This feels counter intuitive, sort of like gamma cores reducing demand worked — you put on a rare thing on a ship/industry to make it better, but it looks worse off, even if it increases its total power (or, in the case of gamma core, just reduces a bit how much the global market value that colony adds due to its demand).
I also think that people will look for ships that, at their baseline, have the most advantage over human ships, like Scintilla or Radiant.
Hmm - I mean, I'm sure it'll be a bit confusing in some cases, but the UI is there to explain all the stuff, and I think the mechanics make sense. I.E. there are reasons to use weaker ships and possibly weaker AI cores.
Alex, have you ever thought of splitting the flagship skills from the fleet and logistics skills, with separate skill points for each? That way you wouldn't have players feeling like they are being pushed into being a cheerleader for their fleet while the AI gets all the fun buffs and toys
Yeah - I'm just not into the idea. It feels like it's removing too many choices from the player - like, no matter what, it'd just be a precisely forced mix of "piloted ship" and "other" skills. Sure, there's some room for choice within that, but to me it doesn't feel like enough. It feels like if a player wants to roleplay a character that's not a crack pilot, they should be able to do that.
Also, I think that feeling of being pushed into not getting combat skills is... I get that it's a thing, but I don't think it's actually as much of a thing as some people feel that it is. Although, in fairness, how it *feels* is a major component.