If you want a brilliant tactician, capable of picking only engagements they can win, and otherwise out maneuvering multiple fleets simultaneously and getting away, then you do that rather than picking a skill that says you can do that, and then potentially proceed to never use it on a particular game run.
This is a stange argument. By this logic a new player will never be able to play a good general in, say Total War they need to "git gud".
I think I failed to communicate my meaning here clearly. When I say "do that", I'm referring to the character in the game, not the player. For example, in a choose your own adventure, sometimes you're presented with options like: Fight the goblin with a sword, talk the goblin out of fighting, cast a spell to put the goblin to sleep.
You might not have a "character sheet", but you're suddenly defining the character on the fly. If you choose fight with sword, you've decided to define your character as one who is trained with at the very least with a sword, if you choose to talk, you've defined the character as being diplomatic, and if you choose to cast spell, you've defined them as being studied and magical. The reader has done nothing but pick a choice, but the character has now been defined by doing and succeeding at the thing that they are good at. This is contrast to having a character sheet that say +10 to diplomacy rolls, and yet rolling a critical failure despite it or going down a story path that never utilizes diplomacy.
The advantage of this system is that by not relying on random chance, you don't have a fraction of the player base running into unlucky runs where a character is defined at being good at diplomacy, and rolls a failure every time. Imagine taking a skill that gives you a 50% chance for success, as opposed to not having the option (essentially 0%) and you have 10 meaningful diplomacy rolls that can change the course of events over the story line. Every 1000 players is going to literally fail every roll despite being "good at diplomacy". I've certainly been in table top sessions where the expert in a subject critically fails their roll every time it comes up, while a dabbler happens to roll a 19 or 20, and succeeding. It usually results in jokes around the table, but it is a bit jarring to have a character be described as "expert", while their story shows they are not.
On the other hand, by making it spend a rare resource, you can allow the effect to be much greater. If I take a skill that automatically makes every point in the game where I could be diplomatic have a 100% chance of success, without cost, then I can't make the effects of diplomacy very powerful. Someone with the skill is just going to pick that option every time. If I do make it cost, the power can be increased proportional to the cost, as then you run into situations where you can't pick it, or at the very least, picking it every time comes at the detriment of something else.
Or as another example, a vet player playing M&B will always be a swordmaster, even if his character is supposed to be a trader/scholar.
If the vet M&B player has decided to roleplay as a trader/scholar and specifically not a swordmaster, why are they using their skills to break character? They can simply fight poorly. Having a game present an option to you, the player, is not the same as the game forcing you to take that option and breaking character. Its the same as a game providing a nice dialog, a neutral dialog, or a hostile/evil dialog. Just because the evil option is there, doesn't mean you have to take it if you're playing a nice character.
Skills exist to explain what a character is good at, and complement, support or offset player skill. And they are essential to keep the feeling of progression.
I'm am simply pointing out a skill on a character sheet is not the only way to explain what a character is good at. Characters in a novel don't have characters sheets, yet we often can identify what they are good and bad at by what happens during the the story. The character is good at things that they've succeed at in story, especially if they've done it multiple times.
Story points are certainly there to help complement or offset player skill, just like skills on the skill tree. If the player failed to out maneuver the enemy fleet and escape on the campaign map, now the character can step in and say, yes, I really did out maneuver the fleet. Of course, this is also a complaint that many have about story points, the player is not suffering the punishment of failing that particular mini-game and thus are bypassing game mechanics. The other complaint in this thread is the particular punishment for failing the mini-game is too much for certain fleet compositions, and should be able to be reduced by other character (non-player skill test) mechanical means, perhaps by buying mines, or spending supplies, or correct dialog options.
Mechanically, from a game design point of view as opposed to an immersion point of view, these are all very similar. Fail the mini-game, pay a small price (supplies, credits for mines, story points, damage to some of your ships), and if you ran out of those particular resources, pay a big price (destruction of a portion or all of your fleet). If the prices are too high for a player, they'll reload and try again - or do something different with the power of foreknowledge.
You can also configure your fleet to be much better at the mini-game to help your ability to win it in the first place, but at the cost of other things (like combat capability). A fleet of all SO, UI, ADF Hounds with 12 burn and 305 speed can always disengage except maybe against Pathers.
About the only thing different between story points and skill points, is their gain and usage rates (their economy if you will). Skill points are fewer, and capped. Story points are more common, uncapped, but are used much more frequently.
I have 2 problems with this statement:
1. Fate points are not like that. In mosst games they are an extermely limited resource, which is often saved until a truly dire moment (not to resolve a routine ambush, but to surive an otherwise lethal boss fight). In many systems, fate doesn't even guarantee success, they just give you another chance.
Now we're arguing over implementation, I'm merely arguing that story points are not inherently bad, and are akin to skill systems, which many people seem to like (given the existence of the role playing game market). I admit it is a different take on skills and character description than is traditional or common.
If you only got 1 story point per level, and 1 per 4 million xp, you'd probably not be using them avoid routine ambushes. You'd be using them to avoid fleet ending ambushes. Simply because you do it 15 times by level 15, then you've got no story points left. Personally, if routine ambushes are a threat to my fleet, I'm doing something wrong. I think I've used story points to avoid encounters somewhere between zero and five each run, and never late game. Late game, the only true threat I can't reach clean disengage status on would likely be the <new redacted> encounters, which you have to specifically request - they don't come and find you.
As for spending the resource and only getting a chance, as I mentioned earlier, Alex has made as much campaign layer RNG as possible to be pre-seeded, so making it chance based seems unlikely to fit with that. And there are systems where spending a "fate point" or whatever resource is guaranteed to work. Or certain mechanics simply succeed if you spend the appropriate resource.
What you are missing here is that one is meant to symbolize learning something, while the other means to symbolize moments of brilliance. Did you ever practice a skill? Well once you practice and learn you just have it, that's what a skill point represents (personally I'm also an advocate for mission locked skills btw). You ever threw a paper ball at a trash can without looking from far away and have it miraculously land in when you actually suck at that? That would be the sort of thing a story point represents.
They certainly can be viewed that way. They could also be viewed as the character having been somewhat skilled at it all along, and are only now doing it because A) They didn't need/want to before, or B) They tried to before, but failed. Both viewpoints seem to be equally valid to me.
Just because I've spent time practicing my internet forum debate skill, doesn't mean I'm going to convince everyone I'm right 100% of the time.
As they are right now they are too common and too silly and inconsequential in their uses (just like the paper ball throw). Suure, disengaging is nice because enemy forcing confrontation is broken as hell, but if you fix that broken as hell force of confrontation and allow for planning fleets around that mechanic then now SP sounds ridiculous. Getting the support of a ruling figure would be the sort of thing you want it to represent. BTW I also don't like %chance checks, I like the New Vegas style flat level requirement, you have it or you don't style.
That strikes me as a fair complaint, but that's a matter of implementation, not that the entire concept is flawed inherently, which is what I'm really arguing against here.
Although, as mentioned above, you already can totally configure fleets to guarantee to escape from virtually all fleets. If your entire fleet's speed is higher than the fastest ship in the opposing fleet, they can't force an engagement - they can harass you as you leave, cause a loss of CR and thus supplies, but you're not forced to fight. Try a fleet of hounds with maxed speed (SO + UI) and jet around a red remnant system - you can leave any engagement you want without fighting an escape battle.