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[Alex]

Do you mean by modding? Or some way to cheese it in-game?

Either way, the answer is likely "pretty prepared, but probably not quite enough"

[AcaMetis]

They'll be fine, nothing that won't buff out. The Doom got a little bit of special attention, though nothing drastic at that - just via a range reduction to Mine Strike, and an improvement to how enemy AI handles mines.

That's more than fair. Though how does the AI handle the old, tried and true "HE Doom mines behind you, 4-6× Anti-Matter Blaster/2× Reaper Doom right in front of you" situation now? Pointing omni-shields forwards instead of backwards would just be trading one problem for another, it seems like.

Hmm, I'm not sure I'm on board with calling ships that haven't been boosted to the max "nerfed". That aside, though, I don't see why it woudln't be viable. It's already viable without any skills involved. Compromises are basically the name of the game regardless, though, if you're picking some of the things, you're not picking the rest of the things.

Eh...probably not the best word to use, admittedly, but it's the one I went with. Blame the fact I'm currently playing Nerfopolis: The Modpack while waiting for the next Starsector update .

Even if they're still viable it just never feels worthwhile to use what you're not specced for. When I make choices(/compromises) I want to get the most out of what I got, and that means focussing on what I've made my strength. Why field carriers when I've chosen skills that boost line ships, or phase ships when I'm focussed on carriers, etc.

[Sutopia]

Do you mean by modding? Or some way to cheese it in-game?

Either way, the answer is likely "pretty prepared, but probably not quite enough"

Cheese - such like strike package s mod exploit.
Shoving ship into storage with such mod/ sell the ship/ transfer the ship ownership but not dropping the mod/ dupe ship

Hm, maybe just make it not be able to built in and auto remove if it’s not in fleet should suffice?
Do a check on every ship transfer - from or to player fleet.

Sorry for dipping my fingers in the soup but I can’t help myself not to cheese.

[Megas]

They'll be fine, nothing that won't buff out. The Doom got a little bit of special attention, though nothing drastic at that - just via a range reduction to Mine Strike, and an improvement to how enemy AI handles mines.

Star Fortress get less range on mines too, or do they have a different system (or something else) to offset reduced range Doom will get?

[Alex]

That's more than fair. Though how does the AI handle the old, tried and true "HE Doom mines behind you, 4-6× Anti-Matter Blaster/2× Reaper Doom right in front of you" situation now? Pointing omni-shields forwards instead of backwards would just be trading one problem for another, it seems like.

Yeah, it's a tough spot. It'll just point shields at mines a bit later in that case. So: better, but unlikely to change the outcome.

Even if they're still viable it just never feels worthwhile to use what you're not specced for. When I make choices(/compromises) I want to get the most out of what I got, and that means focussing on what I've made my strength. Why field carriers when I've chosen skills that boost line ships, or phase ships when I'm focussed on carriers, etc.

Yeah, I get that. Some things you're not specced for can be better than more of the thing you are specced for, though, just due to providing something different and complementary. But a lot of this is a psychological/how it feels thing. Still, it'd take, what, two points to feel like you've got something going with carriers and phase ships? Provided you had some points in tech and leadership, anyway.

Cheese - such like strike package s mod exploit.
Shoving ship into storage with such mod/ sell the ship/ transfer the ship ownership but not dropping the mod/ dupe ship

Hm, maybe just make it not be able to built in and auto remove if it’s not in fleet should suffice?
Do a check on every ship transfer - from or to player fleet.

Sorry for dipping my fingers in the soup but I can’t help myself not to cheese.

It's all good, this stuff is super fun to think about

I *am* prepared for this one, actually! The game doesn't limit what you can put the hullmod on - just, only the first two ships with it on the battlefield are linked, assuming you're in one of them. If one is destroyed, the remaining one can link with another ship, etc.

The hullmod also can't be built in - not to prevent exploits, but to 1) keep SO company and 2) it's a cheap mod and it's not a great idea to do it since you might want to remove it and it's a waste of an s-mod slot, anyway.

[Cathair]

Initial opinions that are burning a hole in my head:


 - The only one of these changes that I disagree strongly with is putting the third S-mod in the Leadership tree. I get your reasoning, but it's pretty different from what I've come to expect from these trees. It may sound a bit arrogant to tell you what your own game's themes are, but FWIW, the impressions stuck in my head from previous iterations are that Leadership is about being the best at using whatever you've got, while Technology is more about making what you've got the best it can be. The latter is often my first priority; I usually want my individual ships to be as mechanically tricked out as possible. So, anytime I'm going deep into Technology, I will always want that third S-mod. I don't mind putting a few points into Leadership for good officers (gonna need respectable pilots who can handle my beast machines, after all!), but having to max it for the S-mod doesn't fit the ethos I'm after at all.


 - Support Doctrine being where it is seems questionable to me unless there are changes coming to substantially reduce the power of high-end officers. As lots of other people have been saying in this iteration, unless an officer-less ship has some strong inherent gimmick (thinking of the support Omens I run, here), it's a disposable speedbump in high-end combat. So unless it's an intentional balance decision that we should avoid using un-officered ships without this skill, I would consider it a band-aid for the issue. I can deal with having a mandatory band-aid skill, but putting at the top of a tree feels unrewarding, and irritating to build around.


 - Neural Link seems very gimmicky. I would typically want to use a skill like this defensively more than offensively- I don't want the AI potentially wasting missiles or whatever that I had planned for a particular purpose, during the times when I need to switch to the other ship. But limiting it to non-officered ships nixes most of its defensive potential, that of repositioning your most important ships to get them out of trouble, since anything really important is going to have an officer in it. It does seem like a great opportunity to make use of ships I wouldn't normally consider fast enough to work as a flagship, and bouncing between two capital ships could be strong as hell. I don't know, the biggest problem I have with it is that it feels, in light of my aforementioned biases, like it's in the wrong tree. It's a skill that's all about making you better at using a ship, instead of making the ship better for you to use- and yes, I'm skimming over the skill bonuses because they seem like a side benefit at best. One more "officered" ship but you can't choose the personality; that doesn't sound like the pinnacle of mechanical engineering. Meanwhile, the skill that literally is the pinnacle of mechanical engineering is over in Leadership.

Hear me out: Replace Best of the Best with a skill called "Neuro-linked Coordination" or something, which combines Neural Link's switching with BotB's deployment bonus. Ditch the application of the player's Combat skills to switched ships, and make switching apply only to officered (or AI-cored) ships. Now you have a command buff combined with the ultimate expression of fleet control, requiring the ultimate in intimacy and trust with your officers. That seems a lot more appropriate to me, both mechanically and thematically. It also neatly solves the issue of too much synergy in the same tree.

And clearly has nothing at all to do with how much the ability reminds me of mind-jacking your Executors in House of the Dying Sun, no sir.


 - S-mods making ships recoverable sounds really cool. Maybe too soft on the player for some tastes, but I like it as another potential help for the issues with non-officered ships. I'm usually loathe to "waste" story points on S-modding ships that aren't my best, but if I get more bang for my buck in the form of this guaranteed recovery, that gives me more options for building and fielding stuff I normally wouldn't bother with.


 - Nothing but optimism for the Industry top-tier changes. Hull Restoration seems well worth going five deep in Industry for the technical elitist player, and I completely agree with your reasoning on Derelict Operations. It seems like it could still be very powerful, or even overpowered depending on exact numbers, while offering a playstyle that's a lot more unique than Derelict Contingent.

[AcaMetis]

Yeah, it's a tough spot. It'll just point shields at mines a bit later in that case. So: better, but unlikely to change the outcome.

There's really no ideal solution, since you're looking at heavy HE damage on either side. I guess if you're going to die either way the best thing you could do is try and deal as much damage before inevitably going down, meaning you don't risk an overload by taking the Anti-Matter Blaster shots on the shield and instead use that flux to fire weapons? A Doom isn't the most survivable boat IIRC (dear word the amount of Atlus MK. IIs that straight killed me with their death explosion...).

Yeah, I get that. Some things you're not specced for can be better than more of the thing you are specced for, though, just due to providing something different and complementary. But a lot of this is a psychological/how it feels thing. Still, it'd take, what, two points to feel like you've got something going with carriers and phase ships? Provided you had some points in tech and leadership, anyway.

I really need to do some testing with that after battle statistics mod, forgot the name, and try to figure out exactly what blank carriers/phase ships can do for a line fleet. Unfortunately two points cannot be spared while there's campaign QoL skills and necessary fleet logistics skills to be had, so base hulls it is.

[BarnOwlBlue]

Sounds great, breathing more life into the low tech ships and expanding the skill point tree.

I am liking the Neural Link skill, being able to put to say a capital and a frigate to more personal use in the same battle is an interesting idea. No longer do we have to wait so long for our little shuttle to bounce between two ships XD

Would there be any interaction between the Operations Center hullmod and Neural Link?

[Burvjradzite]

I do not care of that 4 radiants thingie. Why should I? If i can bring 16 betacored glimmers mwaahahahha. Like, if gold standard is alphacored radiant 60*4 then at the same cost i will have 16*5*3 points of glimmers, and that's value value. I'm a bit concern at all that ai officers not contributing to battle points, they still do receive bonuses for officer skills right, like wolfpack?

[snicka]

Phase Command teleporter - assuming Player control od this ship and other ships from it is instant

*Visible happiness in having something close to a suggestion ( Neural link ) implemented in game*

[evzhel]

Making the skill tree easily configurable and moddable still seems to be the best solution, as it's nearly impossible to make it satisfactory for everyone. Also modding is what keeps small games going through years.
Regarding changes, the root of the problem still stays - the skill tree mixes personal piloting skills (1), fleet commander skills (2), fleet technician skills (2) and colony government skills (4) while having too few points and too big of disparity between these groups, making players pick certain skills in certain order from (2) and (3), ignoring (1), while (4) shouldn't even be there.
If a certain skill is an absolute must-have, it shouldn't be a skill or shouldn't be optional and missable. So my personal view on the skill system is the same - I'd better mod it while having more types of officers for the fleet.

[Alex]

- The only one of these changes that I disagree strongly with is putting the third S-mod in the Leadership tree. I get your reasoning, but it's pretty different from what I've come to expect from these trees. It may sound a bit arrogant to tell you what your own game's themes are, but FWIW, the impressions stuck in my head from previous iterations are that Leadership is about being the best at using whatever you've got, while Technology is more about making what you've got the best it can be. The latter is often my first priority; I usually want my individual ships to be as mechanically tricked out as possible. So, anytime I'm going deep into Technology, I will always want that third S-mod. I don't mind putting a few points into Leadership for good officers (gonna need respectable pilots who can handle my beast machines, after all!), but having to max it for the S-mod doesn't fit the ethos I'm after at all.

That's a really interesting way to look at it! And a neat categorization/split. But, does it actually hold up? If we consider "making a ship the best it can be" to mean "if you take it and put into a fleet without the same commander skills, it'll still be better" then I think Special Modifications is literally the only skill that fits the bill. I'm having a hard time seeing how one could come up with a reasonable definition of this that would somehow make skills liks Crew Training, Carrier Group, Fighter Uplink, Flux Regulation, and Phase Corps qualitatively different.

I *think* the way you're thinking about this might be largely driven by the existence of Special Modifications and where it currently is.

- Support Doctrine being where it is seems questionable to me unless there are changes coming to substantially reduce the power of high-end officers. As lots of other people have been saying in this iteration, unless an officer-less ship has some strong inherent gimmick (thinking of the support Omens I run, here), it's a disposable speedbump in high-end combat. So unless it's an intentional balance decision that we should avoid using un-officered ships without this skill, I would consider it a band-aid for the issue. I can deal with having a mandatory band-aid skill, but putting at the top of a tree feels unrewarding, and irritating to build around.

Well - I think unofficered ships are quite usable, at least to a point. For some of the more recent testing, I've been using a fairly middling fleet - a bunch of ships with default loadouts, but with a couple of s-mods built into the officered ones only, and generally facing a mid-tier Remnant bounty, with one Radiant. I was having a much harder time using officer-only ships - but then I added a bunch of unofficered Vanguards and Lashers to my deployments, and things got much easier. Throwing Support Doctrine in further improved things, but it was already great to have a bunch of unofficered ships - even frigates! With Support Doctrine, I felt like I could put some capital-class ships on the field w/o officers, and that made the fight go even more smoothly.

You're right about them being disposable, though, especially the frigates. But not speedbumps - you lose them, sure, but they give you a lot. And some reasonable number usually survived until the very end, too. I can see them dropping off vs tougher targets, perhaps... well, maybe not tougher, just *different* in a way that punishes them more. Since for example this Remnant fleet always had me at 40% deployment points, so a larger one wouldn't be *that* much tougher.

But in general, the idea is that you *are* mostly using officer'ed ships, with non-officered ones thrown in for special purposes. So it's less of a band-aid for and issue an more just things working as intended.

(Yes, I'm probably trying to have my cake and eat it too, here - "you can use unofficered ships!" and "it's fine if they aren't any good". Uh, sorry.)

- Neural Link seems very gimmicky. I would typically want to use a skill like this defensively more than offensively- I don't want the AI potentially wasting missiles or whatever that I had planned for a particular purpose, during the times when I need to switch to the other ship. But limiting it to non-officered ships nixes most of its defensive potential, that of repositioning your most important ships to get them out of trouble, since anything really important is going to have an officer in it. It does seem like a great opportunity to make use of ships I wouldn't normally consider fast enough to work as a flagship, and bouncing between two capital ships could be strong as hell. I don't know, the biggest problem I have with it is that it feels, in light of my aforementioned biases, like it's in the wrong tree. It's a skill that's all about making you better at using a ship, instead of making the ship better for you to use- and yes, I'm skimming over the skill bonuses because they seem like a side benefit at best. One more "officered" ship but you can't choose the personality; that doesn't sound like the pinnacle of mechanical engineering. Meanwhile, the skill that literally is the pinnacle of mechanical engineering is over in Leadership.

Hmm, I think what you're saying you'd want to use Neural Link for is the sort of micromanagement that I super don't want it to be used for Like, if we're not careful with it, it becomes a "cycle through your ships and tell them to vent" sort of skill and that doesn't sound like much fun.

And clearly has nothing at all to do with how much the ability reminds me of mind-jacking your Executors in House of the Dying Sun, no sir.

Hah! I need to play more of that game. Just couldn't get into it using a mouse, though...

- Nothing but optimism for the Industry top-tier changes. Hull Restoration seems well worth going five deep in Industry for the technical elitist player, and I completely agree with your reasoning on Derelict Operations. It seems like it could still be very powerful, or even overpowered depending on exact numbers, while offering a playstyle that's a lot more unique than Derelict Contingent.

*thumbs up*

I really need to do some testing with that after battle statistics mod, forgot the name, and try to figure out exactly what blank carriers/phase ships can do for a line fleet. Unfortunately two points cannot be spared while there's campaign QoL skills and necessary fleet logistics skills to be had, so base hulls it is.

FWIW, with the new system, I think there's more flexibility on doing that.

Sounds great, breathing more life into the low tech ships and expanding the skill point tree.

I am liking the Neural Link skill, being able to put to say a capital and a frigate to more personal use in the same battle is an interesting idea. No longer do we have to wait so long for our little shuttle to bounce between two ships XD

Would there be any interaction between the Operations Center hullmod and Neural Link?

Oh, good question! Offhand, I believe it'll work when it's on either ship, and I suppose you could put it on both. That'd be... interesting

I'm a bit concern at all that ai officers not contributing to battle points, they still do receive bonuses for officer skills right, like wolfpack?

They do, yeah. Nothing's changed regarding that.

Phase Command teleporter - assuming Player control od this ship and other ships from it is instant

*Visible happiness in having something close to a suggestion ( Neural link ) implemented in game*

Oh, hah! Hadn't seen that, but that does indeed sound quite similar

Making the skill tree easily configurable and moddable still seems to be the best solution

It is and has been!

Regarding changes, the root of the problem still stays - the skill tree mixes personal piloting skills (1), fleet commander skills (2), fleet technician skills (2) and colony government skills (4) while having too few points and too big of disparity between these groups, making players pick certain skills in certain order from (2) and (3), ignoring (1), while (4) shouldn't even be there.

Ah, hard disagree that it's actually a problem! Or, rather, that it's a fundamental problem. I mean, it *could* be an issue, but whether it is or isn't depends on the details. And we're pretty far from combat skills not being worth taking. You certainly don't have to, and how beneficial they are depends on how your piloting is, but that's not a bad thing.

(*cough*can't disagree too much about (4), though*cough*)

If a certain skill is an absolute must-have, it shouldn't be a skill or shouldn't be optional and missable. So my personal view on the skill system is the same - I'd better mod it while having more types of officers for the fleet.

I'm not sure that any skill is a absolute must-have, since you can play the game and beat the toughest challenges without any of them!

[Kohlenstoff]

Most of the changes look good.

BUT as an fanatic Radiant user i have to say, I really dislike the changes on Automated Ships. Its a shame to have the Radiant on so low CR levels. It feels not good to have either a ship with degraded performance or not the maximum core inside. Its not a Gold standard at all. Its feels as incomplete like having to choose an antique ming Vase with either color lacking or a corner lacking. None of both is an choice to go for because it is just incomplete. The 60 % maximum CR of the current tree is the bare minimum, which actually feels usefull. Its already a shame, that it cannot even have improved Performance, which gives already an incomplete feeling. When i had to choose less than 60 % CR (equals a mere two Battles in succession), i would ditch the skill Automated Ships and choose another skill instead and go back to deploy Paragons again.

A Paragon with improved Performance combined with another skill due ditching Automated Ships and the ability to be deployed more often in succession is much better than an Alpha Core Radiant on bare minimum and degraded Performance and just one Deployment in succession. Especially, when i also consider, that i can command this Paragon during Battle.

[Cyan Leader]

I think the best change here is that the wrap around system is gone, so you actually have more freedom of choice while still maintaining progress through the skill tree with unlocks for the new tiers. A very elegant solution, seems like this will work very well.

I'm not sold on Neural Link though, seems fun but without finer control of the AI piloting the other ship I can see a lot of problems with it. Ie. the AI wasting all your precious missiles. Also, is the delay for larger ships really necessary? Is that something that you think would really be broken? The appeal of the skill is to have instant control switch, I'd say let players have that regardless of the ships they like flying. I say that because piloting large ships is something that not all players like since they are slow compared to the more agile and, well, "fun" ships. Having a skill to switch between a fast ships and a big one seems cool and motivates direct control of those slow ships more, but if there is a delay between switching that's another matter entirely because you might need to take control of that fast ship quickly if the AI mis-positions it. It just seems unnecessary to have that, I don't think there are any obvious exploits here.

[Alex]

Regarding changes, the root of the problem still stays - the skill tree mixes personal piloting skills (1), fleet commander skills (2), fleet technician skills (2) and colony government skills (4) while having too few points and too big of disparity between these groups, making players pick certain skills in certain order from (2) and (3), ignoring (1), while (4) shouldn't even be there.

I wanted to expand on this a bit - it's a common enough sentiment (and also, IMO, wrong) and I think it warrants addressing. At the core of it is, I think, the idea that personal combat skills have too little impact compared with fleetwide bonuses for personal combat skills to be worth taking, and that this is a fundamental problem because the scale of battles is such that it'll always be the case - too many ships benefit from fleetwide skills.

Let's do some really rough math here. Suppose you've got a maximum battle size of 400 points, and are deploying 60% of it - that's 240 points. Say the player's ship is worth around 30 deployment points - approximate, right, but in the ballpark for a strong cruiser. So, 1/8th of player's deployment points is in the flagship. This means that at absolute worst, before we factor in the impact of the player's decision making and piloting skills, or the player's ability to - unlike officers - swap into another ship and keep fighting, or the fact that concentrating more power into a single ship counts for a lot more than the actual raw power increase, or the fact that the AI is fairly conservative and the player has a lot of time to make their impact felt - all of that aside - if combat skill effects were about 8x stronger that the effects of fleetwide skills, they'd be roughly balanced. That's the scale of battles we're looking at, that's the deficit that combat skills have to make up to pull their weight.

Even in the absence of all of the compensating factors, that's not enough of a disparity to say there's a fundamental problem with having both types of skills use the same skill points or be in the same tree. With the compensating factors? Frankly, I think personal combat skills have an easy time making up the difference and then some.

BUT as an fanatic Radiant user i have to say, I really dislike the changes on Automated Ships.
... The 60 % maximum CR of the current tree is the bare minimum, which actually feels usefull. ...

Hmm. Let me take a look - I might've mixed up some numbers or just mis-remembered exactly where it's at in 0.95a. ... yeah, let me just raise the threshold to 120 points, at least - so that it's at 50% and out of debuff range.

(You do have the option of giving it an extra 10% (or even 15%) CR, though 10% involves going up into Industry, and making that 15% involves going all the way up into Leadership, as well.)

I'm not sold on Neural Link though, seems fun but without finer control of the AI piloting the other ship I can see a lot of problems with it. Ie. the AI wasting all your precious missiles. Also, is the delay for larger ships really necessary? Is that something that you think would really be broken? The appeal of the skill is to have instant control switch, I'd say let players have that regardless of the ships they like flying. I say that because piloting large ships is something that not all players like since they are slow compared to the more agile and, well, "fun" ships. Having a skill to switch between a fast ships and a big one seems cool and motivates direct control of those slow ships more, but if there is a delay between switching that's another matter entirely because you might need to take control of that fast ship quickly if the AI mis-positions it. It just seems unnecessary to have that, I don't think there are any obvious exploits here.

It's just as you say - piloting large ships is not something all players like! But if it's instant in that case, then I think it would be optimal - or it would at least feel very optimal - to have the two biggest, best ships in the game linked, and then just absolutely load up on combat skills. I think the delay is necessary to give smaller ships more appeal here, as they are generally more "fun". It's not a long delay, though; it maxes out at 5 seconds.