Spoiler
I guess it could be argued that not all ships need it, but a good question to ask is how many people don't choose Loadout Design 3 in their games?
I'm pretty dependent on that extra OP, so while not having it is technically not a reduction in OP, it does seem a bit like it in practice. However I don't know whether this is true for other players (you don't necessarily pick it all the time as you mentioned), perhaps I'm in the minority with Intrinsic_parity in thinking that it is super important.
With story points I'm almost certain to be able to actually squeeze more OP into a ship with the hull mods, but rather than being a specialization, I'm thinking about integrating the most expensive hull-mods first to free up the OP lost with the absence of LD3. I guess it would feel better to me if integrating hull-mods with story points was an upgrade rather than being a requirement of getting that additional OP I count on in 0.9.1a.
I admit though that once I see the new mechanics in action, perhaps I will change my mind, and I want to emphasize that I'm genuinely excited about the new skill system overhaul; it just seems very much more interesting than the current system. I'm just greedy when it comes to ship customization!
A possible compromise would be to create a hull-mod that gives that 10% additional OP of "Loadout Design 3". Perhaps make it logistics based (was the limit on those 2 right?), though that may mean buffing other logistics hull-mods so that the OP reduction hull-mod doesn't become the default choice.
Building on this idea, how about offering several unique hull-mods only available with story points?, some random examples:
"Lightweight Weapon Mounts"
- OP cost reduction per size class of weapon (Small: -1 OP, Medium: -2 OP, Large: -3 OP)
"Waste Flux Re-Routing" <-- I struggled for a name here....
- +50% to Energy Weapon damage at high flux levels
"Hull Repair Droids"
- +0.5% Hull integrity restored each second up to 50% hull (maybe requires 5 seconds of not receiving enemy fire to activate).
Ignoring my randomly chosen bonuses, these unique hull-mods could be more expensive in story points, and be of a limited amount (eg 5/10 per game, but refundable) so that they don't end up replacing all the standard hull-mods as the de-facto choice. You could even make these special hull-mods into something that you need to acquire through salvage rather than be given immediately.
Yeah, I think this is largely being spoiled by LD3
A reset to not having it might be uncomfortable, but, well, changes!
Interesting idea as far as hullmods; I'll say I'd as soon not have another type of limiter (i.e. X maximum or some such) - that gets weird implementation-wise (what happens when you lose those ships? sell them? put them into storage? take one from storage? mothball? etc?) but also story points are supposed to be that limiter in the first place.
Have been half-thinking about being able to make just assorted stat improvements to a hull at the cost of story points, without involving hullmods directly, and that's kind of along the same path. It'd have to be very much less story-point-efficient than building in hullmods, though, or individual ship power would go through the roof.
Speaking of the old skills system. I often took missile specialization as first combat skill. It is very effective in the early game when piloting a Wolf built as missile platform. There's nothing like oneshotting a Hound and Cerberus with a salvo of atropos missiles before they can even get in firing range, and then having all the flux to deal with a third ship, and thanks to expanded missile racks still having a quick finisher. Being able to quickly remove ships from the battlefield is very valuable.
It sounds like being able to pick missile specialization early on will no longer be possible because I have to progress through several tiers of combat skills before that. On the other hand some of its effects are available through hull mods.
Right now, missile spec is +top speed/maneuverability, +hitpoints, and +damage, right? You get the first one from ECCM, the second is still part of the skill (along with some other more powerful effects), and +damage for missiles is no longer available specifically. You could pretty easily pick up Target Analysis, though - it's at Combat 2 - for a nice damage boost. (The way that skill works now, btw, is a bit more direct - it's just a damage bonus, but higher vs the bigger ship classes. More target to analyze and all that.)
Will "elite" fleets like the Diktat subfaction and maybe some inspections/bombardment/expedition fleets have builtin hullmods? They seem like a good way of making "late game" NPC fleets stronger. Or maybe for high ranking commanding officers, would make sense for them to have customized ships. Maybe also put a few of them on mission flagships.
Maybe! Still haven't worked that through. It's certainly another lever to use in making late-game stuff more of a challenge, though.
Also, I do think more information is good, but knowing bonus hullmods or all officers skills might be too much. Maybe just anything remarkable, rumored or storied about the officers? Like one or two Elite Skills they might have?
Yeah... e.g. the person bounty mentions the target's leadership skills, IIRC. Going to the level of individual officers seems a bit too much info, even.
How moddable is the new skill system?
About the same as the current/old one. You can still add more aptitudes (the character screen adds a scroller), you can set up tiers for skills, and so on. It should in theory support more than 2 skills per tier, as well.
To add to that, I'd like the new skills to be modified more easily, without having to recompile the game. Maybe it's a tall order but hey.
That's just not in the cards, sorry! In general anything new I'm adding ends up in need-to-compile code, in part because there are less restrictions on what I can do in code like that, and in part because it speeds up the game's startup loading time.
(For what it's worth, I don't take Loadout Design 3 - late if ever - and don't feel constrained by any OP shortages)
New skills arrangement / framework sounds brilliant, by the way (especially the third iteration of it, heh!)
Haha, thank you! Yeah, it's taken a few goes at it. It's kind of amusing (to me, anyway) how the number of skill levels keeps going down. 10 -> 3 -> 1 (or 2, I suppose, if we count Elite effects as levels).
Personally, I'm in the camp that "story points," as a term, are a bit of a misnomer. I get that you're trying to "tell a story" with them but I don't think you'll ever get away from people associating them with campaign/mission arcs. In practice, they're used to make decisions of varying degrees so I'd be more inclined to call them "decision points", "journey points" (synonymous with "story" but a wider connotation), "fulcrum points" (nice double-meaning but tipping the balance in one way or another), or even "path(way) points" as you took one fork or another along the way. Nit-picking notwithstanding, I like the idea and the more ways there are to spend them, the more meaningful they are.
Duly noted! Going to talk this over with David, too, see what he thinks.
Will there be some sort of scaling after max level for earning story points? I know the previous "post-max level" xp curve (if enabled in settings) was rather insane. As a player, I want the story points to be earned (i.e. not drowning in them) but not a trickle, either. I guess the key to all of this is rate at which we're getting them. I kind of like the idea of getting a ton early (i.e. while you're still earning levels you get 4) but after max level, you get 2, but gaining post-max levels aren't that hard. I'm also assuming that combat is the quickest way to earn XP still so if the impetus to get another story point or two is "fight stuff," I'd approve of that direction.
At max level, it's consistent. Otherwise it'd be more of a "soft cap", really, than "unlimited"...
(I know this sounds a little crazy, but I think the best way to teach a new player to not hoard them is to put an expiration date on them or, as has been mentioned, give a bonus for not having any at all. The MO behind them should be "you can always get more!" and though their rate of accrual will slow(?), they're never that far away).
Trying to keep it to positive reinforcement with bonus XP! If there's something like an expiration date - or, and earlier idea I had of giving less XP for story points the more yo have - it encourages odd behavior, like trying to spend a point on something before it runs out, etc. You'd end up worrying about it, and I really want story points to be something you don't worry about unless you're deciding exactly what to use them on.
As an aside, cribbing from Civ 6 a little, if you want to really lean into telling a story, I think the game should record a timeline of how when/how you used story points, in addition to other major events like starting colonies, getting your first capital ship, finding a rare item, etc. It could get bloated, sure, but run-throughs are just as much about "oh remember when I got ambushed by 6 pirate fleets out on the fringe?" as it is the play-style you decide on. Heck, if the player could write their own little logs and add it to the timeline, that would be kind of cool. Whether or not this is worth dev time is another issue but I digress...
Actually on the list already
Though maybe not for this release, we'll see. But, yeah, spending story points is a really natural way to remind the player of all the things they've done, and pair that with some graphs - say, credits, fleet size, colonies, income, crew, etc - and that sounds like *a lot* of fun.
Count me as a filthy Loudout Design 3 junkie. It's every game, though not first thing. I think it provides a cushion for an extra hull mod, more flux, a better weapon, etc. and its enough that I can't recall the last time I didn't get it. For example, I have a very tight SO Hammerhead build that uses LD3 (in addition to a lot of other skill perks) to reach flux parity with its weapons (930 vs 925) and still incorporate hardened subsystems. If I can "bake-in" SO and/or Hardened Subsystems using the new system, that saves me 40 OP so LD3 is a non-issue but I get the concern others are having. I think a list of ships that need looking at (not just for OP) would be helpful and I'd like to contribute.
Cool! I'd love to hear your thoughts on the various ships, yeah; I think
this thread is good for that.
