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[Embolism]

As noted, I've suggested this before.

The current system is fine, it's only numbers that are imbalanced. Giving piloted skills level 3 fleet-wide effects for example can make them more enticing for players without unnecessarily buffing officers. In some ways this is essentially making all player skills fleet-wide, but without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I don't think that's a good idea - you'd end up with combat skills also promoting having a large fleet to leverage those fleet-wide bonuses as much as possible, and that's pretty much exactly the opposite of what we want.

That assumes piloted skills will be as good as fleet skills at conferring fleet bonuses. They obviously won't, the idea is to make combat skills more balanced against fleet skills for the player without making officers, who use the same combat skills, more powerful.

If you really want to focus on fleet you would probably want to take dedicated fleet skills, since combat skills won't be as good at fleet bonuses. On the other hand if your fleet is small enough that the player has a lot more sway over the battlefield then taking skills that boost yourself (while also giving your allies a slight boost) may be more efficient, not to mention fun.

[Wyvern]

Giving piloted skills level 3 fleet-wide effects for example can make them more enticing for players without unnecessarily buffing officers. In some ways this is essentially making all player skills fleet-wide, but without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

You'd end up with combat skills also promoting having a large fleet to leverage those fleet-wide bonuses as much as possible, and that's pretty much exactly the opposite of what we want.

That assumes piloted skills will be as good as fleet skills at conferring fleet bonuses.

No, it really doesn't.  Adding a fleet-wide effect promotes having more ships to benefit from it.  That it's a poorer investment than a dedicated fleet-wide skill doesn't change the gameplay result you get from taking the skill.

If you're going to buff the per-ship skills that a fleet admiral (i.e. player rather than officer) has access to, I'd rather buff the actual per-ship effects and let the player make their flagship better, rather than adding fleet-wide effects.

[Embolism]

That assumes piloted skills will be as good as fleet skills at conferring fleet bonuses. They obviously won't, the idea is to make combat skills more balanced against fleet skills for the player without making officers, who use the same combat skills, more powerful.

If you really want to focus on fleet you would probably want to take dedicated fleet skills, since combat skills won't be as good at fleet bonuses. On the other hand if your fleet is small enough that the player has a lot more sway over the battlefield then taking skills that boost yourself (while also giving your allies a slight boost) may be more efficient, not to mention fun.

No, it really doesn't.  Adding a fleet-wide effect promotes having more ships to benefit from it.  That it's a poorer investment than a dedicated fleet-wide skill doesn't change the gameplay result you get from taking the skill.

If you're going to buff the per-ship skills that a fleet admiral (i.e. player rather than officer) has access to, I'd rather buff the actual per-ship effects and let the player make their flagship better, rather than adding fleet-wide effects.

The problem with buffing per-ship effects is it makes officers more powerful too. At that point you may as well go with OP's suggestion and go full separation of player and officer skills, which is what we're trying to avoid.

There's a continuum here, it's not black-and-white. A skill with a large piloted effect and a small fleet effect does not automatically switch from favouring solo (as in the previous patch) to favouring 100-ship fleets. Example:


Skill A boosts the player's ship by 100% and all ships by 10%.
Skill B boosts all ships by 20%.

By numbers alone:

You would prefer skill A if your fleet has 9 ships or less (+190% effectiveness vs 180%)
You would prefer skill B if your fleet has 11 ships or more (+220% effectiveness vs +210%).


Obviously this is an insulting oversimplification but you get the idea I'm trying to convey.

[Wyvern]

You're missing the point.  Yes, clearly skill B is better.  However, if the player for some reason takes skill A instead, then the bonus to all ships component incentivizes using a larger fleet (and eventually the player will realize that they made a mistake and shouldn't have taken skill A.)

Secondly, skill A is already different between the player and an officer, as the officer doesn't get the "all ships by 10%" part.  If you're trying to avoid separating player and officer skills (and why would we be trying to do that, anyway?), then you've already failed.  And besides, that wasn't the OP's suggestion; giving the player (and AI fleet admirals) access to stronger per-ship skills than a regular officer would get is completely different from removing per-ship skills and allowing the player (and AI fleet admirals) to assign an officer to their flagship.

[Deshara]

I prefer to play as a combat freighter pilot who incidentally happens to be owner of a fleet and delegates the tasks of Admiralty to others while he pilots ships into combat, and if Alex made me unable to do that I'd riot

[Embolism]

You're missing the point.  Yes, clearly skill B is better.  However, if the player for some reason takes skill A instead, then the bonus to all ships component incentivizes using a larger fleet (and eventually the player will realize that they made a mistake and shouldn't have taken skill A.)

But Skill B is not clearly better. Skill A is superior for smaller fleets, skill B for larger fleets. Remember this is an "insulting oversimplification" and adding more ships to the fleet is not always better due to logistic costs and efficiency/player preference/fun (going to back to what Alex is saying here).


Plus if I'm not mistaken, you're saying you want (for example) for skill A to be buffed from 100% to 200% for the player only. The result of this then would be:

Skill A is better for fleets with less than 9 ships (200% vs 180%).
Skill B is better for fleets with more than 11 ships (220% vs 200%).

... The end result is the same for which skill is better at which fleet sizes. The difference is my suggestion allows Skill A to scale, so in fleet sizes with less than 9 ships you're still encouraged to have a few wingmen rather than going solo. So what makes your idea The Solution^tm and mine Terrible^(c)?

Secondly, skill A is already different between the player and an officer, as the officer doesn't get the "all ships by 10%" part.  If you're trying to avoid separating player and officer skills (and why would we be trying to do that, anyway?), then you've already failed.  And besides, that wasn't the OP's suggestion; giving the player (and AI fleet admirals) access to stronger per-ship skills than a regular officer would get is completely different from removing per-ship skills and allowing the player (and AI fleet admirals) to assign an officer to their flagship.

Ah, but Skill A is different between players and officers in the same way it already is now! As it is certain combat skills unlock hullmods for the player to use for the entire fleet, whereas officers having the same combat skills don't. So there's precedence and cohesion is maintained!

With that in mind I think your idea of giving player version of piloted skills a stronger effect than officer versions is valid too, but I prefer mine for thematic reasons : you're ultimately a fleet admiral, and you already have the option to be a stronger combatant than your officers by taking more combat skills than they can.


EDIT: also by separation of player and officer skills I mean having the two draw from entirely different pools with no overlap, essentially splitting one system into two systems... which is what OP suggested.

[fededevi]

A couple of comments.

I do not think the player should be able to get more skills than the AI, the AI is weak enough as it is. In my opinion the efficiency of having a small fleet comes from the fact that the player is much better at piloting than the AI and the logistic system itself. I do not see the need of additional player skills that make the player ship OP (subjective).
I do not see how removing personal skills would prevent you from using  a small fleet. You still have most of the benefits: reduced logistic cost, most ship have an officer, more % of the fleet is piloted by you so -> more efficiency.

Also, again: if you are going to specialize into combat + small fleet, you will want to really exploit those skills you have chosen instead of the overall better fleet-wide skills. And this means you will be locked to a couple of optimal ships to use, usually with similar play-style, and this is BAD and boring.


The more player-centric your skills are the more hull-specific skills are a bad idea.


But on the other side, plain "+damage", "+speed" are quite boring. Note that a "+shield" skill would already start to be hull-specific, even a "+ship damage" would be sub-optimal for a carrier.

If hull-specific skills are bad and non hull-specific skills are boring the solution is to have hull-specific skills interchangeable with officers (or some other mechanism), hence my suggestion.