The one issue is the Phase Anchor hullmod (the one that makes the ship slower, but with a higher phase-time multiplier) – the ship just feels too slow to fly, and the extra time multiplier doesn’t feel like enough to make up for it.
- what are the costs of the Neutral Link/Integrator hullmods? Is it going to be an easy choice to s-mod the latter? :PThey cannot be built in :p
Admins, officers, NPCs, etc will all have their old skills converted to new equivalents/best matches, as appropriateHow will this handle officers with non-vanilla skills at the time of the patch?
Combat Endurance brings back the “repair ship hull during combat” effect from several versions ago – repairs up to 25% of the hull level, with total repairs not exceeding the higher of 50% of the hull, or, as of right now, 2000 points.Is that base hull or modified hull? Basically if I have a Sunder (4000 hull) with Reinforced Bulkheads (+40% hull, from 4K to 5600) will that effect cap at 2000 (50% of 4K/2K, whichever) or 2800 (50% of 5600)?
Damage Control’s elite effect grants a reduction to large hull hits – any hull hit above a certain threshold of damage has the portion above the threshold reduced by (again, as of right now) 60%. No-one plans on being hit by a Reaper torpedo, but still, neutralizing that much damage when things go wrong is going to have a lot of appeal. To make the skill not completely neutralize the strike potential of certain weapons, this effect only triggers at most once every two seconds.I still think this is too much of a kick in the teeth to those types of finisher weapons. Reapers especially exist to do a ton of single hit damage, with this skill turning that into a gamble (does any given officered ship have this skill yes/no?) there's not much argument I can think of to take a Reaper over a Hammer.
A new personal-combat skill in Industry, this is a fun one – it boosts flux dissipation (and capacity, as an elite effect) based on the number of ordnance points spent on weapons.Just to clarify, is this based off of the base OP cost of a weapon or the actual cost that any given weapon takes to equip? Basically did the Onslaught/Conquest and their Heavy Ballistic Integration get put on stage to be laughed at by the High Tech audience again ::).
Alpha Cores – which you can install as colony administrators – also get Industrial Planning. In addition, they also get a unique “Hypercognition” skill that confers some of the benefits of the previous colony skills.That does answer the question of "how is my vagabond wanderer of a captain able to do the work of multiple Alpha cores simultaneously from the other side of known space". How rare are these new skilled admins, compared to how hunting down a decent admin was such a pain previously?
Adaptive Phase Coils increase the hard flux level at which speed bottoms out to 75%. This, naturally, facilitates an “assassin” type of build. Phase Anchor increases time time multiplier to 4x, but reduces the ship’s speed while phased by half – this is good for the “brawling” style.While a good idea on paper these new hullmods very much feel like "mandatory OP tax" territory, depending on what type of build you're going with. Than again with hull and armor increased across the board you can maybe forgo Heavy Armor, noted king of OP costs and prime S-Mod candidacy, so perhaps it all balances out. Still curious, though: What is the OP cost of these new hullmods?
*Bunch of "combat phase ships" in skill descriptions*Did the two new logistics phase ships get civilian tags, or will they still cripple this skill if you try to go full phase raiding party?
*Phase ship sensor changes*;D
Even though the Radiant had its deployment points cost increased (to account for powerful it is in player fleets, especially now that it can be controlled directly with a Neural Link), they might be overall more difficult to face just due to how consistently deadly they are.Right, because of how powerful it is in player fleets. Not because it has better stats and guns than a Paragon along with the mobility system of a Wolf, but because a player is now able to control it. That is why it's worth 60DP.
With the test conditions established, I played a lot. (You don’t want to know how much I got wrecked by these, you really don’t. More to the point, I don’t want to talk about it.)
That can no longer be installed on automated ships – instead, there’s a new “Neural Integrator” hullmod which is functionally identical and just costs a pile more ordnance points, especially for capital ships.Disappointing, although I do agree with this being a better solution than gutting either the Radiant or the whole Neural Link mechanic entirely.
I definitely like the thought process I am seeing here! I think skills are going to be in a much better place after all of these changes.
- How does the new phase mechanics impact the AI from what you've seen? We have a fairly competent phase AI at the moment, imo, and I'm slightly concerned that the slower speed is going to revert phase ships back to being overly timid since the time to get to the target is longer - so there is more opportunity for the ship AI to go "oh crap I'm in trouble better start retreating" except now that is harder too. Have they been made even more aggressive to compensate for this? Or are they otherwise more willing to use their armor to tank in order to get damage in since that value is higher?
- Is it possible that admins could just have skills (similar to cores) that the player doesn't have access to? Please forgive my ignorance, but what would a 0 skill admin do, exactly? I was under the impression the skills were the main point but I haven't played around with colonies all that much and I'm a bit unfamiliar with the mechanics other than the general stuff.
- How are these changes reflected under the hood? Is there now just a section for the number of skill points required per tier in the JSON, or is this stuff hardcoded in the skill line itself - since it varies from skill line to skill line?
mm. Not sure how I feel about the phase speed thing.
On one hand, it's good to have a balancing aspect to make overextending matter more, since they just don't have any consequence to it as it stands unless you well and truly blow it out. But on the other, it feels like it may make them a lot less enjoyable to play.
Sure, they're still effective. And externally they're still just as fast.
But if you're piloting one and you're gradually taken down to 1/3rd the speed your ship normally has, I'm concerned it might feel as crippling as when engines blow out and you're left limping along at a fraction of the speed you were working with a moment prior, which could easily both discourage engaging and, as mentioned, simply make it feel very slow and "boring" to pilot.
Yes. Going from 1x speed at 3x time flow to 0.5x speed at 4x timeflow is an effective speed reduction by 1/3 (3x "outside" speed vs 2x "outside" speed at zero hard flux), while with phase coil tuning and phase anchor, a ship is just as fast while phased as a phase ship without the hullmod or skill.
If you wanted the hullmod to have zero effect on "outside" speed while phased, it'd need to only do a 25% speed reduction while phased (0.75*4=3), but I do not know if that would be a good design goal or not.
Would it be possible to have officers placed 'in reserve' (unusable and you pay their salary but they are not removed or altered) if the skill is respecced out of? Also, the same thing for ships with s-mods (CR is set to 0) would be nice.
It will also be interesting to see how the phase mechanics play out. It seems like there are a ton of bonuses now that might offset the changes and not actually weaken phase ships.
Phase anchor sound really weird to me. It makes phase ship impossible to escape and tick down PPT much faster. It sounds like ... uh... bad life decisions.
The main purpose of this hullmod is for brawling phase ships right?
How about let a phase ship vent hard flux prior to soft flux when unphased? (Is it possible?)
For Polarized Armor, I see that part of it is hard flux only so doesn't work for unshielded ships unless they have other ways to drive up hard flux. Good for phase ships! Would a converted shield shunt ship have something?
For Ballistic Mastery, it has a great shot speed bonus. Is the recoil reduction still part of gunnery implants? That to me is the other half of the ballistic gun skill buffs.
For the previously unremovable skills that can now be respecced: I absolutely think this is the right call in terms of the design of the skill system, but my god does the backend work you put in look like a pita. Thanks!
I think the only thing I'm particularly hesitant about is the max speed reduction of Phase Anchor (though you've mentioned it yourself) which sounds a bit excessive at -50% speed. It feels like it's going to be in the same ballpark as High Scatter Amplifier - a relatively costly hullmod with significant downsides that outweigh its benefit). I haven't really found a good use for HSA and I sort of have the feeling that as-is I likely wouldn't bother with Phase Anchor either.
- ooh, the Neural Link status info icon is pretty
- what are the costs of the Neutral Link/Integrator hullmods? Is it going to be an easy choice to s-mod the latter? :P
- unmentioned in the blog post but I kind of want to complain that Point Defense's +100% damage against fighters is rather extreme (granted I'm not a big fan of very high damage multipliers in general -
- feels a bit strange that the Phase Coil Tuning fluff is a Brother Cotton quote, but it's a good line.
- Ordnance Expertise is going to like 1.5x the Onslaught's base flux dissipation and I am so for it
Ballistic Mastery:
+10% Ballistic Weapon Range
+10% Ballistic Weapon Damage
+50% Ballistic Projectile Velocity
Dakka: (https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=22063.0)
+10% Ballistic Weapon Range
+10% Ballistic Weapon Damage
+25% Projectile Velocity
+10% Ballistic Weapon RoF
So close! When this update it out I'll be amending the projectile velocity to Ballistic only (that was the original intent) and let the insanity stack!
The good: I like the removal of colony skills, and Field Manipulation is a great roll-together.
The bad: Combat endurance is imo forgettable (PPT is *really* generic/binary/boring when it's all in one place), and I think Ballistic Mastery looks very OP (effective damage application through the roof!).
The fuzzy: Phase ships are probably cut out of any large battle because they'd eat all the attrition while retreating, but being pushed out from that environment may not be a bad thing. I'm not sure this address their strengths/weakness (hyper-impactful ship systems) directly, and that may not resolve their balance problems in smaller engagements.
Quote from: BlogAdmins, officers, NPCs, etc will all have their old skills converted to new equivalents/best matches, as appropriateHow will this handle officers with non-vanilla skills at the time of the patch?
Is that base hull or modified hull? Basically if I have a Sunder (4000 hull) with Reinforced Bulkheads (+40% hull, from 4K to 5600) will that effect cap at 2000 (50% of 4K/2K, whichever) or 2800 (50% of 5600)?
I still think this is too much of a kick in the teeth to those types of finisher weapons. Reapers especially exist to do a ton of single hit damage, with this skill turning that into a gamble (does any given officered ship have this skill yes/no?) there's not much argument I can think of to take a Reaper over a Hammer.
Just to clarify, is this based off of the base OP cost of a weapon or the actual cost that any given weapon takes to equip? Basically did the Onslaught/Conquest and their Heavy Ballistic Integration get put on stage to be laughed at by the High Tech audience again ::).
That does answer the question of "how is my vagabond wanderer of a captain able to do the work of multiple Alpha cores simultaneously from the other side of known space". How rare are these new skilled admins, compared to how hunting down a decent admin was such a pain previously?
While a good idea on paper these new hullmods very much feel like "mandatory OP tax" territory, depending on what type of build you're going with. Than again with hull and armor increased across the board you can maybe forgo Heavy Armor, noted king of OP costs and prime S-Mod candidacy, so perhaps it all balances out. Still curious, though: What is the OP cost of these new hullmods?
Did the two new logistics phase ships get civilian tags, or will they still cripple this skill if you try to go full phase raiding party?
Right, because of how powerful it is in player fleets. Not because it has better stats and guns than a Paragon along with the mobility system of a Wolf, but because a player is now able to control it. That is why it's worth 60DP.
The resulting wrecking ball after making sure they consistently had decent guns was...not unexpected ;).
Disappointing, although I do agree with this being a better solution than gutting either the Radiant or the whole Neural Link mechanic entirely.
Everything combat/ship related sounds fascinating! Concerning the colony skills being effectively removed though: What about coming up with some quick back of the napkin administrator-only skills? Surely there's some possibilities there?
Just as a quick addition, I do want to echo Morrokain's question about Administrators. Is it possible to let them retain a unique set of skills that the players dont have access to, thus keeping the same skill system for admins we have and increasing the diversity of administrators? I 100% agree with the colony skills discussion(which will likely be in my wall of text on this) but I think reverting admins to just be weak expansions on the number of colonies rather than definable skillful(or weak) admins is also reverting a system that makes players think about their administrators(or seek out constant improvements) isn't a wise idea.
Plus now that I write this and thus think about it, it likely adds in potential later down the line to have a more expansive colonization system without toying with player skills.
We were discussing phase ships on the unofficial discord (we do this a lot for everything lore related), and I wanted to ask you: how does movement in phase work? The phase coils anchor ships to realspace, right? But otherwise the rest of the ship is in phase space, as it no longer becomes affected by objects or energy in realspace.
So what is the ship moving in that allows normal ship thrusters/mobility to function as normal? Is phase a medium? Harsh entropy? Is it empty space?
Phase lance per its name shoots a beam that partially exists in phase space. Why wouldn't it not be possible to develop a weapon that shoots a beam of energy into phase space and melt phase ships? And why wouldn't the opposite also be possible?
I mean, the entire concept of phase is purposely shrouded in mystery, but at what level are objects in phase still obeying the physics of realspace?
And then there's the Doom that can teleport mines from phase space into realspace. That creates even more questions!
While I like it for the purposes of balance, it's going to be a bit lame personally piloting a phase ship. I guess that's a part of the reason why you made Adaptive Phase Coils...
Re: Whatever phase hullmod that slow ships too much?
Just make their time shift speed up your ship instead of slowing down the world. Part of the reason to use phase is a poor-man's teleport.
Re: Colonies...
So we lose the skills but get nothing back?
I'm not sure about the flux level movement penalty for phase ships. They blow themselves up all the time decloaking too close to explosions, and now they're even slower - it will be even harder for the AI to gain distance in time, and when it's an emergency decloak too close to an enemy ship it'll basically be crawling away from it.
How does heavy ballistic integration interact with the new OE?
If they're piled on like TT bounties, that can present a challenge though.
This sentiment alone is so rare these days and imho needs to be recognized and applauded! ;D
On the 'running phase ships at 1/3rd speed is annoying' thing: Would it be better instead to cut the phase time dilation to 1x as hard flux increases?That would simply make them able to stay invincible for 3x time and makes ticking phase PPT to their demise much harder.
So the player ship isn't unbearably slow, and I think the "bullet time" effect where every non-player ship is slow (as perceived by the player) on activation and speeds up over time might be an interesting experience.
On the 'running phase ships at 1/3rd speed is annoying' thing: Would it be better instead to cut the phase time dilation to 1x as hard flux increases?
So the player ship isn't unbearably slow, and I think the "bullet time" effect where every non-player ship is slow (as perceived by the player) on activation and speeds up over time might be an interesting experience.
I did tweak it a bit to be aware of what it's actual speed is/is going to be, for the attack runs calculations. It seems... fine? I haven't spent *that* much time with it but also haven't seen any obvious problems. And for example a pack of phase frigates was just rapidly deleting remnant frigates I right-clicked them on.Gotcha. Sounds good. My only suggestion would be to test out 1v1 a bit. That's probably where it would show up the most. It's not relevant as much as general fleet behavior, but it can be annoying in specific circumstances where the player is engaged elsewhere and relying on an isolated phase ship.
These are already a thing - what they do is take away the stability penalty from having too many colonies under your direct personal control.Ah ok right so that's their standard function now rather than colony bonuses. (At least the majority of the time anyway.) That makes sense.
I'm not sure what you mean exactly. Oh, "line" being "aptitude"? If so: the skill points required etc are in skill_data.csv.Oh yeah sorry I meant aptitude. And great!
If colonies were completely excised from the player skill system, though, and if running colonies yourself was just not an option - you *had* to have an admin... hmm. This sort of thing could make sense and be good.Hmm, I actually think that could be a very good idea. Not sure about any potential pitfalls off the top of my head, but it's intriguing to separate the two in order to give more spice to admins - and therefore cores as well. (Though cores are already pretty interesting by themselves.)
If colonies were completely excised from the player skill system, though, and if running colonies yourself was just not an option - you *had* to have an admin... hmm. This sort of thing could make sense and be good.I'd suggest, rather, making it so that colonies can't get to size four without an admin.
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.)
Finally registered a forum account after a year playing this game to reply to this: Bulk Transport is definitely not a bench-warmer for my playstyle; It's either the 2nd (after Navigation) or the 1st skill (if I'm playing the turtorial) I take. It's good at the start, it's good in midgame, and it's good in the endgame (the high cap on the personnel capacity helps with the marines needed for raids against high end targets.) It opens up new possibilities for play (an early tanker can be skipped if you have exploration ships, you can afford more crew losses, it really takes the sting out of the crew capacity/minimum crew D-mods, and the +1 burn for civ ships means militarization or Augmented Drive fields is not necessarily mandatory for most of them to keep up with fleet speed. I could go on for a while 8-))
If you wanted to nerf/change it because you thought it was *too good*, I'd understand. But please don't get rid of it because you think it's a bench-warmer 8-)
Thank you for making a great game with loads of replayability.
If colonies were completely excised from the player skill system, though, and if running colonies yourself was just not an option - you *had* to have an admin... hmm. This sort of thing could make sense and be good.Hmm, I actually think that could be a very good idea. Not sure about any potential pitfalls off the top of my head, but it's intriguing to separate the two in order to give more spice to admins - and therefore cores as well. (Though cores are already pretty interesting by themselves.)
It also makes a bit more sense to me that the player doesn't govern their own colonies directly and rather hires administrators to oversee them, since, they aren't actually present most of the time. And that doesn't necessarily mean that the player couldn't have skills that sort of tie into colonies (like the detachment idea that was mentioned) without directly affecting them.
Re: colonies/admins. It makes too much sense to simply not let the player govern. Keep colony skills as-is but up the number of base admins to 4. Make non-skilled admins plentiful and 1-skill admins still relatively common. 2 skill admins would be rare/found (as an aside, these rare ones that cost $25k a month cripple early colonies. All admin salaries need to be pro-rated based on colony size). Also, Beta Admins should be a thing (2-skills but no hypercognition). Industrial planning in Skills could just be Colony Management and increases Admin count by 2 and gives all colonies under Admin control (but not Cores) some kind of bonus to their existing skulls and/or a reduction in their cost to govern. I think Cores are simply no-brainers at this point and paying admins should have an upside.
Why would an update with such a massive change to the skill system be titled 0.95.1a instead of 0.95b?Because it's not a comprehensive overhaul (by Alex's standards).
But all in all, the skill changes detailed in both this post and the previous blog post appear to be a massive improvement over the current 0.95a skill system, though perhaps I'm just biased because I just straight up hate the wrap-around mechanic.
Edit: grammar... the quiet sibling of spelling.
Phase Anchor seems useless. It inherits the weakness of previously existing 4x time skill (when 2 phase ships fight, the one which can out-wait the other has immense advantage) and adds speed reduction on top. This is a huge "kill me please" advert to all enemy phase ships.Same thoughts here.
Also, I don't think speed reduction at 50% hard flux is actually a notable nerf to player-piloted assassin builds - I rarely go above 25% hard flux in current version. Short approach ( a bit hard flux) - unload AMs (soft flux close to the cap) - short retreat (a bit more hard flux) - vent - repeat.
I see no one talking about the very complicated built in hullmod undoing system.??????
Alex, I think you're getting yourself into a mess there - keeping an extra list of all ships that remembers what to undo when the skill is unselected? That sounds like a nightmare to maintain, and also very opaque to the player.
If you really need to know, you can actually tell what skill the enemy officer has when you target it! Anyway, from experience firing a ton of Reapers recently vs things that ALL had elite Damage Control, they're still fine and great and Hammers don't really compare. Just not enough raw damage.Huh, wasn't expecting that. And how are Reapers still worth it despite getting their damage reduced to 1900, whereas an individual Hammer punches for 1800 and has two shots for the same OP as a single Reaper? Purely firing at armor rather than as a finisher against hull?
Actual equip cost. And yeah, this interacts with HBI.Hmm...on the surface it sounds like that gives HBI a negative synergy with that skill, but "get the benefit of two guns for the price of one gun" isn't a negative, so...playtesting needed...
I forget exactly. Not too rare?Well, previously there only existed a single two skill admin in the Sector at any given time, and finding this one person when you actually needed them was improbable if not impossible. So hiring early, long before you needed them, and just eating the unassigned salary and hiring bonus years before you could start to begin working on getting a return on that investment wasn't an unreasonable idea. The configurable odds of X-skill admins spawning also didn't work anymore, or something like that? I don't exactly remember, either way so long as I'm no longer tempted to hoard good admins I'll be happy.
I forget exactly what the cost is. Right now APC is pretty cheap and Phase Anchor (in addition to needing a rework) is more expensive, but we'll see.Making them cheap is probably the best solution, at least the best one I can think of. Something like Expanded Deck Crew you could easily make standard and just completely remove the mandatory OP tax for dedicated carriers, but a choice between two distinct playstyles is a lot harder to manage that way.
IIRC I'd tweaked that a while ago.Excellent.
I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but it's really for both of these reasons, so if there's sarcasm, I'm not sure it lands :)Me and sarcasm have a long and storied history of being unable to meet up somewhere sensible, so let's just call that Schroedinger's Sarcasm ;).
Trust me, it's not!Speaking as someone who prioritizes campaign QoL (meaning ADF, EO, etc.) over pure combat power I'm sure that -50OP for manual control will sting greatly. Still, I'm sure there's a budget build I can make work.
If colonies were completely excised from the player skill system, though, and if running colonies yourself was just not an option - you *had* to have an admin... hmm. This sort of thing could make sense and be good.I'll echo what others have said and mention that this does indeed sound like a good idea, worth testing at least. Just make sure that good admins aren't an absolute pain to get within a short window of time (the game can't tell when a player is ready to put down colonies, after all) as they are in the current version, otherwise hiring/hoarding good admins early becomes a thing.
QuoteI forget exactly. Not too rare?Well, previously there only existed a single two skill admin in the Sector at any given time, and finding this one person when you actually needed them was improbable if not impossible. So hiring early, long before you needed them, and just eating the unassigned salary and hiring bonus years before you could start to begin working on getting a return on that investment wasn't an unreasonable idea. The configurable odds of X-skill admins spawning also didn't work anymore, or something like that? I don't exactly remember, either way so long as I'm no longer tempted to hoard good admins I'll be happy.
And yes, some easy way to keep colonies at size 3 also really needs to be a thing. With everything and the kitchen sink waking up to kill you when you reach size 4 some means of giving yourself time to build up would be very useful.There should be growth freeze option aside from removing Spaceport until the growth bar declines to an acceptable level before rebuilding it.
Totally false. The admin is generated on the fly and it’s about 1 out of 15 freelance admin having two skills. You’re just not checking comm frequently enough.Could swear that freelance admins were generated at game start and periodically "moved around", effectively, since one would be removed and another generated elsewhere as a replacement, and only if the two skill admin was removed could a new one spawn somewhere. Is it officers that work that way, or is that an older mechanic? I don't think I completely made up that whole idea.
Admin skill may change if you load a game saved prior to visiting the planet.QuoteTotally false. The admin is generated on the fly and it’s about 1 out of 15 freelance admin having two skills. You’re just not checking comm frequently enough.Could swear that freelance admins were generated at game start and periodically "moved around", effectively, since one would be removed and another generated elsewhere as a replacement, and only if the two skill admin was removed could a new one spawn somewhere. Is it officers that work that way, or is that an older mechanic? I don't think I completely made up that whole idea.
Either way, two skill admins in the current game are too rare. Especially if you need them on short-ish notice.
What if Phase Anchor's effects are inverted: Less TD and more top speed?
About skills in general: i m exited! I mean: the last patch was interesting, but now i feel like i want 40 skill points ;D
About phase ships: may be i m wrong, but i feel that they ll be even more OP now.
SpoilerAbout administrators: How about making specialisations? A mean: officers have different behavior (steady, agressive, etc.). Why not make admins different? For example, AI is OP, but it has no emotions. While admin can sometimes make strange decicions, but it may lead to better outcome.
Also i d like to see skills, affecting colonies in some ways, like:
- bonuses to specific industry
- bonus to pop growth
- bonus to combat
- bonus, allowing to deal with ludds/pirates better (like: admin automatically goes to bar, buys a drink to a pirate and sends a fleet to eliminate pirate base)
- bonus, adding extra industry by some high price (not money, but something else... maybe malus to pop growth)
- bonus, decreasing enviroment penalties
Also. Why not add people happyness system in future updates?
- if planet is happy, people from other planets might want to migrate there (maybe even people from different factions, if they will not prevent that). It also will allow to create colonies specially for pop export (i mean: you anyway cant get colony bigger than 7 now).
- your people will be more happy if there is no war with other factions
- admins might have skills to boost happyness
- some planets might have exotic fauna which boost happyness
- miners will have some other ways to enjoy life, not just by medicine
- higher happyness rate if luxury goods are cheap (so, you need to choose: low price and happy people or sad people, but more income)
- etc.[close]
QuoteIf colonies were completely excised from the player skill system, though, and if running colonies yourself was just not an option - you *had* to have an admin... hmm. This sort of thing could make sense and be good.Hmm, I actually think that could be a very good idea. Not sure about any potential pitfalls off the top of my head, but it's intriguing to separate the two in order to give more spice to admins - and therefore cores as well. (Though cores are already pretty interesting by themselves.)
It also makes a bit more sense to me that the player doesn't govern their own colonies directly and rather hires administrators to oversee them, since, they aren't actually present most of the time. And that doesn't necessarily mean that the player couldn't have skills that sort of tie into colonies (like the detachment idea that was mentioned) without directly affecting them.
I'd suggest, rather, making it so that colonies can't get to size four without an admin.
...On the phase ships thing, I'll just say that the current phase mastery elite bonus is very much a quality-of-life thing for me; I don't like playing phase ships without that because the fastest way to travel is using phase... and that costs you your zero flux speed boost, making it feel slow. Losing that will be annoying.
Re: colonies/admins. It makes too much sense to simply not let the player govern. Keep colony skills as-is but up the number of base admins to 4. Make non-skilled admins plentiful and 1-skill admins still relatively common. 2 skill admins would be rare/found (as an aside, these rare ones that cost $25k a month cripple early colonies. All admin salaries need to be pro-rated based on colony size). Also, Beta Admins should be a thing (2-skills but no hypercognition). Industrial planning in Skills could just be Colony Management and increases Admin count by 2 and gives all colonies under Admin control (but not Cores) some kind of bonus to their existing skulls and/or a reduction in their cost to govern. I think Cores are simply no-brainers at this point and paying admins should have an upside.
I like how phase coil tuning says "Combat phase ships", which gives me hope the logistic phase ship issue has been handled.
And it feels like low tech is getting a lot of subtle buffs from some of these skills.
It does raise the question, does the scaling armor for calculations apply to damage hitting hull (in terms of minimum armor?).
To be honest, a pair of Neural linked Onslaught XIVs with a pile of personal skills looks like they should be terrifying. Combat 7, Tech 5, Industry 3 sounds crazy to me initially, but 10 personal skills buffing them both feels like low tech ballistics with old release armor survivability and probably around 1600 flux dissipation each (and potentially with resistant flux conduits+elite polarized armor, 4800 dissipation while venting, for a 4-5 second vent from full flux).
I will say, the 25 OP cost for Neural interface isn't that bad for an Onslaught, but for say a Legion or Odyssey, 25 OP feels a bit steep. Battle carriers, which tend to feel to many players to have insufficient OP for fighters and guns, are going to probably pass on being Neural linked. I guess you're worried about double capitals being the optimal use, given the DP limits on instant swap, and the large jump in OP costs on the hull mod. I'm wondering if I'd bother to use it with an Odyssey, for example. That tends to require attention 100% of the time, the AI isn't quite as good at handling some player centric builds, plus it is a 9% hit to OP. Certainly looking forward to trying it at least getting a feel for how much of a benefit fast swap is on those kinds of ships.
Why would an update with such a massive change to the skill system be titled 0.95.1a instead of 0.95b?
Phase Anchor seems useless.
Also, I don't think speed reduction at 50% hard flux is actually a notable nerf to player-piloted assassin builds - I rarely go above 25% hard flux in current version. Short approach ( a bit hard flux) - unload AMs (soft flux close to the cap) - short retreat (a bit more hard flux) - vent - repeat.
When does the forced removal of the “permeant” effects take place? i.e. if I want to swap my skills from phase ship to carrier skills do I go through that dialogue (and lose stuff) when I press the reassign button or after I have re-spent my points and re-brought the skills (therefore to no effect)?
I see no one talking about the very complicated built in hullmod undoing system.
Alex, I think you're getting yourself into a mess there - keeping an extra list of all ships that remembers what to undo when the skill is unselected? That sounds like a nightmare to maintain, and also very opaque to the player.
I suggest instead that when a player has the relevant skill and builds-in a hullmod, these are marked as "extra built-in" - so it's clear to the player that these are the ones that go away, and the data is stored together with everything else. No second master list of ships!
This makes it trivial to give ships to players that never owned them. Imagine a mod adding an event that gifts a ship - the mod creator can kit it out with the extra built-in hullmods, knowing that if the player doesn't have the appropriate skill they'll just be removed.
Question: does Polarized Armor "turn off" when a ship is overloaded or is it passive-passive to the point of protecting you a bit during such unfortunate circumstances too? I guess it'd be weird to have a skill 'disabled' in such a way, but it's not exactly completely unprecedented (the no-flux-generate speed boost ended up doing that, IIRC?) so I could see that one go either way.
QuoteIf you really need to know, you can actually tell what skill the enemy officer has when you target it! Anyway, from experience firing a ton of Reapers recently vs things that ALL had elite Damage Control, they're still fine and great and Hammers don't really compare. Just not enough raw damage.Huh, wasn't expecting that. And how are Reapers still worth it despite getting their damage reduced to 1900, whereas an individual Hammer punches for 1800 and has two shots for the same OP as a single Reaper? Purely firing at armor rather than as a finisher against hull?
Hmm...on the surface it sounds like that gives HBI a negative synergy with that skill, but "get the benefit of two guns for the price of one gun" isn't a negative, so...playtesting needed...
Me and sarcasm have a long and storied history of being unable to meet up somewhere sensible, so let's just call that Schroedinger's Sarcasm ;).
Speaking as someone who prioritizes campaign QoL (meaning ADF, EO, etc.) over pure combat power I'm sure that -50OP for manual control will sting greatly. Still, I'm sure there's a budget build I can make work.
You still haven't revealed what T4L does.
Any changes to Shield Shunt?
The more I think about it, the more I think an additional speed penalty on top of the of the 1/3rd at high flux sounds like a bit too much stacking penalty. If I understand it correctly, from the pilot's perspective, a Harbinger with Phase Anchor and 50% or higher hard flux moves at a speed 13.3 (80/3 -> 26.6/2 -> 13.3), which roughly half the speed of an Onslaught for a human pilot. That's going to feel painful to pilot a destroyer at. Even reducing it to 25% means speed 20 (26.6*0.75 = 20), although which with 4x time dilation means standard out of phase speed of 80.
The benefits of 4x time dilation relative to 3x are: 25% faster soft flux dissipation, 25% faster weapon cycling, 25% faster ship system cycling, and 25% faster movement speed relative to real time. Adding a speed reduction eliminates the last advantage, literally turning it into faster gun/system cycling at the cost of player patience while trying to move.
The disadvantages are 25% faster hard flux accumulation, and 25% faster peak performance time tick down. Say it's a 25% speed penalty from the Anchor mod, so real time speed stays the same. The hard flux cost per unit distance covered in phase has gone up by 33%. Which means such a mod makes it more likely you simply get killed when it comes time to run away as your hard flux will be higher than compared to a ship that didn't have that hull mod.
...
Hmm - maybe you didn't catch the part about the skill being changed so this damage-reduction effect only procs at most once every two seconds? Because with that, you fire two Reapers, the first one takes down the armor and also procs the effect, while the second one just deals full damage. Hammers... things get a lot messier trying to use Hammers. It's not just a DPS-on-paper thing, you know?I did, but I don't know how I'm supposed to consistently deal a 500+ damage hit at most two seconds before landing a Reaper to get the full damage out of it. Using a second Reaper is only possible if I've got multiple Reapers slotted and is a huge waste of ammo/damage potential if I do besides, to the point where I'd be better off using that same OP to fit Hammers and using them to dance with the damage nerf. A small hammer torpedo slot comes with 2 ammo and a 1 second reload time, so (in theory, decent aim permitting) it can trigger the damage nerf and sneak in a full damage shot by itself, whereas that same OP worth of Reaper either needs support or gambles with hitting the damage nerf and turning into a dud.
I mean, getting 10 OP to spend is generally going to be better than getting 20 flux dissipation (and, what, 200 capacity?), since that's just 3 OP worth of vents/caps. So unless you're maxed on vents and caps and have flux distributor/coil adjunct, HBI is just strictly better than not having it (which isn't even a choice in the first place since it's built-in, so that's a bit of a moot point anyway). And even if flux stats are maxed, chances are you can get more out of the extra OP.Yeah, on paper it seems silly that HBI lowers the bonus you get from the skill but in practice you're better off using that OP elsewhere anyway. Unless someone manages to create a physical incarnation of the Platonic Ideal of all meme builds, I suppose. There's a reason I wouldn't call myself a master theorycrafter.
I'll just say, if admins don't use skills the player can get, then that opens up some possibilities for what sorts of things those skills could be/represent...Random thought: Faction specific(/inspired?) colony skills? Like a Luddic Church admin might have something farming/handcrafting related, whereas a Tri-Tachyon admin might boost Tech Mining/AI Core usage/etc.? Don't know if admin skills should get that specific, but there might be a decent idea in there.
Hmm - genuinely not sure what you mean! I'm not seeing how any of these changes would make them "more OP".Same ability and cloak CD, more HP and armor. You think that speed limit after 50% flux will do the thing, but under 50% there is no difference. And then you allow to install mod for 75% cap. What could go wrong?
I just don't want to come up with a bunch of mechanical stuff if it all boils down to "more or less credits at the end of the month"...I agree. I d like to see more QoL stuff and, may be, some more ways to attack other factions from different "angles". Culture victory by making every citizen happy? I ll take 2! =)
There is another skill that could really use this mechanic, the 10% hardflux dissipation while shields are up hardly do anything, as you a normally using your guns while your shields are up, so you are only venting softflux anyway.Phase anchor sound really weird to me. It makes phase ship impossible to escape and tick down PPT much faster. It sounds like ... uh... bad life decisions.
The main purpose of this hullmod is for brawling phase ships right?
How about let a phase ship vent hard flux prior to soft flux when unphased? (Is it possible?)
Hah! Hmm, that's an interesting idea, actually. It's not currently possible but it's *likely* doable without too much trouble - I'll see how my threshold-altering idea goes, then maybe try this too, if needed. I mean, reducing the "lowest speed" threshold to 25% hard flux should hopefully hit some of the same goals - enough mobility to get away if you're part of a battle line.
I don't get the point of an super expensive neural link hullmod for radiants, just S-Mod it.
A small hammer torpedo slot comes with 2 ammo and a 1 second reload time, so (in theory, decent aim permitting) it can trigger the damage nerf and sneak in a full damage shot by itself, whereas that same OP worth of Reaper either needs support or gambles with hitting the damage nerf and turning into a dud.
QuoteHmm - genuinely not sure what you mean! I'm not seeing how any of these changes would make them "more OP".Same ability and cloak CD, more HP and armor. You think that speed limit after 50% flux will do the thing, but under 50% there is no difference. And then you allow to install mod for 75% cap. What could go wrong?
I agree. I d like to see more QoL stuff and, may be, some more ways to attack other factions from different "angles". Culture victory by making every citizen happy? I ll take 2! =)
I don't get the point of an super expensive neural link hullmod for radiants, just S-Mod it.
Hmmmmm
Cybernetic Augmentation... is not an officer skill
I have a few guesses
1. Increase the upper limit of coordinated maneuvers and EW
(Same effect as 0.91 Command Control level 3)
2. Allow officer elite skill reassignment and pick any personality (shown in Twitter)
3. Increase auto-fire accuracy across the board (including fighters)
4. Increase weapon hit strength during armor damage calculation
These are all just old skills but missing in latest (except for #2.)
As you have mentioned, how tight is the guardrail against potential respec cheese as of S mods? There are multiple ways a player can temporarily put away a ship full of S mods for reclaiming later.
i enjoyed reading the blog post, sounds like great improvements are comming. very exiting.
one thought i had was that i really do not care so much about safe game compatiblity. its a pre-release game anyway, i think most of us expect that any upgrade might break an older game. i mean, yeah. its nice to have, but id generally would appriciate another piece of progress then safe game compatiblity where i would most likely start a new game after major changes anyhow.
Another mostly disappointing read. The overarching problem seems to be something that's plagued Starsector for years, stinginess with player power ("but not too game-changing"). A whole +5 top speed? Woo-hoo, that'll make all the difference in a fight! ::) I said it for years, I'll say it again: Starsector is a power fantasy, finding ways to attain excessive power is what makes such games fun, and perfect balance is a detriment in that respect. It seems this realization was almost reached in the Neural Link + Automated Ships section ("it's way too strong but also really fun"), but then a nerf was applied instead. Fun overload detected, deploy emergency nerfs!
The one issue is the Phase Anchor hullmod (the one that makes the ship slower, but with a higher phase-time multiplier) – the ship just feels too slow to fly, and the extra time multiplier doesn’t feel like enough to make up for it. So that’s something I’d like to take another look at.This one is probably an easy fix. Its main goal is to boost brawlers, by effectively giving better flux/weapon recharge? Skip the time acceleration, and just do that:
Ahhh! The speed penalty *maxes out* when the ship is at 50% max flux, and stays maxed from 50 to 100%. But it begins as soon as hard flux level is above zero, so e.g. at 25% hard flux, it'd have half the penalty - so, a 33% reduction in max speed at that point already. Which, funnily enough - happens to be the exact number you're suggesting there :)Now it sounds good =)
I think it would be better to be able to switch how much time dilation you want to experience, when it comes to quality of life. Speed is an in-game statistic and it very much has an impact on the game - as I have demonstrated, the bigger, the more speed you have....On the phase ships thing, I'll just say that the current phase mastery elite bonus is very much a quality-of-life thing for me; I don't like playing phase ships without that because the fastest way to travel is using phase... and that costs you your zero flux speed boost, making it feel slow. Losing that will be annoying.
Yeah, I get that. I mean, you could get Phase Coil Tuning for half that bonus, and Unstable Injector is there, etc, but yeah. That one stings a bit but I don't think there's any good way around that.
(Sadly, that notation no longer makes much sense. Maybe we can call it, like... T3C. Or just T33.)Or 333 even! Full on robot speak. Though I don't think this notation of mine has a long life ahead of it, mainly because of the rather substantial combat tier 1 selection. We will just learn names of all the skills and use those.
That skill is called "Cybernetic Augmentation", but beyong that, :-X
Something for brawlers would be something that reduced cloak cooldown, cloak activation cost or time dilation in phase, or all of the above.The more I think about it, the more I think an additional speed penalty on top of the of the 1/3rd at high flux sounds like a bit too much stacking penalty. If I understand it correctly, from the pilot's perspective, a Harbinger with Phase Anchor and 50% or higher hard flux moves at a speed 13.3 (80/3 -> 26.6/2 -> 13.3), which roughly half the speed of an Onslaught for a human pilot. That's going to feel painful to pilot a destroyer at. Even reducing it to 25% means speed 20 (26.6*0.75 = 20), although which with 4x time dilation means standard out of phase speed of 80.
The benefits of 4x time dilation relative to 3x are: 25% faster soft flux dissipation, 25% faster weapon cycling, 25% faster ship system cycling, and 25% faster movement speed relative to real time. Adding a speed reduction eliminates the last advantage, literally turning it into faster gun/system cycling at the cost of player patience while trying to move.
The disadvantages are 25% faster hard flux accumulation, and 25% faster peak performance time tick down. Say it's a 25% speed penalty from the Anchor mod, so real time speed stays the same. The hard flux cost per unit distance covered in phase has gone up by 33%. Which means such a mod makes it more likely you simply get killed when it comes time to run away as your hard flux will be higher than compared to a ship that didn't have that hull mod.
...
What I'm thinking about is having it reduce the hard flux threshold instead, so that it hits max speed penalty at 25% instead of at 50%. That way you'd have a tougher time getting into an "assassinate" type position, but would have enough room to back off and vent, especially with some support to hide behing. Reducing the phase cloak cooldown could be good here, too, or perhaps just overall reducing the damage taken. And perhaps combining all this with a 5x multiplier. Need to try a bunch of things and see how it all feels, though - that's just assorted ideas at this point, nothing concrete.
I think the Neural Link adjustment for the Radiant is very reasonable, because otherwise that might fall into that sort of category. Go Automated Ships, Neural Link, cap Radiant - win.
Go Best of the Best - feel really let down by how terrible it is in comparison.
As you have mentioned, how tight is the guardrail against potential respec cheese as of S mods? There are multiple ways a player can temporarily put away a ship full of S mods for reclaiming later.The blog says cheapest one gets removed for those not in your fleet, while you choose for those in your fleet.
I think the new skills changes are a step in the right direction:agency for the player and emphasis on their general playstyle without forcing absolute overspecialization.Removed.
Just one question if it can be answered:Is Auxiliary Support changed in any way???It felt relativey weak in its current implementation,mostly because of the crippling DP limit.6 DP is barely enough to fit one small civilian ship,and since no one in their right mind would run Auxiliary Support to buff,say,a Phaeton,that leaves Combat Freighters,which means an entire skill point is spent making a Gemini somewhat stronger which feel immensely weak.
I think the new skills changes are a step in the right direction:agency for the player and emphasis on their general playstyle without forcing absolute overspecialization.Removed.
Just one question if it can be answered:Is Auxiliary Support changed in any way???It felt relativey weak in its current implementation,mostly because of the crippling DP limit.6 DP is barely enough to fit one small civilian ship,and since no one in their right mind would run Auxiliary Support to buff,say,a Phaeton,that leaves Combat Freighters,which means an entire skill point is spent making a Gemini somewhat stronger which feel immensely weak.
I think the new skills changes are a step in the right direction:agency for the player and emphasis on their general playstyle without forcing absolute overspecialization.Removed.
Just one question if it can be answered:Is Auxiliary Support changed in any way???It felt relativey weak in its current implementation,mostly because of the crippling DP limit.6 DP is barely enough to fit one small civilian ship,and since no one in their right mind would run Auxiliary Support to buff,say,a Phaeton,that leaves Combat Freighters,which means an entire skill point is spent making a Gemini somewhat stronger which feel immensely weak.
***,for real???Is there any source confirming it?
Auxiliary SupportRemoved.
Not sure if this question has been asked already but why the elite effect of polarized armor is in direct conflict of interests with the effects of the skill itself? I mean skill favours you being at high hard flux levels by providing bonuses to armour, but the elite effect makes you vent better, thus youll spend more time in the "no bonus to armor" levels of hard flux. Seems a bit counter-intuitive
Not sure if this question has been asked already but why the elite effect of polarized armor is in direct conflict of interests with the effects of the skill itself? I mean skill favours you being at high hard flux levels by providing bonuses to armour, but the elite effect makes you vent better, thus youll spend more time in the "no bonus to armor" levels of hard flux. Seems a bit counter-intuitiveIt’s active vent speed, not passive.
It's certainly more fun to play with over tuned talents than under tuned. Star sector is a single player campaign after all. If it feels like good, fun talents stand out because other trees lack that same punch, it may be worth trying to improve those trees instead.
For example, safety overrides is one of the most game changing hull mods there is. Perhaps a talent should target it directly? The concept of reckless ship design doesn't fit in leadership, combat or technology. It'd be right at home as an industry skill.
With s-mods being able to be removed by respec-ing BotB on and off, it would be nice if there was another easier way to remove s-mods, especially from unique or limited ships like Ziggurat.
Yeah I was referring to ship clones, or somehow ship stored as variant instead of actual ship, as those may not be referenced by the collection you built.
But I guess that’s mod’s responsibility to keep track of that. Is there an API for mod to log or query the collection?
Re: Derelict Contingent
I changed it to be both combat freighters and civilian ships that benefit but halved the bonus. Maybe something along those lines could be interesting? Or just combat freighters maybe?
I mean, this just doesn't hold up in practice! And if you land a single Reaper on a heavily armored capital (i.e. the Radiant, in this case), much of its damage potential will be spent on armor anyway, and calling that a dud is a bit much.So if i'm reading this right, damage control will reduce the hull damage taken, but have no impact on the armour damage taken?
- An added thought i came up with after typing all of the above, is how this "every 2 seconds you take reduced damage from a shot" mechanic is going to be rather hard to advertise to the player, unless there is a visual indication of some sort, and that could quite easily look out of place.
There's also the fact that it's a bit of a... "gamey" mechanic, and to me almost feels a bit out of place in the game.
On the subject of everything else, it's all sounding nice.
One thought though, two of polarized armors bonuses only work with hard flux, so for ships that can't generate hard flux (the new Vanguard for one!) it might be an idea to add a cheap(?) hullmod, that converts some/all of soft flux into hard flux (and/or possibly tie this into shield shunt?)
"Cybernetic Augmentation"? And it's a strikecraft skill.....
Really awesome to see the return of in-combat repairs through Combat Endurance. I loved this skill since it always reminds me of the power of Automated Hull Repair units I built into my starships in Master Of Orion 2. Will any hull that is currently regenerating when combat ends automatically get their maximum repair?
Sounds good that Phase Coil Tuning now doesn't include non-combat phase ships. Revenants should provide a decent boost to sensor range without increasing your sensor profile, so they are becoming even better for exploration/salvaging (not quite ready to retire my favourite Apogee just yet though!).
* Is T4L the new Ground Operations?
Hmm? Not sure which you mean but I think it's one of the fighter skills.
There's a new Technology skill for strikecraft?Since you were talking about GO it was assumed you were talking about "Tier" 4 left of Leadership.* Is T4L the new Ground Operations?
Hmm? Not sure which you mean but I think it's one of the fighter skills.
With s-mods being able to be removed by respec-ing BotB on and off, it would be nice if there was another easier way to remove s-mods, especially from unique or limited ships like Ziggurat.
Might be worth adding that as an option at some point, yeah.
So what you're saying is...With s-mods being able to be removed by respec-ing BotB on and off, it would be nice if there was another easier way to remove s-mods, especially from unique or limited ships like Ziggurat.
Might be worth adding that as an option at some point, yeah.
so the inflexibility of s-mods is meant as a balancing factor. but how much of a balancing factor is it, really? i would argue not at all, the inflexibility does not change performance, but just makes it less convinient to use. the price is high, as it discourages experimentation as it puts a very high price tag on failed experiments, and inconvinience itself is hardly ever a good thing.
there are more issues: its generally best to use s-mods on the most expensive mods and so s-mod usefulness scales a lot with the price of the mods its used on, so its effect is variable which i would think is not optimal.
i like the idea of adding a permanent cost on ships, but i do not like this sysem all that much. why not replace it? like, maybe let me spend s-points to increase op and/or maybe max vents to elite my ships for story points.
of couse, this might (proabably would) again break overdrives, but id argue that this is merely an indicator for overdrives themself still being problematic.
so the inflexibility of s-mods is meant as a balancing factor. but how much of a balancing factor is it, really? i would argue not at all, the inflexibility does not change performance, but just makes it less convinient to use. the price is high, as it discourages experimentation as it puts a very high price tag on failed experiments, and inconvinience itself is hardly ever a good thing.For most ships, player can just build another (or loot another in case of automated ships), but this does not work for Ziggurat because it is unique and player cannot replace hero ship Z. (Guardian could be another limited option if it becomes recoverable.)
there are more issues: its generally best to use s-mods on the most expensive mods and so s-mod usefulness scales a lot with the price of the mods its used on, so its effect is variable which i would think is not optimal.
i like the idea of adding a permanent cost on ships, but i do not like this sysem all that much. why not replace it? like, maybe let me spend s-points to increase op and/or maybe max vents to elite my ships for story points.
For .95.1 a ship is almost always recoverable if it has any S-mod / has an officer or has reinforced bulkhead.so the inflexibility of s-mods is meant as a balancing factor. but how much of a balancing factor is it, really? i would argue not at all, the inflexibility does not change performance, but just makes it less convinient to use. the price is high, as it discourages experimentation as it puts a very high price tag on failed experiments, and inconvinience itself is hardly ever a good thing.For most ships, player can just build another (or loot another in case of automated ships), but this does not work for Ziggurat because it is unique and player cannot replace hero ship Z. (Guardian could be another limited option if it becomes recoverable.)
there are more issues: its generally best to use s-mods on the most expensive mods and so s-mod usefulness scales a lot with the price of the mods its used on, so its effect is variable which i would think is not optimal.
i like the idea of adding a permanent cost on ships, but i do not like this sysem all that much. why not replace it? like, maybe let me spend s-points to increase op and/or maybe max vents to elite my ships for story points.
Augmented Engines is a very expensive QoL hullmod, and I usually put it on my burn 7 battleships, but I will take it off if I desperately need more power. I have no problem s-modding that into Onslaught or Paragon, but I do not on Ziggurat because I cannot undo or get another Ziggurat.
Also, Reinforced Bulkheads (expensive on capitals) guarantees recovery of Ziggurat, but depending on skills, that hullmod is unnecessary.
For a player-piloted Radiant, the initial version was rather close to the aforementioned godMode.
And it feels like low tech is getting a lot of subtle buffs from some of these skills. Polarized armor is an obvious boost to high armor ships, bringing back the 85%->90% max reduction, as well as the +50% armor for calculations (admittedly scaling, but still). That straight up increases the amount of damage before minimum stops applying by 50% (at 0% flux). Assuming high flux, say, 75%, I'd guess you'd get 37.5% more effective armor for calculations, which means 1.5*1.37 that overall that minimum damage period lasts twice as long.IMO the offensive buffs aren't even subtle, ordnance expertise/ballistic rangefinder/ballistic rangefinder look like they really beef up low-tech.
I mean, this just doesn't hold up in practice! And if you land a single Reaper on a heavily armored capital (i.e. the Radiant, in this case), much of its damage potential will be spent on armor anyway, and calling that a dud is a bit much. I do understand your logic here, but I don't think it adds up - and playtesting bears that out. Reapers feel powerful.I don't like damage control's 60%/2 secs for 3 reasons:
going just by statistic it looks like the radiant is just a flatly better shipThis is one of those cases where the stats don't tell the full story:
https://imgur.com/a/qPZTBkg
I said it for years, I'll say it again: Starsector is a power fantasy, finding ways to attain excessive power is what makes such games fun, and perfect balance is a detriment in that respect. It seems this realization was almost reached in the Neural Link + Automated Ships section ("it's way too strong but also really fun"), but then a nerf was applied instead. Fun overload detected, deploy emergency nerfs!Starsector is a power fantasy for you.
so the inflexibility of s-mods is meant as a balancing factor.
i like the idea of adding a permanent cost on ships, but i do not like this sysem all that much. why not replace it? like, maybe let me spend s-points to increase op and/or maybe max vents to elite my ships for story points.
For a player-piloted Radiant, the initial version was rather close to the aforementioned godMode.
Was it really? With the Ziggurat in the game I have to wonder if that was really that much more powerful.
Either way, I'm looking forward to the changes, seems like almost everything is positive.
I'm a little sad to see the administrator skills go, as now the administrators are more a matter of what portrait you want to see on your colony screen.
If the skills aren't that important, why not add something else instead? Administrators could come with a set of contracts that either make certain production more profitable or increase imports for a particular product in addition to what is maximally available. These contracts can rotate at intervals, encouraging you to move your administrators to other colonies.
You could even start farming administrators from your pool of contacts once you've ground the reputation enough...
I don't like damage control's 60%/2 secs for 3 reasons:
- it's pretty hard to show the player which ships will shrug off tons of hull damage at any given time, certainly clunks up the UI
- AI already has some trouble using missiles, this skill complicates that further
- friendly AI can potentially mess with your shot. You can work around their hellbores/whatever, but it's a new way for allies to annoy the player. No matter how rare it is, the few instances it happens will be remembered
IMO it'd be much cleaner to have a weaker effect, but with no frequency limitation.
More reliable, less ways to get frustrated, easier to handle HIL/strike beams.
One annoyance with Ziggurat is I cannot rob or fight people without going to war with them, regardless of stealth. (I can only use Z for bounty hunting or Ordos hunting in the fringe.) On the other hand, being unique gives the Ziggurat the feeling of a blatant hero ship destined to be the player's personal flagship for the remainder of the game, like the Vindicator from Star Control 2.If only there was a big, reclusive capital ship with a game-changing ability tucked away somewhere in the sector.
I feel kind of pressured to get phase ship skills because Xenorphica is Starsector's Vindicator once in falls into the player's hands.
There ought to be at least another unique or signature ship to choose from.
#3, I'm not sure how friendly AI could mess with it. Their fire can only help, it can't harm anything as far as you trying to manage this. Maybe I'm missing something?Nope, just a brainfart on my side.
Nope, just a brainfart on my side.
I meant allies can mess your timing up by unreliably triggering the CD, properly thinking about it that's not a problem.
I'm a little sad to see the administrator skills go, as now the administrators are more a matter of what portrait you want to see on your colony screen.
If the skills aren't that important, why not add something else instead? Administrators could come with a set of contracts that either make certain production more profitable or increase imports for a particular product in addition to what is maximally available. These contracts can rotate at intervals, encouraging you to move your administrators to other colonies.
You could even start farming administrators from your pool of contacts once you've ground the reputation enough...
Ah - that sort of thing is just outside of how far I'd want to go while just changing how skills work. I will say that we've talked about some things that are vaguely in the same general area, but it's not something I want to talk about publicly because it's not decided, if that makes sense.
Nvm got it right the first time, just getting late:#3, I'm not sure how friendly AI could mess with it. Their fire can only help, it can't harm anything as far as you trying to manage this. Maybe I'm missing something?Nope, just a brainfart on my side.
I meant allies can mess your timing up by unreliably triggering the CD, properly thinking about it that's not a problem.
(Aaaah, gotcha, that makes sense!)
If only there was a big, reclusive capital ship with a game-changing ability tucked away somewhere in the sector.
And that we could recover.
If only there was a big, reclusive capital ship with a game-changing ability tucked away somewhere in the sector.We know of Ziggurat, but it is the only one. Would be nice if there were one or two more such signature ships (very powerful and no hiding ID possible) so player can choose one among few instead of left with Ziggurat as the only choice.
And that we could recover.
Why the Guardian of course!If only there was a big, reclusive capital ship with a game-changing ability tucked away somewhere in the sector.
And that we could recover.Spoilerwhat are we talking about?[close]
On the other hand, once colonies have a more active role in the game…
Speaking of Guardian, can't anything be done to it to make it recoverable? From my experience, the only thing it had over Radiant was too high a number of ordnance points and the fact that I had to conciously not put small sabots in medium missile slots since those are a bit broken when they don't run out due to extremely high DPS. The first problem can easily be solved by reducing OP to slightly less than Radiant, the second can be solved by changing medium missile slot into medium synergy/composite/universal, so that missiles couldn't be downsized.
Wouldn't it be cool to have a choice between 2 different Automated capitals?
Looking at the phase ships behaviour changes being play-tested/planned for next version, I think reducing Ziggurat's deployment/recovery cost might be warranted to keep it desirable in a player fleet in next version.
For other phase ships, their existing (supposedly unchanged) deployment/recovery cost might actually become adequate for their new performance profile.
So there's only three fighters-affecting skills (Point Defense, Carrier Group, Fighter Uplink) in total now?
Speaking of Guardian, can't anything be done to it to make it recoverable? From my experience, the only thing it had over Radiant was too high a number of ordnance points and the fact that I had to conciously not put small sabots in medium missile slots since those are a bit broken when they don't run out due to extremely high DPS. The first problem can easily be solved by reducing OP to slightly less than Radiant, the second can be solved by changing medium missile slot into medium synergy/composite/universal, so that missiles couldn't be downsized.
Wouldn't it be cool to have a choice between 2 different Automated capitals?
These skill and balance changes sound good. Except for the Damage Control's elite effect which sounds bad. Heavy hitters like reaper torpedoes are exciting for those on the giving and those on the receiving end. It's better if they cannot be neutralized with a passive skill.
These skill and balance changes sound good. Except for the Damage Control's elite effect which sounds bad. Heavy hitters like reaper torpedoes are exciting for those on the giving and those on the receiving end. It's better if they cannot be neutralized with a passive skill.
I'll just say, I understand what you're saying! From the testing I've done, though, Reapers still felt pretty great. I'll keep an eye on this, though.
Also, kind of annoyed that the projectile speed skill is still attached to ballistics bonuses. I'll still take it for my plasma cannon apogees, because that bonus is the difference between them shooting down frigates and not, but taking "Ballistics Mastery" for a build that is anything but that, does not feel good. Don't suppose we're getting a projectile speed hullmod any time soon?
Actually, there are some good ways around that... but the easy one requires changing the helmsmanship elite skill bonus....On the phase ships thing, I'll just say that the current phase mastery elite bonus is very much a quality-of-life thing for me; I don't like playing phase ships without that because the fastest way to travel is using phase... and that costs you your zero flux speed boost, making it feel slow. Losing that will be annoying.
Yeah, I get that. I mean, you could get Phase Coil Tuning for half that bonus, and Unstable Injector is there, etc, but yeah. That one stings a bit but I don't think there's any good way around that.
So there's only three fighters-affecting skills (Point Defense, Carrier Group, Fighter Uplink) in total now?
Right.
+15% CR skill still exists and is good on carriers. Defensive skills matter for carriers. System Expertise can be great depending on the carrier. Same for missile spec.Energy weapons get EWM, ballistic weapons now get BM, missiles get MS.
Imo it's better than having the same few dedicated carrier skills on every carrier officer you have.
Alex, what are your thoughts modifying the following skills to affect fighters: Ballistic Mastery, Energy Weapons Mastery, Missile Specialisation, Ordnance Expertise, Best of the Best, Support Doctrine, Cybernetic AugmentationI bet he's thinking "where's the suggestion in this post?"
(...Honestly, I did like the old less-than-5% thing, because that meant a normally-designed ship variant could operate both shields and PD without losing the zero flux boost... but I get that it was problematic and abusable via, say, beam-heavy loadouts.)I liked the whatever% thing not because it's any good, but because it makes AI stop shooting itself in the foot in pursuits and the like.
SpoilerPersonally, I've always seen Reaper as armor crackers primarily. Which the Damage Control skill doesn't change at all. A fully skilled Onslaught XIV with heavy armor and armored mounts is still going to have 0 armor in a spot hit by a reaper with Elite Damage Control or without. So the primary use, to open a hole that your other weapons can exploit is still there. Sure, you can use them to wipe out hull, but that's always struck me as inefficient compared to using other weapons, especially when factoring misses in.
To be honest, I'd be worried that the skill is too narrow, not that it is too strong against reapers. It really only comes into play under some very narrow circumstances, which the player doesn't control - namely what weapons the enemy is equipped with. And even then might affect only a single attack depending on how much incoming alpha there is (overkill harpoon swarms come to mind). And I'd argue for the majority of fleets and majority of ships (although not all), sabots are scarier than reapers. You need to win the flux war before you need to concern yourself with how fast you're dealing hull damage. At the point you're taking hull damage, all other defenses have failed. Range, speed, shields, armor.
For example, I don't think I'd ever consider making it elite on an officer, for example, even if I did take damage control for the officer. Especially with a 2 second cooldown. Whatever the field modulation elite effect for shields is likely to prevent more meaningful damage and potentially change the fate of the ship. Or the elite Combat Endurance if you really are relying on hull tanking - that works against small weapons better which tend to be more common. If an enemy officer has this as elite as opposed to something else more useful, I'll probably just be glad and most likely won't notice a difference than if they didn't have any elite skill in terms of outcome.
At best it's going to be a minor perk for Brilliants and Radiant's with AI cores installed. And you're already better of going kinetic DPS instead of large single shot HE heavy against those ships anyways, and Reapers will open up 1500 armor on a Radiant for kinetics to do hull damage just fine if necessary.
Of course, I'd like to get to play with it first, just to see how much of a difference it really does make, but for a lot of my fleet configurations, just based on their weapon loadouts, it is not going to be noticeable.[close]
And as for locked out options - with the skill as it is, you have to be really careful about anything that boosts the zero flux speed bonus. Cut that out, and you could, for example, just give phase ships enough of a zero flux boost that they're actually better off not using phasing for travel - which should play better. With the skill in the game, though, you can't do things like give a battlecruiser a significant bonus to zero-flux speed, because it'll compound badly with elite helmsmanship.
I'd prefer an elite helmsmanship bonus that's either just a zero flux speed boost increase - or just a literal "shield maintenance costs no longer disrupt the zero flux boost". (...Honestly, I did like the old less-than-5% thing, because that meant a normally-designed ship variant could operate both shields and PD without losing the zero flux boost... but I get that it was problematic and abusable via, say, beam-heavy loadouts.)
Alex, what are your thoughts modifying the following skills to affect fighters: Ballistic Mastery, Energy Weapons Mastery, Missile Specialisation, Ordnance Expertise, Best of the Best, Support Doctrine, Cybernetic Augmentation
Does that mean that since of out those the officers have access only to Point Defense AFAIK, assigning officers to carriers is basically an inferior choice at best, newbie trap at worst?
+15% CR skill still exists and is good on carriers. Defensive skills matter for carriers. System Expertise can be great depending on the carrier. Same for missile spec.
Energy weapons get EWM, ballistic weapons now get BM, missiles get MS.
Fighters? They aint get nothing.
A Missile based point defence option would be cool, e.g.
small 3op active flare launcer against missiles only
small 5op regenerating Locust SRM clone against figthers
For adding more bonus effects for fighters without adding more skills.Alex, what are your thoughts modifying the following skills to affect fighters: Ballistic Mastery, Energy Weapons Mastery, Missile Specialisation, Ordnance Expertise, Best of the Best, Support Doctrine, Cybernetic Augmentation
My thoughts are "but why?" :)
I think this came up earlier in the Part 1 thread - it's an interesting idea, but I think it'd make you feel forced to use ships with fighters just to make the most out of the bonuses. And that'd likely be the "optimal" way to go.While I feel this is definitely true, I also feel the pendulum's swung too far the other way:
I am pretty sure people still use Paragons and consider them strong, even if they benefit from neither tier 5 combat skill.
While I feel this is definitely true, I also feel the pendulum's swung too far the other way:
I feel disincentivised to use carriers because they're not an optimal way to go.
it definitely does, i literally wont take an officer on who has any carrier skills just bc i dont want to pigeon-hole myself into always having to have a carrier. if some combat skills gave a benefit to a combat ship and also gave a benefit to fighters, it would be great.Isn’t that the same with current Phase Mastery?
(Hmm - not sure if you're responding to something I said, or not? If so: I'm not clear on how it relates.)The player monkey realises that even if a given ship benefits more from skills than other ships, it doesn't make it automatically a better pick over other ships.
Isn’t that the same with current Phase Mastery
The player monkey realises that even if a given ship benefits more from skills than other ships, it doesn't make it automatically a better pick over other ships.
I am pretty sure people still use Paragons and consider them strong, even if they benefit from neither tier 5 combat skill.
Nah lemme complain the last bit:
Phase has everything it needs packed in one single tech skill (fleet-wide), why are carrier skills split into two?
I mean, I feel being taxed an additional skill point to use carriers(need 2 points in leadership) comparing to using phase(only need to take the phase coil one).Nah lemme complain the last bit:
Phase has everything it needs packed in one single tech skill (fleet-wide), why are carrier skills split into two?
They're not anymore; both carrier fleetwides are in Leadership.
I mean, I feel being taxed an additional skill point to use carriers(need 2 points in leadership) comparing to using phase(only need to take the phase coil one).
It gives combat endurance, which has 15% CR as one of its effects. I might be way off base, but I think support doctrine might be low key but very strong.
If the 15% CR skill (Crew training) is still around (and I see its icon, no idea if unchanged) they can both be taken so they will stack. And with both of the fighter boosters being in leadership now (cool!) they serve as handy prereqs for support doctrine, which gives combat endurance for another 15% means that unofficered carriers can be at 100% (while being at a DP discount!). If I understand the skill structure correctly, that means that a carrier centric playthrough is only going to need 1 noncarrier skill in leadership to reach the first peak.
I am pretty sure people still use Paragons and consider them strong, even if they benefit from neither tier 5 combat skill.
Enemy AI and builds have improved, and they'll ram that down any captial's throat pretty hard(though your own AI is still a potato).
For explorer runs extra Cr is more of a malus than a buff, as you can sink quite some supplies into unneeded CR, would be nice to limit the CR for repairs of ship you never plan to field anyway.That’s totally untrue unless you run extended combats and run down CR to literally 0 or surf hyperspace storms/coronas as if they don’t exist.
Btw. an efficeny overhauled Paragon in a Corona seams to consume much more supplies than one without efficiency. If you disable repair for the time inside, and repair later both consume the same amount which is even less than both previous values.
Enemy AI and builds have improved, and they'll ram that down any captial's throat pretty hard(though your own AI is still a potato).
(AI's the same on both sides... :) )
Well for A: AI core officers have an aggression level above reckless, exclusive to them.
I gotta say, I really like the direction of the industry skills now. having cr and hulltank improvement skills already felt great and a big step towards more civvie/low tech plays, and the new ones seem to go well with that style.
I think this might be as good as it gets for a place to mention this but hulltanking is really not that big of an option as of now, and it could be the secret to making low tech stronger due to minimum armor reduction. as it stands we had great steps towards it with min armor reduction skills, reduced crew casualties on hull hits etc, but at the end of the day it's still a fleet game where often multiple ships engage one target, with each having dps in the 3-4 digit range against 4-5 digit hull points. multiplying hull points by some factor across the board is not something that would probably happen but it would disproportionately help out ships with higher base armor more,, so I suggest doubling down on what the new industry skills have blessed us with already, some skills further adding hull points and making min armor skills percentage based rather than flat could save lowtech and general civvie scavenger rig play styles (most mods add some or the other commercial mining vessels in the vein of the shepherd), along with perhaps a buff to hull increasing hull mods as in a skill that would reduce hull HP affecting hull mods to be perhaps a bit op cheaper or double their effect or something. Just my 2 cents as a mining/commercial scavenger rp enjoyer seeing how the new industry skills will make this better now
A) [REDACTED] do not have the standard AI, and no combination of commands and officer personalities can replicate how they behave to my own satisfaction. In vanilla, [REDACTED] and {INCREDIBLY REDACTED} are the two situations for which you really want to bust out capitals, and ironically to me, seem to be the situations they are weakest in.
B) I suspect that enemy fleets are run by an invisible 'fleet commander'. It seems, based on how fluidly they behave, that this invisible fleet commander has an absolute metric ton of command points. You can replicate how enemy fleets behave, but you don't have the command points to come close to the sustained behavior.
Oh its quite very true.For explorer runs extra Cr is more of a malus than a buff, as you can sink quite some supplies into unneeded CR, would be nice to limit the CR for repairs of ship you never plan to field anyway.That’s totally untrue unless you run extended combats and run down CR to literally 0 or surf hyperspace storms/coronas as if they don’t exist.
Btw. an efficeny overhauled Paragon in a Corona seams to consume much more supplies than one without efficiency. If you disable repair for the time inside, and repair later both consume the same amount which is even less than both previous values.
It only costs additional supply when recovering CR to max, but uses the same supply to sustain.
Oh its quite very true.For explorer runs extra Cr is more of a malus than a buff, as you can sink quite some supplies into unneeded CR, would be nice to limit the CR for repairs of ship you never plan to field anyway.That’s totally untrue unless you run extended combats and run down CR to literally 0 or surf hyperspace storms/coronas as if they don’t exist.
Btw. an efficeny overhauled Paragon in a Corona seams to consume much more supplies than one without efficiency. If you disable repair for the time inside, and repair later both consume the same amount which is even less than both previous values.
It only costs additional supply when recovering CR to max, but uses the same supply to sustain.
There are effects that instantly reduce the CR of a ship to 0
Recovering 70 Cr is cheaper than 100 Cr on any ship
e.g. a Logistics ship get hit by a hyperspace storm.
I want to be able to limit my repairs to save supplies in some situations, namely I don't profit from extra Cr on that ship and having more Cr just means it will lose more Cr in some situations, which would be a net loss of supplies.
Hmm yeah "overkill" from a storm strike would cost more wouldn't it! Consider me corrected. I suppose the player could run with repairs off on those ships as default and only toggle once they got too low for emergency burning? Thats quite the tedious micro though.Ships with critical CR/hull that are not being actively repaired or Mothballed can randomly get destroyed from a lack of repair, even when being stationary on the campaign map.
Hmm yeah "overkill" from a storm strike would cost more wouldn't it! Consider me corrected. I suppose the player could run with repairs off on those ships as default and only toggle once they got too low for emergency burning? Thats quite the tedious micro though.That's the point, it's tedious micro, limiting the CR for repairs would remove useless tedious micro for the same effect.
Well for A: AI core officers have an aggression level above reckless, exclusive to them.
I really like the changes, looking forward to trying out a bunch of new playstiles with the next update! That we now can completely respec will make it so much easier, thank you for your work on that, Alex!
One thing I'm wondering (maybe it was already answered): will the elite skills stay as cheap as they are, just one SP? At the moment they are absolute no-brainers to pick, and now they will be even better. I was expecting them to double in cost each time you pick one, or something...
I think this came up earlier in the Part 1 thread - it's an interesting idea, but I think it'd make you feel forced to use ships with fighters just to make the most out of the bonuses. And that'd likely be the "optimal" way to go.What about fleet skills instead of piloted ship skills for that purpose? There's no forced assigning this way.
Would it be possible to have officers placed 'in reserve' (unusable and you pay their salary but they are not removed or altered) if the skill is respecced out of? Also, the same thing for ships with s-mods (CR is set to 0) would be nice.
Hmm - things are really not set up for doing that easily, unfortunately.
Hmm - I'm not actually sure that buffing hull values would help *that* much. It's useful, right, but if a ship is in a bad way - armor cracked and being shot at by multiple enemies - chances are most of its weapons are disabled, maybe even its engines, and it's not in a position to fight back. So more hull is kind of delaying the inevitable. And, yeah, it would sometimes buy enough time for a friendly ship to come to the rescue. But if the bad spot the ship got into is representative of how the battle is going, then more hull probably isn't going to help very much.just seems like something industry-ish to me. we have hullmods like RFC and ARU which are kind of dead weight atm as as youve said yourself, "hulltanking" is a ship already on the death bed. the addition of skills in industry giving extra CR (mimicking HS) less crew losses (RS) and extra HP (insulated engines and bulkheads and what not) and now the new flux impoving skills already play into levying the OP-taxes of some of these hullmods, so perhaps investing more skill points into something that would increase the effects and cheapen the op costs of hullmods which precisely are there to mitigate these issues such as ARU for example would just about make it worth the build investment, idk
A weird stray question, how hard would it be to make officers be cargo items?That would allow the player to change officer personality and skills at will at no price whatsoever.
Just like Alpha cores are commodities, make officers sit in cargo hold as well.
Add attributes to the item as their skills.
That way a player can freely put away officers not needed now and get them back later.
Have you heard of Shulker Box?A weird stray question, how hard would it be to make officers be cargo items?That would allow the player to change officer personality and skills at will at no price whatsoever.
Just like Alpha cores are commodities, make officers sit in cargo hold as well.
Add attributes to the item as their skills.
That way a player can freely put away officers not needed now and get them back later.
Hmm - I'm not actually sure that buffing hull values would help *that* much. It's useful, right, but if a ship is in a bad way - armor cracked and being shot at by multiple enemies - chances are most of its weapons are disabled, maybe even its engines, and it's not in a position to fight back. So more hull is kind of delaying the inevitable. And, yeah, it would sometimes buy enough time for a friendly ship to come to the rescue. But if the bad spot the ship got into is representative of how the battle is going, then more hull probably isn't going to help very much.
I find that better hull is valuable for fast ships that can evade well, like phase ships. Armor never lasts since so much breaks it, and better shields don't matter if you only zip in and out anyway, but more hull pads you against mistakes that may have otherwise been crippling.
I think this came up earlier in the Part 1 thread - it's an interesting idea, but I think it'd make you feel forced to use ships with fighters just to make the most out of the bonuses. And that'd likely be the "optimal" way to go.
How would the on impact damper field interact with lasers? They deal constant damage (10 ticks per second) so it can just tick away the damper counts?I think this came up earlier in the Part 1 thread - it's an interesting idea, but I think it'd make you feel forced to use ships with fighters just to make the most out of the bonuses. And that'd likely be the "optimal" way to go.
Perhaps the optimal method of catering to peeps who want more carrier/fighter oriented builds is to add a few more carrier hull mods rather than more carrier/fighter skills, whether or not such mods can be built in or not. IE, weaker carrier/fighter hull mods can be built-in, while the really powerful hull-mods cannot (like the upcoming changes for neural link and [redacted] ships can't be built in). Example of "powerful" hull mod: All fighter/bomber wings always launch with temporary Damper Fields (up to 3-5 "impacts" before going away, regardless of whether fighters have a shield or not), or maybe a launch catapult so that all fighters/bombers launch with a temporary speed bonus that lasts 30 seconds or something.
Point is that maybe having too many carrier ship skills runs into the same issue has having too many phase ship skills in skill tree... It wastes a skill point on a skill that might be better expressed as a hull mod. Food for thought. But I agree, carriers and fighters/bombers maybe need to have more varied effects that shouldn't necessarily be skill dependent, only money/OP dependent.
But then again, I keep complaining about bringing back fighter/bomber wing control to overhead tactical map so attack behavior isn't directed per parent carrier and that prolly ain't gonna happen, so not exactly holding my breath...
you are 100% correct. yet the key detail here is that the "0 armor" minimum armor values are a percentage of original armor, which do not further decrease until the ship sinks. they obviously favour more armor so technically a low tech ship at min armor with 1000 hp has more hp than a high tech ship at min armor. think of the difference RB makes on a wolf vs a centurion. and thats where the skills come in; take for example the current damage control which adds 25% hull value and containment procedures for less crew damage from hull tanking, they are skills which favor armored ships more, and yet theres still issues of disabling. we have industry skills which can basically replace some hullmods (for extra hull and less crew loss) or can add to them, having something more of that sort of synergy for increasing the effect of those hullmods and perhaps the automated repair unit in particular would open a new industry playstyle without the RNG mess that we know from derelict contingent.I find that better hull is valuable for fast ships that can evade well, like phase ships. Armor never lasts since so much breaks it, and better shields don't matter if you only zip in and out anyway, but more hull pads you against mistakes that may have otherwise been crippling.
https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=12268
FYI.
Armor is extremely effective at mitigating low damage hits.
It’s especially obvious against low dph ballistic weapons and kinetic damage weapons.
For instance, sabot has 100 hit strength on armor. An odyssey (1000) can mitigate 33% of its damage on hull but if you put a heavy armor it can now mitigate 43%.
Also part of the reason why current derelict contingent Venture so OP.
I find that better hull is valuable for fast ships that can evade well, like phase ships. Armor never lasts since so much breaks it, and better shields don't matter if you only zip in and out anyway, but more hull pads you against mistakes that may have otherwise been crippling.+
To clarify, those examples aren't set in stone or anything, the hull mod could just as easily apply like a 15% armor buff to fighters/bombers. Or whatever. Which is why I used the word EXAMPLE. Lazy criticism is the worst...
Hmm... if fighters (non bombers) will not be made stronger, could they have faster base speeds, so they can better chase down frigates and other fast ships?I think fighters and bombers per wing need to be increased, not speed.
Nothing comes anywhere close in per-DP efficiency. Doom is probably next best thing, but it's far less efficient.If Afflictors cannot destroy everything in the game, then Doom wins out in the cases Afflictors fail. And potentially against the station, but I don't know how good Afflictors are against stations.
If Afflictors cannot destroy everything in the game, then Doom wins out in the cases Afflictors fail. And potentially against the station, but I don't know how good Afflictors are against stations.
Can we have more teasers please?
Alex posted a screenshot of a much-needed feature on Twitter.Can we have more teasers please?
I don't know, can we?
Alex posted a screenshot of a much-needed feature on Twitter.Can we have more teasers please?
I don't know, can we?
Considering this, there are plans to have fewer than 10 skills, if anything.* 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.
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.)
Just wanted to tune in with an unpopular opinion.Voice your support for this then:https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=22515.0
I personally nearly always end up with all of the colony management skills. Like 90% of my games i skill them, because boosting passive income is my idea of fun. It also is my personal main endgame goal. Get as many Colonies as possible and make them self sufficient militarily and profitable.
These skills are definitely not boring at all. Sad to see them go away.
So there's that.
I personally nearly always end up with all of the colony management skills. Like 90% of my games i skill them, because boosting passive income is my idea of fun. It also is my personal main endgame goal. Get as many Colonies as possible and make them self sufficient militarily and profitable.
These skills are definitely not boring at all. Sad to see them go away.
I personally nearly always end up with all of the colony management skills. Like 90% of my games i skill them, because boosting passive income is my idea of fun. It also is my personal main endgame goal. Get as many Colonies as possible and make them self sufficient militarily and profitable.
These skills are definitely not boring at all. Sad to see them go away.
I think the main issue with colony skills isn't that they're not good, it's that they're mostly replaceable by Alpha Cores. Once you're able to fight [REDACTED] fleets, Alpha Cores are essentially unlimited (just based on how much time you're willing to spend farming them), whereas skills are limited to 15 total. So in that situation, it's better to just use Alpha Cores as colony admins so you can maximize your skills.
I personally nearly always end up with all of the colony management skills. Like 90% of my games i skill them, because boosting passive income is my idea of fun. It also is my personal main endgame goal. Get as many Colonies as possible and make them self sufficient militarily and profitable.
These skills are definitely not boring at all. Sad to see them go away.
I think the main issue with colony skills isn't that they're not good, it's that they're mostly replaceable by Alpha Cores. Once you're able to fight [REDACTED] fleets, Alpha Cores are essentially unlimited (just based on how much time you're willing to spend farming them), whereas skills are limited to 15 total. So in that situation, it's better to just use Alpha Cores as colony admins so you can maximize your skills.
Or Colony Items, which are much more interesting and have more levers to pull than Skills. Ultimately, all colony skills boil down to generating income and keeping that income safe. I agree with Alex in that printing money can be handled outside of the Skill system. The only Skill that might still be necessary is something to improve the number/efficiency of Admins but even then it should probably be tied to some other campaign layer.
Colony items are not that interesting when they spike Pather interest. I avoid Hypershunt Tap like the plague because I never ever want cells on my colonies, not after the painful experience of 0.9a. Two colonies are locked with pristine nanoforge and synchrotron because I need them to meet demand for Military Base/High Command. That leaves two other planets with one colony item each. Ideally, they should have Dealmaker Holosuite (or maybe Biofactory for the Light Industry drug planet if core worlds were not wiped out).
Industrial Planning feels like a tax because it seems like demand always assumes admin has IP, not to mention that meeting 9 or 10 demand for the lamp or tap assumes player min-maxed demand stats.
It would be nice if player could rule more than four planets without using cores. Even if getting colony skills was sub-optimal (thanks 0.9.1a Pather bug), at least it was a way to get a kingdom as big as the Hegemony or League.
P.S. Four planets feels kind of constraining when I need two systems with two planets or one system with four planets because of required colony defenses to avoid babysitting.