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[intrinsic_parity]

Once you can kill a star fortress, pathers are really not a problem.

[Megas]

Once you can kill a star fortress, pathers are really not a problem.

They are if I ignore them.  Cells ignore all defenses except stability, which is not guaranteed.  I do not want to play whack-a-mole Pathers like in the first 0.9a release, even when I could roll over their stations.  This is why the Pather bug was so great last release - no whack-a-mole headache.

Unless I plan to keep colony size at 3, I would avoid cores, and I do not want to use more than one item (and I would avoid the shunt at all costs).

[intrinsic_parity]

The bases pop up much less frequently, I didn't feel annoyed by it when I was dealing with it.

[DatonKallandor]

But I will still do it.  It just means I need to grind longer to get those points!  After I s-mod the important ships, nearly the rest of my points will go to colonies!

And that's your choice. But that doesn't mean it's the *only* choice. Or even that it's a *good* choice. Story points have a ton of uses, all of which are really cool and unique. The only problem is acquisition slows down to a crawl after level 15, but on the way to that, they are fantastic.

You also don't need to respec just for flying a different ship, that's ridiculous.

[Arcagnello]

I strongly disagree on Story Points being hard to get past level 15.

In mid to late game, AI fleets start to get really big which results in quite the massive bonus XP for fighting them. What is  even more "exploitable" when it comes to bonus XP calculations is that it seems to be using the same algorithm for ANY fleet you're fighting.

This means that fighting, I don't know, 3 Pirate Armadas you intercept as they're traveling towards a system they're going to raid and fight them all at once will result in a final XP value many, many times higher than the ones you'd get even from fighting [Redacted] Ordos.

It is not difficult at all provided you know what you're doing. Deploying into battle and capturing at least 3 buoys out of 4 will mean that both sides will deploy 180FP each for the battle (too bad if you did a "balance" and modified the maximum FP values, that effectively makes you a victim of your own hubris) bottlenecking the much more numerous enemy force and turning what would be a difficult fight into a spawn camping massacre where your superior, 2 or even 3 Smodded ships butcher enemies as it spawns. This is more effective the least total combat FP and officers you have in your fleet, as that will increase the bonus XP even further. Limiting your own fleet to 180, 240 FP maximum of combat ships should be the norm.

Now, if the AI fleets would stop spending their "over limit strength" that lets them deploy more than 10 officers and spend it on integrated hullmods instead, making their fleet power more CONCENTRATED and FULLY DEPLOYABLE, now this strat would get a tad more complicated.

Say a current "over limit" fleet has 15 level 6 officers, a change like this would result in 10 officers and a single integrated hullmod for every 3 hypothetical officer levels that would be over the limit, translating into a fleet with 10 level 6 officers and 10 integrated hullmods distributed to the highest FP ships with an officer on them.

Huh, could warrant its own suggestion thread.

[Megas]

And that's your choice. But that doesn't mean it's the *only* choice. Or even that it's a *good* choice. Story points have a ton of uses, all of which are really cool and unique. The only problem is acquisition slows down to a crawl after level 15, but on the way to that, they are fantastic.

You also don't need to respec just for flying a different ship, that's ridiculous.

Story points may have a ton of uses, but many of them are frivolous.  Those that permanently powerup your character and have no other way to do it (use on s-mods, colonies; don't waste on historian when player can raid for blueprints instead) or those free in the long run (officers, run from fight, recover your ships) are the best uses.  Thus, the execution of story points is that of currency, and no amount of embellishment will change that reality.  Basically "You Require More Vespene Gas" trope.

It is not ridiculous to optimize for different ship, if respec was cheap enough.  Player can fly warship without missiles (C4L and either C5L or no C5), warship with missiles (C4L and C5R), small phase ship, or large phase ship.  Carriers too if they were not sub-optimal.  It is a bit of a waste of points, which is why elite skills are annoying because they make respec more expensive.  Player should not be married to a ship, and respec should be cheap.

[Arcagnello]

There, finally managed to fish some after-battle XP values. I considered the Story Point gain requiring 2.5 million EXP to be somewhat arduous but still entirely understandable, now that it's only one million some of these fights would litterally earn you 2,3 or even more story points every time. I hope you'll forgive my laziness of just quoting a thread I myself wrote.

Spoiler

Sample fights
This is a brief collection of difficult fights that showcase the utility of the various fleet's elements. I'll add the various spoilery fights when I eventually get to them.

Double 300k bounty
I was in the middle of exploring when I got jumped by around 600k worth of bounties orbiting the same planet when I was not looking with a battle difficulty exp multiplier of 257%. The sheer amount of stuff in the fleet in combination with the great amount of cruisers threwat me forced two consecutive engagements since even my Conquests, Griphons and Herons started to suffer from CR degradation at the end of the first fight. After the CR of my frigades was rock bottom I retreated them (fun sidenote: it takes the Hyperion around 20 seconds to retreat from anywhere on the map) and proceded to grind the enemy to nothingness thanks to a full 180 deployment points of Conquests, Griphons and Herons. I don't have any pretty battle screenshots to showcase for this fight sadly.
End of the first engament: my losses

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and the enemy losses

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End Of the Second engagement (I lost no ship here, only the enemy)

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Recovery Screen (all the ships lost were fished back into the fleet)

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Now that's some tasty exp, I think that earned me a whole story point by itself!

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Salvage screen of the battle

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3xParagon 5x Doom meme bounty

I had stuff to do this evenning so I'm going to do this the lazy way and quote myself

What in Ludd's good name is that bounty ? And how is triple Paragon/quad Doom not even worth three times as much as a pirate fleet which doesn't field any capitals, insofar that the Atlas MK. II counts as such?

Beyond that I am looking at the OP and am in the process of taking notes...

So, uh, I went to see what the actual bounty fleet looked like:

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And, spoiler alert, I actually beat it only losing (and then recovering) 3 frigades. I'm actually really surprised. I guess giving the enemy a bad case of extreme sensory overload works wonders against capital-class ships. They won't be firing their weapons or properly using the ship systems most of the time.

Initial Deployment

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The Donut capital starting to feel really alone there in the middle of the map

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The Donut capital REALLY wishing it had accellerated shields right now

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Enemy can only deploy 135FP worth of stuff after the first Paragon got disabled. That's how disgusting Gamma Core officer stacking plus 10 normal officers can get

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Glimmer actually managing to annoy a Doom long enough for it to overflux itself and get deleted by a double Hurricane from the Conquest

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Spawncamping the filthy phase weebs

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Bullying the second donut while the last doom is having a good old time being chased around by 360 shield frigades wasting its time

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Second Donut being pelted by frigades while it's distracted by the artillery COnquest and carriers. This is why I always suggest giving Paragons Accellerated Shields, Front Shields AND stabilized shields even before considering Hardened Shields, this would not happen so easily.

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Hyperion soloing an officered Doom by itself after it was done with giving the second donut capital the buisness

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Fight result screen. Watching that Last paragon deploy just to immediatelt rout was hilarious.

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Bounty completion and Exp value. Funny how two no-capital 300k bounty fleets paid out more than a single one with 3 paragons and 4 Dooms.

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10 Questionable Conquest Fleet
I honestly expected this to be way more difficult than what It ended up being (especially considering it's nearly 400k in rewards), which is due to the horrid setups most of the 10 Conquests. And why in holy Ludd are they giving an Enforcer the priviledge of an officer before all the Conquests? Can someone explain this to me?
Fleet Bounty

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Actual Fleet Composition

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Hyperion soloing one of the most pathetically autofitted Conquest designs I've ever seen

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This Champion is not having a good time

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The battle has now degraded into a spawncamping massacre

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I've actually tried to pilot a scarab in this and got myself exploded within 20 seconds. Watching YT videos while driving a squishy frigade going at 500 units per second is not advisable. The one Glimmer just exploded like Glimmers do and this is the first time I've actually lost a Hyperion in battle. It litterally teleported itself right in front of a Hurricane and did not raise the shield up in time. I guess shooting everything everywhere until something sticks is the one true counter for the doom equivalent in the frigade world.

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Man you really do earn story points quite fast with the latest version of the game, this admittedly mediocre battle earned me a whole story point!

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Big Hegemony Chungus Fleet
My first high value Hegemony bounty consisting of 4 Onslaughts, 1 Legion, 3 Eagles and two Dominators as the main force. At least this one had all capital ships with an officer on it.

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Actual fleet composition

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There's not much to say here, the enemy fleet did actually beat me in the original Deployment Points

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But they had way too little frigades to contest them against my roided up squirrel squad so the battle eventually because a spawncamp farm

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And good news, I've finally managed to grow some restraint and not kill myself while driving a Scarab for more than 30 seconds.

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And this is the exp reward. Getting a whole story point for these battles still seems crazy to me.

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As I said before, these are not even the best fleet battles you should take to fight in order to farm story points. Having your fleet just farm Pirate Armadas stacked ontop of eachother
 like throwing Wùrstels into a meat grinder is the absolute best method.

Edit: I actually found a YT video in my suggested feed showing this exact farming method, against TT. DO give the vid a like on YT if you got the time, I'd hate to just scavenge it for my own use without anything coming back to it.

Spoiler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz_Cx75oZKw

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[AcaMetis]

As I said before, these are not even the best fleet battles you should take to fight in order to farm story points. Having your fleet just farm Pirate Armadas stacked ontop of eachother
 like throwing Wùrstels into a meat grinder is the absolute best method.

Do you get a different base xp yield depending on what kind of fleet you're fighting, actually? Because if not than yes, fighting nine pirate fleets at once is absolutely top tier xp farming.

[Arcagnello]

As I said before, these are not even the best fleet battles you should take to fight in order to farm story points. Having your fleet just farm Pirate Armadas stacked ontop of eachother
 like throwing Wùrstels into a meat grinder is the absolute best method.

Do you get a different base xp yield depending on what kind of fleet you're fighting, actually? Because if not than yes, fighting nine pirate fleets at once is absolutely top tier xp farming.

I made the assumption that the bonus XP scaling is the same no matter the AI fleet because I've noticed I got more EXP fighting combined fleets of Pirates/Pathers/Hegemony than much scarier [redacted] fights.

If there is a different base XP yield giving more to generally stronger factions, it's not significant enough to offset farming low tech lemmings.

[Euripides]

IMO story points expose a failure in hull mods themselves. Competing with weapons and shields/vents isn't a good thing. I often find myself spending all my skill points on 'free' hull mods for my ships to shore up deficiencies or specialize them in ways I could never do if I had to pay the OP cost for the hull mods.

I really think the following should be done:

1. Do not allow story points to be spent on making permanent hull mods or enhancing colonies. Use story points as a sort of 're-roll' the player can use to get better outcomes. For example, ALWAYS having the option to recover ships with a story point, being able to spend a story point on a loot re-roll (guaranteed better) if you're not happy with it; that sort of thing.

2. Move hull-mods to their own category with its own restrictions independent of OP costs, with the amount of hullmods a ship can install depending on each ship in question. I could see for example, low-tech ships tending to have many hull mod slots, while high tech ships get fewer or even none.

[xenoargh]

If we could simply "un-burn" the SP-bought Hull Mods, it would help w/ the choice anxiety, but honestly, then it's just like having more OP, but w/ a derpy way to earn / spend them.

Honestly, I don't really have much of an issue w/ the system as it now stands; SO is great, but it's never been the end-all-be-all Hull Mod.

[DatonKallandor]

Story points may have a ton of uses, but many of them are frivolous.  Those that permanently powerup your character and have no other way to do it (use on s-mods, colonies; don't waste on historian when player can raid for blueprints instead) or those free in the long run (officers, run from fight, recover your ships) are the best uses.  Thus, the execution of story points is that of currency, and no amount of embellishment will change that reality.  Basically "You Require More Vespene Gas" trope.

Story points are infinite, so using them on temporary utility is not a "waste". If there was only a fixed amount of story points to get then yes, spending them on impermanent things would bad. But luckily, they aren't. Of course it's a currency - it's points you spend on things, there's no way for them not to be a currency.

But, like credits, it's a currency that is (until the level 15 crunch, which does exist if you don't go out of your way to farm in a way that is counter to intended gameplay) effectively infinite. Is spending a few thousand credits on a frigate tanker early in the game a "waste" because eventually you'll end up with a capital tanker? Of course not, you'll get more money eventually, just like you'll get more story points.

[Megas]

Story points are theoretically infinite, but not unlimited.  Maybe player with much free time and the very best fleet can grind for them fast enough to get hundreds of them.  Player will need hundreds of story points to boost all colony industries.  Currently, I have over seventy (I made it to endgame about a day or two ago), and I want most of them for colony improvements.

[Thaago]

Why is it imperative to boost every colony industry?

[Megas]

Why not, aside from SP extreme costs?

The way I see it, if I do not want to use items (because of Pathers), then player needs both IP and improvement to meet demand.  (Player still needs items to meet demand for military base.)  It really helps open up more viable colony locations for Mining.

Player cannot get all colony skills without locking himself into officer skills.  I was looking forward to get all colony skills early, then respec away.  Also was looking forward to Ground Operations for raiding.  However, locking a point in officers is... not what I want.  I need improvements to make up for colony skills I will not have.  The new skill system has shafted those with the most interest in colony skills, or at least those with more interest in colonies than combat.

Also, items become really picky on colony conditions.  (Nevermind +4 to Pather interest on most items.)  May need improvements to make up for no item use.

I do not know if I played a crappy seed, but many more habitables have decivilized in my current game than in previous games in previous releases, and I want improvements to make up for lost stability.

And since our colonies cannot grow as big, I have two options.  Either improve military for more fleets, or cut the core worlds down to size with sat bombs.