I don't agree with OPs wording/reasoning but I do agree that having personal and fleet skills competing against one another creates some fundamental issues.
Namely, personal skills are more fun in some sense because they directly augment your piloting experience while fleet-wide skills more augment your ability to win combats but don't make a huge difference in your personal second-to-second experience. That creates some really annoying decisions where you have to choose between having more fun and being better at winning, which I think is not a good decision in a game. It's analogous to deciding between going into finance and being rich but hating your job, or going into poetry and doing what you love but having low standard of living. It's variety, but it's not good variety IMO.
That's not even getting into balance of the two against one another. Balancing things that have categorically different effects against one another is also just inherently much more difficult, and will likely result in many more balance issues.
I think having separate combat and fleet skills still creates interesting decisions. The decisions are just more of 'what kind of ships/strategies do I want to use and how can I pick skills to augment that' rather than 'do I want to have fun piloting a strong flagships with a weak fleet, or do I want to build an AFK farming fleet and go alt-tab into a youtube video'. Personally, I think that later is not an interesting decision, but I understand others might disagree.
I do bump max level to 17 so I can get a couple extra combat skills because the game is just more fun when your flagship is strong, but I think the fleet skills I would have to drop to get those skills at level 15 are more valuable overall.
I already pick quite different skills for piloting Afflictor or Conquest. There are no small set of universal best personal skills.That's not what I meant, of course the skills will change with different ships. I'm saying in 2 different runs, a similar type of ship will have the same combat skills because now you have to pick them.
Combat skills being quite play-style specific is probably their biggest weakness right now.I agree but do people even like skills like Target Analysis? Even Gunnery Implants and Ordnance Expertise aren't good for every type of ship.
And obviously you're going to try to pick the best skills for your flagship? I don't see how that's different from the current game, the only difference is that you might choose to get less personal skills so your flagship is weaker (which I think is choosing to have less fun playing in order to be better at winning, which is a bad choice to be presented with in the first place).That's very subjective, there's a ton of folks who just don't care about combat skills (be it they prefer the admiral style gameplay, or are just not good). Why should we nerf those playstyles? I'm the one enjoying piloting strong combat ships and I'm defending the current system, surely I'm not the only one.
Even though I know from experience that games are most fun when you're this close to failure, my lizard brain wants me to take all the skills and win more.SpoilerI feel like there's an unexamined assumption here that more flagship power unequivocally means more fun. I think past a few key skills for whatever you're doing, this isn't necessarily the case. You really want something - an edge you can leverage - since that opens up some interesting decision-making. But once you have that, adding more and more power to your flagship doesn't mean it's more fun to fly. It'll have more impact, certainly (which trades off for less impact by the rest of your fleet), but the actual moment to moment gameplay can easily be more fun when you have a little less to work with.
I mean, consider a flagship buffed to the point where it one-shots everything and takes no damage. That's not fun - beyond a few minutes, perhaps - so clearly there's a line beyond which more power is actually... less fun. The question is where that line - and its more fuzzy cousin, "more power isn't bad but isn't actually *more* fun, either" line - actually are. I think it's at a pretty low number of skills, but a lot of this is necessarily going to be personal preference. And, you have that choice![close]
I feel like there's an unexamined assumption here that more flagship power unequivocally means more fun. I think past a few key skills for whatever you're doing, this isn't necessarily the case. You really want something - an edge you can leverage - since that opens up some interesting decision-making. But once you have that, adding more and more power to your flagship doesn't mean it's more fun to fly. It'll have more impact, certainly (which trades off for less impact by the rest of your fleet), but the actual moment to moment gameplay can easily be more fun when you have a little less to work with.
I mean, consider a flagship buffed to the point where it one-shots everything and takes no damage. That's not fun - beyond a few minutes, perhaps - so clearly there's a line beyond which more power is actually... less fun. The question is where that line - and its more fuzzy cousin, "more power isn't bad but isn't actually *more* fun, either" line - actually are. I think it's at a pretty low number of skills, but a lot of this is necessarily going to be personal preference. And, you have that choice!
From a player mindset, however, routinely being less powerful than your subordinates is a weird place to be in.You must really dislike Pokemon.
In absolute agreement from a gameplay perspective. From a player mindset, however, routinely being less powerful than your subordinates is a weird place to be in. I choose quite a few combat skills most runs but more often than not, my flagship is the weakest vessel in my fleet “on paper.” Why? Because officers don’t have to choose between fleet and combat skills.
I don’t think we need another skill revamp or anything like that but I would love for there to be opportunities to earn Combat traits (and exclusively Combat) via missions or quests that don’t eat into other skill points. The Galatia quest line grants your transverse jump and neutrino detector without spending skill points. Why not earn portions of Combat skill traits in a sort of piece-meal fashion? Maybe 3-4, tops. It could be completely optional but for those combat-minded, you’d have an alternate path to improve the flagship passively, albeit not as quickly or powerfully as actual Skills. Maybe you have to spend a Story Point too. Just spit-balling.
Player skills are not worth 10x more than a skill in AI hands IMO.Don't think I agree with this.
If you're going to advocate raising the level limit, then just raise the level limit, but don't change the system to something where you're forced to take player skills or forced to take fleet skills, dumping some players into a playstyle they don't care for.I don't think raising the level cap fixes the issue. It just results in you taking more fleet wide combat skills IMO. I think it's fair to argue that splitting combat skills off would eliminate some possibilities (taking no combat skills), and there are probably better approaches. I guess my favorite idea is making skills cost different numbers of skill points as way to balance them without having to gut the strong skills, or try to make all skills equally strong.
From my experience in vanilla, you can be successful with the no personal skill style as well as the 13 player skill style, or anything in between, assuming you have an appropriately designed fleet for the skills you chose.Success is a super poorly defined term. You can do a ton of stuff that could be called 'success' (make arbitrarily large amounts of money, clearing most fights etc.) without any skills. Does that mean that skill balance doesn't matter since you can do most stuff regardless? IMO it's important to think about the direction that the game balance moves you in, even if the balance is not perfect. In other words: what is the game incentivizing you to do and is that good? If the system creates the possibility of playing in fun ways, but incentivizes you to play in unfun ways, I think there is a problem (obviously fun is subjective, but there are definitely some generally agreed upon ideas, particularly of what is unfun).
It's time to realize that if you value fleet skills that much higher than combat ones, you're just not very good at combat it seems. That's it, there's no fancy philosophy here.
And most importantly, enemy doesn't care about losses. You don't just have to win fights, you have to win without any significant losses. If AI blew up one of your cruisers and it got 2 d-mods, you lost. Doesn't matter if the end battle screen says otherwise.This is a reason why I love Hull Restoration. It is not guaranteed, but there is a good chance ships get recovered without any lasting damage. It makes casualties acceptable.
Enemy ships now have mostly good loadouts and s-mods, so you can't gain an advantage there either. And both fleets use the same braindead AI that can't even remotely cope with being outnumbered, which the player always is, unlike the enemy fleets.s-mods on enemies seem limited to special fleets (mercs, infamous phase fleet, Omega bounty). I do not see any on the random non-merc fleets, Ordos or otherwise. And that one unique Omega bounty is not harder than a multi-Ordos fight.
I would disagree with this. I’m very good at combat but when comparing the benefits of adding Support Doctrine (with my 10 unofficered ships) vs. Ballistic Mastery for my flagship, the impact of the former is magnitudes higher than the latter. And this a real choice the game gives you. All Tier 0 Combat Skills ultimately compete with T3/T4/T5 skills for your skill points.I agree for some ships. If I do not have Omega missiles for Ziggurat, elite Point Defense and Ballistic Mastery are more valuable to me than either Systems Expertise or Missile Spec. Only if I get Omega missiles that I respec and grab Missile Spec. (to make up for not enough Omega missiles to fill all mounts.)
That's a very bad comparison. First you're comparing a t5 skill to a combat skill you can pick whenever. Better comparison would be either Systems Expertise or Missile Spec.
Secondly, the power of combat skills is their combination on a single ship. Your flagship can have a number of combat skills (all elite), along with the fleet buffs that affect all ships. It's weird to compare a single combat skill to a single fleet skill in a vacuum, there's very little context.
But compare investing 5 skills into combat versus investing 5 skills into industry.
EDIT: Random idea: ok so if a chunk of people think personal skills are meh, just make them a slightly stronger version of officer skills?
I don't think raising the level cap fixes the issue. It just results in you taking more fleet wide combat skills IMO. I think it's fair to argue that splitting combat skills off would eliminate some possibilities (taking no combat skills), and there are probably better approaches. I guess my favorite idea is making skills cost different numbers of skill points as way to balance them without having to gut the strong skills, or try to make all skills equally strong.
From my experience in vanilla, you can be successful with the no personal skill style as well as the 13 player skill style, or anything in between, assuming you have an appropriately designed fleet for the skills you chose.Success is a super poorly defined term.
RE 'my good fleet can't use these strong fleet-wide skills'
From the perspective of pure optimization, the response would be that the fleet is probably worse than another fleet that can use those skills, and you should just use different ships (for instance just remove some capital ships and add more hyperions to use the extra officers). You can of course do many things that will work, but I am trying to talk about what the game is incentivizing you to do, which is the 'strongest' thing.
I’m very good at combat but when comparing the benefits of adding Support Doctrine (with my 10 unofficered ships) vs. Ballistic Mastery for my flagship, the impact of the former is magnitudes higher than the latter. And this a real choice the game gives you. All Tier 0 Combat Skills ultimately compete with T3/T4/T5 skills for your skill points
Generally I grab 5 skills in the combat treeRight, I forgot one thing: combat tree's usefulness falls off hard after getting 5 or 6 skills, simply because that's how many skills are really useful to the ship you're piloting. Getting Impact Mitigation for Hyperion won't really change all that much. There are still good skills in Technology and Industry trees.
EDIT: Random idea: ok so if a chunk of people think personal skills are meh, just make them a slightly stronger version of officer skills?That is probably the reason for Elite level. Officers only get one or two (with Officer Training), unless they take Cybernetic Augmentation for two more. (Then eventually, player fights Remnants with a massive skill advantage.)
I would like to get about six or seven in Combat but limit myself to five when I want capstone skills in two other trees.Generally I grab 5 skills in the combat treeRight, I forgot one thing: combat tree's usefulness falls off hard after getting 5 or 6 skills, simply because that's how many skills are really useful to the ship you're piloting. Getting Impact Mitigation for Hyperion won't really change all that much. There are still good skills in Technology and Industry trees.
Generally I grab 5 skills in the combat treeRight, I forgot one thing: combat tree's usefulness falls off hard after getting 5 or 6 skills, simply because that's how many skills are really useful to the ship you're piloting. Getting Impact Mitigation for Hyperion won't really change all that much. There are still good skills in Technology and Industry trees.
* Helmsmanship: This one's... okay for the player. Not the best choice for AI, though, since the AI doesn't know how to use it.I would want elite Helmsmanship on a non-SO high-tech ship like Shrike or Fury so it can run away more easily to vent. Although I would not take it on an officer.
* Combat Endurance: Trash for the sorts of ships I prefer to field; if your Aurora is below 50% hull, it should be retreating.
A simpler way would be to just formally bump max level ... (yes, I know it's in settings.json)You might want to check out a mod for that instead, (https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=20535.0) as just modifying the settings.json values will make levelling past level 15 way too slow.
the shield boosting skills are good on low tech because they do use shields, just less oftenI always take this one anyway and I included it in the "5 or 6 useful skills" I mentioned earlier.
the hull/armor/repair skills are good on high tech because the more hull/armor tanking you can doWhile that is true, you probably will want the Polarised Armour skill for faster venting, in addition to better armour tanking. And it's a yellow skill, instead of a red skill.
Elite skills are supposed to help with this - even with a few combat skills, you'd still have more elite effects than most of your officers. Hmm. What's "quite a few" that if you make them all elite, you still feel weaker than let's say a level 6 officer with 2 elite skills?My experience with combat skills so far, is that for regular warships (and probably carriers), 091 skills were preferable to 095 skills. Missile-heavy and gimmicky ships are better off in 095. A part of that difference might be that Remnants get more skills than human officers and than they used to, and that they are more aggressive now. 7/8 elite combat skills might be around the same as a character that goes for best flagship bonuses, not the most combat skills.
Regardless, though, the solution to that - if required - would be to shift more of the combat skill power into the elite effects, imo, since that's what they're there for.
My experience with combat skills so far, is that for regular warships (and probably carriers), 091 skills were preferable to 095 skills. Missile-heavy and gimmicky ships are better off in 095. A part of that difference might be that Remnants get more skills than human officers and than they used to, and that they are more aggressive now. 7/8 elite combat skills might be around the same as a character that goes for best flagship bonuses, not the most combat skills.Not only more skills, but more officers (cores) too. Every ship in an Ordos fleet has a core, and the cores in about half of the ships are Alpha grade. Human fleets do not have officers in all of their ships, and none of them are as powerful as an Alpha core.
Another idea is to just have some skills be worth more than one skill point, and increase max level to compensate. That would let you make it cheaper to grab combat skills, and just gives another lever for making skill balanced overall.
I would very much like to see a return of the player's fleet being limited by deployment value - though ideally, this time, with several skills that play around with that limit (boosting the maximum value, or offering discounts for certain ship types, or even easing the over-cap penalties.) And a slightly higher base limit to start with, too; back when this was in the game, the base limit was small enough as to make taking the skill to boost it effectively mandatory.I would prefer this to the DP caps in skills if it means removing DP pools in full fleet skills like Field Repairs, Flux Regulations, Crew Training.
I would prefer this to the DP caps in skills if it means removing DP pools in full fleet skills like Field Repairs, Flux Regulations, Crew Training.Limiting everyone else so drastically, just for the sake of making personal skills better, makes no sense to me.
Alex tries to force this through lowered max map size, skill DP caps, and maybe bonus +xp%. Just simplify the mess with classic DP limits used in 0.5 or 0.6 releases.
If we consider what modern skills do, player would probably start with 100 DP and have skills that boost it by about 25%, not start at 25 DP and boost it to 100 or 125 DP in a 0.6 era release.
Also, no return to crew adding to fleet DP limits (Logistics in 0.6x).
Limiting everyone else so drastically, just for the sake of making personal skills better, makes no sense to me.Field Repairs, Flux Regulations, other similar skills are not personal skills, but full fleet skills, or at least all combat ships for some.
I don't agree with OPs wording/reasoning but I do agree that having personal and fleet skills competing against one another creates some fundamental issues.
Namely, personal skills are more fun in some sense because they directly augment your piloting experience while fleet-wide skills more augment your ability to win combats but don't make a huge difference in your personal second-to-second experience. That creates some really annoying decisions where you have to choose between having more fun and being better at winning, which I think is not a good decision in a game. It's analogous to deciding between going into finance and being rich but hating your job, or going into poetry and doing what you love but having low standard of living. It's variety, but it's not good variety IMO.
That's not even getting into balance of the two against one another. Balancing things that have categorically different effects against one another is also just inherently much more difficult, and will likely result in many more balance issues.
I think having separate combat and fleet skills still creates interesting decisions. The decisions are just more of 'what kind of ships/strategies do I want to use and how can I pick skills to augment that' rather than 'do I want to have fun piloting a strong flagships with a weak fleet, or do I want to build an AFK farming fleet and go alt-tab into a youtube video'. Personally, I think that later is not an interesting decision, but I understand others might disagree.
I do bump max level to 17 so I can get a couple extra combat skills because the game is just more fun when your flagship is strong, but I think the fleet skills I would have to drop to get those skills at level 15 are more valuable overall.
I remember someone's suggestion about personal skills and fleets skills each having their own skillpoints instead of using the same skillpoints as it is right now.