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Suggestions / Unforgettable talents
« on: April 19, 2021, 06:05:45 AM »
I understand the main reason behind permanently locking talents. If you lose the skill, you should lose the bonuses with the skill. Some skills give persistent bonuses, leading to a potential exploit of losing the skill but keeping the bonus. Valid reasons for sure. But is there a better way of handling this? Can the talents be tweaked in such a way that unlearning them is no longer a permanent issue?
Officer management is an easy talent to unlearn, 0.9 already had a setup for going over officer cap. You lose the ability to assign 2 officers, so just don't let the player assign them. EZPZ. The two last officers might be unequipped "at random" or maybe all officers get unequipped for the player to deal with. Unlearning talents is a rare event so that's not too inconvenient.
Special modifications is a bit more tricky. It allows extra caps and vents on a ship, in addition to baking in a bonus S-mod. If the player loses the talent, what kind of penalty makes sense? Maybe the ships get "too complex" and can no longer get fixed. They can't restore CR until they're downgraded to pre-talent spec. It's not a hard lock but remains a firm one, denying the ability to use super ships in a stern way.
Officer training is the HARD one. Officers are allowed a bonus level, with associated +1 skill and +1 elite skill. If the player unlearns the talent, what to do? Do officers suddenly lose their levels and have to be reset? That'd be annoying. Do officers start getting "unruly" that their skills are too good for the player? Will the player have to delete all their elite officers and start from scratch? That'd be a huge setback and way worse than the simple loss of talent. It may be better to remove officer training entirely.
What could officer training be replaced with? A talent that boosts mercenary play would fit in pretty well. Officer management gives permanent officers, while Mercenary management gives better options for hiring mercs. Unfortunately both talents would be pretty similar and might need more to distinguish them. The loss of +1 level talent isn't a big deal. A story point option could help, or high level officers might be one of those rare loots in the void.
Officer management is an easy talent to unlearn, 0.9 already had a setup for going over officer cap. You lose the ability to assign 2 officers, so just don't let the player assign them. EZPZ. The two last officers might be unequipped "at random" or maybe all officers get unequipped for the player to deal with. Unlearning talents is a rare event so that's not too inconvenient.
Special modifications is a bit more tricky. It allows extra caps and vents on a ship, in addition to baking in a bonus S-mod. If the player loses the talent, what kind of penalty makes sense? Maybe the ships get "too complex" and can no longer get fixed. They can't restore CR until they're downgraded to pre-talent spec. It's not a hard lock but remains a firm one, denying the ability to use super ships in a stern way.
Officer training is the HARD one. Officers are allowed a bonus level, with associated +1 skill and +1 elite skill. If the player unlearns the talent, what to do? Do officers suddenly lose their levels and have to be reset? That'd be annoying. Do officers start getting "unruly" that their skills are too good for the player? Will the player have to delete all their elite officers and start from scratch? That'd be a huge setback and way worse than the simple loss of talent. It may be better to remove officer training entirely.
What could officer training be replaced with? A talent that boosts mercenary play would fit in pretty well. Officer management gives permanent officers, while Mercenary management gives better options for hiring mercs. Unfortunately both talents would be pretty similar and might need more to distinguish them. The loss of +1 level talent isn't a big deal. A story point option could help, or high level officers might be one of those rare loots in the void.