In old releases, player could solo multiple fleets with any capital or even with Dominator (and Aurora if the enemy did not have a Paragon). And small ships could solo a mid-sized pirate fleet or taking out a capital. Today, that seems limited to specific ships (like phase ships) with specific skill choices. It seems more limited now.
Isn't that a good thing? Being able to solo entire fleets with just one ship is a testament of bad game balance. It deosn't make sense lore-wise and gameplay-wise. Starsector is not a zombie shooter, where enemies are weaker by design (or is it?). I would much prefer being surrounded by competent allies and enemies.
Depends how the game is designed. In Starsector, the enemy has unlimited resources, and it can wear the player down through attrition. Any casualties the enemy takes can be casually shrugged off and replaced at no cost. For the player, combat rewards are not enough to replace a major ship (or any ship early in the game). Losing ships at all is effectively a loss - a pyrrhic victory at best, unless it is something like a cheap small ship in a 300k+ bounty. Also, with the lack of skill points, if player does not boost the fleet, the flagship has to pick up the slack when the enemy has a better fleet than him. Today, the flagship does not have significantly greater skill power than a high-level officer (6/2+ human or alpha core), assuming player took some Combat. If the game is hard enough that losing half the fleet is the expected outcome, then either rewards need to be much higher or Restore needs to be almost free.
If a fleet is mandatory, then it seems like Leadership is mandatory, and that looks that way for most builds I see posted. Right now, Leadership today appears to be the Loadout Design of old - you need it for critical fleet buffs, officers, and BotB (unless going for Support Doctrine). You can still get a good flagship with a good fleet, but because you have limited fleet points, something needs to be dumped, and Industry is the obvious or least painful choice. If player wants high Industry and enough skill power in his flagship through Combat, well... he has to dump either Leadership or Technology (or sacrifice capstones from both), which will be painful, and the fleet will be weaker than it should be.
In the old days with skills, your fleet was limited by Fleet Points or Logistics, and you started with enough to use five frigates or one cruiser, more than that and your fleet took penalties. Also, in the Logistics releases, crew counted toward DP limit. Back then, Combat had to be overpowered to allow no Leadership fleets to work. It worked too well for the combat side, or rather, losing ships was even more painful in the old days because ships and weapons were rarer, and there was no guaranteed recovery of ships and weapons like today. In some old releases, high-tier weapons like plasma cannon, tachyon lances, and some needlers were almost as rare as Omega weapons, and few ships were very rare (too rare in shops and enemy fleets). Because combat skills were much more powerful back then, taking a loss was almost guaranteed from empowered Harpoon spam the moment a ship's flux level got too high. The only weapons that were common back then were what was found in Open Market. Also, buying anything from Black Market at all rose suspicion regardless of transponder, and triggered investigation that caused massive rep loss if found guilty - all to get a few elite weapons that were nearly impossible to find anywhere else.
Because Ordos hunting demands optimized officers for their chosen ships and loadouts, building toward them effectively locks your choices in and changing officers when the fleet is changed is way too tedious and costly. It is almost as bad as no respec in the old days. Also, if your avatar has combat skills, it too needs to adapt with the ship, and changing skills is too costly since respec has no refund, although at least it might be better than replacing an officer. If I want to pilot a phase ship, I definitely want Phase Coil Tuning and elite Field Modulation. If I pilot a frigate, I want Wolfpack Tactics. If I pilot a carrier, I want Carrier Group so rate does not fall to 30% so fast.
There's a big difference between having 8 officers that level up over time, and having 40 officers that are static and unchanging. The latter has great flexibility in gameplay, but the former allows you to get attached to your officers and watch them grow over the course of a playthrough. At least, you could get attached *in theory,* but in practice I don't see anyone treat them as much more than bundles of stat boosts with a funny name.
In Starsector, the real characters or party members are the ships, at least for me. Officers are the ships' equipment. It is like Transformers (at least the cartoon ones). They make toys for the robots, not the humans. You do not get attached to the humans, you get attached to Optimus Prime, Bubblebee, Megatron, or Starscream.
