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0.91

109 (52.2%)

0.95

100 (47.8%)

Total Members Voted: 209

Voting closed: June 02, 2021, 10:12:39 PM

[Inhilicon]

So that the optimal use of any fleetwide skill isn't to spam 20 Paragons.

I wouldn't do that to begin with. I don't do tryharding super optimal builds in a single player game, that's dumb.

Because, for example, when you get Special Modifications, you get 10-20 new opportunities to spend story points on ships. When you get Systems Expertise, you have no new incentive to spend story points on anything, so as a participation award story point sink, you get the elite upgrade.
You can also think of it this way: combat skills cost 1 1/4th of a skill point to fully unlock.

This would make sense if Industry also got a nice elite effect as a consolation prize, but it doesn't allow you to tap into comparable power. Only Combat and Technology get the good stuff either with or without elite effects, being vastly OP compared to Leadership and Industry.

Also, sorry for late reply. 

[Sarcolemma]

I tend to like both in their own ways

In 0.95 I love making skills elite for me and my officers, love being able to respec, and I like some of the new skills like automated ships. However, I don't like the wrap around or the significant DP penalties. I see what the goal was with choosing between 2 skills but I feel there are a lot of non choices where one skill will always be better than the other.

Colony skills I think should be put into their own fleshed out tree with a bunch more choices/nodes. They're fundamentally different than all the others. Having colony skills on the last tier makes colony specialization much harder for those that want to go that route, forcing them into taking combat skills they might not be interested in. It also diminishes the incentive to reach a higher skill tier if colony management isn't an interest.

In 0.91 I didn't like having to invest points to unlock tiers but I liked that I could make any selection I wanted in a given tier once it was unlocked

Overall I think I prefer 0.95. If I could change anything fundamentally though it would be grouping skills by specialization rather than by generalized category. Meaning there would be 1 tree for colony stuff, 1 tree for piloted ship buffs, 1 tree for fleet buffs, 1 for logistics etc with some special skills fitting in between the trees that you could get by going down either one

[Schwartz]

There are two sides to skills and how they change over time.

1) The skills themselves change, get more powerful, get nerfed. This is a balancing act and I would say it has generally gotten better over time. With a few exceptions. Firstly, trap skills that still exist - old trap skills get removed, new trap skills get added. Secondly, by nerfing skills too hard and gimping playstyles, like we are currently seeing with carrier-heavy builds.

2) The skill tree overall. First we just had points, then we had points and attributes. Now we have a tier choice system. This is where I think 0.91 was better.

[Draba]

For the new system I'm not a big fan of the tier/wraparound system, if some skills are too good compared to the rest it locks in a bit too much.
IMO loosening that restriction in some way would help a lot.

I do like the fever, more impactful points and choice between 2 alternatives parts.

There is no meaningful choices for me as of current patch as I always pick the same set of skills.
Wolfpack is a blind pick. Special modification is a blind pick. Level 6 officer is a blind pick. Sensor is a blind pick. Industry tree doesn’t exist. I only need to respec combat tree for flagship but again it provided no meaningful choices as my flagship only benefit from one skill of any given tier than the other. It’s just annoying to need to spend SP to respec when switching flagship.

You having a skill preference doesn't mean the alternative is bad or the system is broken.
A good portion of players will take the exact opposite of your blind picks, because they have different preferences or made different choices in fleet composition.

Wolfpack is decent, a mixed fleet with +20% speed destroyers/cruisers is generally much stronger IMO.
I'd probably pick CM even for full frigate fleets unless I'm lugging around a bunch of nav relay kites.

Level 5 officers already get helmsmanship+target analysis/PD+shield modulation+gunnery implants+reliability engineering.
The leftover (impact mitigation/ranged spec or systems expertise/missile spec + a weaker elite bonus) doesn't benefit AI ships that much, just swap something out for missile spam fleets.
You could also luck out on lvl 6-7 sleeper officers, I'd pick 2 extra officers every time.

For general use navigation over sensors every time.
Stealth helps with spy missions and clean raiding for blueprints, but +2 burn is much more useful later on and reducing the nebula penalty on top of that is a massive QoL improvement.

Industry 2 reliability engineering is a very good universal combat skill.
For some flagships it easily beats combat 5 even with the industry 1 tax.

[Realm]

I love the new skills for the most part, bar some small gripes with DP limits. My only particular gripe with 0.95 isn't the skills themselves but rather the imbalance of options at some tiers, such as with Automated Ships competing with the obscenely better Special Modifications to where you actively gimp yourself by not choosing the latter - or a particular offender, Carrier Group competing with Crew Training when Carriers highly value their CR (Due to how fighters rely on the CR of their Carrier, if Carrier Group boosted CR of ships w/ wings by 15% I'd be much happier). Overall though, I agree with their layout on the skill tree.

I do also love that skills are, on paper, far more meaningful upgrades and offer some interesting decisions (Coordinated Maneuvers vs Wolfpack Tactics) on what you plan to do with your fleet.

[Sutopia]

Funny people would put alpha core on the table as counter argument to colony skills. Other people have been ranting about AI inspection so they’re nerfed all the way to a minor factor as of current iteration while I think the punishment should be much more severe and without a upper limit.
I for one am a believer of Ludd thus if I run a colony there won’t be a luddic pather cell, nor would it get inspected. Your choice of abusing AI core and exploit the out of balance punishment does not stand as a counter argument to invalidate a colony play style picking all colony skills.


.8 one of the major changes was embedding fighters to carrier instead of using up a ship slot.
Along with it came with skills that benefit fighters that greatly increases their efficiency. In current iteration there is only 1 combat skill out of 14 supporting fighters while there were sometimes like 3 out of 12 in previous iteration, not to mention fleet wide skill is limited by decks now and carriers are double taxed by also taking up DP for other fleet wide skills.
Tl;dr Carriers in .95 are not fun.

.91 with colonies it became possible to print your own ships. Replacing lost ship became trivial and paragon-only meme fleet became reality. Colony were to support a playstyle that runs a business and use sheer amount of cash to crush whatever is in the way. I would argue paragon spam is totally valid as long as you can foot the bill.
That said colony challenges are lackluster and too weak to be a thing. It was weak but people were ranting about it, so the challenges got nerfed while they ought to get buffed. People complained about needing to babysit colonies not realizing how much money they print and why it worth the effort to defend a golden goose. At the end of the day colony system is left in piles of unbalanced debris that poorly interacts with the rest of the game.

[SCC]

You know, if we consider "doing things, but not the ones I want" as taxes... CE2, OE2, TA1, DC1, DC2, IM2, DS1, FL1, FD1, GI2, PGM1, LD1, LD2 weren't really of any use or interest to me, meaning 42% of old skill points were taxes.

I wouldn't do that to begin with. I don't do tryharding super optimal builds in a single player game, that's dumb.

You might not, but the thought that getting a fleetwide skill over a personal/limited one because the former is potentially better is still there.

This would make sense if Industry also got a nice elite effect as a consolation prize, but it doesn't allow you to tap into comparable power. Only Combat and Technology get the good stuff either with or without elite effects, being vastly OP compared to Leadership and Industry.

But Industry combat skills do get their elites and for what it's worth, I consider both of them to be pretty good, too. Now, the issue of Industry not giving you combat power (sans the combat skills and derelict contingent), unlike other trees, isn't an issue that should be solved by sprinkling some story point sinks on it.

There is no meaningful choices for me as of current patch as I always pick the same set of skills.
Wolfpack is a blind pick. Special modification is a blind pick. Level 6 officer is a blind pick. Sensor is a blind pick. Industry tree doesn’t exist. I only need to respec combat tree for flagship but again it provided no meaningful choices as my flagship only benefit from one skill of any given tier than the other. It’s just annoying to need to spend SP to respec when switching flagship.

Wolfpack Tactics is decent early game. I used it mostly for exploration, to take more expdrones with my Tempest. Specmods seems good, but I have a feeling that most people take it simply because it's a safer pick, or because they don't know just how good a Radiant is. Hm. I don't think it's worth comparing my choices with yours, unless there's a clear target to reach, like maximum power.
Industry tree indeed needs help. It was and still is "lose less" tree, where you want to "win more" instead.

I feel forced to pick combat tree otherwise there is no possible way to beat end game enemies. (Of course we’re talking about full vanilla, including any setting values.) I do understand the game was designed to be combat focus, but it’s now over emphasizing it. The addition of colony and whatnot was meant to have different approaches to combat, now it’s all nullified. It’s essentially expelling all players that had fun by utilizing features added between.8 and .91.

Interesting. I actually feel the other way around: with the exception of phase ships (because of course...), combat tree isn't what it used to be and it's probably more optimal (though less fun) to invest into making your fleet stronger now. At least, I got a considerable power boost by accepting I can't do as much as I used to and focusing on getting fleet more optimised.

such as with Automated Ships competing with the obscenely better Special Modifications to where you actively gimp yourself by not choosing the latter

I think Spec Mods is better for phase fleets and low-tech fleets (former benefit from extra s-mod than a Radiant, simply because phase ships are better than Radiants now, and the former cannot keep up with a Radiant, which means a higher risk of it overextending and dying) and Auto Ships is better for midline and high-tech fleets that can keep up with the Radiant as it pulverises anything in its path.

At the end of the day colony system is left in piles of unbalanced debris that poorly interacts with the rest of the game.

As far as I know, colonies are supposed to be means that let you take on actual, proper endgame, once that actual, proper endgame is a thing, and not just hard battles you can do for fun. They don't give a "money making-focused playstyle enabler" vibe to me. I wonder if Alex is going to go through with his idea to remove colony skills (and administrators) entirely.

[Megas]

Last release, babysitting was not just player colonies, but also the core worlds.  If player did not defend the core worlds from endless pirate raids, there was a not insignificant chance of some core worlds decivilizing.

I may want to explore, farm Remnants, hunt bounties, or otherwise goof around.  It was hard to do that in earlier 0.9.x releases because the game expected the player to play Superman and defend everyone from... the universe and themselves, more often than not.  (At least half of my playtime was spent intercepting pirates and occasionally expeditions last release.)  It was a reason why I was (and still am) somewhat obsessed with destroying the core worlds simply for peace of mind and no more babysitting.  I did not care if I lost all income from trade and took a 90% cut out of income if it meant I could do whatever I want at my own pace.

I do not want to be forced to play babysitter for the majority of the game (because if I refuse to, core worlds will die or my colonies burn down).

[Locklave]

It’s a different story when you need to waste 4 out of 15 (wrapping) comparing to 2 out of 30.

Right on the money. There can't be wasted points to reach stuff you want when the limit is 15.

When I say "can't" I mean the system shouldn't allow for that to happen, these trees have failure baked into them. Everyone knows the Industry tree is using I4 as a crutch, remove those skills and it's not even a real tree. I2 is good for person combat, something the tree isn't about, the rest is sub par trash that doesn't compare to the scale and scope of Leadership or Technology. Although they have some losers and counter intuitive locking design they are superior trees.

Which of the lame options did you want to choose to reach the thing you actually want? Even if that single skill is overpowered you are left feeling like your other levels were wasted.

[silfidum]

I don't really like either due to mixture of there being officer skills, economic skills and fleet wide buffs. I generally just cheat my way to unlock all the skill since it's convenient in terms of logistics, even though a little OP.

IMO economic side of things should be on logistic ship and colonies rather then skill management and officer skills should be in their own category outside of player skills entirely so they can be balanced separately.

All in all it's kinda meh since it's largely modifiers to existing things that don't really provide more options but instead provide specialization.

[DatonKallandor]

The old one had wasted points in the aptitudes and too many must-take or filler skills.
The new has respecs.

Clearly the new one wins for me.

[Ad Astra]

I don't really like either due to mixture of there being officer skills, economic skills and fleet wide buffs. I generally just cheat my way to unlock all the skill since it's convenient in terms of logistics, even though a little OP.

IMO economic side of things should be on logistic ship and colonies rather then skill management and officer skills should be in their own category outside of player skills entirely so they can be balanced separately.

All in all it's kinda meh since it's largely modifiers to existing things that don't really provide more options but instead provide specialization.

Oohh I've thought of something like that before too, if your character was just an admiral type (only fleet wide and logistic bonuses) and you could decide whether you want to put an officer in your flagship or not, balancing officers would be far easier. I might start a thread to talk about that.

[Impetus]

While I do like some things about the new skill system, I also feel like there are far less options available for different builds, in particular when it comes to combat skills I feel like the skillbuild has become rather one-dimensional. Elite skills are cool, but they are just a story point tax for combat tree players, which feels a bit strange.

[Sutopia]

I don't really like either due to mixture of there being officer skills, economic skills and fleet wide buffs. I generally just cheat my way to unlock all the skill since it's convenient in terms of logistics, even though a little OP.

IMO economic side of things should be on logistic ship and colonies rather then skill management and officer skills should be in their own category outside of player skills entirely so they can be balanced separately.

All in all it's kinda meh since it's largely modifiers to existing things that don't really provide more options but instead provide specialization.

Oohh I've thought of something like that before too, if your character was just an admiral type (only fleet wide and logistic bonuses) and you could decide whether you want to put an officer in your flagship or not, balancing officers would be far easier. I might start a thread to talk about that.

Alex has solidly denied this path. I have proposed it once and it got turned down immediately.


Oh in fact it wasn’t even my thread.
https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=13076.0

[TaLaR]

Alex has solidly denied this path. I have proposed it once and it got turned down immediately.

Then skill system should guarantee that player won't be left inferior to an average officer. It's just immensely not fun even in cases when it works. Like separate point pool that can be spent only on personal skills (you can spend general purpose points to go above minimum investment).