Well if you don't pick Bulk Transport, then it's pretty useful.Why would I not pick Bulk Transport though?
Also you should consider that not the entire game is spent at 240 DPIn no game I have ever played in the current version, have I ever cared even the tiniest bit about skill limits/dropoff.
Well if you don't pick Bulk Transport, then it's pretty useful.
Do people not take bulk transport early? That solves all the civilian burn problems without any hullmods and also significantly reduces the number of civilian ships required in the first place. For me, that's a super easy early game skill pick and I always want ordinance expertise so I have to take a tier 1 industry skill late game anyway. None of the other tier 1 industry skills seem much better.If I take Industry, I get Field Repairs because I lose ships and frequently recover enemy ships early, and for partial repairs in fights that take more than one round to finish (like solo Ziggurat against some endgame fights). If I get Hull Restoration, my primary source of pristine ships becomes whatever I loot from the enemy (instead of buying them from markets) and having some armor and CR right off the bat is convenient. Also, late in the game, Field Repairs is handy for regenerating armor in fights that take more than one round to finish.
Also, I'm not a big fan of using the extra cargo/fuel hullmods. If I need more cargo/fuel capacity, I will just get more logistics ships. With efficiency overhaul instead of expanded cargo holds/auxiliary fuel tanks, I end up with much more cargo/supplies/month and about the same fuel capacity/fuel/ly, plus reduced crew requirements.
I mean, efficiency overhaul on all your haulers also reduces their fuel consumption too. Quick math:Also, I'm not a big fan of using the extra cargo/fuel hullmods. If I need more cargo/fuel capacity, I will just get more logistics ships. With efficiency overhaul instead of expanded cargo holds/auxiliary fuel tanks, I end up with much more cargo/supplies/month and about the same fuel capacity/fuel/ly, plus reduced crew requirements.
In my experience it's easy to print supplies with either Salvaging skill or just three Salvage Rigs. Fuel, not so much. So I don't really care about supply use, at least not in the late game.
I guess, the best thing you could do fuel-wise would be efficiency overhaul on everything along with auxiliary fuel tanks on fuel ships.
Do people not take bulk transport early?
Also Atlases are faster, because they can reach 10 burn with ADF and bulk transport, and you only need to spend 1 SP, and you are going Bulk Transport most times anyways to reach higher tier skills.
Like most ship mods, militarized sub sys CAN be useful depending on what you need. It doesn't have to be good all the time. I use it extensively anytime I'm doing a smuggler style playthrough. It provides a small burn boost and a sensor profile buff (which STACKS with insulated engines). Those are great perks! Maybe it's in-combat effect is a bit anemic, but does it need a full rework? I don't think so.Well why would I bother myself with civilian hogs when I can achieve a similar result with customized non-civilian logistics ships, except also getting a passable combat backup? Especially in a world where phase ships exist? If you never get into combat, then sure Militarized Subsystems don't have downsides. But I have two problems with this: First, do you really want to avoid one of the most fun features of this game just to optimize your overworld gameplay? Second, isn't it quite a flavor mismatch when Daud's feat is being shoved into the player's face every other turn of a corner, yet a playstyle emulating it is unfun and suboptimal in practice?
I might be the only idiot, but in my early runs I used to pick it for the Burn increase and the Sensor buffs, not realizing that I made civilian ships eat into my fleetwide buffs with their DP despite never using them in combat.I fully agree that once you go over the 240 DP cap for fleetwide abilities the mod can definitely be more harmful than helpful. And in such a situation I probably wouldn't use it. But like I said it doesn't have to be the type of mod that you use all the time.
Well why would I bother myself with civilian hogs when I can achieve a similar result with customized non-civilian logistics ships, except also getting a passable combat backup? Especially in a world where phase ships exist?Some of the biggest strengths of civilian ships are that they are easy to find as well as relatively cheap to purchase and maintain. Sure in an endgame fleet you could use rarer and more costly logistic ships but that's not the point of the mod IMO. The point is to take something useful and common, but with crappy downsides, and to shore up it's weaknesses. I don't think the mod is designed to make a freighter or tanker into a combat ship. It's designed to make them less of a liability and to make your fleet not a giant target on the overworld map, especially during the early and mid game.
One thing I feel needs to be pointed out in this thread is that Militarized Subsystems may act as a noob trap. I might be the only idiot, but in my early runs I used to pick it for the Burn increase and the Sensor buffs, not realizing that I made civilian ships eat into my fleetwide buffs with their DP despite never using them in combat. Doesn't help that Insulated Engine Assembly seems strictly inferior at first glance.
I never really found a good use for Militarized Subsystems in my later runs. True civilian ships plain suck at combat and putting the hullmod on rogue faction rebuilds isn't worth it. The idea of a Daud wannabe scraping up a fleet where auxiliaries play combat support doesn't currently translate into the gameplay in any good way.
Well why would I bother myself with civilian hogs when I can achieve a similar result with customized non-civilian logistics ships, except also getting a passable combat backup?
Especially in a world where phase ships exist? If you never get into combat, then sure Militarized Subsystems don't have downsides. But I have two problems with this: First, do you really want to avoid one of the most fun features of this game just to optimize your overworld gameplay? Second, isn't it quite a flavor mismatch when Daud's feat is being shoved into the player's face every other turn of a corner, yet a playstyle emulating it is unfun and suboptimal in practice?
On the flipside, does Venture without Militarized hullmod count toward skill DP limits? Because that's actually a competent combat ship. By current logic, it should not.
One way to change that, is to make civilian ships, and civilian adjacent ships (combat freighters such as the Hound, Cereberus, and Mule) be the only ones that can be purchased off the open market, and also the only ones that can be purchased off the black market without high pirate relationship (similar to how military markets restrict combat ship purchases based on relationship). Similarly, lock all new hullmods behind faction markets (and skill picks, which then makes the various skills which provide hullmods much more important). This then requires the player to do something more than trade to build up credits. They need higher relationships with factions, to gain access to better ships. This interesting has a side effect of making black market trading more painful (due to the negative relationship that happens from it), as faction relationship becomes critical to being able to outfit a fleet as you want.Here's a thought I can get behind. I do agree that acquiring decent ships doesn't really need much of any commitment at this point. I don't think making ships above destroyer size hard to get would make the game much more difficult for a new player. It's compounded by the fact that having good relationships with all standard factions tends to play more optimally than taking a side, at least in my experience. I'd say that what you suggested would help with getting the player more involved in faction politics. Anyway you're onto something that Militarized Subsystems feeling bad is more of a symptom of make-do measures being quickly suboptimal. Does it therefore make sense to try to make Militarized Subsystems feel better? On the other hand, does it make sense for the hullmod to exist if its niche can disappear so quickly?
In such a drastic change, I'd make the faction military markets even better stocked, so that once you've unlocked the reputational tier needed, it becomes relatively trivial to get the faction related ships and hullmods you want, and probably weapons as well. And on the other hand, you wouldn't see combat ships in the other markets at all, except for high pirate relationship in the black market. Pirate relationship becomes your "street cred" in that case.
Unless the game changes such that people are forced to play through the early phases of the game like they play through the end phases of the game, Militarized Subsystems is always going to be considered underpowered by the players skipping that phase. The entire concept of it is incompatible with perfect end game fleets, simply because it is a "make do with what you have" hullmod. If you're never just "making do" with a limited selection of options, the hullmod is never going to look appealing or make sense to you. I'm not sure if such a drastic change would be overall better or worse for the game as whole, but that's what you're going to need to do if you want to see anything along the lines of militarized subsystems be useful to the majority of players.There were attempts at making "trash" viable with stuff like Derelict Contingent and Auxiliary Support and indeed, I don't recall any of these catching on. If playstyles like these are ever to become viable, there has to be a niche at which they outperform the "optimal" stuff. In the end, there's probably no good reason to make these a thing post early game. At the same time, I don't think it's necessary to force experienced players into early game if they feel like skipping it. Afaik most wouldn't want to anyway because it's their favorite part of the game. Regarding early game, I'd agree that it's good to have options like Militarized Subsystems exist, I just probably got blinded by being accustomed to the game.
I mean, I doubt many experienced players would like it, but one way to make Militarized Subsystems clearly more useful to more players to is to prevent the ability to skip the limited selection of ships and hullmods phase of the game. I believe in the current game there are many players who simply do some black market trading to build up a pile of credits to buy a perfect fleet, or at least the starting core of one, and then proceed into actually playing other phases of the game, such as combat or exploration. (...)
I might mess around with it to see how it easy it is to have essentially a reputation + commission lock for the vast majority of ships.Doesn't Starpocalypse (https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=21812.0) do this?
I might mess around with it to see how it easy it is to have essentially a reputation + commission lock for the vast majority of ships.Doesn't Starpocalypse (https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=21812.0) do this?
Might be worth digging around in there for inspiration.
I mean, I doubt many experienced players would like it, but one way to make Militarized Subsystems clearly more useful to more players to is to prevent the ability to skip the limited selection of ships and hullmods phase of the game. I believe in the current game there are many players who simply do some black market trading to build up a pile of credits to buy a perfect fleet, or at least the starting core of one, and then proceed into actually playing other phases of the game, such as combat or exploration.
There were attempts at making "trash" viable with stuff like Derelict Contingent and Auxiliary Support and indeed, I don't recall any of these catching on. If playstyles like these are ever to become viable, there has to be a niche at which they outperform the "optimal" stuff. In the end, there's probably no good reason to make these a thing post early game. At the same time, I don't think it's necessary to force experienced players into early game if they feel like skipping it. Afaik most wouldn't want to anyway because it's their favorite part of the game. Regarding early game, I'd agree that it's good to have options like Militarized Subsystems exist, I just probably got blinded by being accustomed to the game.
I do the ignore early game build up fleet thing myself and it sounds like it could be interesting for a bit, but I would probably just find some way around it. I think it could be interesting though to make the standard method for acquiring good ships be something other than credits. Missions that reward you with a ship instead of credits for instance. I also don't think grinding rep is fun by any stretch of the imagination.
Well as long as Automated Ships remains a skill you can take, no other strategy but High Tech + Auto Ships will ever be viable (unless there is some insane buff to other ship styles). However, trash ships with the dmod skills have been pretty viable?
In regards to missions rewarding ships, nearly every single combat mission I've taken provides me the opportunity to grab new ships, albeit with d-mods. Also exploration missions to a derelict sometimes gives you the opportunity to salvage that ship. All you have to do is tow them yourself. So combat salvage, combined with exploring for derelicts would be the short cuts in a system where you can't buy good ships. if you don't want to travel for your ships, just turn your transponder off before jumping into a system, and go say "Hi!" to your local Tri-tach or Hegemony small patrol. You even get to see what is in them before you "buy". Commissions actively encourage you to do this against fleets which your faction is at war with.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by viable here. I've had success with fleets that didn't take Automated Ships or use any high tech ships. There are plenty of posts on the forums talking about Gryphon fleets with Legions or Onslaughts leading them taking on triple Ordos and the like, with no Radiants or high tech ships. If I can beat the hardest fleets in the game with such non-automated ship and non-high tech fleets, they are by definition viable, no?
Perhaps you mean easiest to use or strongest, but a viable fleet just means a fleet that you can make work. If it can beat the hardest challenges in the game, and be organically grown from the ground up on just combat missions, that strikes me as a plenty viable fleet.