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Author Topic: Impressions about skills in 0.9.5  (Read 58894 times)

Thaago

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Re: Impressions about skills in 0.9.5
« Reply #180 on: April 19, 2021, 09:35:46 PM »

I haven't wrapped in either of my two complete playthroughs, because after going wide (some points in every aptitude) I've used up all 15 of my skill points. In each playthrough, I've reached tier 5 in only one aptitude (tech first time, combat the second).

Quick thought on colony skills: I expect they'll be dead points for non-roleplayers as long as alpha admins are relatively abundant and safe to use.

As someone roleplaying a Hegemony wannabe faction with no alpha core admins, I'm still not taking them because my colonies make plenty of money without. Early game money savers/makers I'm happy with because they help me grow faster and do more missions, but I feel like by the time I have enough colonies to warrant colony skills, I don't need the money anymore. I'd be happy to see them go, especially as a lot of their effects have been folded into some other game mechanics. The + accessibility skill and ground defenses are colony items. Increased production is story points and items again. Stability is story points (starting to get expensive though). Really the only thing left is more colonies/admins, but at present thats what alpha cores do.

Without those on top I could see wrapping leadership and industry: wrapped leadership would be amazing for a wide frigate + carrier fleet (L1R would be a bit weird but maybe I'd bring along an Atlast Mk II just to take advantage of it? I dunno). Industry is a bit hampered at the end of the day by being the "more money/less maintenance" branch for both ranks 1 and 3, and those being low priority things for endgame, but the level 2 skills at the very least is excellent and worth doubling up on.
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Rain

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Re: Impressions about skills in 0.9.5
« Reply #181 on: April 19, 2021, 10:44:20 PM »

Which is a fair counter-point. How much are people "wrapping"? My assumption was that it would be a fairly rare thing.

On my first three characters, I did it only so far as to get both Tech-1 skills and Special Modifications just 'clicks' with me to the point that I've always taken it anyway, so I guess it'd just barely count? On my present character I did it to get both Tech-5 skills to play around with automated ships. On my next I'm intending to get both officer skills in Leadership and see how that plays out. I've not wrapped Combat or Industry, nor have I even taken any of the colony skills so far, for the same reasons as others have mentioned (they're profitable enough anyways etc, even though I don't use Alpha core admins).
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TaLaR

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Re: Impressions about skills in 0.9.5
« Reply #182 on: April 19, 2021, 11:04:40 PM »

Which is a fair counter-point. How much are people "wrapping"? My assumption was that it would be a fairly rare thing.

Tech 7 - easily. Tech tree has at least 1 good skill on every level (unlike Leadership and Industry),  both GI and EWM on 2nd level are very strong, so the only wasted point is T1R (it provides some minor utility, but I wouldn't take it unless forced). Would only skip T7 if piloting only ships with few/no energy weapons.

Combat 8 - a very unlikely maybe. Odyssey does benefit from all skills up to this point, but not that strongly and C8 doesn't comfortably fit within 15 point budget (T7, L3 - I'd lose more than gain by skipping these).

Tech 10 - it almost seems to to work, but actually doesn't. Point of taking auto ships is to combine them with L3L and I4R for twin Radiant deployment. Doesn't fit in 15 point budget. Plus, either way auto ship build has to massively sacrifice personal skills, which I don't like.

Nothing else. L2 skills are strong and have perfect synergy with each-other (to the point that L1L feels incomplete without the other), but cost is just too great (permanently locked L4, useless L1R and non-combat L5).
« Last Edit: April 20, 2021, 02:04:07 AM by TaLaR »
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Malignity.

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Re: Impressions about skills in 0.9.5
« Reply #183 on: April 20, 2021, 12:13:46 AM »

it should be possible to get atleast 3 of the 4 colony skills =( in the old patch colonies were much better.... now its very unprofitable to have 4+ colonies unless you use alot of alpha cores; and not everyone wants/can do that.... for example on my current playthrough im in cycle 212 and i spent alot of time exploring... havent found a single alpha cores despite actively searching for it, engaging remnant fleets etc etc etc.... now im at max administrators, and if i want to get more than 4 colonies i just have to find an alpha, respec my tree, or live with the stab pen i get when i govern more than those 2 colonies (or as i said respec my tree for more colonies instead of boni to already existing)
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SCC

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Re: Impressions about skills in 0.9.5
« Reply #184 on: April 20, 2021, 12:34:32 AM »

Just wanted to comment on this real quick: they're there because they're out of the way. The "real" top-tier skills are in L4 and I4. I don't think "colony master" is really a thing; there's only 4 skills total that have to do with colonies. And as you say, colonies are profitable without skills. You can pick a few skills there if you want them, but you're not obligated to in order to get the good skills in I/L (unless you're planning to wrap).

Which is a fair counter-point. How much are people "wrapping"? My assumption was that it would be a fairly rare thing. Incidentally - I'm now remembering - this is also why it felt reasonably alright to have Field Repairs and Derelict Contingent be contradictory, since the difference between I8 and I10 is basically just a "boring" colony skill.

So, to repeat, colony skills are in tier 5 so that you mostly don't have to pick them if you don't want to. And in some cases they have some non-colony bonuses so e.g. if you're wrapping Leadership, you can at least pick Ground Operations that boosts your fleet in some way.
Jesus Christ, Alex! This approach is so backwards. Why would a huge investment be an afterthought? Why should the player be punished (not rewarded) for specialising, if this was one of the reasons for skill rework? Come on! I thought you just run out of bonuses to give, rather than go "well whatever, tier 5 is for unwanted rubbish anyway". I think the only skill this would be okay for would be Phase Mastery, because it's both really powerful and totally useless for people who don't like phase ships.

For me, personally, wrapping is not a thing, sans the Doom cheese (and even then, I'm starting to think that taking Reliability Engineering over phase corps is better. Then again, I almost soloed that bounty, maybe I just need not be so careful at the end next time). For normal play, very few ships want both skills from any given tier, meaning it's a waste, unless the only thing I want to do is pilot one specific ship, like Odyssey (or battle carriers), doubly so since there are combat skills I want scattered around other trees. Even then, either C4L or C4R is wasted, no matter what I pilot, unless I have multiple flagships, but it doesn't really make sense because of limited bonuses from fleetwide skills, so I don't.

About potential admin changes: I can't say I will be bothered anyway, I treat colonies mostly as shipyards and storage. This isn't Endless Space.

Megas

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Re: Impressions about skills in 0.9.5
« Reply #185 on: April 20, 2021, 04:51:43 AM »

Re: No skill admins
They, or rather the Industrial Planning skill they can get, are very useful when trying to meet demand, especially for no item run (unlikely with Military Base demands) or trying to meet demand 10.  If not for that, Colony Management would be a no-brainer choice to pick over Industrial Planning.  Currently, I am mulling over getting Industrial Planning for my character just for four worlds with IP instead of three.

Re Alpha admins
My solution to inspections is to sat bomb and wipe Hegemony off the map for permanent peace of mind.  Pathers are the ones I fear more because they are zombies like pirates and cells cannot be sat bombed off the map.  Fortunately, I can avoid them by not letting those colonies grow past size 3.  Just wished there was a way to freeze growth so I do not need to remove Spaceport every so often to reverse growth.

While money is nice, I just want to colonize the whole sector, or at least several constellations worth.  Four worlds do not feel like enough for an empire.

If Alphas become too onerous to use as admins, then I probably would avoid them altogether and want to get colony skills to make my colonies better.

Re: Capstone at 4
While I can see the reasoning (because I might do it too if I made a game, after getting tired of hyper-specialization that is encouraged in other games), this really hurts those who want colony skills.  In particular, getting Ground Operations is impossible without locking the player into an officer skills.  That really hurts.  Similarly, both Industry 5 skills work great together, but getting four unwanted skills after wrapping around is worse than three points in dead aptitude in previous release.

Also, this is inconsistent.  Combat and Tech have good or great capstones.  Leadership and Industry are either very important to colony enthusiasts or useless.

@ SCC
I would wrap around Tech to make phase ships hit harder.  Energy Mastery lets the smaller ships hit harder.  (I always take Gunnery Implants for more shot range.)  It lets Afflictor and Harbinger fry things faster.  Harbinger needs all the shot range boosters it can get to match the expanded range of its system boosted by Systems Expertise.
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Malignity.

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Re: Impressions about skills in 0.9.5
« Reply #186 on: April 20, 2021, 06:14:56 AM »


Re: Capstone at 4
While I can see the reasoning (because I might do it too if I made a game, after getting tired of hyper-specialization that is encouraged in other games), this really hurts those who want colony skills.  In particular, getting Ground Operations is impossible without locking the player into an officer skills.  That really hurts.  Similarly, both Industry 5 skills work great together, but getting four unwanted skills after wrapping around is worse than three points in dead aptitude in previous release.


i very much agree!! very unsatisfying
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: Impressions about skills in 0.9.5
« Reply #187 on: April 20, 2021, 07:19:48 AM »

IMO colony skills should all be in one tree so they can be completely avoided without interfering with wrapping, or over specialized. I think it's fine to nerf them so that that is balanced. Officer skills make sense as capstones for leadership IMO.
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speeder

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Re: Impressions about skills in 0.9.5
« Reply #188 on: April 20, 2021, 08:07:02 AM »

The colony master type player ...
Personally, I don't see why colony skills are considered tier 5 worthy in the first place.  Doubly so for the ones in the fleet tree.  How is +25% colony fleet size and +30% access on a colony you potentially don't even have better than an extra skill buffing all your ships with officers?

Just wanted to comment on this real quick: they're there because they're out of the way. The "real" top-tier skills are in L4 and I4. I don't think "colony master" is really a thing; there's only 4 skills total that have to do with colonies. And as you say, colonies are profitable without skills. You can pick a few skills there if you want them, but you're not obligated to in order to get the good skills in I/L (unless you're planning to wrap).

Which is a fair counter-point. How much are people "wrapping"? My assumption was that it would be a fairly rare thing. Incidentally - I'm now remembering - this is also why it felt reasonably alright to have Field Repairs and Derelict Contingent be contradictory, since the difference between I8 and I10 is basically just a "boring" colony skill.

So, to repeat, colony skills are in tier 5 so that you mostly don't have to pick them if you don't want to. And in some cases they have some non-colony bonuses so e.g. if you're wrapping Leadership, you can at least pick Ground Operations that boosts your fleet in some way.

I am a colony master player.

And the reason is partially because I like it, and partially because I often roleplay someone being absolutely "lawful", never doing smuggling, never betraying whatever faction I am comissioned to, etc...

When playing that way, you get much less money, so the colony money helps a lot.

And when you manage to make a really high powered "empire" you draw a lot of fights to your way, and end having those massive battles with tons of capital ships and officers on both sides, that make the default 400 dp maximum feel like it is way too low.

So yes, Colony Master IS a thing.

So what skills make sense for me? 1. all skills that boost colonies. 2. skills that let your colonial fleet shine, possibly even fleets that you are NOT controlling personally.

To be honest it feels to me you are struggling with the industry skill tree, not only it was developed last, you still don't know what you want out of it, it feels like it is half-assed colony tree, half-assed pirate tree, half-assed exploration tree, all at same time.

If you wanted it to be about exploration, you need to give back the skills to boost finding cool stuff.
If you wanted it to be more about actual industry, it need skills to boost production, lower tariffs, make easier to find trade contacts, etc...
If you wanted it to be more about being a pirate, it should have skills that help you smuggle things (for example more stealth not tied to tech), and more "junker" skills instead of shoving all junker effects i na single skill.
If you wasnted it to be more about colonies, it should have skills that boost the fleets of your factions, make your faction officers better, let  you control your faction better (for example a skill that let you from afar call your faction for help, so the Patrol HQ fleets can be used by you in combat), etc...


Right now the industry tree feels like a big mess with tons of half-baked ideas, and considering two of its skills ended on leadership it is clear it is affecting the rest of the design too.


Also if you planned for people never wrapped around, why on earth a ton of synergistic skills are on same tier and same class? It is obvious anyone wanting more salvage will also want more cargo to carry that salvage! So if your goal was that people would stop at tier 4 you are screwed up there, because if the person wants to play as salvagar he is guaranteed to want to wrap around to have the cargo skill too, so if you put the colony skills there to keep them out of the way, you basically forced any salvager player to take a useless skill.

Neutrino Skill and Traverse Jump skill also both are great for exploration oriented players, and thus it is highly likely they would want both. So again if  your idea was people would avoid wrapping around, you made the tier combinations go against that design.
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Flying Birdy

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Re: Impressions about skills in 0.9.5
« Reply #189 on: April 20, 2021, 08:29:25 AM »

Which is a fair counter-point. How much are people "wrapping"? My assumption was that it would be a fairly rare thing. Incidentally - I'm now remembering - this is also why it felt reasonably alright to have Field Repairs and Derelict Contingent be contradictory, since the difference between I8 and I10 is basically just a "boring" colony skill.

In my three vanilla runs so far I've wrapped in every single one. Granted, I have not wrapped around directly each time. But in two out of three runs I've gone I4, T5, C5, reassign all Industry skills for either T10 or C10.

A huge part of the reason why I wrapped was that a lot of ships I want to fly and "need" to wrap. While I can see how some of the combat trees and technology trees are supposed to be "mutually exclusive" playstyles between phase and shields, I echo the sentiment that many others have made that C10 and T10 actually really complement each other. Doom doesn't feel the same without C8, Odyssey doesn't feel the same without C10, and T9 is incredibly useful for all phase ships.

I've also never in a single playthrough felt that I wanted to just play with phase ships or just play with normal ships; I've always wanted to use both or have the option to do so at any point. I mean it's certainly true that I could fly a doom without any of the phase skills, but it's just not "fun" to do so. There are not enough phase ships for me to justify a pure phase specialization build without wrapping, but I also still want to fly phase ships at a moment's notice. So the solution is to always wrap.
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Megas

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Re: Impressions about skills in 0.9.5
« Reply #190 on: April 20, 2021, 11:00:42 AM »

If I get Industry 4 (which I do because I do not want d-mods, and there is no other cheap way of removing them), I like that Industry 5 is only one point away.

Field Repairs is convenient.  Just wished it removed d-mods faster and/or reduced Restore costs.

I like Industry 2.  Without it, I would need Reinforced Bulkheads to avoid losing ships.  (Of course, flagships might need Reinforced Bulkheads because they become officerless ships if player changes out of it and lose guaranteed recovery from skills.)

IMO colony skills should all be in one tree so they can be completely avoided without interfering with wrapping, or over specialized. I think it's fine to nerf them so that that is balanced. Officer skills make sense as capstones for leadership IMO.
Colony skills are kind of underwhelming, especially Industrial Planning and Fleet Logistics.  Colony skills better give something good for giving up combat power.  Slightly more income or slightly bigger babysitter does not cut it.
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FooF

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Re: Impressions about skills in 0.9.5
« Reply #191 on: April 20, 2021, 05:45:51 PM »

Re: Doing away with colony skills/admins

Might cut the Gordian Knot, honestly. I avoid Administrators because they cost too much for early colonies and by the time I want them, I don't need them or I have Alpha Cores. I actually lament finding a "good" Admin early because that's a negative monthly expenditure and if I do decide to use him/her it's $25,000/month on a colony that doesn't even make $10,000. It's lose/lose. I think "generic" or "one-skill" Admins ought to be much more plentiful and the "good" admins need to cost less to govern. They don't really become a net positive until a colony is well on its way.

On the one hand, it's nice to have ways of governing more than what you can personally but I don't think it's implemented really well at the moment. Likewise, I don't see why a Beta Core couldn't be used as a "generic Admin" without the risk of Alpha-Core shenanigans (whenever that becomes A Thing).

As for Colony Skills themselves, I don't think I'd miss them if they vanished one day from the skill tree. I'd actually get to wrap Leadership and Industry faster. Or, if they were baked-in to Leadership/Industry somehow (i.e. you get a single Colony perk for each point spent in the tree with more powerful ones at the end) you could make the T5s something more interesting and powerful while still retaining Colony skills. It would also make Industry and Leadership more attractive relative to Combat/Technology from a meta-game perspective.



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Megas

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Re: Impressions about skills in 0.9.5
« Reply #192 on: April 20, 2021, 05:57:46 PM »

I would not mind getting rid of colony skills provided production is raised +1 across the board (since demand seems to assume IP as standard, and no IP is a penalty) and maybe raise maximum colonies to five or six.

I do not mind admins since it seems silly that the player can rule multiple planets while the faction leaders with the most colony skills can only govern their capital world and nothing else.

However, even if I want an empire, if I did not have interest in Field Repairs, I probably would have ignored Industry 5 because I want combat power too.

As for cores, they should have limits just like human admins, unless Alex wants to support the possibility of full Sector colonization (after annihilating core worlds so player can take over their worlds and build new colonies in their place).  Either AI would be too punishing or not punishing enough to use.
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Malignity.

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Re: Impressions about skills in 0.9.5
« Reply #193 on: April 21, 2021, 02:55:01 AM »

i think colony skills are great to have and they are very useful. so to me personally it would be a shame if they were removed. but the way they are on the tree now is a real pain; i had to give up my t1 navigation (which is very helpful) to get a third colony skill
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nathanebht

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Re: Impressions about skills in 0.9.5
« Reply #194 on: April 21, 2021, 01:27:12 PM »

Realize the skill tree is a work in progress but not a fan of making d-mod's help you in some way.

D-mods should make the player feel pain. Then you get to enjoy the feeling when you can afford ships that don't have d-mods.

On a related note, the each month a free d-mod removal skill is great. It would be better if it was a more random occurrence. Something you couldn't plan on so much.
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