Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Save/Load UI, Autosave, Intel Map Markers, and More (04/10/24)
So what seven skills do you want?Truthfully? It depends on the ship and ship's loadout. I'll build an Officer for a ship, not a ship for an Officer. For example, CE I'll only use on civilian ships (Prom. Mk II, Atlas Mk. II notably) to get them up to 100 CR since the rest of my ships have CR 100 between Crew Training and Best of the Best + Hull Restoration.
(And, for my curiosity, what six skill combinations would you like better than the various seven-skill sets people have suggested so far?)
And while I'm here, have an extra officer setup:
Generic Okay-At-Anything Officer: Ordnance Expertise (Elite), Field Modulation (Elite), Target Analysis (Elite), Point Defense (Elite), Gunnery Implants (Elite), Helmsmanship, Combat Endurance
(Keeping in mind that you can swap around what skills an officer has at elite, so for example the above could get swapped to elite Helmsmanship if you were planning on putting them in a slower cruiser or capital.)
That's more of the point I'm making, it's a fairly underpowered combination outside of perhaps super-buffing one Radiant - so giving it some benefit for the unique vessels recovered from this particular fight might serve to help make it more appealing. More unique benefits to running HR as a capstone of your build rather than something occasionally respecced to in order to save money would be wonderful, currently it offers no more real benefit than as an alternative to Crew Training or putting Combat Endurance on Officers.Story points aren't exactly free, and if it really need be then require spending SP in addition to possessing those skills to clear the d-mods - or introduce a malus for respeccing after repairing the vessels. As it stands Hull Restoration is very underwhelming outside of being paired with Automated Ships, and that neither has any bonus for special 'one of a kind' automated ships is just wholly disappointing. Skills should matter more in the grand scheme of things, especially in fleet composition, and offering more viable reasons to run AS/HR as your main build than keeping a Radiant would be a step in a more interesting direction.Hull Restoration plus Automated Ships is underwhelming in the first place, much as it pains me to say this. That combo gives the sadistic choice between good flagship or good fleet with only five skill points left. (I chose good flagship, and my fleet is underwhelming.) Player cannot build AI ships, so the only options when your AI ships take d-mods is to wait a long time for d-mods to disappear or pay for Restore (or respec and get Derelict Ops and not care about taking more d-mods). Automated ships cost as much as an elite ship of its class to Restore. However, the one ship that is really nice for Hull Restoration is Ziggurat. Z costs almost two million to Restore.
Additionally, to return from being mildly off-topic, making all of the non-Capital vessels from that particular encounter SP-salvageable might be a fair way to let people get as many as they want without reloading the encounter repeatedly.
Automated ships are not very good (i.e., no better than human ships) without AI cores, so player cannot use too many ships bigger than frigates if they have AI cores.
Hull Restoration plus Neural Link is even worse. Neural Link has too many problems (OP tax, less flexible than Automated Ships). Ziggurat is stronger than something like two linked Onslaughts or similar.
Story points are not free when I want to set them aside for s-mods for every ship I have or especially if I want to go wild with colony improvements with doubling costs per improvement (especially for no AI in colony runs). Plus, some good systems do not have enough stable points and need five story points per point to create. Story points are not fast to earn unless the player can easily crush endgame fleets with high to max +xp% multiplier.
Story points aren't exactly free, and if it really need be then require spending SP in addition to possessing those skills to clear the d-mods - or introduce a malus for respeccing after repairing the vessels. As it stands Hull Restoration is very underwhelming outside of being paired with Automated Ships, and that neither has any bonus for special 'one of a kind' automated ships is just wholly disappointing. Skills should matter more in the grand scheme of things, especially in fleet composition, and offering more viable reasons to run AS/HR as your main build than keeping a Radiant would be a step in a more interesting direction.I feel as though they should be all be a guaranteed recovery, really. I mentioned this in a thread suggesting the ability to cleanse them of d-mod appearance, but it's really strange that there's no further benefit in the recovery, usage or even restoration of these ships if you have the automated ships and hull restoration skills. A build that typically signals going all-in on this precise kind of ship in the fleet has no real boost to them over any other build, even in just their acquisition, which is very disappointing flavour-wise.Because you can respec, having the ability to repair them with those two skills will make the dmods just become a time and two story point cost. Either they're permanent or they may as well be repairable normally.
