Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Megas]

Reassigning skills often would be okay if it was free or the cost is trivial.  It is not, especially with the black holes called colonies with 2^n story point costs.

[Chaos Blade]

Mr Blade.
Seems nice quick response.
Well one of your choices is 'do i want to be a ****hot ninja pilot or do i want to be captain mother of the seven samurai' you cant be effective at both. Meaningful choice here. I cant speak as such for Alex, of course, But i dont think he wants 'Captain mother, the ninja pilot' to be the only meta worth considering.

This game shares quite a few aspects with battlebrothers.

With reference to binary choices, hah, well, i can teasingly say all choices are binary. Its either this, or not this. I dont really have an opinion on that, having more options per level would just be different i wouldnt say it it would give more overall choice as something you would have had to sacrifice at some other point, now never has to be. Which is less choice. Have to witness.

I disagree with you regarding respec. Its so cheap and once youve got your master fleet and millions rolling in you can drop all of industry. Which is more choice.

How many phase ships your fleet runs? because that skill is less I am a space sub wolfpack vs I am the GRAND FLEET and more a do I prioritize the handfull of phase ships or do I go for the skills that benefit most of my fleet?
And that is the thing you aren't running around a ship, you operate a fleet and that is the problem, tech and leadership skills should be about the fleet at large, with combat being the ships themselves (your ship)
And, let's be honest, the problem with binary picks is that, once the meta has been worked over, one will be the winner, it is very hard to offer a genuine tradeoff that is interesting and balanced.

It is folly to try, imho.

So, yeah, let the players having the option of picking both, regulate it with the skill points, where you put the emphasis? in combat? in your officers? in your tech? or in your logistics?

Those? those are meaningufl choices, not ones that I can redo on the flick of a storypoint

So forget every skill a choice and offer organic options, things the players will want to invest and instead of offering OR sets, manage that thru scarcity of skill points.
If you want to have your battleline to have good shields and your phase auxiliars doing their thing? your pic
if you want to have your carriers be the centerpiece or auxiliars? your pic

Hell, maybe you want to run most of your combat force with phase ships, so instead of phase auxiliary go with phase fleet

See? that is what the choices should be about, letting players have their options and be flexible.

You mention battlebrothers, but keep in mind that you customize your brothers there, not your company, so the skill system here is really not applicable. it would be if you were asked to have skill that made archers better but the shieldwall worse. that is not a pick
Affter all, it is a power fantasy game, so...

[Dex]

Phase ships are powerful and the only skill tht comes to mind that they directly dont appreciate is shields. They get enough love.

YOu seem to forget that you can give your ships officers? You having stuff that buffs the whole fleet AND then your officers on top would get way OP too fast. We get enough in my opinion.

Agree, with your commetns regarding the meta, but thats got little to do with binary choices and more to do with tweaking the skills themselves as and when a playstyle is identified as OP.

I honestly believe the folly to which you mention is just playing the game. Every fleet is not going to be ideal against every fleet. Over specialise, you breed in weakness, and conversely, a jack of all trades is a master of none. The successful, overpowered, meta that needs rebalance is the jack that never needs refining.

Heres the issue, i believe you are asking for too much. Incidentally, i dont see why you cant have good shields and good phase ships as ALL the skills mentioned targetting those are exclusively for the ship you or that officer is piloting, or on non mutually exclusive tiers. You can already do what you are suggesting unless i misunderstand?

Another thing, you say flexible, and this is another choice! You can choose to be honed to a razors edge at one task, like tanking, which means you arent going to be good at phase ships. THen with the introduction of the elite skills, the choice here is to have a cheap flexible skill set that only costs one SP to respec. or a ninja elite spec that costs 5 SPs to respec. ITs these trade offs. Its a good thing.

Opolgise in advance for lack of proof read.

[Immahnoob]

Every skill tier is a choice?

Having to pick skills you dont want to get those you do? To start, thats an almost fundamental aspect of progression and applies near universally to RPGS that have more mechanics than you have fingers.

Just to clarify, i believe there is huge difference between 'choices' and choices. Hopefully the italics will portray my intent there, else its gonna get wordy. - seems like i did, below.

For the sake of this discussion, and i apologise if this has already been mentioned but i didnt read large swathes of the somewhat redundant comments, do you have examples? Of skills you dont want?


Mr noob.
Im not here to argue with everyone as I quite simply havent read everything. Even if i did, im not really compos mentis enough to hold it all in my head because reasons.

The overarching message i have is: Choice is good. I can only say we disagree on what 'meaningful' choices are. Share your definition?

ALSO, the choices are at their most basic

15 skill levels and five tiers, of debatably increasing potency.
thats three entire trees with one choice at each tier.
thats one tree with no choices made (going round twice, ill come back to this) and one tree with choices at each tier.
A mash of whetever skills.
and a mash of whatever of the above.

Theres also archetypes and sub archetypes you can base your choices around, which is also a choice!. E.g. Shortrange, long range, carrier etc etc. Its unlikely youre gonna be able to get all applicable skills to your archetype unless you sacrifice leadership or industry. Choice!

Also, if you want to go round twice on a tree to get multiple upper tier skills but theres skills you dont want on the way? that is ALSO a meaningful choice. Is that skill worth the 'dead' point?

Now compare this to previous incarnations. All those before were WHEN should i get 10% more OP fleet wide, shield expert and so on. Not IF. Just wanna say, holy crap i miss the, what was it? 30% more OP fleet wide? MENTAL. and awesome. but silly.

Im not saying the skills cant be tweaked, theres some skills in questionable locations. But really, this a great system. Power creep is a thing and the s-mods, im pretty sure, counter a LARGE chunk of any power depreciation you see, imagined or real. Its just portrayed differently and else where.

ill leave this mind vomit here. I suppose theses are just things i want people to consider before finding their pitchforks. A counterpoint is healthy? maybe?

Man... im taking so long to write this in my mind haze you people keep replying.

Mr Blade.
Seems nice quick response.
Well one of your choices is 'do i want to be a ****hot ninja pilot or do i want to be captain mother of the seven samurai' you cant be effective at both. Meaningful choice here. I cant speak as such for Alex, of course, But i dont think he wants 'Captain mother, the ninja pilot' to be the only meta worth considering.

This game shares quite a few aspects with battlebrothers.

With reference to binary choices, hah, well, i can teasingly say all choices are binary. Its either this, or not this. I dont really have an opinion on that, having more options per level would just be different i wouldnt say it it would give more overall choice as something you would have had to sacrifice at some other point, now never has to be. Which is less choice. Have to witness.

I disagree with you regarding respec. Its so cheap and once youve got your master fleet and millions rolling in you can drop all of industry. Which is more choice.

Yes, the meaningful choice between "useless" and "useful", the change in gameplay is astonishing.
Helsmanship or Strike Commander really depends on you again, it's a more meaningful choice. Are you a carrier player or a non-carrier player? Honestly though, speed and maneuverability are still simply better.
Why would I ever want to pick Point Defense for myself? When do you ever meet yourself with a situation where you think this is necessary? Most likely never, point defense is sucky for anything that isn't beyond a Destroyer, and even then, it's enough to handle anything the game throws at you without this skill, meaning you're better off doing more damage.
What about Impact Mitigation? I would honestly never find myself using this either, when is that special situation where I'm going to have to tank without my shields? Where is the meaning in picking a skill that might be useful once only?
System Expertise is also rather meh, but I'd say this is more of a preference since I'd rather have System Expertise, unlike the MEANINGFUL choice between Phase Mastery and Shield Modulation.

And these are just a few examples, oh wait, it's pretty much more than half the Combat skill tree that sucks.
How did we get here, I wonder?
So no, choice isn't good, it's meaningful choice that is good, because otherwise, it's not choice. I can read the skills and already see, no matter what playstyle I have, my choices are already predefined.

Respecing costs too much considering elite skills, that's also pretty much a fact. There's no point in it unless you don't use elite skills.

[Chaos Blade]

Phase ships are powerful and the only skill tht comes to mind that they directly dont appreciate is shields. They get enough love.

YOu seem to forget that you can give your ships officers? You having stuff that buffs the whole fleet AND then your officers on top would get way OP too fast. We get enough in my opinion.

Agree, with your commetns regarding the meta, but thats got little to do with binary choices and more to do with tweaking the skills themselves as and when a playstyle is identified as OP.

I honestly believe the folly to which you mention is just playing the game. Every fleet is not going to be ideal against every fleet. Over specialise, you breed in weakness, and conversely, a jack of all trades is a master of none. The successful, overpowered, meta that needs rebalance is the jack that never needs refining.

Heres the issue, i believe you are asking for too much. Incidentally, i dont see why you cant have good shields and good phase ships as ALL the skills mentioned targetting those are exclusively for the ship you or that officer is piloting, or on non mutually exclusive tiers. You can already do what you are suggesting unless i misunderstand?

Another thing, you say flexible, and this is another choice! You can choose to be honed to a razors edge at one task, like tanking, which means you arent going to be good at phase ships. THen with the introduction of the elite skills, the choice here is to have a cheap flexible skill set that only costs one SP to respec. or a ninja elite spec that costs 5 SPs to respec. ITs these trade offs. Its a good thing.

Opolgise in advance for lack of proof read.

Sorrry I'll be blunt, that isn't a good design, the skill tree lacks any sort of sense of advancement, the picks seem arbirtrary and substandard and in many cases they are there to make the trees have the same number of skills
OR pics are annoying because of the forced progression and a few of the current examples, some of the niche skills aren't just useful (carriers are substandard now, so the one carrier skill is more oft than not unjustifiable over the crew training option) and sometimes you pick one skill to get to the one behind it.
Or having damage control in industry, because that makes sense....

Honestly?the character screen seems a bit lacking in direction OR progression, few picks, less significant ones, and only a few good (and one very cheesable that, as a bonus, breaks game immersion)

I'd rather not have skills that boost officers, but ships in general. so there is also that
The officer picks should be simple, quality or quantity, not which extra bonuses the officers give.
And speaking of that, skill limitations are unclear. you can't see at a glance if you are covered or not

And that is bad

[Ryan390]

I agree with the OP, the old system was better IMO.

[speeder]

Dex I don't see how I am choosing anything.

I want a playstyle focused on being governor.

I have to pick: entire industry tree twice + leadership tree once so I get the stability bonus.

What choices are there?

What if I want to go around salvaging stuff to sell? Have to pick industry tree almost twice again.

So is that a choice, where?

As long I want a industry playstyle all choices are done, I can't choose if I want a shield bonus or a phase ship bonus, because all my points go into other trees.

Basically some types of players don't have any choice to make, you will always pick the same skills.

[Dex]

Mr Noob

Well its just obvious you havent been flying ships where those choices are useful. Which is your choice.

heres a case study.

Doom
Helmsmanship - easy
This next tier, awkward one, meaningful choice here..... Hmmm im not very good so lets go with POINT DEFENSE.
impact mitigation - easy
Shields - KIDDING
NOw doom will probably appreciate both of the tier five skill here, but im gonna go with systems for the mines.

all youve told me is that you dont like to pilot the doom not that there arent meaningful choices.

Mr Speeder, your choice is to have both of the max tier skills?? How is that not a choice? your choice of playstyle is now focused on being a governor....... im pretty confused here.

Mr Ryan,

Hello!

Mr Blade,

I simply disagree for reasons shared and im too lazy to go into more detail BUT i will copy paste this again.

15 skill levels and five tiers, of debatably increasing potency.
thats three entire trees with one choice at each tier.
thats one tree with no choices made (going round twice, ill come back to this) and one tree with choices at each tier.
A mash of whetever skills.
and a mash of whatever of the above.

And say: you can hit the highest tier skills in any tree in only 5 levels.

sheesh, guys.

[Thaago]

...

Hmmm well thats interesting, because a few of the combat skills you mention as never being worth it are the go to powerful skills according to others. Strike Commander is the meta skill for carrier captains, armor mitigation is meta for everything but dedicated snipers because of how good it is on defense, and missile specialization is a specialist skill that is useless for some ships and extremely good on others.

Point defense could probably use some love, but anyone who fights a high tech station, dooms, or fighter spam can suddenly see how powerful it is.

Looking at the skill tree from the perspective of generalist or specialist:
1L: Generalist speed; 1R specialist carrier
2L: Generalist offense; 2R specialist defense + specialist carrier
3L; Generalist defense (armor); 3R specialist ranged (becomes generalist offense with capital ships)
4L; Generalist defense (shields); 4R specialist phase (crazy good on phase ships)
5L; semi-generalist (system), but only truly excellent on some ships. 5R: specialist missiles (crazy good on missile ships)

So while there are a few skills I'd like to see tweaked for sure (point defense minor buff, navigation elite tweak to not apply to overloaded ships, removal and replacement of impact mitigation -50% kinetic damage for weapon balance purposes comes to mind, there are probably other minor ones I'm forgetting), the combat skills follow the generalist/specialist pattern on each level, and no skills are useless at all.

[trucane]

I really really hate the new skill system. While I don't think the old one was perfect it was at least way more fun than this one.

[Dex]

Mr trucane,

Would you be so kind as to elaborate? You dont like the choices? You dont like the potential sacrifices?

[Immahnoob]

Mr Noob

Well its just obvious you havent been flying ships where those choices are useful. Which is your choice.

heres a case study.

Doom
Helmsmanship - easy
This next tier, awkward one, meaningful choice here..... Hmmm im not very good so lets go with POINT DEFENSE.
impact mitigation - easy
Shields - KIDDING
NOw doom will probably appreciate both of the tier five skill here, but im gonna go with systems for the mines.

all youve told me is that you dont like to pilot the doom not that there arent meaningful choices.

Mr Speeder, your choice is to have both of the max tier skills?? How is that not a choice? your choice of playstyle is now focused on being a governor....... im pretty confused here.

Mr Ryan,

Hello!

Mr Blade,

I simply disagree for reasons shared and im too lazy to go into more detail BUT i will copy paste this again.

15 skill levels and five tiers, of debatably increasing potency.
thats three entire trees with one choice at each tier.
thats one tree with no choices made (going round twice, ill come back to this) and one tree with choices at each tier.
A mash of whetever skills.
and a mash of whatever of the above.

And say: you can hit the highest tier skills in any tree in only 5 levels.

sheesh, guys.

You have this problem where you're rambling for no reason at all without actually reading what people are saying.
What you've described is that one exception I already mentioned which is Phase ships, which is either an all-in (because you won't be doing jack with those skills anywhere else) or you can just play the rest of the game AND play with Phase ships with the rest of the skills.
That's it.
And even then, you still have a useless skill, which is Point Defense. ESPECIALLY Point Defense when Phase ships are simply better with more damage.

Again, there's no "meaningful choice" when one side is just a better investment from almost every point of view.
And I can do this for the other trees as well. Sensors? Lol. Fighter Uplink? Lol. Automated Ships? Lol, too little to matter versus Special Modifications.
Auxiliary support? Lol. Coordinate Maneuvers? Omegalul. Carrier Group? Lol. Ground Operations? Lol.
Bulk Transport? Lol. Damage Control? Lol. Derelict Contingent? Lol. Colony Management? Lol.

This wouldn't even be as bad if it wasn't a binary. It would actually be better if some of these become subsets and we get new skills, rather.

...

Hmmm well thats interesting, because a few of the combat skills you mention as never being worth it are the go to powerful skills according to others. Strike Commander is the meta skill for carrier captains, armor mitigation is meta for everything but dedicated snipers because of how good it is on defense, and missile specialization is a specialist skill that is useless for some ships and extremely good on others.

Point defense could probably use some love, but anyone who fights a high tech station, dooms, or fighter spam can suddenly see how powerful it is.

Looking at the skill tree from the perspective of generalist or specialist:
1L: Generalist speed; 1R specialist carrier
2L: Generalist offense; 2R specialist defense + specialist carrier
3L; Generalist defense (armor); 3R specialist ranged (becomes generalist offense with capital ships)
4L; Generalist defense (shields); 4R specialist phase (crazy good on phase ships)
5L; semi-generalist (system), but only truly excellent on some ships. 5R: specialist missiles (crazy good on missile ships)

So while there are a few skills I'd like to see tweaked for sure (point defense minor buff, navigation elite tweak to not apply to overloaded ships, removal and replacement of impact mitigation -50% kinetic damage for weapon balance purposes comes to mind, there are probably other minor ones I'm forgetting), the combat skills follow the generalist/specialist pattern on each level, and no skills are useless at all.

The only way I can accept what you're saying here is if you're talking about the AI officers and not the player, honestly. They don't get frustrated for how useless they are (not at dealing damage per say, but at dealing it when it matters) and they certainly don't have the brains to not die without some extra help.
Your point defense either sucks or you're well-equipped since you're a bigger ship to ignore missiles and fighters.
Carriers suck right now, the only exception for me is the Legion since it's not dedicated, so there's no point to even having officers with Strike Commander.

[Thaago]

I was talking about the player. In terms of dealing more damage when it matters: you may enjoy a more aggressive player ships like an aurora, SO ship, phase ship, Sunder, tempest etc, or you may enjoy a ship with more missiles, such as the dominator, onslaught, conquest, etc.

Either option lets you pick and choose when to apply a burst of damage: usually enough to destroy a ship of the same weight class in one or two passes, though capitals have a lot of hull to chew through.

[Chaos Blade]

regarding the skills Thaago,
 the problem I see is that there are a handful of specialization opportunities and by, and large, that makes a generalist pic a better choice if not all the time, certainly most of it.
nevermind the curret woes of carriers in the meta, it doesn't feel like an interesting pick, less so as a pick progression which is where the system totally fails.

I don't feel like I am getting a better character as I level up.

Now, this reminds me with story and quest becoming more a thing, I think an interpersonal skill would be neat to have, we could still have the story points for the "if the skill fails" or if we don't have the skill, but it would make the characters a bit more... wel... human.
Specially with spending so much time in seedy space bars.
Maybe getting more contacts, or more contracts, or fewer better of either

[Dex]

ok, maybe i didnt read everything everyone has wrote cos well, you saw your last message, AND i get carried away with prose smithery sometimes. I make myself snigger. Sue me.

But you are ignoring my point. what I gave was an EXAMPLE of why your opinion, is.... well its your opinion. Its not everyones. You dont play carriers, obviously. Nor phase ships. What you should be doing is realising that OTHER people use these skills. What you are missing here is perspective, that the choice that is being made is the PLAYSTYLE THAT REQUIRES THAT SKILL CHOICE.

From other peoples perspective, your favourite skill is the pointless one.

YOur playstyle is the choice that youve made, which is iterated at every skill tier.