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Author Topic: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes  (Read 355088 times)

Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #540 on: April 20, 2016, 08:58:43 AM »

My idea for a skill revamp would be that instead of giving direct bonuses, most of them (except leadership type skills) would unlock a dedicated hullmod at level 1, and all subsequent levels would improve the efficiency of that hullmod. Then they could still provide significant bonuses, but since you'd have to spend OP and could not install all of them, that would prevent turning all ships in flawless murder machines.

That's interesting. As you say, though, that'd mess up officers... hmm.

I'm not sure this does anything qualitatively different than skills providing direct bonuses, though. These hullmods cost OP, alright. But this just means they provide a greater-than-usual amount of benefit per OP - otherwise, they wouldn't be locked behind a skill. And then we're looking at skills providing that "extra" amount of power for free, in terms of OP.

The difference is the balancing factor is being limited by OP in addition skill points, but if anything, that makes it more difficult to balance - now you've got to consider the OP values for the various ships, too. Skills would turn into something that's more beneficial to ships that have above-baseline OP values. Is that an intended effect of that approach? I suspect not, because it doesn't seem like a good thing on the face of it.


Personally, I'm not at all sure that coupling Hull Mods and skills was a great idea in the first place, especially when most of them are on Tech / Combat areas we'd get anyhow. 
...
Seriously, though, I think that ultimately, Hull Mods should be tied to missions given to you by Factions, where the power toys require pretty amazing heroics, rather than leveling.

Been thinking along similar lines myself for a while, actually.

The fleet could catch practically anything and fear nothing, and I could just sit back and watch.  Practically no amount of anything less than Cruiser-sized could kill even one member of this fleet, frankly.

I'm still not understanding - this sounds like exactly an issue with skills being very strong compared to baseline.


I think that the Fleet AI should get more exposed in the API; I'd be more than willing to write a smart one that takes player levels / power into account, calls reinforcements, etc.

If you're talking about the campaign-level fleet AI - that's entirely replaceable now, via CampaignPlugin.pickXXXXXXAIModule().
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Tartiflette

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #541 on: April 20, 2016, 09:39:44 AM »

I'm not sure this does anything qualitatively different than skills providing direct bonuses, though. These hullmods cost OP, alright. But this just means they provide a greater-than-usual amount of benefit per OP - otherwise, they wouldn't be locked behind a skill. And then we're looking at skills providing that "extra" amount of power for free, in terms of OP.
The main difference as I see it is that you can't mount all hullmods on a ship, thus they can't get better in every single aspect even at high level. Also hullmods are already pretty powerful by themselves, and skills are VERY powerful alone. The combinaison of both create ships worth multiple times their skill-less hullmod-less self.

By making both these thing a single one, with hullmods a bit stronger than they curently are (although not that much) and adding new ones when apropriate, I think it would avoid a lot of the powercreep issues and make them easier to balance.

Not all skills would be tied to a hullmod though, so the whole distinction between "Leadership" "Technology" and "Combat" would have to be changed in something else. Maybe two trees? The Technology+Industry tree that would unlock the hullmods and manage your outposts, and the Combat+Leadership that would encompass the officers and non-hullmod skills.

Anyway I still need to finish mulling over this and probably make a smal list of examples.
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Schwartz

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #542 on: April 20, 2016, 11:15:25 AM »

Skills and hullmods are fine. They both work differently and I enjoy having both in the game. The only thing problematic are Combat skills right now, because they focus too much power on your flagship - and on every ship with an officer. These need to be toned down and changed more towards defensive skills rather than weapon characteristics, speed and maneuverability. If you want to nerf these mechanics, go for the real issue and nerf the Combat tree and officers.

Hullmods are not universally awesome - they cost OP, meaning you make a concession, you pay for it. Skills require combat experience, they're the carrot to go out and fight. Please don't remove either of these. They are both fun mechanics, they have a place in the game and it'd only make it more dull if you couldn't have both. The magnitude of power creep is only really a problem since version 0.7 and we all know why.
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xenoargh

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #543 on: April 20, 2016, 12:17:56 PM »

Quote
I'm still not understanding - this sounds like exactly an issue with skills being very strong compared to baseline.
It's the combination of skills, a few ships / weapons being markedly superior to everything else in their weight class, having enough OPs, etc., etc.

I guess we could say all of this is the fault of skills being OP, but I look at this more as simply not having enough challenges on the high end.  I'm entirely OK with having awesome fleets of cool captains and ultra-tech at the high end- that's fun.  I just want stuff that's flying around that can possibly kill me.  

After a certain point, the only time that happens in Vanilla is if I decided to go Scarab and fight Tri-Tach fleets that contain two Paragons, because they can and will sometimes kill a chunk of my fleet, even if I use Avoid and kill them dead last.  That, and they usually bring Afflictors early.

But usually the Apogee can get in and tank one of them long enough to bring it down, and then we're all over the other one like hyenas.

Nothing else really can do that; Onslaught's not cutting it atm and the Conquest is a joke in AI hands, fighter fleets don't work out against my mix and the only Cruisers I actually have some fear of because they are effective in AI hands, the Apogee and the XIV Eagle, are pretty rare encounters.  

Neither is really well-kitted to take my stuff down.  Nothing else really bothers that bunch, on the high end; at that point in the game, I out-range and out-DPS and out-fly all possible enemies, and that's before Captain skills take them to the next level.  We need some really dangerous threats around to deal with the player at that point that aren't just ignorable or entirely optional.  I'd really rather see that than nerfing everything into a dull mush; once Industry exists and Leadership gets revamped, levels will get spread out more anyhow.
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #544 on: April 20, 2016, 01:01:33 PM »

Hmm - this started out with you saying that reducing the impact of skills would make everything into one-ship-vs-all, which is what I'm still trying to understand the logic of. I think we're getting fairly off-track regarding that :)

I guess we could say all of this is the fault of skills being OP, but I look at this more as simply not having enough challenges on the high end.  I'm entirely OK with having awesome fleets of cool captains and ultra-tech at the high end- that's fun.

That's all completely relative, though. Whichever way you look at it, bringing skills down will add more challenge on the high end. It's quite out of hand now, and there's a ton of room to reduce the impact of skills while still having it be very significant. More importantly, the way they are know seriously messes with the balance and feel of most ships, which were really tuned for no-skills to start with.
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Dri

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #545 on: April 20, 2016, 01:03:38 PM »

Oooo, Megas ain't gonna like you nerfing skills to create a more "base-stat" feel to ships!
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xenoargh

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #546 on: April 20, 2016, 01:24:14 PM »

Quote
this started out with you saying that reducing the impact of skills would make everything into one-ship-vs-all
Because if we don't have fairly heroic Skills for AI Captains, then we're back to player skill being the deciding factor, basically.  

AI Captains are more of a liability than not until midgame; after that, the player can afford to take ship losses, if needbe, to get them the XP they need to hit higher levels.

If player skill, rather than stats, is what is most efficient, we're right back to the single-player-vs-all model of gameplay.  

If you want fleet combat to be the normal way play progresses, then Captains make the difference between just soloing with a series of Medusas and rolling around with a mixed bag, tbh.  Until Captains were a thing, I only used AI ships that could tank or be support; Captains made them viable to actually get them fighting.  The problem isn't, "Captains are OP"... again, the problem is largely, "there is nothing challenging a player fleet built by a good player after about Level 30".

So, no, I don't agree about nerfing Skills; instead, make the high end much more challenging. 

Otherwise, we're back to, "do I use the the Tempest or the Medusa to Solo All", because player skill vs. the AI is always going to go in the player's favor, at the high end of play.  I think that the right answer to that is to make the AI fleets come out ahead on raw stats and numbers, so the player is both using their skills and the buffed-up Captains to win, but probably with losses (rather than like it is right now, where an optimaxed fleet can largely win for me without me doing much at all).  So, to win without any losses at all, they'll have to be extremely good at solo play.  That'd strike a good balance with the solo-vs-fleet crowds; solo would work, but be Nintendo Hard and take longer amounts of time IRL, whereas fleet would work more efficiently, time-wise, but wouldn't be quite as efficient, in terms of cost / benefit, game-wise.
« Last Edit: April 20, 2016, 01:34:35 PM by xenoargh »
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xenoargh

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #547 on: April 20, 2016, 01:57:21 PM »

Or, to use another analogy:

Great gameplay is when you avoid the Mount and Blade error, and players don't just use Huscarls or solo castles or both, because efficiency.

Great gameplay is when the player feels like mixes of AI-piloted things actually add more strength than weakness, but at the high end, losses are a real cost and losing a battle is just an error away.  That's how it feels past early game up until midgame atm, until it becomes too easy as everything (OPs, Skills, good ships and weapons, etc.) add up.

Right now the main problem is that early-game on Normal is tense and brutal, but it gets much easier past level 16-ish (when Combat is maxed and you start getting Captains past Level 10-ish).

The right answer isn't to make the early game even harder by making the climb out even slower, imo... which is exactly what nerfing Skills much, especially Combat, is going to do, along with making Captains in general far less relevant.  Instead, focus on that later period of play.
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Dark.Revenant

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #548 on: April 20, 2016, 02:05:05 PM »

I completely disagree; skills shouldn't affect a massive improvement in combat prowess, at least not if the player doesn't dedicate an entire career to it.  The base balance of ships is more interesting overall and leaves open tons of early-game content to fill the void present currently.
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #549 on: April 20, 2016, 02:07:00 PM »

If player skill, rather than stats, is what is most efficient, we're right back to the single-player-vs-all model of gameplay.  

Aha - I get what you're saying now, but I just think on this point it's ... well, wrong :)

If skill bonuses are focused around offense - as they largely are - then the more you get from them, the more it magnifies the impact of player skill, while simultaneously making the environment much more dangerous to friendly ships.

For a very basic example, a non-skill Tempest kitted with pulse lasers is going to take a good long time to kill a single Venture, just due to the time it takes to punch through armor. Add in Target Analysis, and the time-to-kill is cut drastically, even if the Venture "keeps pace" by getting the same bonus.

The more dangerous ships are, in terms of TTK, the higher the impact of player skill and the more encouraged the player is to solo everything. To me, the logic of this seems pretty cut and dry.

The right answer isn't to make the early game even harder by making the climb out even slower, imo... which is exactly what nerfing Skills much, especially Combat, is going to do, along with making Captains in general far less relevant.

If skills are both weaker and more defense-focused, this will make officers *more* relevant, not less. They'd make ships less likely to be lost, and the overall environment they fight in would be less dangerous.

I also don't think skills are a huge factor in "climbing out" of the early game. Until you get a good number of wins w/o skills, you're not going to get the skills anyway. Once you've gotten them, you have the money for a few extra ships already.


Different, asymmetrical late-game challenges are another matter, though. There, I do agree with you - it'd be very much a good thing to have. But the difficulty of that would be tuned to whatever the impact of skills is, and so it's almost entirely a separate issue.
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xenoargh

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #550 on: April 20, 2016, 02:23:05 PM »

I'm pretty sure TTK isn't the issue here at all.

Power Modulation 10 is, other than Entoptic Rangefinder, the most powerful buff in the game.  It and the flux-to-damage stat is why the Apogee is king of the Cruisers. 

I think that the idea that TTK is what's wrong is largely incorrect; it's not TTK, it's that the Tempest, for example, suddenly becomes able to kite indefinitely without taking damage, with Power Modulation 10, Entoptic Rangefinder, and Helmsmanship 10.  Add in ITU and it's in a range band that nothing deals with well, efficiently killing things one Hard Flux chip at a time.  You could take away all of the TTK skills tomorrow and that Tempest would still be a monster- but a monster that's harder to kill than ever.

The TTK stuff helps a bit, but it just speeds up the outcome.  The only part of the TTK that even matters in that scenario is the 25% Shield damage- the rest of it's just tinsel, frankly, because a Flux-locked AI ship is dead sooner or later.

Those three Skills are where the power is, with optimized fleets, though, and they're all basically defensive in nature, because they alter real-world CEP for counter-attacks or make counters impossible, depending on what the Tempest is killing.
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Dark.Revenant

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #551 on: April 20, 2016, 02:29:01 PM »

Your argument only applies to the player; the invincibility you describe is something that the AI does not know how to make use of.
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xenoargh

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #552 on: April 20, 2016, 02:36:07 PM »

Nah, the AI deals with kiting pretty well, actually.  Even Vanilla's AI does a great job with a well-configured Tempest.

Now, there are limits, admittedly; the Tempest, in AI hands, will not kill non-D Cruisers+, because of range bands.  But up until that point, yeah.

Past that, Medusa / Apogee hammer-and-anvils can kill just about anything on auto-pilot, configured well.  I just use the Enforcers as fighter sponges and to kill on Paragons; one Enforcer and three Shepherds makes for a well-nigh unkillable unit that soaks an incredible amount of stuff.
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #553 on: April 20, 2016, 02:42:09 PM »

TBH, I'd call all those skills "offensive", at least in part. They're useful for defense, sure, but it's the kind of defense that lets you continually stay on target while dealing damage. (It's not quite clear how to differentiate between "offensive" and "defensive" skills, anyway, except for how they affect TTK - but perhaps that's not very important, just nomenclature.)

You could take away all of the TTK skills tomorrow and that Tempest would still be a monster- but a monster that's harder to kill than ever.

You're forgetting peak performance here, I think. It's a pretty critical component of all this. If that's not in place, then yeah, you get a Tempest soloing anything, with or without skills, and yes, it's probably in a bit more danger when everyone has skills, but it IS in place, and precisely for this reason. (The alternative to peak performance is making larger ships hard-counter smaller and faster ones; if there's any room for skill to prevail, it will, so gameplay changes are generally ineffective there unless they're drastic - i.e. hard-counter.)

What movement and offense skills let you do is break peak performance limitations, basically - sometimes, too badly. For example, if a Medusa can effectively kite frigates, this is bad. Movement skills are something that badly needs some toning down as well, for this reason.


Then you get into, "what if the player just chain-deploys however many Tempests they need", and this is indeed an issue. It's made better by increasing the overall usefulness of allies, though - e.g. you'll kill things much faster w/ a friendly Tempest to distract/deal extra damage. This may or may not be more efficient than chain-deploying both Tempests; will have to play around with this and see.
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xenoargh

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #554 on: April 20, 2016, 02:58:36 PM »

I think that "defensive" is pretty clear- "stuff that actively prevents permanent damage from occurring" rather than "stuff that causes damage to happen" is a good distinction.  

Of the skills I just mentioned, only one (Entoptic Rangefinder) counts as both; it both boosts range and therefore it also boosts CEP.  Helmsmanship is purely about CEP at kiting ranges; Power Modulation 10 is about causing damage to not matter, long-term; only major burst damage matters.  

None of these skills are totally OP or whatever; it's just that they're especially synergistic for some ships that already have mobility advantages and exacerbate the problems with weapon balance / ship balance in general.  The Wolf also gets much more powerful with those three skills maxed out, but it's not as egregious as the Tempest, for example.

Peak performance on the Tempest is significant until they have Combat Aptitude 10, yes.  But usually I have Hardened Subsystems installed, forgoing missiles to pay for it.  I practically never use Missiles, in general; they simply aren't worth bothering, with AI fleets, vs. getting the OPs put to better uses.  But frankly, at high levels, Peak Performance isn't a thing; I just kill everything before it starts to kick in, 90% of the time.  If AI fleets were double their current size, on the high end, it'd start mattering.

But frankly, the way things work right now, it's:

A.  1-2 Tempests killing all the little stuff on the fringes up to wounded Destroyers.  They don't die, because meanwhile...
B.  Medusa duos are killing all of the big stuff up to Battleships.  They don't die, because meanwhile...
C.  Enforcer / Shepherd squads are running interference, because the Vanilla AI likes to focus on them and waste missiles on them for some reason. But if there are really big ships on the field then...
D.  The Apogee gets called in if I want to just screw up the AI entirely; it can get surrounded by ships and not die, if kitted properly, while dealing minor damage the whole time.
« Last Edit: April 20, 2016, 03:00:30 PM by xenoargh »
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