I've thought about the gameplay implications of these notes a bit more, focused around this change
Increased XP gain from fighting more challenging battles; up to 500% more XP gained
Fleet Combat 'Efficiency' will now be significantly more important. Combat XP is now not only based around the strength of the fleets you destroy, but also around how efficiently you have designed your fleet.
XP now also has the added importance of gaining you Story Points, in addition to the already important Skill Points.
These changes add a new meaning to picking player Combat Skills, in the current 0.9.1a patch they can massively increase your fleet's combat efficiency - especially in the early game/for small fleets where you have very few combat ships - but with 0.95a's changes they further give a boost to XP gain and now by extension, Story Point gain.
(assuming Combat Skills are equally as good as they were previously, a well piloted player ship with full combat skills can increase the ship's effectiveness tenfold)
These changes definitely encourage players to try maximising the efficiency of a smaller fleet through carefully designed fleet strategy and loadouts in order to fight bigger fleets (going 'taller' kinda), as opposed to getting more/bigger combat ships and focusing more on numbers (going 'wider'), which I think is especially good since big fleets for new players can be frustrating to manage the logistics of; they often end up being slow and expensive.
Also more than before you're discouraged from going after easy targets, and encouraged to go after larger targets where you can make full use of all of your combat ships.
Story point uses include (but are not limited to):
- "Piloted ship" skills can be raised to "elite" level, unlocking an additional effect
- Building a limited number of permanent hullmods into ships, making the cost 0 ordnance points
- Officers: Can raise one skill to "elite" level (story point)
Speaking of Story points, these additions give the player more ways to spend resources on their fleet to further tune its effectiveness in combat and affect combat XP. However, depending on how the equation works, using these features could increase the "fleet strength" value of your fleet, which could make them less worthwhile. (Although using story points does grant bonus XP anyway, so it might cancel itself out)
Another implication that I find interesting is, the player already has a choice to forgo logistics in order to increase the fleet's overall combat efficiency, and the change of "more XP from challenging battles" adds to the already existing dynamic of Combat vs Logistics by asking Combat-focused fleets the question "Do you want to focus on Combat XP, or do you want more space for Salvage?", which adds extra playstyle options even among Combat focused fleets.
Cargo Pods: cheaper to stabilize, stabilization adds 400 days (was: 150)
This also supports the idea of removing cargo ships to increase combat efficiency to some extent, as it makes it easier for the player to pick up all of the cargo they couldn't at a later time. (Also generally.. I'm quite happy about the prospect of stabilising cargo pods being less costly and more effective, big fan of this change!)
However, I have a few worries about this change to combat XP, depending on how the equation works for deciding on the strength of a fleet. For example if the number of officers in your fleet strongly affects the "strength" of your fleet for the purposes of combat XP calculation, then it could discourage hiring low level officers. If it scales with the level of the officer, it could discourage the use of officers overall (however, even if the scaling was punishing it would at least give you a choice of more Combat XP vs more pure fleet strength).
However, if the "fleet strength" value does scale with your fleet officers' levels, that also raises the worrying question of "Does your Player Combat Skills Level affect "fleet strength" ? I personally think this would be a mistake as it further discourages players from trying Combat Skills if they think they're bad at piloting ships.
Some more questions, does having more/more expensive weapons equipped on ships increase the player's "fleet strength" value? Does having less dmods increase the value?
Of course, all of this depends on how exactly the equation will work, and what the purpose of the change is. Since I don't know I'm just making assumptions about what it could be. It could scale with your officer levels but only a little bit, so that it's still better to have officers than not (as long as you use them). I guess there's a lot of unknowns here so I began thinking about the (in my opinion) worst case scenarios.
As far as I can tell, the main purpose of the change is either to reward the player for their skill (in piloting/ordering and planning/loading out their fleet),
or to reward the player for their skill
and all the resources they put into making their fleet more combat effective.
I guess my question comes down to: Is that the case? And if so, which is it? (Although I can understand if you don't want to share exactly how it'll work; people are bound to take the equation and minmax their gameplay choices around its quirks)
