Initial Analysis:
Aptitude Side-by-Side Skill Comparisons:
Spoiler
Combat:
- Impact Mitigation seems weaker than Ranged Specialization due to how important it is to build more flux on your opponent and the strength of range in the game.
Leadership:
- Coordinated Maneuvers seems weaker than Wolfpack Tactics on paper unless you are not using frigates at all. Even then, the destroyer perk of Wolfpack Tactics seems pretty good early game. Part of this assumption lies in the feedback about being outnumbered late game though. Wouldn't that sort of negate the bonus?
Technology:
- Energy Weapon Mastery only seems worth it for the elite version, and I'm curious to see if the AI takes advantage of it without an aggressive or reckless officer.
- Fighter Uplink seems fairly unattractive compared to Electronic Warfare. Excluding carriers on Electronic Warfare might give it a role for carrier-heavy fleets though. I'd argue the threshold for vanilla should probably be 8 instead of 6 for fighter bays. That would make it and Carrier Group more viable late game skills, imo, compared to EW or Crew Training - which both seem essential in comparison upon an initial analysis.
- Automated Ships probably needs a slightly higher DP limit for the threshold compared to an extra built-in slot from Special Modifications. (Depends on SP availability. It's harder to analyze without testing late game SP acquisition rates since that is such a new feature.) This opinion stems more from a sense of novelty and flavor than it does from the perspective of which is better to min/max.
Industry:
- Damage Control and Reliability Engineering are a bit of a strange trade-off because one primarily effects campaign level and one primarily effects combat.
- Same thing with Field Repairs and Derelict Contingent.
Aptitude vs Aptitude Comparisons:
Spoiler
Combat
- The obvious powerful player flagship choice. The highest investment of points (10) wastes a point due to competing flagship bonuses between phase ships and shielded ships. This makes it less viable to completely invest in above 7 points. Potential solution: Phase Mastery and Flux Regulation switch places. (I'll explain more about why later.)
- Tier 5 bonuses, while nice, are nowhere near as attractive as Technology tier 5 bonuses because Combat affects a single (though powerful) ship in a modest way and Technology affects the whole fleet in a pretty substantial way with the caveat that a large investment of story points is required to reap the full benefits.
- Low level bonuses are probably the most attractive small-scale investment option for those wanting some flagship boosts if they don't need a specific tier 5/tier 4 skill in one of their other attribute skill lines.
Leadership
- The specialization attribute. Essentially, pick an aspect of your fleet composition that you want to boost. With the options being carriers, smaller ships, combat auxiliary civilian ships.
- Then there are random colony bonuses and the very valuable officer boosts. Leadership probably has the worst tier 5 options of all the attributes. They seem more important for administrators than players and should probably be replaced with large compositional bonuses for each composition. Each skill needs to effect each composition of the earlier compositional choices or full investment is unlikely - but the specific bonuses themselves should compete in value. Example: Plus 5% OP on all compositional choices vs + 5% Range (weapon and fighter) on all compositional choices. Alternatively move the tier 5 bonuses to tier 2 and slide the other bonuses up a tier.
- The officer boosts are the real meat of the attribute - with ship compositional bonuses mostly being an afterthought to get to these skills.
- Crew Training is too strong of a competitor for Carrier Group as is - Potential Solution: swap Crew Training with Fighter Uplink and rename them if necessary. A compositional bonus vs a fleetwide bonus is probably impossible to balance.
- Same with tier 1 bonuses - fleetwide vs compositional bonuses should probably be avoided.
Technology
- The best attribute because of the tier 5 bonuses. Also likely the most interesting from a flavor/novelty standpoint because of Automated Ships.
- Already discussed that phase ship bonuses should directly compete. The player chooses between a big flagship bonus or a smaller fleetwide bonus. It might be worth it to make these the tier 5 bonuses so players don't feel forced into phase ships just to get Automated Ships or Special Modifications. That would also lessen the overall point burden created by moving the officer bonuses up a tier through lowering the tier to get Special Modifications or Automated Ships. The rest of the attribute is compositional specialization and full investment into the attribute simply means using both phase ships and automated ships.
- Above changes means that Technology consistently starts with a campaign QOL bonus, then gets a ship bonus, then a fleet bonus, etc. It seems more consistent when considering target goals of investing into an attribute and how much to fully invest.
Industry
- Mostly campaign benefits comprised of colony, exploration and fleet maintenance bonuses.
- While thematically interesting and great for a player struggling with campaign level challenges, it is the only attribute that mostly lacks combat benefits. This sort of puts it in an odd place.
- Needs some kind of campaign level pressure (at all points of the game) in order to functionally compete with the other attributes.
Outside of the specific changes I suggested, the major take-away I have when analyzing the current system and the feedback on all sides is that the old system let players cherry pick bonuses to either salve a campaign annoyance or help with a challenging thing at the campaign level and then once that condition (unique to the individual) is met, focus on the combat bonuses of choice and composition.
Now, the attributes require more investment and it is much harder to cherry pick bonuses of either campaign or combat. I think that is leading to all the vague playstyle complaints. Players were choosing X skill at Y time because X's bonus made sense at that time in the game while planning an overall compositional build - which was likely more flexible than the current system because, again, cherry picking was more possible.
So, conceptually, I think the new system is A) easier to balance overall B) better as far as replay-ability is concerned and C) thematically more interesting as far as specialization.
It lost complexity in build-making, however, and that is also a factor.
Some broad suggestions to possibly help the system feel more versatile:
1) Somewhat streamline bonus types at tiers with perhaps Combat being the exception. For instance, if each attribute is a unique playstyle, then have a similar bonus type at each tier - campaign level boost, flagship boost, fleetwide boost, compositional boost are what I consider "types". Weigh types based upon player desirability if possible. Big combat boosts should be higher tier but roughly equally powerful across the same tier in each attribute. Players should then be able to choose a maximum of 3 per highest tier in 2-3 attributes.
2) I'd weight campaign QOL as tier 1, fleetwide bonus at tier 2, flagship bonus at tier 3, major feature bonus at tier 4, large compositional bonus at tier 5.
3) Finally, separate out bonus themes by attribute. Example: Industry is armor combat bonuses while Technology is flux bonuses and balance between the two. Or: Leadership is carrier compositional bonuses while Combat is smaller ships, Technology is phase ships and Industry is auxiliary civilians and D-modded ships. All compositional bonuses are effectively optional and fairly powerful. That way compositions wouldn't feel as forced to get the more powerful combat benefits.
That would probably be a good middle ground between the new system and the old system and still retain the balancing benefits of the new system. A player gets 3 of each type but can sacrifice compositional or feature/theme combat-oriented boosts for more campaign QOL or fleetwide/flagship combat bonuses.
Anyway I spent enough time on this already. Just trying to think outside of the box when looking at polishing the new skill system.