I feel like I say this every blog post, but sweeet - really exciting changes! I don't even know which T5 skill / combination I'm looking forward to most, which is probably a good sign that they're roughly similarly appealing.
Let's see! I have a feeling a lot of players will make for Best of the Best just for "comfort" reasons, but hopefully the other stuff is comparable. It's kind of like how, at least, the impression that I get is that a lot of people don't think the Automated Ships skill compares well to Special Modifications, even though it absolutely does. It's just, it's real hard to mess up "you have an extra s-mod"...
These look like great changes! One thing I like is that colony skills seem to be off the menu for this system, or at the very least bypassable. I suspect you may be underestimating the value of mixing Best of the Best with Support Doctrine, as in a late game fleet of mixed ship classes (ostensibly the intended fleet composition, rather than the meme-y “Three Paragon” setup) there simply aren’t enough officers to go around.
Thank you!
And, ah, re: all the colony talk: I'd like to keep any discussion of colony skill changes until part 2 is out!
I suspect you may be underestimating the value of mixing Best of the Best with Support Doctrine, as in a late game fleet of mixed ship classes (ostensibly the intended fleet composition, rather than the meme-y “Three Paragon” setup) there simply aren’t enough officers to go around.
It's possible! Though I don't think that mixing them has more effect than them just being separately good, where other combinations have effects that actively help each other. But the whole could still be very good even if it's no greater than the sum of the parts.
That brings me to my next point, though. Is anything being done to rein in AI fleets with more officers than a player fleet could field? It seems as though every Redacted fleet I run into has the Deployment Point advantage simply because they fit a core to every vessel, and even late game Hegemony fleets seem to have more than they ought. This undermines the parity of “anything the AI can do, you can do as well” — a fleet (or really, even a combination of several) should have a maximum number of deployment points it derives from officers, simply because having too many cooks in the kitchen shouldn’t help matters. The officers should still give their ship-sode benefits (though Redacted deathfleets still need a look at) but I’m tired of seeing smaller fleets “outnumber” me because they’ve managed to squeeze sixteen officers around their planning table, when mine only fits 8.
Human faction fleets don't generally have too many officers beyond the limit, with the Hegemony having the most, IIRC (and you can have mercs, though right now that's a bit too punishing/difficult). For Redacted fleets, though, I'd say that your expectations of parity are just misplaced! Even just looking at things from a completely in-fiction point of view, they're not operating by anything like the same rules you are.
I like the changes around making officer-less ships more viable. Derelict Contingent is especially frustrating in that regard, and I'm pleased the new junkfleet skill is about bringing lots of random stuff to battle, rather than finding 8-10 elite-but-battered ships.
S-mods giving always recoverable status as well is pretty interesting, too.
*thumbs up*
Derelict Operations only affecting ships with officers seems weird. You're looking to to run a fleet of trashy junk ships... and then you need to make sure they all have officers?
Oh, oops! That's a typo in the skill description; it should just say "all ships". Fixed up the screenshot, thank you!
Ooh boy, Neural Link is looking sexy. That has so much potential, and it feels like there would be a ton of different ways to make use of it.
Assuming there's no cooldown and no delay (so 50 and down), the skill ceiling on using it seems insane. I can't wait to try to pilot two SO Hammerheads simultaneously.
On the other hand, it means I don't need to focus as much on speed if I want to have a personal effect on battles, since we can now fly two ships to two different places, win one, switch, and have the other ship start getting to the next fight in the meantime.
Double combat skill capital ships also sounds funny. Good? I don't know. Funny? Oh absolutely.
The core changes, moving away from the rigid structure to one that better fits each aptitude, looks great.
I can't decide between combining it with more combat skills, or with Best of the Best. Which I'm sure is the point. Looking forward to trying it out.
Indeed, that's what I like to hear
Automated ship get support doctrine if I don’t plug a core in?
That makes gamma core seems very bad for what it does.
They do. And, I mean! They have 3 elite skills you can pick, vs 3 non-elite that you can't - plus, you have to actually pick up Support Doctrine.
But, of course, it does cut into the usefulness of gamma cores - all cores, really - if you do. That's kind of the point, to open up the possibility of not using cores.
This concludes part of of this two-part blog post!
I read this sentence 3 times and couldn't figure out what was wrong. Guess after a read like this people won't even notice the mistakes hahahaha.
Thank you! Took me a second even after knowing something was wrong there.
Anyways I'm really happy about the changes you mentioned, especially S-modded ships being always recoverable and less boring skills in general (I literally never picked a colony skill in any of my playthroughs). Oh yeah and the different structures certainly sound like a big improvement, hopefully it will help with the "I hate having to pick skills I don't like" problem. Can't wait to try all of them out.
And, thank you!
EDIT: I've almost missed this "mercurial scythe of balance coming for your phase ships in part 2". You sly devil always teasing us in the tags tsk tsk tsk.
Haha - sorry but also not sorry? It's how I do.
