Some notes/analysis on the blog post:
* With the change to the skill system, from a design perspective, it also means that now there's no need to keep each aptitude at 10 skills each. You certainly can, for symmetry purposes, but might be something to keep in mind if you're having trouble trying to balance out all the different aptitudes.
* Combat tree: Interesting that it is just 2 tiers. I think though that it may be necessary to cater to as many different player playstyles for their flagship as possible, to have so many skills as tier 1 -- so that there are as few restrictions as practical.
* Best of the Best: For late-game battles (or where I'm farming for that +500% XP), generally my fleet is 40% of battlesize with the enemy at 60%, then I grab some objectives early to get an additional +15% so I'm at 55% of battlesize (I find that planning around getting the full +20% is usually too difficult). So this means that it'll now be that I start with 50% of battlesize and just need another 10% to get the full 60%. So this should make the endgame easier; I can size my fleet knowing I can deploy 60% to their 60%, instead of my 55% to their 60% of battlesize.
This, combined with Radiants having their DP increased to 60 DP, might actually make endgame fights too trivial.
To give a concrete example: Currently, I size my fleet so that the Remnants can have at most 4 Radiants on the battlefield at one time. Thus, 60% of battlesize < 200 DP (the cost of 5 Radiants), so battlesize max is 330, so my fleet, at 55% of that, can have at most 182 DP. So 2 Dooms and 7 Furies (175 DP) fit the bill, and is enough to handle 2 Ordos fairly easily and 3 Ordos fleets with some difficulty (no real need to do 3 at once, since I max out the +500% XP bonus with 2 Ordos fleets, this is simply what it's capable of). With the new changes, including that a Radiant costs 60 DP, then I could theoretically set the battlesize up to 490 (I know, it's capped at 400), and have a fleet of up to 294 DP, and still only deal with 4 Radiants at once. Or more likely, I change the battlesize to 290 (so that they're limited to 2 Radiants at once), and use this same fleet except probably change a Fury out for something cheaper or have one be unofficered, and use this same fleet. It'll steamroll through 2 simultaneous Radiants easily when it can currently handle 4 -- so the endgame fight will become much easier.
* Hull Restoration vs Derelict Operations: Both are interesting; would there be a way to disable Hull Restoration's d-mod-repairing ability? Since not all d-mods are terrible; so I could see some advantage to ships having d-mods "on purpose" to reduce their deployment cost, plus with s-mods for the extra CR. After all, not all d-mods are debilitating. (My flagship having Compromised Hull is something I don't mind, since if I'm taking hull damage then I'm likely doing something wrong in the first place.) Or I don't know if this is intentionally closed off as a fleet composition trick.
* What will happen in terms of enemy fleet commanders having the same skills? For example if they have Support Doctrine and/or Derelict Operations, then they can potentially actually deploy more ships than they can now.
If you put a Neural Interface on a ship module (on a ship added by a mod, presumably, since there are no player-ownable ships with modules in the base game), will you be able to control that module directly?
Oh, huh, neat question! I *think* so? That's kind of cool, actually, if that works, I can see being a "gunner" be a fun alternate take on things.
Actually, I think a concern may be -- which may crash the game if it's not coded around -- what happens if some mod author puts Neural Interface on a module for a station? But yes, if it ends up on a ship's module, then would the ship still be piloted by the AI yet the human controlling the guns, etc. Haha there may be all sorts of potential crash issues if this isn't planned for in the code.
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.
Keep in mind that that the other ship also has all your combat skills, so it's effectively a "super officer ship" just like your flagship (i.e. in that the player character can get a lot more combat skills than regular officers), just that it's under AI control while you're not controlling it. Hopefully the game allows for selecting the personality of this ship while it's under AI control (maybe via your fleet doctrine tab?).
Well, that's kinda what I was getting at, trying to determine just how much officerless ships are supposed to be worth. "Speedbump" may be overly dismissive, but what I mean is, I find them good only for delaying the enemy while my "real" ships finish whatever else they're doing, and they often get chewed up while doing so. I do use some un-officered ships out of necessity (not just Omens, haha), but the few times I've been desperate enough to expect them to actually kill anything, it's been pretty rough.
In which case this will make them worth a lot more, since all these skills (Helmsmanship, Damage Control, Combat Endurance) affect their "tankiness". Having more distractions on your side means it splits up the enemy fleet more, allowing your "real" ships to dispatch them more easily.
One other thing that I dislike about the current officer dominance is how it gravitates naturally toward running multiple capital ships. It seems like everyone who's serious about getting things done in "endgame" is running three or four or more, and it makes sense as the objective best choice for maximizing your gain from each limited officer slot, while still having some left over for Wolfpack Tactics frigates or whatever. I like a capital anchor or two but I prefer smaller ships, and I'm only hampering myself with that idiosyncrasy. Is it okay to need a top-tier skill just to effectively go wide instead of tall? I don't know.
I've never found it necessary to spam capitals or even use capitals at all. In 0.9.1a of course it was all Drovers except my flagship (which was either Aurora, the boss Medusa from the Ship & Weapon Pack, or the superfrigate Brave Blade from DME). Currently my fleet is 2 Dooms and 7 Furies. There are lots of other fleet compositions that work well, which don't use any capital ships (nor frigates).
Capital ships get surrounded easily, especially versus Remnants. They're nice against paper tissue fleets like pirates, where they can kill ships as they close in, but falter against more hardy fleets. They have a low flux per DP ratio -- meaningful for both offensive and defensive power. I've found it much better to use destroyers or cruisers in combat than frigates or capital ships, because frigates are generally too weak to pack a punch, and capital ships are generally too expensive. Under the current system, my combat fleet ends up being 9 cruisers, which sounds about right. The Furies are basically light cruisers, good for chasing down frigates and destroyers. (Falcon P's punch up better, but Remnant fleets throw a lot of trash, and my flagship handles a lot of the major threats.) While a capital or two might be useful to center the fleet around, I don't see it as being necessary.
