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General Discussion / Re: 0.9.1a Balance Testing Case Study: Condor
« on: July 19, 2020, 02:02:35 AM »
Well, to be fair, we don't know how the other skills scale as well. Or at least, I don't if there's been further details put somewhere. If the skill opposite the Carrier group provides a similar CR bonus that gets split across ships (i.e. +15% CR up to 10 ships, then scaling down to +5% Cr at 30), then there is also a penalty to having reserve direct combat ships (or really, any reserve ships). I'd need to see the all the skills before being able to make a statement about where this skill fits in.
I guess the question is, how does it stack up against say, a single ship skill from the combat tree. In the current skill trees, the fleet wide skills all scale with the size of your fleet, while the combat skills do not. If you want optimal power at end game, you prioritize the fleet wide bonuses from leadership and tech. Currently, unless you're limited by cash for some reason, it is always better to have more and bigger ships in your fleet. From an optimization view point, a +15% replacement bonus from Fighter Doctrine on a large fleet size likely beats out any single Combat skill. Especially if its 20 fighter bays. At 8 bays, this skill is the same as Fighter Doctrine 3 and Carrier Command 3 (a personal skill!) right now. At 20 Bays its equivalent to the fleet wide Fighter Doctrine 3 by itself.
To be honest, +15% on 20 bays (equivalent to 10 Drovers) seems good. More than that in your fleet, I'm kind okay with weakening it versus the current setup given how dominant fighter spamming is and the way it scales non-linearly. Recovery also scales non-linearly. If you have enough fighters in your wings, your recovery goes up. If you build ships faster, you spend more time recovering replacement rate, which leads to fighters coming out faster. There's some feedback there.
I agree it probably does lead to some unintended decision making, dumping non-combat ships with drones that never get deployed. On the other hand, early game when you fail to escape a pirate fleet with your small exploration fleet, you'll want that bonus applying to any ships you have, to get as much of as an edge as you can get. It'd be weird early game taking that skill, and then not having it help your shepherds which happen to be your only fighter ships at the time. Having to stick hull mods which modify skill behavior strikes me as inelegant and non-intuitive.
Its not clear to me what is the right way to go in this situation without testing and without knowledge of all the other skill effects.
I guess the question is, how does it stack up against say, a single ship skill from the combat tree. In the current skill trees, the fleet wide skills all scale with the size of your fleet, while the combat skills do not. If you want optimal power at end game, you prioritize the fleet wide bonuses from leadership and tech. Currently, unless you're limited by cash for some reason, it is always better to have more and bigger ships in your fleet. From an optimization view point, a +15% replacement bonus from Fighter Doctrine on a large fleet size likely beats out any single Combat skill. Especially if its 20 fighter bays. At 8 bays, this skill is the same as Fighter Doctrine 3 and Carrier Command 3 (a personal skill!) right now. At 20 Bays its equivalent to the fleet wide Fighter Doctrine 3 by itself.
To be honest, +15% on 20 bays (equivalent to 10 Drovers) seems good. More than that in your fleet, I'm kind okay with weakening it versus the current setup given how dominant fighter spamming is and the way it scales non-linearly. Recovery also scales non-linearly. If you have enough fighters in your wings, your recovery goes up. If you build ships faster, you spend more time recovering replacement rate, which leads to fighters coming out faster. There's some feedback there.
I agree it probably does lead to some unintended decision making, dumping non-combat ships with drones that never get deployed. On the other hand, early game when you fail to escape a pirate fleet with your small exploration fleet, you'll want that bonus applying to any ships you have, to get as much of as an edge as you can get. It'd be weird early game taking that skill, and then not having it help your shepherds which happen to be your only fighter ships at the time. Having to stick hull mods which modify skill behavior strikes me as inelegant and non-intuitive.
Its not clear to me what is the right way to go in this situation without testing and without knowledge of all the other skill effects.