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[Kung Fu Harry]

https://i.imgur.com/LNXV5EG.png

I'm thinking about what the best officer skills and elite skills general. To me it appears that there are 8 high tier officer skills for AI. Helmsmanship, Gunnery Implants, Field Modulation, Combat Endurance, Target Analysis, Ballistic Mastery, Missile Specialisation and System Expertise. Ship speed and weapon range appear to be most important stats with weapon damage and shield efficiency being the next most important. But from here I'm unsure.

Is it best to fully max speed? On an Aurora best speed is:
80 base + 15 unstable injector + 12 (15%) Helmsmanship + 10 Helmsmanship Elite + 8 (10%) from 100% CR ie Combat Endurance = gives 125 speed before the +20% coordinated manoeuvres.
Dropping Helmsmanship entirely only drops speed to 103 while keeping helm and dropping unstable injector  for +15% range gives 110 speed. No injector or helm gives 88 speed, to slow.
Aurora's Plasma Jets gives 125 speed and has, (according to the fandom wiki), 1 second wind-up, 3 second duration, 2 second wind-down and 5 second cooldown which System Expertise will reduce by 33% to 5 sec * 66% gives 3.33 sec

That might be enough up time that it is best to use the 2 elite skills on Target Analysis for 100% weapon and engine damage and System Expertise for the 10% damage reduction. Or Missile Specialisation as the 10% damage will be doubled for Sabot kinetic vs shield and Harpoon HE vs armor?

Something like an Omen doesn't need Ballistic Mastery or Missile Specialisation so it only has to choose the 6 skills (Helmsmanship, Gunnery Implants, Field Modulation, Combat Endurance, Target Analysis and System Expertise) and 2 elite skills which would probably be Target Analysis and System Expertise.

Let me know what your high tier picks are.

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

I would say that Helmsmanship is most effective when you slap an elite version of it on a very slow ship, like Legion or Onslaught. Huge speed difference.

Gunnery Implants is something I recently changed my mind about. In the grand scheme of things(i.e. with +40/60% bonus already in place) and especially against Ordo which always try to close in the distance, +15% range is really not that big of a deal. The autofire accuracy it gives is also applied with 100% CR so I don't think it does anything at all, and recoil reduction is wasted on most weapons in the game. I used to get Gunnery Implants for every officer as a matter of course but now I really don't think it's even that good of a skill.

Field Modulation is a no-brain pick, the question is if you want to elite it because it's hard to gauge the effectiveness of the "hard flux dissipation"(what does that even mean?) Hovewer the elite effect for phase cooldown is fantastic for AI phase ships which can only react, not predict.

Combat Endurance, personally I run with Hull Restoration so it's useless to me. But if you need the +15% CR then yeah, it's a no brainer.

Target Analysis, don't really see the point of going elite, smaller ships already die fast anyway.

Ballistic Mastery, again hard to gauge 33% faster projectiles but I expect the effect on accuracy is minimal. 5% extra damage is not worth an elite IMO.

Missile Specialization, elite if S-modded EMR, otherwise not worth.

Systems Expertise, now here's the new ace of elite skills. -10% damage, yes please.

[Kung Fu Harry]

I interpreted "hard flux dissipation" as 20% of your dissipation can be used on hard shield flux ie a paragon has 1250 base dissipation so it can dissipate 20% => 250 hard shield flux while it is up, If you build in stabilized shields it goes up to 30%. Seems to be a player pilot stat.

[Thaago]

...
Ballistic Mastery, again hard to gauge 33% faster projectiles but I expect the effect on accuracy is minimal. 5% extra damage is not worth an elite IMO.
...

It depends on the weapon, but for some I've found the impact on accuracy to be large, especially for capitals where they have large range bonuses.

Re: Gunnery Implants, the same is true of the -25% recoil reduction - for some weapons its a more important part of skill than the range!

A good example of the combo of these is comparing the performance of a Mk IX with and without - without any, on a turret, the spread of projectiles is large enough that half the burst will miss a destroyer at range. With all of them, the gun is more akin to 4 hvd rounds (ok not quite as good, but close).

So for me the value of these skills partially depends on how I want to fit a ship.

[intrinsic_parity]

I've become a big fan of elite ballistic mastery when combined with gunnery implants. It makes a very large difference on hitting shots on moderately fast ships at max range.

I've generally felt more and more like range is a very valuable stat for the AI because it requires 0 finesse to get full value out of. When I build short range agressive ships, the AI is just not that good at taking advantage of them and spends a ton of time loitering and doing nothing because it can't find openings. Fast/agressive builds are good for handling smaller ships but they just don't get much done against big ships in the hands of the AI in my experience, and they also tend to die much more frequently against end game threats.

[Pizzarugi]

Target Analysis, don't really see the point of going elite, smaller ships already die fast anyway.

It also provides 100% increased damage to weapons and engines. This sounds particularly effective if the ship has an EMP weapon or several attached as that means shutting down a target's ability to fight or flee, making for an easier kill.

[Kung Fu Harry]

This is particularly good on the Omen as its system does emp damage. It becomes its main weapon, one of the best support weapons at that.
I ended up going System Expertise and Missile Specialisation for the Auroras as the emp job is for the Omen and frigates and destroyers are mostly 1 shot by missiles already.

I'll back 'Thaago' in the Gunnery Implants and Ballistic Mastery combo. There are some ballistic weapons that I don't like at base but with both skills, and maybe armoured weapon mounts as well, suddenly you start beaming frigates.

[Pizzarugi]

This is particularly good on the Omen as its system does emp damage. It becomes its main weapon, one of the best support weapons at that.

That's a thought: Is the EMP ability from Omen and that one phase frigate considered an EMP weapon? Stacking Target Analysis elite with Energy Mastery (30% energy damage at close range) could have terrifying results for CC.

[Phenir]

Field Modulation is a no-brain pick, the question is if you want to elite it because it's hard to gauge the effectiveness of the "hard flux dissipation"(what does that even mean?) Hovewer the elite effect for phase cooldown is fantastic for AI phase ships which can only react, not predict.

Combat Endurance, personally I run with Hull Restoration so it's useless to me. But if you need the +15% CR then yeah, it's a no brainer.

Hard flux dissipation means you can dissipate hard flux while keeping your shield up. Flux is separated into two parts, hard and soft flux. For shielded ships, hard flux is only generated by taking hits on shields and is shown by the vertical line in your flux bar. Soft flux comes from weapons fire, system use, enemy beams, and enemy projectiles hitting outside their effective range. Soft flux gets dissipated first, then hard flux. Normally while your shield is active, you cannot dissipate hard flux at all. This stat is really helpful for ships that have more dissipation than weapon flux as now they can mitigate enemy damage while keeping shield up. You can consider it something like a dps floor the enemy has to exceed to actually start doing damage.

Combat endurance elite is really nice on armor tanking ships. Repairs up that scratch damage nicely. Also, frigates, destroyers, high tech ships, and SO ships will enjoy the extra ppt and reduced degradation rate from regular combat endurance. Also lets you go over the automated ships limit a bit, I think it's required for an alpha core brilliant.

[Vanshilar]

In general I find Combat Endurance and Target Analysis to be pretty much mandatory on all my officered ships. CE means +5% damage, +5% top speed and maneuverability, and -5% damage taken, which are all useful buffs. TA is useful because it actually boosts all your damage modifiers, i.e. it's multiplicative with other damage modifiers instead of additive. So, a 100-damage shot with 15% from Ballistic Mastery (elite), 10% bonus from CR, 5% bonus from Tactical Drills, and 20% from TA against a capital, actually means 100 * (1 + 0.15 + 0.1 + 0.05) *1.2 = 156 damage -- TA actually provides +26 damage on that shot, compared with +30 from the other buffs combined.

Beyond that it really depends. I tend to use long range ships so that means Gunnery Implants and (elite) Ballistic Mastery. Missile Spec if the ship uses missiles, elite if it uses constant fire missiles (but not needed if it just has things like Harpoons). Helmsmanship is very useful for slower ships and faster ships alike. Ordnance Expertise is also useful.

I've generally felt more and more like range is a very valuable stat for the AI because it requires 0 finesse to get full value out of. When I build short range agressive ships, the AI is just not that good at taking advantage of them and spends a ton of time loitering and doing nothing because it can't find openings. Fast/agressive builds are good for handling smaller ships but they just don't get much done against big ships in the hands of the AI in my experience, and they also tend to die much more frequently against end game threats.

I've generally found that player ships are better at high-DPS high-flux ships, whereas AI is better at higher-range higher-capacity ships. AI isn't good at gauging whether or not to commit to going in, which the player is much better at. So for the AI, longer-range weapons are safer to use.

Also, the AI (on both sides) seems to be very sensitive to each ship's % of total flux. So the AI will start turning off weapons if its flux gets high. But conversely, the AI, especially fearless, tends to charge in and launch missiles more often if the opponent is high on flux. This means that to keep the enemy fleet pacified, your ships should try to stay low on flux. That means both good vents and good flux capacity. I've gotten more mileage out of my AI ships by having them load up on capacity than by loading up on vents. They build up some flux while killing each enemy ship, but they gradually dissipate it before moving on to the next ship, so their overall % flux stays low. This means the enemy ship won't launch their missiles, and die with their missiles largely unused, making them easier to kill.

I actually tend to overflux my AI ships quite a bit but also make sure they have a lot of capacity to handle it.

[Thaago]

... TA is useful because it actually boosts all your damage modifiers, i.e. it's multiplicative with other damage modifiers instead of additive. So, a 100-damage shot with 15% from Ballistic Mastery (elite), 10% bonus from CR, 5% bonus from Tactical Drills, and 20% from TA against a capital, actually means 100 * (1 + 0.15 + 0.1 + 0.05) *1.2 = 156 damage -- TA actually provides +26 damage on that shot, compared with +30 from the other buffs combined.
...

Huh. It's not a large effect, but that breaks the general rule on how bonuses work in the game. Is it supposed to be like that or is it a fortuitous bug?

[Vanshilar]

Huh. It's not a large effect, but that breaks the general rule on how bonuses work in the game. Is it supposed to be like that or is it a fortuitous bug?

No idea. But just noticed it when I was testing damage interactions with Sunder and HEF.

Plasma Cannon does 500 base damage, against Practice Targets (Low Tech) with shield efficiency of 1.4:

Without HEF, it does 1066 damage. With HEF, it does 1486 damage.
Dividing by 1.4 (shield efficiency), that leaves 761.4 damage and 1061.4 damage.
Dividing by 500 (PC base damage), that leaves 1.523 and 2.123 as damage multipliers.

The ship has +5% from Tactical Drills, +10% from 100% CR, +12% from Cybernetic Augmentation, and +20% from Tactical Analysis.

So that works out to 500 * (1 + 0.05 (TD) + 0.10 (CR) + 0.12 (CA) + 0.50 (HEF) ) * 1.20 (TA) = 1062 damage, pretty much the same. In this case since TA is multiplying everything, it also gives an additional amount due to HEF being on. Even HEF only works on the base damage, while TA multiplies a bunch of other damage modifiers including HEF.