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Author Topic: Skill Changes, Part 1  (Read 29143 times)

pairedeciseaux

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #105 on: July 04, 2021, 03:45:07 AM »

Bold of you to assume the Fury will still be 15 DP :) But, right, yeah, this makes sense.

Oh no. The scythe is coming for me, too. :( I mean hey, look at those phase ships some more, nothing going on here, just a slightly bigger Shrike for twice the DP cost, don't worry about it officer!

I guess that'd be fair, overall. As much as I'm kind of in love with the Fury and everything about it just *clicks* with me, I feel like I've gotten some pretty disgusting effect flying that ship. Even though I still don't really trust the AI with plasma burn.

Well, I think people on the forum expected this kind of re-balance. Either that or a significant nerf.

It's a good thing some ships will get an increased DP cost that better match their actual performance. Radiant and Fury were obvious candidates, IMO. In some other cases we might get reduced performance (nerf) rather than increased DP. Raising DP cost means largely preserving the existing ship behaviour / character.

So Radiant at 60 DP will still be a monster, especially as player will be able to directly control it. 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.
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Megas

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #106 on: July 04, 2021, 06:19:53 AM »

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.
I missed full carrier having combat power of... 0.5 or 0.6 in the pre-0.8a (well, pre-0.7a) days because they had the OP to arm themselves as a warship of one or two ship classes smaller without giving up fighter power.  (Battlecarrier like pre-0.9a Odyssey or pre-0.8a Venture was 0.8 or 0.9.).  Now, they have combat power of 0 (or maybe 0.1) because they put most OP into fighters and Expanded Deck Crew just to do their expected job.  Of course, carriers before 0.8a could not double-dip because there were no fighter skills, but that did not matter before 0.7a because only one ship on each side had skills and the rest did not.  During 0.7a, too many people had skills and carriers became obsolete because fighters were too slow and weak compared to officered ships.

I hope fighters without skills become useful again.  Currently, in late-game fights that are not trivial, fighters with only Expanded Deck Crew are somewhat relevant for about a minute before they are wiped out at 30% and become irrelevant for the rest of the fight.  Fighters in 0.95a seem to be about as weak as they were in the 0.7a days, and they seem low-tier without skills (and Expanded Deck Crew on all carriers) to back them up.  By late-game, I phase out carriers for better ships as I move from pirates to 200k+ bounty equivalents or Ordos with Radiants.

Expanded Deck Crew feels like a tax, despite the huge nerf it took in 0.95a (because without skills, it is the only boost available to carriers, and they need it to do their job, or try to before their wings are wiped out!)  Unskilled fighters die too quickly even with the hullmod.  Do not want to imagine how fast a carrier becomes an irrelevant load without Expanded Deck Crew.
« Last Edit: July 04, 2021, 06:25:46 AM by Megas »
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Sarissofoi

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #107 on: July 04, 2021, 08:07:24 AM »

It looks nice.
Really promising. Good to see system evolving in hopefully great direction.

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.

Undead

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #108 on: July 04, 2021, 08:10:33 AM »


...

I hope fighters without skills become useful again.  Currently, in late-game fights that are not trivial, fighters with only Expanded Deck Crew are somewhat relevant for about a minute before they are wiped out at 30% and become irrelevant for the rest of the fight.  Fighters in 0.95a seem to be about as weak as they were in the 0.7a days, and they seem low-tier without skills (and Expanded Deck Crew on all carriers) to back them up.  By late-game, I phase out carriers for better ships as I move from pirates to 200k+ bounty equivalents or Ordos with Radiants.

...


Yes, thats exactly the problem, that could be solved by the skill that I have proposed earlier in the thread. Something like "fighter nanoforge mastery" in an industry tree that would improve the replacement rate, or just directly reduce the time it takes to construct a fighter. Or perhaps something else entirely - like improving the fighter AI, making them backstab/outflank enemy ships, etc. I feel like direct stat buffing of fighters (like +20% damage or whatever) doesnt fit the spirit of fighters, that fits regular weapons much more.
« Last Edit: July 04, 2021, 08:14:00 AM by Undead »
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WeiTuLo

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #109 on: July 04, 2021, 09:20:34 AM »

If fighters are going to remain as they are, could carriers have their deployment points lowered or their fuel/lightyear lowered? 2 Wolves will often kill the enemy better than 2 Condors, and even an officered Heron. And the makeshift hangar fighters feel too slow without dmod penalty restrictions.
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Schwartz

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #110 on: July 04, 2021, 09:28:13 AM »

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?
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Alex

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #111 on: July 04, 2021, 09:38:27 AM »

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
[close]

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!
:-X
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.)
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Megas

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #112 on: July 04, 2021, 09:48:19 AM »

I just want carriers to have the OP to afford ITU, vents, and weapons... while still being able to support quality fighters (8 to 12 OP fighters in all bays).  I get Condor is junk, but something like Mora and Heron should be able to fight as well as a frigate or destroyer without resorting to mining pod spam, and Astral should brawl at least as well as a heavy cruiser.

Currently, aside from Legion, after a carrier gets good fighters and Expanded Deck Crew, there is not enough OP left to get ITU and the rest of the warship necessities, and the ship might as well get more defenses or double-down on more fighter stuff.

Yes, thats exactly the problem, that could be solved by the skill that I have proposed earlier in the thread. Something like "fighter nanoforge mastery" in an industry tree that would improve the replacement rate, or just directly reduce the time it takes to construct a fighter. Or perhaps something else entirely - like improving the fighter AI, making them backstab/outflank enemy ships, etc. I feel like direct stat buffing of fighters (like +20% damage or whatever) doesnt fit the spirit of fighters, that fits regular weapons much more.
I just wish the bonuses from Expanded Deck Crew became the baseline, and the hullmod removed.  It is a guaranteed tax for all carriers that are relied upon for their fighters.  (Few ships like Odyssey and Brilliant are viable warships without the bays and simply have them as a bonus, and do not need EDC.)

It would be nice if unskilled carriers were strong enough, but then again, some warships and phase ships need skills too to be competitive.  Without skills, I would not mind something like old Spark Drovers that were powerful unskilled but ridiculous with skills, like current Doom.  If there will not be anymore carrier skills, then carriers and/or fights could get some of their power back.

(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.)
I do not even use Drover unless it is all that I have.  I quickly skipped destroyers for Heron or Mora (and I got the latter only because I can squeeze campaign/logistics hullmods more easily than on Heron.)

If Reserve Deployment chops off replacement rate, that hurts; almost as bad as old Accelerated Ammo Feeder when it did not have the flux discount.  I rather have Flares or No System than that.  Replacement Rate is a prime stat for carriers.
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AcaMetis

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #113 on: July 04, 2021, 09:57:38 AM »

Quote
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.)
Would it also be possible to take a look at the Converted Hanger hullmod? I swear every time I try to fit it into a build the ship ends up sending one wave of fighters to die horribly against anything more threatening than a Mining Lasing with a bad cold, and after that fighters just seem to slowly come out piecemeal to die horribly one by one instead of all at once. Replacement rate is awful in general, and also drops so quickly as to be basically useless.

Maybe I'm just doing something wrong, but I've never managed to get the hullmod to justify it's own OP cost. Let stand the added 150% cost of fighters/200% cost of bombers.
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Thaago

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #114 on: July 04, 2021, 10:05:09 AM »

As a contrary point, while fighters are less powerful then in the past I've found them useful and viable in endgame fleets. I've found destroyer carriers (Condors mainly as I do think Drovers have some sort of bug) to work best with interceptors because they don't need synchronization to do their job, while I use larger ships for bombers. They need orders to guide them as opposed to just rolling over the enemy on autopilot, but thats ok.
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WeiTuLo

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #115 on: July 04, 2021, 10:21:46 AM »

I only use Drover for double Cobras. Rockets' red glare!
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Megas

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #116 on: July 04, 2021, 10:22:15 AM »

As a contrary point, while fighters are less powerful then in the past I've found them useful and viable in endgame fleets. I've found destroyer carriers (Condors mainly as I do think Drovers have some sort of bug) to work best with interceptors because they don't need synchronization to do their job, while I use larger ships for bombers. They need orders to guide them as opposed to just rolling over the enemy on autopilot, but thats ok.
Did you use the carrier or fighter skills?
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Thaago

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #117 on: July 04, 2021, 11:41:43 AM »

As a contrary point, while fighters are less powerful then in the past I've found them useful and viable in endgame fleets. I've found destroyer carriers (Condors mainly as I do think Drovers have some sort of bug) to work best with interceptors because they don't need synchronization to do their job, while I use larger ships for bombers. They need orders to guide them as opposed to just rolling over the enemy on autopilot, but thats ok.
Did you use the carrier or fighter skills?
In that case I was using the tech fighter skill to get more speed and it had a very large impact. The fighters were also boosted by crew training for extra CR (it boosts their speed so I am guessing it also gives them 5% damage/defense). My bomber Heron had an officer with fighter skills and the CR skill for 100% CR, but my Condors with interceptors did not have any officers. I built in expanded deck crew on them (only built in I used for those ships): for the Condor with Thunders I don't think it was needed, but for the Spark one it was (I phased out the Sparks for more Thunders after a while, but IIRC Alex mentioned in another thread tweaking them to have higher DPS but lower armor penetration, which would make them more useful next update).
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Sutopia

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #118 on: July 04, 2021, 11:55:26 AM »

Hmm, I think 15 feels just about right here. If it's 16 then you'd possibly feel forced to pick two aptitudes and get both top-tier picks in them. I suppose if it was 20 it might be ok? But something about "you can decide to get a top-tier skill in every aptitude" doesn't feel right.

Would it make sense to have dynamic level limit? For instance, make it 20 for easy mode, but retain 15 for normal
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Since all my mods have poor reputation, I deem my efforts unworthy thus no more updates will be made.

Marco

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #119 on: July 04, 2021, 03:16:56 PM »

Hmm, I think 15 feels just about right here. If it's 16 then you'd possibly feel forced to pick two aptitudes and get both top-tier picks in them. I suppose if it was 20 it might be ok? But something about "you can decide to get a top-tier skill in every aptitude" doesn't feel right.

Would it make sense to have dynamic level limit? For instance, make it 20 for easy mode, but retain 15 for normal

There will always be a mod that raises the level limit high enough to get all the skills. The next version will be no different.
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