Spoiler
HOTS has a system, (starting at level 1) every 3rd level you have to pick a talent out of a predefined set of talents for that level for that hero -- the ones you don't pick at a tier are gone for good. Each talent tier gets at least 3 talents to choose from, which allows players the space to decide that one of the talents is not for them (If I'm running a lowtech campaign where I never use phase ships, I will never take the phase skill) without that deciding which specific talent you must then take -- you're still given a choice of 2 talents if you hate 1 of them. It's far easier to balance 3 weaker talents without forcing players down a road they don't want to go or make them feel like they've been forced to waste a talent tier with bad picks, and if you design a hero's talent tier to be intentionally underwhelming or extremely niche you can just pad the tier out with an "out" talent that just gives a bonus to some stat, that isn't anything impressive but will always do more than nothing unlike, like, 2 other talents that both upgrade the same spell that you don't want to be focusing.
The funny thing being that, Alex worked his way around to this line of thinking too, apparently.
The exception to this 3 or more rule is that level 10 is an ult tier, where instead you get to choose between two super over-powered talents that give you an ultimate ability. Because the ults don't modify an already-existing ability but add a new one (thus not impacting any build you've been making with the abilities you started the game with aside from natural synergy) and because of how much more powerful they are than a normal talent the issue of being forced into taking a sub-optimal talent bc u refuse to take 1 of them is much less of an issue -- if you hate 1 of the ults the other is probably going to be useful to you no matter what just bc of how strong the ults are.
Which again circles back around to Alex adding in "pinched in" skill tiers that narrow down to 2, although that one is not just for super-powered tiers but also for under-powered tiers where Alex wants the player to be inconvenienced(?)
Additionally, the ult talent tier is not the last one -- it's halfway up. The other exception to the two kinds of talent tiers previously described is the final talent tier at level 20, where instead of getting talents that change the functionality of your base abilities, you get 2 talents that change the functionality of the ult talent you picked at level 10 (1 of them being greyed out based on which talent you took) that upgrades your ult to be game-breakingly strong (for context; one hero gets a talent at 20 that allows him to kill every enemy hero on the map from anywhere, under the correct circumstances), and then an additional 2(?) talents that function like a normal talent by just adjusting your base hero's functionality in a way that can add to a spell you've already spent all game upgrading, but bc they're on the same tier as ult talents it lets the devs go hog-wild with how strong they can be (kaelthas gets a talent at 20 that increases the range on his already long-ranged flamestrike spell by 100%, which combined with 5 other flamestrike talents turns the enemy you hit with it into a bomb that will damage everyone around him both of which reduces the cooldown on your flamestrike, makes the ability to cast it on people from outside their sight range so they can't even predict it's coming extremely powerful). And, when in doubt the HOTS devs just throw a "survive death once every x seconds" on some heroes in case you don't like how niche/weird the 20's they put on them are
Neat, thank you for explaining!
So might there be more skills in the future?
And what's the mystery new Industry and Technology skills?
Will we still have a skill which boosts marines?
Maybe!
Tactical Drills does that now, per one of my earlier replies.
... nothing going on here, just a slightly bigger Shrike for twice the DP cost, don't worry about it officer!
Oh, that's good
Imo, battlecarriers *need* to double-dip to be worth putting officer on. For example:
- a full carrier has abstract fighter power of 1 and direct combat power of 0, and battle carrier has 0.5 + 0.5
- assuming that full relevant skill set doubles the power of fighters/direct
-> Both will have 2.0 buffed power IF skills double-dip, but battle-carrier would be capped at 1.5 otherwise.
This is of course an extremely oversimplified picture, but also roughly how battle-carriers ended up less good than specialized ships in 0.91, when full carrier skills were an option.
Hmm. I get what you're saying! The base assumption here is that boosting the direct-combat power of the battle carrier does not boost the effective power of the fighters. And if the battle carrier uses its fighters separately, then that sort of breakdown - while as you say very simplified - holds up. But does this hold up if we look at the battle carrier using its fighters to complement its other weapons?
I think that gets more complicated and there's a lot of "it depends". It's the same sort of idea where a dedicated carrier can do more with its exactly-the-same fighters if they're used in support of something, and making that something stronger creates more opportunities for the fighters to be useful. And the same fighters used without that might just get mulched and accomplish nothing.
Strictly speaking, the fighters don't get any "better", but there's just a lot of volatility in how much they can do so it feels like what you usually get out of them can improve without improving them directly.
And Fury at... maybe 18-22 DP (?)... will still be a very good high tech cruiser, I mean look at the flux stats and mobility of this thing, it's a bit of a mash-up of some of the good parts of Eagle, Falcon, Aurora and Shrike.
Good guess, it'll be 20! (So will the Falcon(P), btw - another ship that's, to be honest, a bit overpowered - but also fun, and I don't want to change the ship itself.)
But I want also point to some point in case of junk fleet.
>CREW CASUALTY
I thing the junk fleet could benefit from some way to limit crew losses. Like making Recovery shuttle mod grant fleet wide reduction to crew losses from all combat losses.
One step ahead of you! Containment Procedures now reduces crew losses by up to 50%, at 240 total deployment points in your fleet. With that and potentially Blast Doors (and/or Damage Control from Support Doctrine, if you want to combine top skills that way), I think there's solid options to take care of this.
Carriers don't need to be made cheaper, they need to be made better again. They were too strong in the last version, now the pendulum swings the other way. While you're working on skills, leave some love for the carriers?
I'll make a note to playtest while specifically looking at where they're at.
(I need to look at the Drover, too; there's I think a bug involve in making it really underperform... hopefully the impression that carriers aren't good is not based on or at least heavily influenced by the Drover being weak now.)
