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Author Topic: More restraints on s-mods for more interesting usage  (Read 6726 times)

RustyCabbage

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More restraints on s-mods for more interesting usage
« on: April 15, 2021, 02:22:23 PM »

After some discussion, I looked through a lot of images of loadouts people posted on the Discord and saw that easily >90% of the s-mods used were some variation of:

Safety Overrides
Augmented Drive Field
Heavy Armor
Expanded Missile Racks
Hardened Shields
Integrated Targeting Unit

Occasionally I'd see Hardened Subsystems for some SO/Phase ships, and rarer still I saw Militarized Subsystems along with some built-in Reinforced Bulkheads and Blast Doors for Derelict Contingent ships.

Overall, there's a rather boring lack of diversity when it comes to placing s-mods on your ship, since it's basically always a no-brainer to include 2-3 of the six hullmods above. There's already been discussion about building in Safety Overrides, but I'd argue that this could reasonably extend to the other ones listed as well.

My proposal:
Remove s-modding non-logistics hullmods above a 5/10/15/20 OP cost. The image below shows which hullmods would be applicable under this rule (highlighted in green):

(This was a bit of a lazy screenshot, but it's sorted by OP Cost so everything above Unstable Injector would be disallowed except for Augmented Drive Field. Operations Center and Militarized Subsystems should also probably be whitelisted.)

There are a lot of good, interesting choices you can select within this subset of the hullmods, yet none of them are so much better or universal than the others as to be auto-includes the same way Hardened Shields and ITU generally are. This lets s-mods be a way to allow you some additional utility in your loadouts without being a simply thoughtless influx of OP.

Retry

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Re: More restraints on s-mods for more interesting usage
« Reply #1 on: April 15, 2021, 02:27:32 PM »

Yeah, no.
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Wyvern

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Re: More restraints on s-mods for more interesting usage
« Reply #2 on: April 15, 2021, 02:34:04 PM »

On the one hand... this isn't a bad idea.

On the other hand, I already have several ships where I've built-in hardened shields and then not added a second (or third) mod due to choice paralysis, which this would just exacerbate.

On the third hand, some of the more expensive hull mods are, I feel, usually overpriced; it's a hard sell to justify Expanded Missile Racks on, say, a Hammerhead... except as a zero-ordnance-point-cost built-in s-mod. (Prior to S-Mods being a thing, I think I only ever used Expanded Missile Racks on a siege-specialized XIV Legion with dual hammer barrages.)
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AcaMetis

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Re: More restraints on s-mods for more interesting usage
« Reply #3 on: April 15, 2021, 02:35:32 PM »

I think this idea would mostly just move the goalposts rather than really change the field. You'd end up with everything having ADF/ITU/UI (or maybe ECCM) rather than ADF/HA/HS, for example. Not really a major change.
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Sandor057

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Re: More restraints on s-mods for more interesting usage
« Reply #4 on: April 15, 2021, 02:41:28 PM »

I would argue, that building in S-mods is an all or nothing game. Whether we like it or not, there are some better options and some subpar options. Not getting as much XP back (or none at all) is one way for "penalizing" the player for choosing an S-mod which is "top tier", and maybe increasing the story point cost could be a sort of balancing change, but excluding hull mods because they are generally (too) good should not be the way to go.
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RustyCabbage

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Re: More restraints on s-mods for more interesting usage
« Reply #5 on: April 15, 2021, 02:43:15 PM »

I think this idea would mostly just move the goalposts rather than really change the field. You'd end up with everything having ADF/ITU/UI (or maybe ECCM) rather than ADF/HA/HS, for example. Not really a major change.
Er, to be clear, the ones highlighted in green are the ones that would be s-moddable. I know that allowing the inclusion of ITU/UI would make them no-brainers as well.

On the one hand... this isn't a bad idea.

On the other hand, I already have several ships where I've built-in hardened shields and then not added a second (or third) mod due to choice paralysis, which this would just exacerbate.

On the third hand, some of the more expensive hull mods are, I feel, usually overpriced; it's a hard sell to justify Expanded Missile Racks on, say, a Hammerhead... except as a zero-ordnance-point-cost built-in s-mod. (Prior to S-Mods being a thing, I think I only ever used Expanded Missile Racks on a siege-specialized XIV Legion with dual hammer barrages.)
Imo having to actually think about where to apply your s-mods is, even with choice paralysis, an improvement over brainlessly throwing Hardened Shields on everything. Re: EMR, sure you probably won't see people spending 12 OP on it on a Hammerhead, but it'd still be common enough on other ships like the Enforcer/Venture/Falcon P/Aurora, etc. If hullmods are overpriced, then their costs should be adjusted instead of a bandaid fix of providing them for free.

Yeah, no.
smh Retry I expected a more eloquent response than that.

edit:
I would argue, that building in S-mods is an all or nothing game. Whether we like it or not, there are some better options and some subpar options. Not getting as much XP back (or none at all) is one way for "penalizing" the player for choosing an S-mod which is "top tier", and maybe increasing the story point cost could be a sort of balancing change, but excluding hull mods because they are generally (too) good should not be the way to go.
Sure, some options are obviously better than others in certain contexts. The problem is when those options are obviously better than others for every ship in the game. There isn't a shielded ship in vanilla that wouldn't have vastly better AI handling with s-modded Hardened Shields than with s-modding any other hullmod, barring maybe EMR on the Falcon P. The XP penalty is ultimately inconsequential given its an infinite resource and at max level it can be hard enough to even expend it (SCC mentioned he has 17 million bonus XP in one of his latest campaigns - there isn't any trade-off here). Same story with increasing story point costs - it costs time but is functionally costless.

Alex

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Re: More restraints on s-mods for more interesting usage
« Reply #6 on: April 15, 2021, 02:49:55 PM »

Hmm - I'm not sure that looking at *just* the commonly built-in hullmods here is actually the right metric for variety. The hullmods one will want to build in are generally ones that will always/almost always be useful for that hull, plus more expensive. Those considerations cut down the pool of viable candidates, but, right - adding an OP limit doesn't really open it up, it just means a different subset of hullmods will meet the new criteria.

The actual question is, does the flexibility afforded by being able to build in a couple of hullmods mean that more of the other hullmods or builds see the light of day, too? In the case of SO, the answer is probably "no" because it's both really strong and playstyle-defining (and thus limiting what you can do with that ship). In the case of stuff like ITU or Hardened Shields, I'd say likely "yes", since you get more OP to play with without pigeon-holing the ship. So I think this is something that needs to be decided on a case-by-case basis, not with a blanket OP threshold.

If we wanted to tone down the power level of building in hullmods, though, an OP cost restriction could do the job. But it doesn't seem like it's the right tool for fine-tuning for "variety".
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Thaago

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Re: More restraints on s-mods for more interesting usage
« Reply #7 on: April 15, 2021, 02:56:08 PM »

I suppose if we wanted to normalize the OP gain of built in hullmods, building in could give a discount rather than be free. Rough numbers of 5/10/15/20 come to mind, though I have no data to back those up. Otoh, that still just boils down to "take the hullmods at that limit or higher that the ship wants for maximum OP".

Or if we want to get really crazy: Scale the effect of built in hullmods depending on their OP cost. So a 6 DP built in hullmod on a destroyer might be more effective than the hullmod normally is. That would make we want to use built ins for lower OP things, as some of the bonuses hullmods give are unique and powerful.

Eg: resistant flux conduits. Its a good hullmod, but at lower OP costs I'm never going to build it in. But if it got a little buff and gave 30% vent speed instead of 25%, thats a different story.
« Last Edit: April 15, 2021, 03:01:46 PM by Thaago »
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AcaMetis

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Re: More restraints on s-mods for more interesting usage
« Reply #8 on: April 15, 2021, 03:01:59 PM »

Quote
Er, to be clear, the ones highlighted in green are the ones that would be s-moddable. I know that allowing the inclusion of ITU/UI would make them no-brainers as well.
Than you'd have a very arbitrary rule, though. ITU is a non-logistics hullmod that doesn't cost more than 5/10/15/20 OP, so why wouldn't it be allowed?
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Wyvern

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Re: More restraints on s-mods for more interesting usage
« Reply #9 on: April 15, 2021, 03:02:44 PM »

Eg: resistant flux conduits. Its a good hullmod, but at lower OP costs I'm never going to build it in. But if it got a little buff and gave 30% vent speed instead of 25%, thats a different story.
Ooh. Yeah, that'd be very nice, especially since we lost the increased vent rate skill...
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RustyCabbage

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Re: More restraints on s-mods for more interesting usage
« Reply #10 on: April 15, 2021, 03:03:56 PM »

Hmm - I'm not sure that looking at *just* the commonly built-in hullmods here is actually the right metric for variety. The hullmods one will want to build in are generally ones that will always/almost always be useful for that hull, plus more expensive. Those considerations cut down the pool of viable candidates, but, right - adding an OP limit doesn't really open it up, it just means a different subset of hullmods will meet the new criteria.
The difference is that at the moment the hullmods one will want to build in are nearly the same for every ship, as opposed to different ships having different favorable choices.

The actual question is, does the flexibility afforded by being able to build in a couple of hullmods mean that more of the other hullmods or builds see the light of day, too? In the case of SO, the answer is probably "no" because it's both really strong and playstyle-defining (and thus limiting what you can do with that ship). In the case of stuff like ITU or Hardened Shields, I'd say likely "yes", since you get more OP to play with without pigeon-holing the ship. So I think this is something that needs to be decided on a case-by-case basis, not with a blanket OP threshold.
I mean, yeah, if you give everyone more OP they will do more different things because you have a bigger design space. You'd achieve the same expanded flexibility if you didn't limit caps/vents to 10/20/30/50, but that doesn't make ships more interesting to design. Limitations breed creativity and choosing between whether I want to s-mod Armored Weapon Mounts or Resistant Flux Conduits is more engaging than thinking, 'yup, 30 OP is more than 25 so I will s-mod Hardened Shields.'

RustyCabbage

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Re: More restraints on s-mods for more interesting usage
« Reply #11 on: April 15, 2021, 03:06:45 PM »

Quote
Er, to be clear, the ones highlighted in green are the ones that would be s-moddable. I know that allowing the inclusion of ITU/UI would make them no-brainers as well.
Than you'd have a very arbitrary rule, though. ITU is a non-logistics hullmod that doesn't cost more than 5/10/15/20 OP, so why wouldn't it be allowed?
Bleh, sorry. I was getting caught up thinking about stuff like ECCM having 5/8/15/20 OP while ITU's 4/8/15/25 cost makes this problematic for non-capitals. That's a good point.

Megas

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Re: More restraints on s-mods for more interesting usage
« Reply #12 on: April 15, 2021, 03:14:38 PM »

Instead of s-mods, let story points increase max OP for that ship.  Say, 5/10/15/25 per story point, up to the limit.  As another benefit, player can boost the ship anytime instead of waiting until good hullmods are found late.
« Last Edit: April 15, 2021, 03:16:27 PM by Megas »
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AcaMetis

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Re: More restraints on s-mods for more interesting usage
« Reply #13 on: April 15, 2021, 03:27:14 PM »

Instead of s-mods, let story points increase max OP for that ship.  Say, 5/10/15/25 per story point, up to the limit.  As another benefit, player can boost the ship anytime instead of waiting until good hullmods are found late.
Same difference, though, everyone would just use the extra OP to fit on ADF/ITU/HS. As for your latter point, I don't see myself s-modding early ships regardless. You're not wrong that s-modding early ships is hard when the good stuff isn't available yet, but it just seems so wasteful when SP dries up lategame and you've got s-modded ships collecting dust in a colony hanger...
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Alex

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Re: More restraints on s-mods for more interesting usage
« Reply #14 on: April 15, 2021, 03:29:50 PM »

As for your latter point, I don't see myself s-modding early ships regardless. You're not wrong that s-modding early ships is hard when the good stuff isn't available yet, but it just seems so wasteful when SP dries up lategame and you've got s-modded ships collecting dust in a colony hanger...

Considering you get more bonus XP for cheaper s-mods, putting some on smaller ships shouldn't make a perceptible dent in your late-game SP count, no?
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