1 S mod was good enough, and now you giving me 10% extra dp?
Hull restoration literally gives you 10% bonus CR. 15% sometimes. Thats it. Quality of life is good, but why build around taking losses if you can invest points into another skills and dont take losses?
What about new strikecraft skills?
Anyway, what will take up Strike Commander's bonuses?
I can definitely see why it looks this way - like a QoL skill that makes you lose less and why lose at all when you don't have to?Because when player fights as a fleet, it is not always possible for everyone (you or AI) to play perfectly and win flawlessly. If a single casualty (caused by dumb AI or pilot error) results in a pyrrhic victory, such that the player must spend more money than the reward, then it is effectively a loss and a reload. If that happens often (because the enemy levels up faster than you can and you are forced to fight at a disadvantage, or you fight overpowered enemies like Radiants or Tesseracts), it gets frustrating. However, if the player can fight, die, and shrug off and recover from several casualties at negligible cost, then the pressure for perfect play becomes much less or gone altogether, and reloading after a casualty or two is no longer necessary.
So, with the removal of Strike Commander, will there be any point to putting an officer on a dedicated carrier anymore? Like a Heron or a Drover - their main weapons are their fighters, not their guns. From the looks of it, there's no officer skills that actually buff fighters, so there's little to no point to putting an officer on these ships.
If strikecraft get bonuses from Weapon Drills now, I'm happy.
QuoteI can definitely see why it looks this way - like a QoL skill that makes you lose less and why lose at all when you don't have to?Because when player fights as a fleet, it is not always possible for everyone (you or AI) to play perfectly and win flawlessly. If a single casualty (caused by dumb AI or pilot error) results in a pyrrhic victory, such that the player must spend more money than the reward, then it is effectively a loss and a reload. If that happens often (because the enemy levels up faster than you can and you are forced to fight at a disadvantage, or you fight overpowered enemies like Radiants or Tesseracts), it gets frustrating. However, if the player can fight, die, and shrug off and recover from several casualties at negligible cost, then the pressure for perfect play becomes much less or gone altogether, and reloading after a casualty or two is no longer necessary.
Every blog post is a gem. Just FYI :)
Of the Top Tier choices right now, the only one that seems "less than" is Hull Restoration and only because it seems the primary boon is inverted relative to the difficulty curve. When I *want* the skill is early game when I don't have money, generally have more D-mods I'd love to get rid of, and need to squeeze a little extra juice out of my clunkers (via CR boost). It also allows my inferior fleet to take losses and I don't feel like I'm unduly punished. Now, granted, I want that also once I get my fleet in tip-top shape but unless I'm fighting full Ordos or multiple $300k bounties simultaneously (like I just did last night)...I don't tend to lose many ships. The primary benefit of the skill is greatly reduced once I'm at end-game. Now if I bee-line for it, I could probably get 5 skill points before I leave Corvus but that means I don't have any other skills outside of Industry and I don't know if Hull Restoration is worth that much. It's one of those skills that pays the most dividends if taken early and is used throughout the playthrough, not as a capstone. Contrast this to Automated Ships where you probably wouldn't even want the skill all that early because there won't be any Remnats or Derelicts to use it on until late.
I think the same could also be said of Derelict Operations because if you're going to go the "junk fleet" route, you'd probably want to make that decision early. Up until you get that particular skill, d-mods are almost a complete liability and the player is incentivized to avoid them when possible. Now an early/small fleet won't see a great benefit from the lowered deployment costs, true, but you won't be penalized along the way if that's the goal you're shooting for from the beginning. As it is, you have to roll with your junk fleet until you hit 5 skill points in Industry and all of a sudden you can deploy 50% more of them.
Strangely, I almost feel like the Top Tier Industry skills ought to be more of an early game pick than late. That also might make Industry more enticing if the Top Tier skills were somehow available earlier than the other aptitudes. (Maybe a "loan" system where you can take them whenever but you have to pay back the skill point "debt" in a prescribed manner like forced Industry picks at least every other skill point choice). Maybe I'm making much ado of nothing but those are very interesting skills that seem more tailor-made for the early game rather than late. But I digress...
Neural Link is bonkers. Just straight-up, bonkers. I saw the Twitter and thought "wtf" but now that it's explained, it's even more crazy than I imagined. It does reward Combat skills and that I can 100% get behind. I think Combat needed some more synergy with the other trees. Is it as powerful as having an Alpha-Core Radiant in your fleet (which is 60 DP now! Much-needed)? With my current piloting (which is pretty good but not Helmut), I think I could take advantage of the skill but I go to other forums and I can't tell you how many people leave their piloting to the AI. This skill will have little/no use for the player who tends to watch the battles and direct vs. directly pilot. For me personally, I think this is a cool and, again, bonkers skill but I know there will be some that immediately pass on it because they don't feel they have the skill to exploit it.
Best of the Best is probably the "safest" choice of the bunch. As long as Story Points flow like water early (and are you happy with the rate of their acquisition or is that also changing?)
Finally, Support Doctrine is the one that probably intrigues me the most because I usually run pretty lean on un-officered ships but the ones I do use are usually higher end frigates or support Destroyers like Sunders. By end-game, I might have an unofficered Cruiser or two. This skill boosts their effectiveness a little but it also gives me reason to pack more of my fleet with support craft, in general (hence the name). Bringing more along will help even the fight when I'm outnumbered and yes, if it means I can deploy an extra Cruiser and Destroyer due to the savings, that is kind of a big deal. I don't know if I'd ever un-officer a Capital just to switch to it and game the system but I like that's where your mind went!
Really good stuff. I'm also curious about what wasn't talked about...but all in due time I'm sure.
Derelict Operations sounds like fun!
Is there a way to reduce the negative effect of D-mods on a desired ship?
Point Defense still applies. To be fair, though, I'm not sure how of a difference "an officer with 2 useful skills" vs "an officer with 1 useful" skill is - it's still a waste of more than half the officer - and besides, you could get Helmsmanship now (which you'd have a hard time getting alongside Strike Commander?) and that's a handy skill for carriers.Well, the bonuses from Point Defense and Missile Specialization along with the damage bonus from Strike Commander were enough to make a reasonably dedicated carrier officer, what with extra range, bonus damage vs fighters and destroyers+, and better missiles. With the removal of Strike Commander, it's really just not worth it anymore. If it was a bad idea to put an officer in a carrier before, now it's even more so. Feels weird to have an entire class of ship just be a no-go for officers, but if that's the intent, then alright.
That's a really interesting way to look at it! And a neat categorization/split. But, does it actually hold up? If we consider "making a ship the best it can be" to mean "if you take it and put into a fleet without the same commander skills, it'll still be better" then I think Special Modifications is literally the only skill that fits the bill. I'm having a hard time seeing how one could come up with a reasonable definition of this that would somehow make skills liks Crew Training, Carrier Group, Fighter Uplink, Flux Regulation, and Phase Corps qualitatively different.
I *think* the way you're thinking about this might be largely driven by the existence of Special Modifications and where it currently is.
But in general, the idea is that you *are* mostly using officer'ed ships, with non-officered ones thrown in for special purposes. So it's less of a band-aid for and issue an more just things working as intended.
(Yes, I'm probably trying to have my cake and eat it too, here - "you can use unofficered ships!" and "it's fine if they aren't any good". Uh, sorry.)
Hmm, I think what you're saying you'd want to use Neural Link for is the sort of micromanagement that I super don't want it to be used for :) Like, if we're not careful with it, it becomes a "cycle through your ships and tell them to vent" sort of skill and that doesn't sound like much fun.
Hah! I need to play more of that game. Just couldn't get into it using a mouse, though...
You could right-click it onto a "rally task force" or give it an escort order or some such.*Sad solo player noices*
I think it actually enables different strategies that might be more effective but commonly discounted because they can lead to more losses than is normally considered acceptableI guess, you are right. It might work for a fleets of many small ships.
If you put a Neural Interface on a ship module (on a ship added by a mod, presumably, since there are no player-ownable ships with modules in the base game), will you be able to control that module directly?
Oh, huh, neat question! I *think* so? That's kind of cool, actually, if that works, I can see being a "gunner" be a fun alternate take on things.
But limiting it to non-officered ships nixes most of its defensive potential, that of repositioning your most important ships to get them out of trouble, since anything really important is going to have an officer in it.
Well, that's kinda what I was getting at, trying to determine just how much officerless ships are supposed to be worth. "Speedbump" may be overly dismissive, but what I mean is, I find them good only for delaying the enemy while my "real" ships finish whatever else they're doing, and they often get chewed up while doing so. I do use some un-officered ships out of necessity (not just Omens, haha), but the few times I've been desperate enough to expect them to actually kill anything, it's been pretty rough.
One other thing that I dislike about the current officer dominance is how it gravitates naturally toward running multiple capital ships. It seems like everyone who's serious about getting things done in "endgame" is running three or four or more, and it makes sense as the objective best choice for maximizing your gain from each limited officer slot, while still having some left over for Wolfpack Tactics frigates or whatever. I like a capital anchor or two but I prefer smaller ships, and I'm only hampering myself with that idiosyncrasy. Is it okay to need a top-tier skill just to effectively go wide instead of tall? I don't know.
Hmm. Let me take a look - I might've mixed up some numbers or just mis-remembered exactly where it's at in 0.95a. ... yeah, let me just raise the threshold to 120 points, at least - so that it's at 50% and out of debuff range.
(You do have the option of giving it an extra 10% (or even 15%) CR, though 10% involves going up into Industry, and making that 15% involves going all the way up into Leadership, as well.)
This obviously synergizes very well with taking a bunch of Combat skills, so that both ships are great – it’s a multiplier on the return you get for Combat skills. I also had to make a decision about whether the Neural Interface hullmod would be able to be installed on automated ship, finally letting you pilot these yourself. On the one hand, this goes against the general idea of not having top-tier skills in the same aptitude work too well together. On the other hand, it’s just too cool not to do, so that won out.
I really like what i'm seeing so far. The derelict contingent/operations got reworked into exactly what i hoped for.
Neural link i clearly the really big one. It's something i wished to see in a mod for a while, but i did not expect it to happen in vanilla. The opportunity to fly two ships "at the same time" is incredible, it radically change the way the game can be played, both in the way one can outfit a ship and how it is used on the battlefield. First thing i'll try is a pair of Neural Linked Harbinger to see if a chain-stun strat is viable. Depending on how the mercurial scythe of balance fall in the next blog post.
The problem for me isn't that personal combat skills can't compete with fleetwide combat skills, it's that personal combat skills can't compete with campaign/logistics skills. No personal combat skill, or officer for that matter, will allow my fleet to get +1 base burn on the campaign map, passively repair D-mods, give me +1 S-mod on my ships (which is very nice QoL on logistics ships), etc. The same pretty much goes for fleetwide combat skills in fact: No officer in the game is going to pick up Wolfpack Tactics for me, only I can do that, so unless I'm not going to be using any frigates at all what personal combat skill can compete with that? And after all is said and done what points are left to invest in personal combat skills? Unless I'm a skilled enough player to solo entire fleets on the wings of the Combat tree (and Neural Link), obviously, but, eh...I'm not :(.Regarding changes, the root of the problem still stays - the skill tree mixes personal piloting skills (1), fleet commander skills (2), fleet technician skills (2) and colony government skills (4) while having too few points and too big of disparity between these groups, making players pick certain skills in certain order from (2) and (3), ignoring (1), while (4) shouldn't even be there.
I wanted to expand on this a bit - it's a common enough sentiment (and also, IMO, wrong) and I think it warrants addressing. At the core of it is, I think, the idea that personal combat skills have too little impact compared with fleetwide bonuses for personal combat skills to be worth taking, and that this is a fundamental problem because the scale of battles is such that it'll always be the case - too many ships benefit from fleetwide skills.
Oh, also - only of interest for modded games, but raising the level cap will no longer mess with the SP gain rate once you reach max level.That is great to hear, but what about the XP curve past level 15 (I'm assuming that cap hasn't changed)? Is it as crazy as it was in 0.9.1, or more reasonable?
0.9.1 had 31 skills + 4 levels, which makes 35*3=105 options to invest a skillpoint, while offering 52 skill points that was ~1/2 of all skills, the new system offers 40 skills and 15 skillpoints, how about raising this a bit.It was 42 originally, 52 was a placeholder
Single-hit hull damage above 500 points has the porting above 500 reduced by 60%
I didn't get how new Damage Control works.
It affect all hits above 500 in a battle.
Or.
It affect a single hit per battle.
?
Former boost difficulty of the Redacted fights from current Hardcore to Nightmare level. While decisively nerfing most high-tier weapons with the finishers being stomped face down into the dirt. And dramatically reducing usefulness of most damage boosting systems and skills in the process.
Latter simply not worth the story point.
Hold on a second, where is the +10 vents/caps bonus? Please dont tell me that skill is goneIt's part of Flux Regulation now.Spoilerand where is the 30 op s kite[close]
Given we now have percentage reductions in deployment points for ships, will they be allowed to be fractional, or will they be rounded? For example, does a Lasher without officer and under Support Doctrine cost 3 DP, 3.2 DP or 4 DP to deploy?Thanks to Soren once putting a 4,5 DP ship in DME, I can tell you that fractions of DP work.
I did, actually! It's now "Tactical Drills", boosts 240 points worth of ships (but with only +5% damage - I try to keep bonuses meatier, but +10% fleetwide is just... too much), and indeed buffs your marines.This nerf reminds me of A&W failing to sell one third pounders, because people thought they were smaller than quarter pounders. I really doubt the marine buff is important enough to warrant the nerf of the damage bonus to smaller fleets.
Regarding fighters, a solution may be to have a hullmod that grants some fighter bonuses -- or a hullmod (or skill) that makes fighters of that ship receive the same combat buffs as that ship.That would become another OP tax for carriers, like Expanded Deck Crew. That would encourage carriers to over-specialize into fighters more than they already do (and not mount any weapons at all).
Well, the bonuses from Point Defense and Missile Specialization along with the damage bonus from Strike Commander were enough to make a reasonably dedicated carrier officer, what with extra range, bonus damage vs fighters and destroyers+, and better missiles. With the removal of Strike Commander, it's really just not worth it anymore. If it was a bad idea to put an officer in a carrier before, now it's even more so. Feels weird to have an entire class of ship just be a no-go for officers, but if that's the intent, then alright.
And Helmsmanship good on carriers now? I'm guessing there are changes to how getting the skill's 0-flux boost works, because currently, that bonus gets removed when setting fighters to Engage.
Hmmm. I admit, skills like Weapon Drills or Carrier Group could be made Technology skills, and Electronic Warfare could be made a Leadership skill, with nothing but a change of flavor text. They aren't qualitatively different. However, most of these skills have an additional component that seems to fit a common theme for their tree- like Wolfpack Tactics' damage bonus being conditional on such a high level of abstraction that it seems easier to explain as the result of crew tactics, rather than an immutable property of the machine; or Phase Corps having a flux generation reduction that seems more like a product of per-ship tweaking than something a crew could do with sheer operational skill.
I think the way I look at this is driven by the trees in 0.8 and 0.9, where Tech was "where you go for more vents, caps, and ordnance points"- the stuff that would make ships better even without the same commander skills, as you say. While 0.9.5 has made the distinction muddier, to me it felt like it maintained the same spirit, with Special Modifications being the prime example. It's less that my biases were formed by Special Modifications, and more that Special Modifications being where it is reinforced my existing bias from years of playing the older versions.
I'm not saying that redefining the trees by a more strictly game-mechanics-driven meta-organization is wrong or anything, I just don't like it as much as what we're used to. I suspect that Technology will still be the player's first stop if they want to make their ships into hotrods (now that I'm thinking about it, will Tech still have a +10/10 vents/caps skill?), and having the ultimate hotrod skill in a different tree, one that feels less focused on this kind of tweaking, seems pretty weird when you're not looking at it in relation to the whole design philosophy.
Well, that's kinda what I was getting at, trying to determine just how much officerless ships are supposed to be worth. "Speedbump" may be overly dismissive, but what I mean is, I find them good only for delaying the enemy while my "real" ships finish whatever else they're doing, and they often get chewed up while doing so. I do use some un-officered ships out of necessity (not just Omens, haha), but the few times I've been desperate enough to expect them to actually kill anything, it's been pretty rough.
One other thing that I dislike about the current officer dominance is how it gravitates naturally toward running multiple capital ships. It seems like everyone who's serious about getting things done in "endgame" is running three or four or more, and it makes sense as the objective best choice for maximizing your gain from each limited officer slot, while still having some left over for Wolfpack Tactics frigates or whatever. I like a capital anchor or two but I prefer smaller ships, and I'm only hampering myself with that idiosyncrasy. Is it okay to need a top-tier skill just to effectively go wide instead of tall? I don't know.
Ah, I should've noted in my hypothetical rework that I'm fine with the limited target numbers as stated. As a player, I like having micro options a lot more than you do as a designer, but even so, feeling like I'm not getting the most out of my fleet if I'm not giving myself whiplash seems exhausting. I'm okay with switching between two, or at most, three ships.
When I wrote that about getting ships out of trouble, I had missed the part where the switching requires a hullmod (not sure how, not like it wasn't clear), and was under the impression that you would just select any officer-less ship on the field, but wouldn't be able to make a third ship switchable after making your choice for that engagement. So my thoughts about wanting to micromanage officered ships with it don't make much sense; there wouldn't be much reason to keep an officer in a ship that you're modding for this beforehand.
It's comfortable to play on a gamepad, but my ability to aim with a thumbstick has deteriorated so much since the old days of Xbox Halo that even with aim assist, I end up falling back to the mouse for the harder challenges. :P
Also i noticed... I never used 3rd S-mod on Paragon. The only (useful) 40-point mod left was Heavy armor, and i was not quite sure i will not want to remove it. So, may be Best of the best is not an autopick...
P.S. Hope Systems spec will remain the same (or become better). It is pretty good on Odyssey and Fury. Maybe on some other ships too, idk ;D
* With the change to the skill system, from a design perspective, it also means that now there's no need to keep each aptitude at 10 skills each. You certainly can, for symmetry purposes, but might be something to keep in mind if you're having trouble trying to balance out all the different aptitudes.
To give a concrete example: Currently, I size my fleet so that the Remnants can have at most 4 Radiants on the battlefield at one time. Thus, 60% of battlesize < 200 DP (the cost of 5 Radiants), so battlesize max is 330, so my fleet, at 55% of that, can have at most 182 DP. So 2 Dooms and 7 Furies (175 DP) fit the bill, and is enough to handle 2 Ordos fairly easily and 3 Ordos fleets with some difficulty (no real need to do 3 at once, since I max out the +500% XP bonus with 2 Ordos fleets, this is simply what it's capable of). With the new changes, including that a Radiant costs 60 DP, then I could theoretically set the battlesize up to 490 (I know, it's capped at 400), and have a fleet of up to 294 DP, and still only deal with 4 Radiants at once. Or more likely, I change the battlesize to 290 (so that they're limited to 2 Radiants at once), and use this same fleet except probably change a Fury out for something cheaper or have one be unofficered, and use this same fleet. It'll steamroll through 2 simultaneous Radiants easily when it can currently handle 4 -- so the endgame fight will become much easier.
* Hull Restoration vs Derelict Operations: Both are interesting; would there be a way to disable Hull Restoration's d-mod-repairing ability? Since not all d-mods are terrible; so I could see some advantage to ships having d-mods "on purpose" to reduce their deployment cost, plus with s-mods for the extra CR. After all, not all d-mods are debilitating. (My flagship having Compromised Hull is something I don't mind, since if I'm taking hull damage then I'm likely doing something wrong in the first place.) Or I don't know if this is intentionally closed off as a fleet composition trick.
* What will happen in terms of enemy fleet commanders having the same skills? For example if they have Support Doctrine and/or Derelict Operations, then they can potentially actually deploy more ships than they can now.
This gives a wayyyy better feeling. Thanks for considering the change.
This will give an enormous boost in own strength! Having a fleet of two piloted ships could become really cheesy. But no matter, which cheese can be found in abusing this skill, i will try my very best to find and abuse the living S*** out of it. ;D
A question on Support Doctrine - does this mean that a player with 0 personal skills can now be worse than un-officered ship?
0-8-5-0[+2] (AI spam) sound like a strong build, but would leave player very little to do in combat. Like, take a cheap frigate and pretend you're helping. Even an Afflictor completely without skills is only a pale shade of it's better self.
I really like what i'm seeing so far. The derelict contingent/operations got reworked into exactly what i hoped for.
Neural link i clearly the really big one. It's something i wished to see in a mod for a while, but i did not expect it to happen in vanilla. The opportunity to fly two ships "at the same time" is incredible, it radically change the way the game can be played, both in the way one can outfit a ship and how it is used on the battlefield. First thing i'll try is a pair of Neural Linked Harbinger to see if a chain-stun strat is viable. Depending on how the mercurial scythe of balance fall in the next blog post.
The problem for me isn't that personal combat skills can't compete with fleetwide combat skills, it's that personal combat skills can't compete with campaign/logistics skills. No personal combat skill, or officer for that matter, will allow my fleet to get +1 base burn on the campaign map, passively repair D-mods, give me +1 S-mod on my ships (which is very nice QoL on logistics ships), etc. The same pretty much goes for fleetwide combat skills in fact: No officer in the game is going to pick up Wolfpack Tactics for me, only I can do that, so unless I'm not going to be using any frigates at all what personal combat skill can compete with that? And after all is said and done what points are left to invest in personal combat skills? Unless I'm a skilled enough player to solo entire fleets on the wings of the Combat tree (and Neural Link), obviously, but, eh...I'm not :(.
QuoteOh, also - only of interest for modded games, but raising the level cap will no longer mess with the SP gain rate once you reach max level.That is great to hear, but what about the XP curve past level 15 (I'm assuming that cap hasn't changed)? Is it as crazy as it was in 0.9.1, or more reasonable?
Support doctrine looks like a great addition, ships without officers felt like wasted potential in most cases (Monitors/Omens excluded).
Same for derelict operations, emphasizing the difference between junkers and superships feels better than making junkers the superships.
Neural link also sounds fun.
TL;DR excited for all of the changes mentioned in this post, didn't read anything I don't like.
* What about the other Industry piloted ship skill? Does this affect strike craft?
* Is T4L the new Ground Operations?
0.9.1 had 31 skills + 4 levels, which makes 35*3=105 options to invest a skillpoint, while offering 52 skill points that was ~1/2 of all skills, the new system offers 40 skills and 15 skillpoints, how about raising this a bit.
IMO, the best thing here is (hopefully!) this time there won’t be a 18 month delay between the blog post and the release, so that the actual player feedback loop will be shorter this time.
I like that the existing 5-tiers-each-having-2-choices is being broken in such a sensible way. Seems like a good balance between the old choose-whatever and the current approach, retaining the important high-tier skill required commitment.
That said, UI-wise I still feel like those “swimming lanes” are not the best way to convey information, choices, and progression. Having a vertical progression from bottom to top would feel more natural, IMO. And replacing the contextual “Requires at least X lower tier skills” by something always visible for all skills at once would clarify how progression to higher tier works and what choices are actually available.
Best of the best increasing DP budget will allow player fleet to be less at a disadvantage when NOT using fast frigates. Which is fair.
Support Doctrine is a going to have interesting consequences on fleet composition. The trade-off decision between putting an officer and not putting an officer further rebalances the wide-vs-tall game. As an example, looking at my 239 DP fleet in my last campaign:Depending how you count, that’s a potential 10% to 20% fleet strength increase.Spoiler(https://i.imgur.com/321xGkJ.png)[close]
Although, to be honest, Neural link almost sounds like a "game changer" combat tree skill hiding in the technology tree. It certainly gives you a good reason to spend points in the combat tree. Not that I'm complaining about the location. Putting it opposite the Automated ships sounds about right. I expect to see Monitor + Radiant solo player fleets.
I like how there's some clear mixing and matching to be done. Assuming we are still limited to 15 skill points, and just the top abilities, the combinations look fairly varied. So we've got the combat tree in general, best of the best, support doctrine, neural link, automated ships, hull restoration and derelict operations.
Keeping in mind that neural link gives you the most benefit when combined with combat, and hull restoration and derelict operations don't mix, you've got something like 14 reasonably distinct combinations that look like they should play differently. Sounds pretty good to me.
Although I do have a few questions. Given we now have percentage reductions in deployment points for ships, will they be allowed to be fractional, or will they be rounded? For example, does a Lasher without officer and under Support Doctrine cost 3 DP, 3.2 DP or 4 DP to deploy? And does Support Doctrine add with or multiply with the reduction from Derelict operations (20+30=50% off DP costs?). That will allow for some interesting fighter saturation attempts. Assuming they add, and if you get choosy with your D-mods, you can get something like 18 Herons worth of fully operational fighters in 180 DP (or 36?! Condors).
Well hot damn. Aside from individual skill balance, which will be debated forever, this solves the core problems I believe everyone presented. Perfect doesn't exist but this is a giant leap forward.
It also leaves the door open to adding new skills in the future without creating secondary problems. So you fixed our concerns, mine at least and planned ahead for the future.
I didn't see this solution coming.
you know whats funny is I was halfway through typing a post comparing the current skill system to heroes of the storm's talent system & discussing its pros & cons and what lessons can be learned from it, took a short break from typing it then saw the blog post lmfao
I find it somewhat ironic that now, when you have more officers than need majority of the time, do we get a skill that buffs unofficered ships specifically.
And that you rolled shields and phase skill together after you made the Phase Mastery entirely optional, had it still existed.
Another thing on my mind is that since almost all combat skills are useless to carriers, why don't you just make their effects apply to fighters? Perhaps not all of them, but e.g. Missile Specialisation could give fighter missiles more durability, Targeting Analysis could give them damage bonuses against targets, Damage Control or Impact Mitigation could make fighters a bit more durable, so on.
This nerf reminds me of A&W failing to sell one third pounders, because people thought they were smaller than quarter pounders. I really doubt the marine buff is important enough to warrant the nerf of the damage bonus to smaller fleets.
I do like cherry picking my skills, and i don’t mind being all-powerfull-do-it-all if i spend time ingame rising my skills.
And this hurts because it closes off a style of play where you grind down the opponent’s CR. The new derelict operations might push down the DP so I can enter a fight, destroy ships until I get a clean disengage, and then retreat for a limited engagement bobus.
Re: Damage Control, hmm. Let me actually make it so this effect can only proc at most once every two seconds. That still keeps it impactful, but no longer stops an alpha strike in its tracks.I don't think that's a good solution. That basically makes it so that a Reaper (1× 4K damage, reduced to 1900) will end up doing less damage than two Hammers fired back to back (first hit gets reduced to 900, second hit gets the full 1500, total 2400 damage). Not to mention that any weapon that has high per-shot damage balanced by low rate of fire (either directly or indirectly by means of high flux cost) will be severely reduced in usefulness.
Conversely, none of those skills are going to let you have an amazing flagship. And if you spend say 10 points in Leadership/Tech/Industry, you can easily pick up the majority of what you really want out of that, the relative utility of further points spent on stuff like that will be lower (i.e. if you have 10 hypothetical fleetwide boosts an 11th one matters less), and I think it'd be generally more optimal to put those points into combat skills.The problem there is that even an amazing flagship can only be as good as the player is a pilot, and my piloting skills are...questionable at best. I don't want to recall the amount of times I've gotten a 1400+ range beam Sunder killed through getting flanked, or caught by Broadswords, or focussing on one enemy I couldn't take down myself and suddenly realizing my entire fleet has wandered off elsewhere, or getting exploded by a dying enemy ship, or getting my rear blown out by flying ahead of my own bombers, etc.
+1 s-mods is mostly just a fleetwide combat buff, btw - I mean, it's not *just* that, but in terms of how it compares to a combat skill, it's something like less than half of one, if that - since it's a third s-mod where high-OP choices are sparser (but of course to all the ships in your fleet).
And something like Wolfpack Tactics... it's great, but you don't really *need* it to run some frigates. It seems like you're considering the opportunity cost of everything *except* for the quality of your flagship and the impact it can make. I mean, I'm not particularly good at piloting, but just for the testing I've been doing, putting 8 points into combat (rather than the IIRC 3 I had before, with more in other aptitudes) made the fights I was trying ridiculously easy compared to how they were with a less-combat heavy build, to the point where the cleaner fights would offset a *lot* of campaign costs. It's true that it's fairly midrange stuff right now (a 1-Radiant bounty), but then, the fleet I'm using is pretty subpar, too. And I was running a bunch of frigates, too - not only sans Wolfpack Tactics, but also sans officers.
Honestly, I would encourage you to give combat skills a closer look. I absolutely understand why they feel like a poor pick, I actually struggle with that myself. But in reality, they're far, far better than they seem.
Oh no :'( why does every nerf feels so bad, I mean I would rather have harder enemies to fight rather than nerfing skills but well, im not a specialist in game balancing
But why not apply the discount after summin up individual ship's deployment costs?
And going back to the topic of fighters - maybe a good idea to counter the mass drover-spark thing would be to introduce an aoe point defence weapon against fighters but with a really big but relatively weak aoe? Basically an equivalent of a weak flamethrower agains bees - useless against few fighters, but good against chipping down hp of dozens of fighters at a time? And im talking about aoe much bigger than the aoe of devastator. Or just to remake the large point defence weapons, as currently they underperform when compared to double/single flak.
One last point - the storm needler is odd. It doesnt really combine with anything well because of its odd range, and even with that ballistic rangefinder it only combines with the small assault cannon. The gauss is simply superior - even with the worse flux stats, especially if you take right hullmods and skills.
I don't think that's a good solution. That basically makes it so that a Reaper (1× 4K damage, reduced to 1900) will end up doing less damage than two Hammers fired back to back (first hit gets reduced to 900, second hit gets the full 1500, total 2400 damage). Not to mention that any weapon that has high per-shot damage balanced by low rate of fire (either directly or indirectly by means of high flux cost) will be severely reduced in usefulness.
The problem there is that even an amazing flagship can only be as good as the player is a pilot, and my piloting skills are...questionable at best. I don't want to recall the amount of times I've gotten a 1400+ range beam Sunder killed through getting flanked, or caught by Broadswords, or focussing on one enemy I couldn't take down myself and suddenly realizing my entire fleet has wandered off elsewhere, or getting exploded by a dying enemy ship, or getting my rear blown out by flying ahead of my own bombers, etc.
...Come to think of it, maybe the issue is the ship. Eh, part of the issue :-[. My typical flagship is a beam Sunder, which is very much build and used as a support ship (mainly popping the early frigates so my fleet doesn't scatter to every corner of creation chasing every individual Kite). Maybe I need to try a different ship next patch and give the combat build a try...if I can let go of enough campaign QoL and fleet logistics skills, at least.
https://twitter.com/amosolov/status/1392522197353308161/photo/1
In response to this... will there be an indicator or a tag to ensure dummy skills don't get picked up during those read-outs...
...Fair points, I suppose.
I saw it, yeah! Didn't have much to say other than I'm generally very "meh" on carrier-specific skills.
One last point - the storm needler is odd. It doesnt really combine with anything well because of its odd range, and even with that ballistic rangefinder it only combines with the small assault cannon. The gauss is simply superior - even with the worse flux stats, especially if you take right hullmods and skills.'Simply superior' is a clearly inaccurate take, you identify the main advantage in your own analysis. Storm needler has ~40% more DPS for ~40% less flux cost. That's a massive advantage. I rarely use the gauss cannon because the DPS is just too low for the flux cost IMO. Everyone evaluates DPS, range and flux cost differently though. The fact that we are having this discussion means that the balance is probably fine.
One last point - the storm needler is odd. It doesnt really combine with anything well because of its odd range, and even with that ballistic rangefinder it only combines with the small assault cannon. The gauss is simply superior - even with the worse flux stats, especially if you take right hullmods and skills.'Simply superior' is a clearly inaccurate take, you identify the main advantage in your own analysis. Storm needler has ~40% more DPS for ~40% less flux cost. That's a massive advantage. I rarely use the gauss cannon because the DPS is just too low for the flux cost IMO. Everyone evaluates DPS, range and flux cost differently though. The fact that we are having this discussion means that the balance is probably fine.
QuoteYeah, it's a tough spot. It'll just point shields at mines a bit later in that case. So: better, but unlikely to change the outcome.There's really no ideal solution, since you're looking at heavy HE damage on either side. I guess if you're going to die either way the best thing you could do is try and deal as much damage before inevitably going down, meaning you don't risk an overload by taking the Anti-Matter Blaster shots on the shield and instead use that flux to fire weapons? A Doom isn't the most survivable boat IIRC (dear word the amount of Atlus MK. IIs that straight killed me with their death explosion...).
Also, how will elite damage control interact with beam weapons and [redacted]flamer?
Edit: with regards to fighters, I was talking from the persective of a interceptor/support fighter user, not the bomber user, and that +100 target leading elite bonus was soooo good
I saw it, yeah! Didn't have much to say other than I'm generally very "meh" on carrier-specific skills.Some things for you to consider:
You have the following three skills: Energy Weapons Mastery, Ballistic Mastery, Missile Specialisation.
Each of these only buff one of the three main weapon types, and are useless if you don't have that particular type of weapon on your ship.
you know whats funny is I was halfway through typing a post comparing the current skill system to heroes of the storm's talent system & discussing its pros & cons and what lessons can be learned from it, took a short break from typing it then saw the blog post lmfao
Ha, I'm guessing it's similar? Never played it :)
...Come to think of it, maybe the issue is the ship. Eh, part of the issue :-[. My typical flagship is a beam Sunder, which is very much build and used as a support ship (mainly popping the early frigates so my fleet doesn't scatter to every corner of creation chasing every individual Kite). Maybe I need to try a different ship next patch and give the combat build a try...if I can let go of enough campaign QoL and fleet logistics skills, at least.Try a Hammerhead, a Falcon or a Fury.
Bold of you to assume the Fury will still be 15 DP :) But, right, yeah, this makes sense.
It's worth noting that the carrier skills stop providing additional fleetwide benefit once you're at 8 flight decks, and the total bonus just gets But then the question/problem is whether it'd be a good thing to even *have* carriers that can be buffed by a full officer's potential; I'm not so sure about that. And in particular, battlecarriers would get an outsized benefit because they'd double-dip. So, hmm, maybe never mind that.
Bold of you to assume the Fury will still be 15 DP :) But, right, yeah, this makes sense.
Oh no. The scythe is coming for me, too. :( I mean hey, look at those phase ships some more, nothing going on here, just a slightly bigger Shrike for twice the DP cost, don't worry about it officer!
I guess that'd be fair, overall. As much as I'm kind of in love with the Fury and everything about it just *clicks* with me, I feel like I've gotten some pretty disgusting effect flying that ship. Even though I still don't really trust the AI with plasma burn.
Imo, battlecarriers *need* to double-dip to be worth putting officer on. For example:I missed full carrier having combat power of... 0.5 or 0.6 in the pre-0.8a (well, pre-0.7a) days because they had the OP to arm themselves as a warship of one or two ship classes smaller without giving up fighter power. (Battlecarrier like pre-0.9a Odyssey or pre-0.8a Venture was 0.8 or 0.9.). Now, they have combat power of 0 (or maybe 0.1) because they put most OP into fighters and Expanded Deck Crew just to do their expected job. Of course, carriers before 0.8a could not double-dip because there were no fighter skills, but that did not matter before 0.7a because only one ship on each side had skills and the rest did not. During 0.7a, too many people had skills and carriers became obsolete because fighters were too slow and weak compared to officered ships.
- a full carrier has abstract fighter power of 1 and direct combat power of 0, and battle carrier has 0.5 + 0.5
- assuming that full relevant skill set doubles the power of fighters/direct
-> Both will have 2.0 buffed power IF skills double-dip, but battle-carrier would be capped at 1.5 otherwise.
This is of course an extremely oversimplified picture, but also roughly how battle-carriers ended up less good than specialized ships in 0.91, when full carrier skills were an option.
...
I hope fighters without skills become useful again. Currently, in late-game fights that are not trivial, fighters with only Expanded Deck Crew are somewhat relevant for about a minute before they are wiped out at 30% and become irrelevant for the rest of the fight. Fighters in 0.95a seem to be about as weak as they were in the 0.7a days, and they seem low-tier without skills (and Expanded Deck Crew on all carriers) to back them up. By late-game, I phase out carriers for better ships as I move from pirates to 200k+ bounty equivalents or Ordos with Radiants.
...
SpoilerHOTS has a system, (starting at level 1) every 3rd level you have to pick a talent out of a predefined set of talents for that level for that hero -- the ones you don't pick at a tier are gone for good. Each talent tier gets at least 3 talents to choose from, which allows players the space to decide that one of the talents is not for them (If I'm running a lowtech campaign where I never use phase ships, I will never take the phase skill) without that deciding which specific talent you must then take -- you're still given a choice of 2 talents if you hate 1 of them. It's far easier to balance 3 weaker talents without forcing players down a road they don't want to go or make them feel like they've been forced to waste a talent tier with bad picks, and if you design a hero's talent tier to be intentionally underwhelming or extremely niche you can just pad the tier out with an "out" talent that just gives a bonus to some stat, that isn't anything impressive but will always do more than nothing unlike, like, 2 other talents that both upgrade the same spell that you don't want to be focusing.
The funny thing being that, Alex worked his way around to this line of thinking too, apparently.
The exception to this 3 or more rule is that level 10 is an ult tier, where instead you get to choose between two super over-powered talents that give you an ultimate ability. Because the ults don't modify an already-existing ability but add a new one (thus not impacting any build you've been making with the abilities you started the game with aside from natural synergy) and because of how much more powerful they are than a normal talent the issue of being forced into taking a sub-optimal talent bc u refuse to take 1 of them is much less of an issue -- if you hate 1 of the ults the other is probably going to be useful to you no matter what just bc of how strong the ults are.
Which again circles back around to Alex adding in "pinched in" skill tiers that narrow down to 2, although that one is not just for super-powered tiers but also for under-powered tiers where Alex wants the player to be inconvenienced(?)
Additionally, the ult talent tier is not the last one -- it's halfway up. The other exception to the two kinds of talent tiers previously described is the final talent tier at level 20, where instead of getting talents that change the functionality of your base abilities, you get 2 talents that change the functionality of the ult talent you picked at level 10 (1 of them being greyed out based on which talent you took) that upgrades your ult to be game-breakingly strong (for context; one hero gets a talent at 20 that allows him to kill every enemy hero on the map from anywhere, under the correct circumstances), and then an additional 2(?) talents that function like a normal talent by just adjusting your base hero's functionality in a way that can add to a spell you've already spent all game upgrading, but bc they're on the same tier as ult talents it lets the devs go hog-wild with how strong they can be (kaelthas gets a talent at 20 that increases the range on his already long-ranged flamestrike spell by 100%, which combined with 5 other flamestrike talents turns the enemy you hit with it into a bomb that will damage everyone around him both of which reduces the cooldown on your flamestrike, makes the ability to cast it on people from outside their sight range so they can't even predict it's coming extremely powerful). And, when in doubt the HOTS devs just throw a "survive death once every x seconds" on some heroes in case you don't like how niche/weird the 20's they put on them are[close]
So might there be more skills in the future?
And what's the mystery new Industry and Technology skills?
Will we still have a skill which boosts marines?
... nothing going on here, just a slightly bigger Shrike for twice the DP cost, don't worry about it officer!
Imo, battlecarriers *need* to double-dip to be worth putting officer on. For example:
- a full carrier has abstract fighter power of 1 and direct combat power of 0, and battle carrier has 0.5 + 0.5
- assuming that full relevant skill set doubles the power of fighters/direct
-> Both will have 2.0 buffed power IF skills double-dip, but battle-carrier would be capped at 1.5 otherwise.
This is of course an extremely oversimplified picture, but also roughly how battle-carriers ended up less good than specialized ships in 0.91, when full carrier skills were an option.
And Fury at... maybe 18-22 DP (?)... will still be a very good high tech cruiser, I mean look at the flux stats and mobility of this thing, it's a bit of a mash-up of some of the good parts of Eagle, Falcon, Aurora and Shrike.
But I want also point to some point in case of junk fleet.
>CREW CASUALTY
I thing the junk fleet could benefit from some way to limit crew losses. Like making Recovery shuttle mod grant fleet wide reduction to crew losses from all combat losses.
Carriers don't need to be made cheaper, they need to be made better again. They were too strong in the last version, now the pendulum swings the other way. While you're working on skills, leave some love for the carriers?
Yes, thats exactly the problem, that could be solved by the skill that I have proposed earlier in the thread. Something like "fighter nanoforge mastery" in an industry tree that would improve the replacement rate, or just directly reduce the time it takes to construct a fighter. Or perhaps something else entirely - like improving the fighter AI, making them backstab/outflank enemy ships, etc. I feel like direct stat buffing of fighters (like +20% damage or whatever) doesnt fit the spirit of fighters, that fits regular weapons much more.I just wish the bonuses from Expanded Deck Crew became the baseline, and the hullmod removed. It is a guaranteed tax for all carriers that are relied upon for their fighters. (Few ships like Odyssey and Brilliant are viable warships without the bays and simply have them as a bonus, and do not need EDC.)
(I need to look at the Drover, too; there's I think a bug involve in making it really underperform... hopefully the impression that carriers aren't good is not based on or at least heavily influenced by the Drover being weak now.)I do not even use Drover unless it is all that I have. I quickly skipped destroyers for Heron or Mora (and I got the latter only because I can squeeze campaign/logistics hullmods more easily than on Heron.)
I'll make a note to playtest while specifically looking at where they're at.Would it also be possible to take a look at the Converted Hanger hullmod? I swear every time I try to fit it into a build the ship ends up sending one wave of fighters to die horribly against anything more threatening than a Mining Lasing with a bad cold, and after that fighters just seem to slowly come out piecemeal to die horribly one by one instead of all at once. Replacement rate is awful in general, and also drops so quickly as to be basically useless.
(I need to look at the Drover, too; there's I think a bug involve in making it really underperform... hopefully the impression that carriers aren't good is not based on or at least heavily influenced by the Drover being weak now.)
As a contrary point, while fighters are less powerful then in the past I've found them useful and viable in endgame fleets. I've found destroyer carriers (Condors mainly as I do think Drovers have some sort of bug) to work best with interceptors because they don't need synchronization to do their job, while I use larger ships for bombers. They need orders to guide them as opposed to just rolling over the enemy on autopilot, but thats ok.Did you use the carrier or fighter skills?
In that case I was using the tech fighter skill to get more speed and it had a very large impact. The fighters were also boosted by crew training for extra CR (it boosts their speed so I am guessing it also gives them 5% damage/defense). My bomber Heron had an officer with fighter skills and the CR skill for 100% CR, but my Condors with interceptors did not have any officers. I built in expanded deck crew on them (only built in I used for those ships): for the Condor with Thunders I don't think it was needed, but for the Spark one it was (I phased out the Sparks for more Thunders after a while, but IIRC Alex mentioned in another thread tweaking them to have higher DPS but lower armor penetration, which would make them more useful next update).As a contrary point, while fighters are less powerful then in the past I've found them useful and viable in endgame fleets. I've found destroyer carriers (Condors mainly as I do think Drovers have some sort of bug) to work best with interceptors because they don't need synchronization to do their job, while I use larger ships for bombers. They need orders to guide them as opposed to just rolling over the enemy on autopilot, but thats ok.Did you use the carrier or fighter skills?
Hmm, I think 15 feels just about right here. If it's 16 then you'd possibly feel forced to pick two aptitudes and get both top-tier picks in them. I suppose if it was 20 it might be ok? But something about "you can decide to get a top-tier skill in every aptitude" doesn't feel right.
Hmm, I think 15 feels just about right here. If it's 16 then you'd possibly feel forced to pick two aptitudes and get both top-tier picks in them. I suppose if it was 20 it might be ok? But something about "you can decide to get a top-tier skill in every aptitude" doesn't feel right.
Would it make sense to have dynamic level limit? For instance, make it 20 for easy mode, but retain 15 for normal
There's no need for a mod. You can just open setting.json and set the max level to whatever you want.Technically true, but the experience curve grows excessively past the point the developers chose for the max level. Like a hundred fold or something.
There's no need for a mod. You can just open setting.json and set the max level to whatever you want.
Hmm, I think 15 feels just about right here. If it's 16 then you'd possibly feel forced to pick two aptitudes and get both top-tier picks in them. I suppose if it was 20 it might be ok? But something about "you can decide to get a top-tier skill in every aptitude" doesn't feel right.
Would it make sense to have dynamic level limit? For instance, make it 20 for easy mode, but retain 15 for normal
There will always be a mod that raises the level limit high enough to get all the skills. The next version will be no different.
The problem for me isn't that personal combat skills can't compete with fleetwide combat skills, it's that personal combat skills can't compete with campaign/logistics skills. No personal combat skill, or officer for that matter, will allow my fleet to get +1 base burn on the campaign map, passively repair D-mods, give me +1 S-mod on my ships (which is very nice QoL on logistics ships), etc. The same pretty much goes for fleetwide combat skills in fact: No officer in the game is going to pick up Wolfpack Tactics for me, only I can do that, so unless I'm not going to be using any frigates at all what personal combat skill can compete with that? And after all is said and done what points are left to invest in personal combat skills? Unless I'm a skilled enough player to solo entire fleets on the wings of the Combat tree (and Neural Link), obviously, but, eh...I'm not :(.
That would become another OP tax for carriers, like Expanded Deck Crew. That would encourage carriers to over-specialize into fighters more than they already do (and not mount any weapons at all).
To be quite honest, you're just cheesing the battle size mechanics at that point - that's not something I can really worry about as a balancing concern. I think ideally the game would be played at battle size 400.
That wasn't the issue with it, though. The issue was it either feeling bad to use phase ships, or to use not phase ships, depending no whether you had the skill or not.
The problem there is that even an amazing flagship can only be as good as the player is a pilot, and my piloting skills are...questionable at best.
Good guess, it'll be 20! (So will the Falcon(P), btw - another ship that's, to be honest, a bit overpowered - but also fun, and I don't want to change the ship itself.)
Would it also be possible to take a look at the Converted Hanger hullmod? I swear every time I try to fit it into a build the ship ends up sending one wave of fighters to die horribly against anything more threatening than a Mining Lasing with a bad cold, and after that fighters just seem to slowly come out piecemeal to die horribly one by one instead of all at once. Replacement rate is awful in general, and also drops so quickly as to be basically useless.
Maybe I'm just doing something wrong, but I've never managed to get the hullmod to justify it's own OP cost. Let stand the added 150% cost of fighters/200% cost of bombers.
Would it also be possible to take a look at the Converted Hanger hullmod? I swear every time I try to fit it into a build the ship ends up sending one wave of fighters to die horribly against anything more threatening than a Mining Lasing with a bad cold, and after that fighters just seem to slowly come out piecemeal to die horribly one by one instead of all at once. Replacement rate is awful in general, and also drops so quickly as to be basically useless.
Maybe I'm just doing something wrong, but I've never managed to get the hullmod to justify it's own OP cost. Let stand the added 150% cost of fighters/200% cost of bombers.
If you're using Converted Hangar, think of the fighters as support, not main attack/artillery. For example, Converted Hangar with Xyphos works well. The Xyphos provides 2 ion beams and PD, and hang near your ship (support range of 0), so they won't go off dying. On a cruiser, this comes out to 38 OP (15 for Converted Hangar, 23 for the Xyphos). However, 2 ion beams cost 24 OP, plus the 400 flux to support them would cost another 40 OP, so you're really getting 64 OP's worth of ion beams plus PD. (Since fighters fire their weapons flux-free, from your ship's vantage point -- they have their own flux.) Combined with some kinetic weapons, this is very effective at shutting down the enemy's offenses; Furies with Sabot pods and Xyphos make up the bulk of my Remnant-farming fleet for this very reason.
(I need to look at the Drover, too; there's I think a bug involve in making it really underperform... hopefully the impression that carriers aren't good is not based on or at least heavily influenced by the Drover being weak now.)
I only use Drover for double Cobras. Rockets' red glare!Speaking of these two things, the Drover's Reserve Deployment makes it so specifically bombers don't redeploy after going in for a rearm while the ship system is active. A Drover might be able to launch 4 Cobras with Reapers all at once, but it won't actually be able to re-launch any bombers until the ship system expires. This, if anything, really kills it's performance.
Xyphos suck becauseUnfortunately the result of poor vanilla Support fighter behavior. Support fighters completely ignore the player's target (even when set to Engage), so trying to get them to shoot the right thing is like trying to herd cats. Hopefully this could be addressed...?
A. they don't obey your orders in any capacity and would shoot at random stuff instead of intended targets
B. they don't benefit from ITU of your own so they can't really have synergy unless you are already running short range weapons
It's really waste of OP to use converted hangar for Xyphos. I'd get broadsword or even long bow.
<looks at Bulk Transport> (I actually kind of want to replace that one with something more interesting; right now it's definitely a bench-warmer.)
Well the first tick to hard mode is to turn on iron mode and make a commitment to not save scum. When I do that I find myself engaging a lot more with different game systems, even sometimes retreating out of a battle when it becomes apparent I'm not going to win but before taking heavy losses.I actually learned to use vanilla ability to engage & hit - disengage - engage again with iron mode. Makes you use more advanced tactics than usual.
Well the first tick to hard mode is to turn on iron mode and make a commitment to not save scum. When I do that I find myself engaging a lot more with different game systems, even sometimes retreating out of a battle when it becomes apparent I'm not going to win but before taking heavy losses.
Well the first tick to hard mode is to turn on iron mode and make a commitment to not save scum. When I do that I find myself engaging a lot more with different game systems, even sometimes retreating out of a battle when it becomes apparent I'm not going to win but before taking heavy losses.Depends on the person. If I couldn't save scum, then I would abuse everything to stack the cards in my favour or do the safest available activity, ignoring whether anything I do is actually fun. While you can't die in Starsector, you can certainly waste time.
There is a fleet size limit and I'm pretty much sure that x1,5 fleet is currently unfeasible. However, progression wise, enemy fleet size getting to max size pretty fast. And even beyond that due to capability to stack several fleets in the single battle. This kinda limits the whole "numerical superiority" thing. You do have deployment advantage but overall it is not really important since enemy can and will have more ships. For the most part they will be of better quality than your pentadmoded junkers.Thankfully we can modify the ship cap pretty easily, though the artificial limitation of how many ships you can recover at once is still going to be annoying.
Well the first tick to hard mode is to turn on iron mode and make a commitment to not save scum. When I do that I find myself engaging a lot more with different game systems, even sometimes retreating out of a battle when it becomes apparent I'm not going to win but before taking heavy losses.Depends on the person. If I couldn't save scum, then I would abuse everything to stack the cards in my favour or do the safest available activity, ignoring whether anything I do is actually fun. While you can't die in Starsector, you can certainly waste time.
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Alex, what do you think about boosting "Auxilary Support" cap to 8 from 5? I want to run a wolfpack fleet with a pather colossus as my capital, with ultimate point defence performance. My main ship will be like a moving base smaller ships can fall back to for a breather.
Maybe I'm just doing something wrong, but I've never managed to get the hullmod to justify it's own OP cost. Let stand the added 150% cost of fighters/200% cost of bombers.
As a contrary point, while fighters are less powerful then in the past I've found them useful and viable in endgame fleets. I've found destroyer carriers (Condors mainly as I do think Drovers have some sort of bug) to work best with interceptors because they don't need synchronization to do their job, while I use larger ships for bombers. They need orders to guide them as opposed to just rolling over the enemy on autopilot, but thats ok.
Would it make sense to have dynamic level limit? For instance, make it 20 for easy mode, but retain 15 for normal
Technically true, but the experience curve grows excessively past the point the developers chose for the max level. Like a hundred fold or something.
At least, it used to. With a lower level in vanilla for the cap, who knows how the equation changed and how it would behave.
* Will the tier/ult thresholds be modifiable? E.g., if I wanted the two combat ultimate skills to require more/fewer of the preceding skills, is that possible?
* Any chance the maintenance-reduction-per-dmod statmod could be value based rather than binary? I fear my attempts to nerf/buff that modifier are going to get messy ^^'
Any changes to Energy Weapon Mastery, Missile Spec and Long Range Spec?
Granted, to a certain degree it's to funnel the incoming enemy fleet into a more manageable trickle. But it's also because my computer is literally from a decade ago (i3-2100 @3.1 GHz, 8GB RAM), so even with just about all the options turned down battles take a long time since they run at around 10-15 FPS for full fleet fights (i.e. vs Ordos fleets say). And that's vanilla, it gets slower once I start adding mods. So making the battle size bigger also makes battles take even longer with the additional ships.
Regardless of player computer limitations, though, it still seems like making Radiants 60 DP instead of 40 DP will make Remnant fights significantly easier, coupled with Best of the Best making it easier to get the full 60% of battle size. With a fixed battle size of 400, this means 4 Radiants instead of 6 Radiants at once, plus the player can field a full 240-DP fleet instead of a fleet of 200-220 DP (depending on how good they are about capturing objectives). Not necessarily a bad thing, depends on how easy or difficult you feel the endgame fights should be.
(By the way, I didn't really comment much on the skill system because it all looks pretty good -- the new tiers overcome issues with the current system pretty well, so it all comes down to what the specifics are when it's released, and experimenting with it.)
Speaking of these two things, the Drover's Reserve Deployment makes it so specifically bombers don't redeploy after going in for a rearm while the ship system is active. A Drover might be able to launch 4 Cobras with Reapers all at once, but it won't actually be able to re-launch any bombers until the ship system expires. This, if anything, really kills it's performance.
Unfortunately the result of poor vanilla Support fighter behavior. Support fighters completely ignore the player's target (even when set to Engage), so trying to get them to shoot the right thing is like trying to herd cats. Hopefully this could be addressed...?
But about skill changes: why not to add ability to give orders to your flagship without use of command points? It will help with neurolink i think, for ex if you wanna to make your ship finish the enemy while you are transmitting to other linked ship. Giving free orders to the linked ship would be nice too, and even without neurolink ability to do this can be helpful (for people who don't like piloting for example). The only problem is to split usual and flagship orders, so other ships from your fleet will ignore flagship's orders and treat this enemy as usual. So if enemy doesn't have and orders for it and you order your flagship to eliminate it, others from your fleet treat this enemy as if they don't have any orders for it, but any non-flagship orders overwrite flagship's orders.
Thankfully we can modify the ship cap pretty easily, though the artificial limitation of how many ships you can recover at once is still going to be annoying.
Sorry if this has been answered already but we're getting part 2 before the next month right? From what I've read the new new skill system is pretty much complete, and you just weren't able to put everything into a single blog post without it being a huge wall of text.
Alex, what do you think about boosting "Auxilary Support" cap to 8 from 5? I want to run a wolfpack fleet with a pather colossus as my capital, with ultimate point defence performance. My main ship will be like a moving base smaller ships can fall back to for a breather.
Weeeeeell, the main thing I think about this is if you have a closer look at the screenshots, you won't see an icon for Auxiliary Support... :(Oh..was it too op or too useless? I really liked that skill.
Oh..was it too op or too useless? I really liked that skill.
Same, just Leadership already had a bunch of "specialize in something" skills and out of everything, this was the one for the chopping block. I think I liked it more conceptually than how it actually turned out.This mean Gemini will lose the Civilian Hull built-in mod? It seemed like Gemini got that debuff built-in mod for the sake of Auxiliary Support. Gemini is the freighter hybrid that favors fighters instead of Mule's brawling power.
..Any changes to Energy Weapon Mastery, Missile Spec and Long Range Spec?
No, yes, and :-X
useful even without the auxiliary support skill? Speaking for myself I thought they were interesting, but I never managed to find a use for them.Yeah, Alex, buff them 900% without the skill :D
One fun use was to slap Escort Package on double Mercuries. Arm it with extended PD lasers, build-in range improving mods and advanced optics. Optionally piloted by point defense admirals. All of that makes a normally useless civilian ship into a fearsome little escort with something close to 2k range.
I won't shed any tears over losing Aux. Support. I still haven't even tried it in any run so far. It's not that I don't "get it," it's just not something ever appealed to me.Main problems are it uplifted one or two ships to warship level and it competed with a generic damage boost. If I wanted Leadership, I will take Gunnery Drills. Similar reason why I take Flux Regulations first over Phase Corps even in a pure phase fleet.
Personally, whenever I tried to pilot a carrier, it never felt all that satisfying. You either had enough firepower to kill your target in the first few waves or you didn't and then attrition would make success harder and harder to achieve. There was very little granularity and player skill really didn't matter (unless you count perfecting your loadout a part of player skill). It just wasn't "active" enough for me and that's why I never piloted an Astral, even when you could abuse mass bomber loadouts and dedicated carrier skills.This is why I dislike fighters and Expanded Deck Crew eating too much OP. After getting good fighters and Deck Crew, there is not enough OP left to get ITU, flux stats, and good weapons to be a passable warship (Legion excepted). If fighters were effective enough while carrier could fly around and bully small warships or standoff against an equal-sized ship, then I would pilot carriers (like during pre-0.7a releases). Dedicated carriers (other than Condor) could use fighters and brawl like a warship back in the day. Today, carriers are merely dedicated freighters or logistics ships that carry fighters instead of cargo or fuel.
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I think the "carrier skills" argument comes more from a basis of principle than gameplay necessity ("We're neglecting a huge portion of ships." "Look at all the weapon skills, why not fighters?" "Why even pilot a carrier, then?") They're fair questions but unless piloting a carrier becomes more active somehow, I have a hard time believing that they will ever be more than support. Effective, even powerful support, but never the stars of the show. I'm good with that, though others might not be.
Can we all agree that we could use more fighter-related hullmods?
Can we all agree that we could use more fighter-related hullmods?
Can we all agree that we could use more fighter-related hullmods?NO! For reasons TaLaR mentioned. If anything, Expanded Deck Crew needs to be removed from the game, and its bonuses made the baseline (because unskilled fighters are still easily wiped in non-trivial fights even with the hullmod), so carriers might have the OP to arm up.
Not really, these kill viability of combat carriers. Most of them already can't fit expanded deck, fighters and a viable weapons package + ITU.Sums up my biggest complaint with carriers since 0.8a.
But the problem is that in any non trivial fighter you do lose fighters, because even the toughest of them cant withstand the heat of the battle for long periods of time. And I also agree of the expanded deck issue of being mandatory - there are no other hullmods that are that much mandatory, even ITU is not mandatory if you intend to make a close-range ship, and hardened shields also sometimes are not needed even though its a top tier hullmod.
All it does is nudge the power of carriers up a notch at the expense of OP. It would kind of be an OP tax on Carriers but I suppose S-mods would mitigate some of the pain of that.S-mods (at least one) mitigate the removal of old Loadout Design 3.
What colony overhaul?One I suspect that he is planning :P
I haven't seen anything from Alex or David about a colony overhaul...What colony overhaul?One I suspect that he is planning :P
I see the icon for Industrial Planning in the tier before the final tier with Hull Restoration, but I do not recognize the other two icons next to IP.Makeshift Equipment and Containment Procedures icons, not that we know if names or effects have changed.
its great that neural uplink doesnt have to compete with the no-brainer skill of +1 smod, but i just dont see it being a top tier skill due to the CP limit...
1)
ill try to express my concern as short as possible, but basically, the skill is based on you having spent lots of CP in combat, and then lots in tech to get the skill itself, and then you have to spend op on your flagships to make use of the skill. so assuming you spend the largest chunk of your cp having a strong combat skill that would justify neural uplink, and on the tech tree, you will not have enough CP to boost your campaign-layer logistics in industry, nor enough for the best of the best, so this directly translates to making anaemic, op-starved ships and/of anaemic campaign stats. you dont have an extra smod to build in EO, and you dont have the CP to blow on industry to not need EO. and if you dont significantly invest in combat, then there isnt even that much of a point in going for NU over just a good officer no? imo the least this would need is being put on the lowest tier and be a free hullmod.
2) not to mention the fact that the high speed ship switching would benefit you the most in superfrigate to DD dogfights where your hit and run and pincer attack and high speed low drag antics would justify the use of NU (and i very much would use it!) but its a top tier skill, and i dont think many people will still be in the frigate/destroyer heavy combat stage by the time you have the CP needed to get a top level skill.
i know it might seem stupid to critique something i couldnt try yet, but from the blogpost descriptions this just really bothers me and screams noobtrap
Alex, a little hint on what you've done with the colony skills? :P
And, ah, re: all the colony talk: I'd like to keep any discussion of colony skill changes until part 2 is out!
if neural link doesnt allow you to control [redacted] i will riotFear not!
This obviously synergizes very well with taking a bunch of Combat skills, so that both ships are great – it’s a multiplier on the return you get for Combat skills. I also had to make a decision about whether the Neural Interface hullmod would be able to be installed on automated ship, finally letting you pilot these yourself. On the one hand, this goes against the general idea of not having top-tier skills in the same aptitude work too well together. On the other hand, it’s just too cool not to do, so that won out.
I called it, the colony overhaul's coming!So, you are assuming that Part 2 is entirely about colony skills? I doubt that but we just have to wait.
Otherwise, why would it need an entire blogpost? ;D
3 DP shuttle flagship
Even with unlimited missiles
Regular shuttle transfer doesn't let the other ship enjoy your flagship skills at the same time.
I was hoping that the skill would actually not transfer your skills, and would have kept the skills of the officer of the ship you have transferred yourself to. So this way you could have invested in other trees than combat, while also having the opportunity to contribute to battle on a piloted ship that wouldnt suck because you have no combat skills.
And something like that feels like something that can compete with the redacted skill as alternatives for the end of tech tree. This way you still can pilot the radiant, but youd have to spend 10 sp for that. Or you can have a strong tech/leadership combo, taking command of the fleet as a general aboard kite in the back, transferring yourself back and forth from time to time to make adjustments to your ship positioning/venting/etc.
The use case for Neural Link that comes to mind is disposable (or ECM/Nav buff) 3 DP shuttle flagship and Radiant. Swap to Radiant immediately, let the original flagship die (or hide it in the corner), then pilot (maybe) overpowered Radiant for the rest of the battle.
Question: Given a fleet of two ships, Radiant and X. X is the flagship, and Radiant is the ship player will Neural Link to. If ship X dies but Radiant lives - basically only ships left alive after battle are automated, what happens? Does player get shunted to Radiant as its new captain, or will it be a fleet wipe and respawn?
Given three ships all with Neural Interface: A (Flagship), B and C
Transfer from A to B, A and B receive bonuses. Then transfer to B to C, is it B and C with bonuses or is it A (Flagship) and C which get bonuses?
I assume the best way to use neural linked Radiants would be to deploy 2 Radiants + player shuttle. Transfer from shuttle to one of Radiants, then retreat the shuttle. Only 2 linked ships left on field, both get the bonus and both are Radiants. And still probably have more CR than single alpha-cored Radiant (4x penalty...).
If having 3 linked ships on field initially is a problem, then 2nd Radiant would have to enter after shuttle leaves, rest remaining same.
It also would make NL Radiant somewhat balanced because you won’t be able to get both missile spec and system spec and is capped at level 9 officer equivalent assuming you invested 7080.
Question: does support doctrine apply to NL target?
SpoilerI was hoping that the skill would actually not transfer your skills, and would have kept the skills of the officer of the ship you have transferred yourself to. So this way you could have invested in other trees than combat, while also having the opportunity to contribute to battle on a piloted ship that wouldnt suck because you have no combat skills.
My guess is that would be unbalanced and leads to undesirable incentives in skill allocation. Trading in 1 character point to get the equivalent of 5 or 6 from another tree seems to completely defeat the purpose of that other tree. We've got access to 8 officers baseline, losing 1 isn't a big deal for many fleets, so Neural Link would become mandatory, and you'd grab 2 more tier 5's, and ignore combat completely every time.
In my view, it is much better to have synergy between trees as opposed to outright obsoleting another tree. As it stands, if you never use the switching, at a minimum it's the equivalent of +1 officer. If you do use the quick switching, it potentially gives you a hard to quantify force multiplier.And something like that feels like something that can compete with the redacted skill as alternatives for the end of tech tree. This way you still can pilot the radiant, but youd have to spend 10 sp for that. Or you can have a strong tech/leadership combo, taking command of the fleet as a general aboard kite in the back, transferring yourself back and forth from time to time to make adjustments to your ship positioning/venting/etc.
I'll note it is actually 8 skill points according to the blog. 7 points invested lets you grab the 2nd top tier skill, for a total of 8. And combining an Alpha Core Radiant that has 8 elite combat skills with player piloting with no investment in combat skills would be crazy strong. 8 Tech, 7 leadership would be optimal every time. All the fleet bonuses, all the officers bonuses, and a top tier combat skilled 60 DP flagship. Spending points in the combat tree with such an ability in play would be a mistake, since you could always get exactly the same bonuses plus more bonuses on top of them with Neural Link.
Also, I'm not quite understanding the "General piloting a kite" play style being combined with Neural link. If you want to occasionally tweak a ship, you can do that now. From what I understand, as soon as you leave the ship to transfer command, it goes back to it's previous officer. So if you just want to order a vent, you can transfer in by being close by in your kite, order the vent, then transfer back, with the ship maintaining officer bonuses before and after.[close]
why do you do this to me Alex? Why do you make updates so interesting and well written I stop wanting to play the current release and play the new one instead? This is the third time you've done this. Stop doing this me! The hype is not good for my brian!
Question: Given a fleet of two ships, Radiant and X. X is the flagship, and Radiant is the ship player will Neural Link to. If ship X dies but Radiant lives - basically only ships left alive after battle are automated, what happens? Does player get shunted to Radiant as its new captain, or will it be a fleet wipe and respawn?
It would be the same thing that happens in that same situation without Neural Link being involved. Which <checks> - weird, you get a fleet without a flagship. That might crash under certain circumstances, actually. Let me make it so that this becomes a respawn.
Question: does support doctrine apply to NL target?It does when you deploy it and then it stops applying just about immediately when the link is established. No easy way around that because which ship actually gets linked is up to a script with hasn't run at that point. Though, hmm - I suppose NI could just get rid of the Support Doctrine bonus! Yeah, let me do that. Nice catch!
What about the 15% max cr from reliable engineering? Or is the skill changed as well?
Hmm - I'm not sure why you wouldn't just use a good ship at that point and have it also benefit from your presumably-heavily-invested-in personal ship skills. Unless you're planning to solo something with the Radiant, in which case, fair enough! But probably looking at an easier fight in that case anyway.Because Radiant is the good ship I really want to use. The original flagship is simply the (car) key to piloting that (high-performance sports car) Radiant! If I can only pilot one ship at a time, why would I trust my original ship in AI hands? (Especially if my old flagship zips all over the place under AI control and greet my return with possible disorienting snapback if I Neural Link back.) The idea is I Neural Link to Radiant immediately after deployment and I do not care what happens to the original flagship. (I do not plan to neural back to my old flagship.) I can retreat the old flagship immediately or let it suicide at first contact with the enemy. The end result is I pilot the overpowered SNK boss ship Radiant, which was the main reason why I want Neural Link to begin with. In short, instead of using Paragon as my flagship, I choose Radiant, and I just take an extra step to do so.
Hmm, I don't think that makes sense? Unless the only ship you want deployed in that combat is the Radiant. No-one's making you transfer back to the original shipThat means if my old flagship explodes or retreats from battle, my pilot is still in the Radiant? Nice!
That means if my old flagship explodes or retreats from battle, my pilot is still in the Radiant? Nice!
The car key flagship would be sub-five DP frigate who is not meant to fight in the first place. (It could be the Shepherd I haul around as a campaign stat stick.) After I deploy cheap frigate and Radiant, then swap to Radiant via Neural Link at the earliest opportunity, the frigate has done its job and I no longer need it in battle.
I am not using Neural Link to jump between two ships as needed and attempt tag-team shenanigans. I am using it to make normally unplayable (and overpowered) AI ship playable.
So...you have a device that allows you to command a ship remotely through a neural interface, but even if your flagship is destroyed/retreated you can still remotely pilot that other ship? That sounds to me like you're able to keep playing a game even after your controller is broken/disconnected, how does that work? In universe, I mean, not mechanically.That means if my old flagship explodes or retreats from battle, my pilot is still in the Radiant? Nice!
Yep.
I guess if the original ship leaves, I cannot Neural Link to another, and... can it actually swap out of a neural link ship via command shuttle? (If so, that is some advanced cloning-on-demand technology for the player to body surf, especially on a ship that cannot support human crew.) I get that if the old flagship leaves, Neural Linking back is impossible.
So...you have a device that allows you to command a ship remotely through a neural interface, but even if your flagship is destroyed/retreated you can still remotely pilot that other ship? That sounds to me like you're able to keep playing a game even after your controller is broken/disconnected, how does that work? In universe, I mean, not mechanically.
I am still confused about this Elon Musks neuralink hullmod/skill, especially the "your ship is blown up but you still get to remotely pilot" part, but hey. At least I havechicken30 OP operations center s-kite. (In the future update. I hope)
And what about those 2 unnamed industry skills? The one with the gun increases the number of shots like expanded magazines, I bet
I am still confused about this Elon Musks neuralink hullmod/skill, especially the "your ship is blown up but you still get to remotely pilot" part, but hey. At least I havechicken30 OP operations center s-kite. (In the future update. I hope)
I am still confused about this Elon Musks neuralink hullmod/skill, especially the "your ship is blown up but you still get to remotely pilot" part, but hey. At least I havechicken30 OP operations center s-kite. (In the future update. I hope)
you know this made me realize that neurolink is going to be one of those skills/mods that gives in to capital creep bc the ability to neorolink between your favorite frigates is effectively worthless when compared to the ability to neurolink between capitals. like, my meta fleet screams out for something like neurolink; i like to run a lot of torpedo frigates, pilot one like a mad person until I've fired its racks empty then swap to a new one. There is literally not a single thing in the game that could improve that meta for me more than a skill that lets me swap instantly between frigates, if it werent for the fact that it has been made only useful for capital ship metas by being restricted to 1 ship. Maybe this'll be something I have to take up with a modder but if the hullmod scaled by hull size, like only 8 neurolink points allowed (not counting flagship) with hull sizes costing 1/2/4/8 neurolink points each, it would be perfect for me
I am still confused about this Elon Musks neuralink hullmod/skill, especially the "your ship is blown up but you still get to remotely pilot" part, but hey. At least I havechicken30 OP operations center s-kite. (In the future update. I hope)
you know this made me realize that neurolink is going to be one of those skills/mods that gives in to capital creep bc the ability to neorolink between your favorite frigates is effectively worthless when compared to the ability to neurolink between capitals. like, my meta fleet screams out for something like neurolink; i like to run a lot of torpedo frigates, pilot one like a mad person until I've fired its racks empty then swap to a new one. There is literally not a single thing in the game that could improve that meta for me more than a skill that lets me swap instantly between frigates, if it werent for the fact that it has been made only useful for capital ship metas by being restricted to 1 ship. Maybe this'll be something I have to take up with a modder but if the hullmod scaled by hull size, like only 8 neurolink points allowed (not counting flagship) with hull sizes costing 1/2/4/8 neurolink points each, it would be perfect for me
this would be cool
atm you have to bring in reinforcement frigates as you retreat the depleted ones
How long does transfer take? If I can't have 2 Radiants, then deploying Paragon(or at least a Conquest) + Radiant seems optimal. But this wouldn't work if result of going far over 50 total DP for 2 ships is ridiculously long transfer.
edit edit: okay but for serious this time; what if the tempest had its 2 drones with 1 ir & pd laser replaced with 1 drone with 2 ir & 2 pd lasers with double the stats that's very slightly smaller than the smallest vanilla frigate & the tempest got a ship system that allows you (if ur piloting it) to hotswap between the tempest & its drone (& if ur not piloting it, it at least lets an AI officer give both their piloting skills and also their carrier skills to both ships)? What if we turned the tempest into a frigate-carrier that can benefit itself from its own carrier skills? The ship already feels like being bolted by your brain stem into a machine that outpaces the human capacity to pilot it, why not take that a little further & turn it into literally a pair of ships that literally exceeds the human capacity to pilot both at the same time?Terminator drone already benefits from fighter skills.
Pairing up a bad ship and a good ship with Neural Link seems weird. If you have combat skills that encourage you to pilot good ships, why would your "clone" have any different priorities?.No, it's not to make a bad ship better. It's for using a bad ship to make a good ship even better.
Riiight... But you can do exactly the same thing using a good ship to make a good ship even better. And then you've also got a good additional ship rather than a bad one.Pairing up a bad ship and a good ship with Neural Link seems weird. If you have combat skills that encourage you to pilot good ships, why would your "clone" have any different priorities?.No, it's not to make a bad ship better. It's for using a bad ship to make a good ship even better.
Riiight... But you can do exactly the same thing using a good ship to make a good ship even better. And then you've also got a good additional ship rather than a bad one.Bad ships are cheaper than good ships, whether because of D-mods or design.
Does wolfpack tactics and other "all ships with officers" skills apply to neurolinked ship?
Pairing up a bad ship and a good ship with Neural Link seems weird. If you have combat skills that encourage you to pilot good ships, why would your "clone" have any different priorities?
Does wolfpack tactics and other "all ships with officers" skills apply to neurolinked ship?edit edit: okay but for serious this time; what if the tempest had its 2 drones with 1 ir & pd laser replaced with 1 drone with 2 ir & 2 pd lasers with double the stats that's very slightly smaller than the smallest vanilla frigate & the tempest got a ship system that allows you (if ur piloting it) to hotswap between the tempest & its drone (& if ur not piloting it, it at least lets an AI officer give both their piloting skills and also their carrier skills to both ships)? What if we turned the tempest into a frigate-carrier that can benefit itself from its own carrier skills? The ship already feels like being bolted by your brain stem into a machine that outpaces the human capacity to pilot it, why not take that a little further & turn it into literally a pair of ships that literally exceeds the human capacity to pilot both at the same time?Terminator drone already benefits from fighter skills.
Question (and apologies if this has been asked before, I can't remember): Does the ship the player is not piloting get the personality of the fleet doctrine/retain orders? And do orders placed on it persist from switching in and out? I think the situation that would make me the most sad would be if I were trying to do a 2 ship flanking maneuver and the other ship kept retreating from the target, so I can see myself giving both ships engage or eliminate orders then switch between them repeatedly.
Question (and apologies if this has been asked before, I can't remember): Does the ship the player is not piloting get the personality of the fleet doctrine/retain orders? And do orders placed on it persist from switching in and out? I think the situation that would make me the most sad would be if I were trying to do a 2 ship flanking maneuver and the other ship kept retreating from the target, so I can see myself giving both ships engage or eliminate orders then switch between them repeatedly.
I'm not sure if this came up before or not! But, yeah, the orders do get retained. I could still see it being frustrating at times, depending, since the AI simply can't continue doing *exactly* what you'd ideally want it to, but... well, we'll see how it all pans out :)
Any player who plays SS for a slow, relaxing gameplay experience can just not take the skillNot if they are set on piloting killer Radiant or other automated ship in battle. For me, the point of taking both Automated Ships and Neural Link is to make those normally unplayable NPC ships fully playable. Player will have seven points left for non-Tech skills, so there is not much more choice left.
Any player who plays SS for a slow, relaxing gameplay experience can just not take the skillNot if they are set on piloting killer Radiant or other automated ship in battle. For me, the point of taking both Automated Ships and Neural Link is to make those normally unplayable NPC ships fully playable. Player will have seven points left for non-Tech skills, so there is not much more choice left.
I am contemplating full Tech and the rest in Industry because Hull Restoration seems like huge QoL, and I want to pilot Radiant personally. Have my doubts that it will work well.
Given the flattening of the combat tree, you could still pick up 2 combat tree skills (like whatever Shield Modulation became + Target Analysis), grab Energy Weapon Mastery and Gunnery Implants as of your 8 picks in technology, and then 2 Industry personal skills on the way to Hull Restoration. Depending on what the industry personal skills are like, that might be a solid set of 6 skills to pilot the Radiant with, along with the +10% CR from 2 s-mods in Hull Restoration. Correct me if I'm wrong, but without the Alpha core, the a 2 s-mod Radiant (you're at 100 points of automated ships or less) should be sitting at 70-100+100+10=80% base CR. You could even pick up 2 alpha core 5 DP Redacted frigates for escort duty and still be hitting that CR.
On the other hand, if one of the Industry personal skills is a ballistic buff, then maybe not so much, as you're then got 5 applicable skills. Still, it's the equivalent of an a standard officer.
Out of the four aptitudes which one got changed the most?
How often do bounty fleets get DP-reducing skills on their admirals? In other words, is it another "you have to take this just to break even" skill, like the +2 officers one?
... The system looks extremely ad-hoc and inelegant now. ...
That sounds pretty solid! And both Industry personal skills would be handy on a Radiant - perhaps not optimal, but definitely useful.And what would they do? We know the name of one but no details on effects of either.
Progression seems more confusing than before and doesn't fix forcing the player to take skills just to access other skills.
Progression seems more confusing than before and doesn't fix forcing the player to take skills just to access other skills.
Uh that's the whole point and is by design. More powerful skills are gated behind requirements so that players don't just pick the most powerful skills and end up with overpowered builds.
There'll be some detail on those in Part 2 :)Will part 2 be covering all the new skills / skills that have changes?
Will part 2 be covering all the new skills / skills that have changes?
When will part 2 publish?
Ah, good point/something to be aware of. <looks at Bulk Transport> (I actually kind of want to replace that one with something more interesting; right now it's definitely a bench-warmer.)
Agreed. Bulk Transport's implementation could use some improvement - the way its effects are displayed to the player is not ideal* - but the actual effect is surprisingly meaningful and useful.
*I made a suggestion thread (https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=21527.0) on this a while back, though it didn't garner much attention.
First off, hi and welcome to the forum :)
Second, that sounds more like an exploit than a style of play! And I'm fairly sure you only get the "limited engagement" recovery if you win the engagement; it's a mechanic meant to prevent an exploit where you'd deploy a frigate, retreat, and have the enemy ships suffer the full CR cost for deploying.