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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Author Topic: Separate combat and campaign skill points  (Read 14236 times)

Megas

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Re: Separate combat and campaign skill points
« Reply #45 on: April 17, 2018, 11:02:59 AM »

Personally, I would split skills between Campaign and Combat, have separate skill point pools, and move all the carriers skills into the combat side. Furthermore, I would have combat points be retrainable at friendly ports for a fee (probably 1000 x player level), allowing the player to adjust their skill layout for the task at hand. This way the player wouldn't feel like they were crippling their strategic capacity just to be effective on the battlefield, and would also allow them to adjust their skills to fit their fleet as it grows and evolves.
Another thing I dislike the skill system, aside from pushing players into buffer or non-combatant role, is that some combat skills are highly specialized, and taking them (for yourself only) effectively marries your character into a specific ship or narrow class of ships.  Want to be the best carrier pilot, better like piloting Drover, Heron (or Mora), or Astral for the whole game.  Even if you want simply want to shoot things up, without carrier skills, you cannot diversify into dedicated carriers (or warship/carrier hybrids like Legion) for endgame if you get sick of driving Paragon or Onslaught.

This is like Weapon Specialization in various games, especially those that require maxed skill/feat to be competent.  You can use your sword you specialized in very well, but you are mediocre with any other weapon.
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Sutopia

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Re: Separate combat and campaign skill points
« Reply #46 on: April 17, 2018, 04:45:19 PM »

So I see the point that "player getting strong themselves" as a must demand
Why not make player themselves a resettable officer?
Yeah then it sounds like a separate combat tree.
Be able to totally reset combat skill level at some cost and now trading and campaign operations doesn't increase your combat experience, you don't gain campaign exp after battle vice versa.
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Cyan Leader

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Re: Separate combat and campaign skill points
« Reply #47 on: April 20, 2018, 03:35:07 AM »

I would really hate to see the combat skills go, as Alex said getting stronger as the game goes on is very rewarding. That said, I pretty much never run into the issues Megas posts about because since my after my first run on the latest version I tweaked the level cap so I did not have to give up on campaign skills to have combat fun and never looked back. I wish I didn't have to do that.

I've always supported the idea of ship upgrades. Hullmods is one thing but I always thought there should be something more to it, a limited resource you could spend on a ship. An idea I've had is having AI core slots on ships. Each slot could enable a combat tree skill, and depending on the quality of the core you'd get lvl 1/2/3 skill. Of course we don't have to use AI cores for this, anything could work, but it would make the combat tree skills localized on the ships and not on something that is in opposition to campaign skills (and also not related to ship OPs).
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Tartiflette

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Re: Separate combat and campaign skill points
« Reply #48 on: April 20, 2018, 06:20:21 AM »

That's an intriging idea. Although I can see it conflicting a lot with Officers.

I have to say, I'm not too worked up about that isse for the simple reason that I never ever put points in combat skills... Which says something. I just entirely ignore that tree because it feels more like a "comfort" tree rather than a necessary one to play: even factoring how efficient I can be as a player against AI, the player ship is but one ship and I always consider it a waste to buff that one ship when I can buff the entire fleet.

So rather than separating the trees, I could see the combat one entirely removed from the player, but the player could then share the bridge of the flagship with an officer and get the benefits from their combat skills.
« Last Edit: April 20, 2018, 06:32:59 AM by Tartiflette »
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Megas

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Re: Separate combat and campaign skill points
« Reply #49 on: April 20, 2018, 06:39:07 AM »

Yes, Combat is comfort tree.  The only Combat perks I see truly vital are Combat Endurance 1 for more peak performance (and mitigate the pain caused by overly cowardly AI) and Helmsmanship 3 (to allow zero-flux boost when fighters are engaged).

As I wrote before, a problem with some pilot-only skills - in all non-Industry aptitudes - is they marry your character into a ship, and Starsector is too long a game for that to be enjoyable.

The idea of your player being an administrator, while his officers are pokemon who he can choose one for his combat flagship can be a solution to that.

EDIT:  Or player could be combo officer and administrator.  In theory, he is already this.  In practice, he does not have enough skill points to pull it off, thanks to empty aptitudes sucking at least nine skill points away, and if you get enough buffer and/or campaign comfort skills, you do not have enough skill points left to match level 20 officers in combat.  Plus, if you want to be the best pilot for a given ship, you will be married to it like a sword-and-board fighter with weapon specialization skill/feat chain is married to his longsword.

Currently, ALL of my characters have the following skills:
Combat:  Combat Endurance 1, Helmsmanship 3
Leadership:  Fleet Logistics 3, Coordinated Maneuvers 1, Fighter Doctrine 3
Technology:  Electronic Warfare 1, Loadout Design 3

That is 24 out of 42 points spent, leaving 18 left for everything else.  That is not very many points left, for less personal skills than what level 20 officers get, even if I completely ignore campaign comfort stuff like Navigation or anything from Industry; not to mention if I want Industry, that is more points wasted on a empty aptitude.
« Last Edit: April 20, 2018, 06:53:41 AM by Megas »
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Tartiflette

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Re: Separate combat and campaign skill points
« Reply #50 on: April 20, 2018, 06:52:40 AM »

And then the Aptitude levels get the combat fleet bonuses (extra speed for Industry, enemy range reduction with Technology, and orders regen with Leadership) to make them feel worthwhile since their bonuses are incremental.
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Megas

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Re: Separate combat and campaign skill points
« Reply #51 on: April 20, 2018, 07:04:29 AM »

And then the Aptitude levels get the combat fleet bonuses (extra speed for Industry, enemy range reduction with Technology, and orders regen with Leadership) to make them feel worthwhile since their bonuses are incremental.
Before 0.8, Combat would have given max CR and deployment cost discount (latter was buggy with supplies), Leadership would have given maintenance discounts (or more Logistics when that was a thing), and Technology would have given more OP.

Range reduction... can't that be reverted to range increases like they originally were (before they evolved into damage bonus, then range reduction)?  Most ships feeling like knife fighters instead of proper gunships gets annoying.  If Safety Override suffers in the process, so be it.
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Megas

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Re: Separate combat and campaign skill points
« Reply #52 on: April 20, 2018, 10:02:46 AM »

The thing about specialist skills is I do not mind fleetwide specialist skills like Fighter Doctrine because even if you cannot use the boost due to your ship choice, your fleet still benefits (if it has any carriers in it, in case of Fighter Doctrine).  However, Carrier Command, which is effectively piloted-only version of Fighter Doctrine, hurts if I take it but do not use a carrier as my flagship.  Before 0.8, this was not a problem due to player getting almost everything after enough grinding (to level 60+), but that is not so today.  Also, because fleet action is generally more useful than soloing enemies, Officer Management is very useful for buffing two ships for less cost (and can be respec'ed by firing and hiring new officers) than it takes to buff your character (that cannot be respec'ed).
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Cyan Leader

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Re: Separate combat and campaign skill points
« Reply #53 on: April 20, 2018, 11:06:56 AM »

That's an intriging idea. Although I can see it conflicting a lot with Officers.

Yeah that occurred to me. A neat solution would be to give officers only a few but unique skills that the player can't get, which could make them more special and distinct from one another.
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Sutopia

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Re: Separate combat and campaign skill points
« Reply #54 on: April 22, 2018, 08:19:23 AM »

So rather than separating the trees, I could see the combat one entirely removed from the player, but the player could then share the bridge of the flagship with an officer and get the benefits from their combat skills.
That was pretty my original suggestion but Alex said it's also an important element to make player "feel they are growing stronger".

That's an intriging idea. Although I can see it conflicting a lot with Officers.
Since SS is java game it should be OO programming so making a officer.player class shouldn't be a huge issue, at least theoretically.
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Rigel

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Re: Separate combat and campaign skill points
« Reply #55 on: April 22, 2018, 08:52:10 AM »

So rather than separating the trees, I could see the combat one entirely removed from the player, but the player could then share the bridge of the flagship with an officer and get the benefits from their combat skills.
That was pretty my original suggestion but Alex said it's also an important element to make player "feel they are growing stronger".

That's an intriging idea. Although I can see it conflicting a lot with Officers.
Since SS is java game it should be OO programming so making a officer.player class shouldn't be a huge issue, at least theoretically.
in that case, making combat having its own skill points separated from other skill tress can work then? honestly though im starting to feel its nigh-impossible to strike a balance between fleet wide skills and player piloted skills.
ideally both player piloted and fleet wide should be viable in their own ways but make player piloted skills good enough to pick over fleet wide then they can encourage to solo fleets like in 7.2 (and if the pilot skill is not good enough for taking on fleets then why bother with single ship skill over fleet wide?)

and then there's the electronic warfare and coordinated maneuvers in this mix too
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Sutopia

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Re: Separate combat and campaign skill points
« Reply #56 on: April 22, 2018, 09:09:14 AM »

So rather than separating the trees, I could see the combat one entirely removed from the player, but the player could then share the bridge of the flagship with an officer and get the benefits from their combat skills.
That was pretty my original suggestion but Alex said it's also an important element to make player "feel they are growing stronger".

That's an intriging idea. Although I can see it conflicting a lot with Officers.
Since SS is java game it should be OO programming so making a officer.player class shouldn't be a huge issue, at least theoretically.
in that case, making combat having its own skill points separated from other skill tress can work then? honestly though im starting to feel its nigh-impossible to strike a balance between fleet wide skills and player piloted skills.
ideally both player piloted and fleet wide should be viable in their own ways but make player piloted skills good enough to pick over fleet wide then they can encourage to solo fleets like in 7.2 (and if the pilot skill is not good enough for taking on fleets then why bother with single ship skill over fleet wide?)

and then there's the electronic warfare and coordinated maneuvers in this mix too
So rather than letting player "owning" entire combat tree, just remove any player personal skill and make an extra class "Officer.Player", maybe make a few method to override original behavior, such as upgrading picks(player should have more option than original picking from random two for normal officers).
Add a method "respec" with a price for player to totally reset combat skill level at a price.(back to level 1 and 0 xp)
IMO player's combat skill, if applying separately from fleet skill, should be totally equal to any operational officer, that is no more than lv20 and they should be identical skills.
In that case any enemy fleet can and should RNG all the fleet skill and combat skills separately. At some point maybe REDACTED can also have some fleet skills.

I think that pretty fix any possible "balancing" issue (since I believe original insufficient skill points was to make decision between 1 super soldier or 20 good soldiers) and fulfill most wishes here.
Player grow stronger, player being single forever(not married to a ship), player no significant advantage over AI to make things too easy = boring, am I missing anything else?
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