Fractal Softworks Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

News:

Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

Pages: 1 ... 8 9 [10] 11 12 ... 16

Author Topic: Skill Changes, Part 1  (Read 29185 times)

Thaago

  • Global Moderator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 7174
  • Harpoon Affectionado
    • View Profile
Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #135 on: July 05, 2021, 11:19:56 AM »

Well the first tick to hard mode is to turn on iron mode and make a commitment to not save scum. When I do that I find myself engaging a lot more with different game systems, even sometimes retreating out of a battle when it becomes apparent I'm not going to win but before taking heavy losses.
Depends on the person. If I couldn't save scum, then I would abuse everything to stack the cards in my favour or do the safest available activity, ignoring whether anything I do is actually fun. While you can't die in Starsector, you can certainly waste time.
...

To play devil's advocate a bit here, wouldn't that be guaranteed wasting time in advance to avoid the possibility of wasting time in the future?
Logged

Sorbo

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 57
    • View Profile
Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #136 on: July 05, 2021, 11:52:55 AM »

Alex, what do you think about boosting "Auxilary Support" cap to 8 from 5? I want to run a wolfpack fleet with a pather colossus as my capital, with ultimate point defence performance. My main ship will be like a moving base smaller ships can fall back to for a breather.
Logged

Undead

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 89
    • View Profile
Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #137 on: July 05, 2021, 11:57:56 AM »

Alex, what do you think about boosting "Auxilary Support" cap to 8 from 5? I want to run a wolfpack fleet with a pather colossus as my capital, with ultimate point defence performance. My main ship will be like a moving base smaller ships can fall back to for a breather.

While I like the idea, Im afraid that 4 kites with 6k flux and antimatter missiles would be op. But generally I think the skill has lots of potential for proper implementation, and could be especially useful in early game. Shame it got scrapped.
Logged

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 23988
    • View Profile
Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #138 on: July 05, 2021, 12:48:37 PM »

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.

Hmm - last I looked at it was a while back, but it was useful but situational, which I think is where it needs to be. If it's something that's just always good, that'd be a bigger problem.

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.

Oh yeah, I remember you talking about this a while back, and using Fighter Uplink! Right, right.


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

Hmm - just in general, I'd like to avoid difficulty settings changing the game so qualitatively.

Technically true, but the experience curve grows excessively past the point the developers chose for the max level. Like a hundred fold or something.
At least, it used to. With a lower level in vanilla for the cap, who knows how the equation changed and how it would behave.

This hasn't been the case in 0.95a, though raising the cap - unless done with more care - did have an impact on the rate of story point gain past max level.


* Will the tier/ult thresholds be modifiable? E.g., if I wanted the two combat ultimate skills to require more/fewer of the preceding skills, is that possible?
* Any chance the maintenance-reduction-per-dmod statmod could be value based rather than binary? I fear my attempts to nerf/buff that modifier are going to get messy ^^'

Yes! Although if they required a *different* amount of points, they'd be in different tier from each other. A tier is basically "all skills that require X points". There are two values here - one is the base points required, and the other is extra points required per every skill you take in that tier. For top-tier skills, the former is set to 4 and the latter is set to 2, thus the second top-tier skill requires 6 points in lower-tier skill (and the first top-tier skill isn't in a lower tier, so doesn't count for it.)

And, sorry, no :(

Any changes to Energy Weapon Mastery, Missile Spec and Long Range Spec?

No, yes, and :-X



Granted, to a certain degree it's to funnel the incoming enemy fleet into a more manageable trickle. But it's also because my computer is literally from a decade ago (i3-2100 @3.1 GHz, 8GB RAM), so even with just about all the options turned down battles take a long time since they run at around 10-15 FPS for full fleet fights (i.e. vs Ordos fleets say). And that's vanilla, it gets slower once I start adding mods. So making the battle size bigger also makes battles take even longer with the additional ships.

Regardless of player computer limitations, though, it still seems like making Radiants 60 DP instead of 40 DP will make Remnant fights significantly easier, coupled with Best of the Best making it easier to get the full 60% of battle size. With a fixed battle size of 400, this means 4 Radiants instead of 6 Radiants at once, plus the player can field a full 240-DP fleet instead of a fleet of 200-220 DP (depending on how good they are about capturing objectives). Not necessarily a bad thing, depends on how easy or difficult you feel the endgame fights should be.

Right, fair enough. I *am* also looking at Radiant loadouts and how they don't get access to all the weapons they need too often.

I should also probably change the bonus of BotB to just capture one of the Comm Relays on your side. It's not meant to give you a qualitative advantage, but I wasn't really thinking that it *does*. And that makes it stack too well with Support Doctrine and is just in general way too strong for something that's meant to be a secondary bonus of a skill that already gives you +1 s-mod.

(By the way, I didn't really comment much on the skill system because it all looks pretty good -- the new tiers overcome issues with the current system pretty well, so it all comes down to what the specifics are when it's released, and experimenting with it.)

Thank you! *thumbs up*


Speaking of these two things, the Drover's Reserve Deployment makes it so specifically bombers don't redeploy after going in for a rearm while the ship system is active. A Drover might be able to launch 4 Cobras with Reapers all at once, but it won't actually be able to re-launch any bombers until the ship system expires. This, if anything, really kills it's performance.

Right, I think that's the bug!

Unfortunately the result of poor vanilla Support fighter behavior. Support fighters completely ignore the player's target (even when set to Engage), so trying to get them to shoot the right thing is like trying to herd cats. Hopefully this could be addressed...?

It's a bit tricky on the code side of things; still, duly noted.


But about skill changes: why not to add ability to give orders to your flagship without use of command points? It will help with neurolink i think, for ex if you wanna to make your ship finish the enemy while you are transmitting to other linked ship. Giving free orders to the linked ship would be nice too, and even without neurolink ability to do this can be helpful (for people who don't like piloting for example). The only problem is to split usual and flagship orders, so other ships from your fleet will ignore flagship's orders and treat this enemy as usual. So if enemy doesn't have and orders for it and you order your flagship to eliminate it, others from your fleet treat this enemy as if they don't have any orders for it, but any non-flagship orders overwrite flagship's orders.

Yeah, you've hit on the problem with the otherwise interesting idea. I think the complications this creates makes it not worthwhile, unfortunately.


Thankfully we can modify the ship cap pretty easily, though the artificial limitation of how many ships you can recover at once is still going to be annoying.

(Worth mentioning: that's going up to 24 normal + 24 difficult.)

Sorry if this has been answered already but we're getting part 2 before the next month right? From what I've read the new new skill system is pretty much complete, and you just weren't able to put everything into a single blog post without it being a huge wall of text.

Yeah, I was thinking of putting part two out within maybe two weeks. It's already mostly written.


Alex, what do you think about boosting "Auxilary Support" cap to 8 from 5? I want to run a wolfpack fleet with a pather colossus as my capital, with ultimate point defence performance. My main ship will be like a moving base smaller ships can fall back to for a breather.

Weeeeeell, the main thing I think about this is if you have a closer look at the screenshots, you won't see an icon for Auxiliary Support... :(
Logged

Sorbo

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 57
    • View Profile
Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #139 on: July 05, 2021, 01:35:25 PM »

Weeeeeell, the main thing I think about this is if you have a closer look at the screenshots, you won't see an icon for Auxiliary Support... :(
Oh..was it too op or too useless? I really liked that skill.
Logged

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 23988
    • View Profile
Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #140 on: July 05, 2021, 01:44:15 PM »

Oh..was it too op or too useless? I really liked that skill.

Same, just Leadership already had a bunch of "specialize in something" skills and out of everything, this was the one for the chopping block. I think I liked it more conceptually than how it actually turned out.
Logged

Megas

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 12118
    • View Profile
Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #141 on: July 05, 2021, 02:02:15 PM »

Same, just Leadership already had a bunch of "specialize in something" skills and out of everything, this was the one for the chopping block. I think I liked it more conceptually than how it actually turned out.
This mean Gemini will lose the Civilian Hull built-in mod?  It seemed like Gemini got that debuff built-in mod for the sake of Auxiliary Support.  Gemini is the freighter hybrid that favors fighters instead of Mule's brawling power.
Logged

AcaMetis

  • Captain
  • ****
  • Posts: 483
    • View Profile
Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #142 on: July 05, 2021, 02:06:36 PM »

Also, did the support package hullmods get removed, or did they get rebalanced to (potentially) be useful even without the auxiliary support skill? Speaking for myself I thought they were interesting, but I never managed to find a use for them.
Logged

Undead

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 89
    • View Profile
Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #143 on: July 05, 2021, 02:56:33 PM »

..
Any changes to Energy Weapon Mastery, Missile Spec and Long Range Spec?

No, yes, and :-X


oh no
Logged

Sorbo

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 57
    • View Profile
Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #144 on: July 05, 2021, 03:49:57 PM »

useful even without the auxiliary support skill? Speaking for myself I thought they were interesting, but I never managed to find a use for them.
Yeah, Alex, buff them 900% without the skill  :D

One fun use was to slap Escort Package on double Mercuries (unlike ballistic only Hermes it supports energy weapons). Arm it with extended PD lasers, build-in range improving mods and advanced optics. Optionally piloted by point defense admirals. All of that makes a normally useless civilian ship into a fearsome little escort with something close to 2k range point defense.

Another was to pimp out Tarsus with Assault Package with hull and armor mods. Thanks to the base quality of the ship the result was something very sturdy indeed. Flown one with spoiler weapons and it was decent cap ship in my wolfpack fleet.

Really sad it got the cut. Also wanted to try mudskipper MKII+Escort Package armed with a heavy machine gun. Wonder if devastator counts as point defense weapon. I guess there is no point anymore.

« Last Edit: July 05, 2021, 04:09:23 PM by Sorbo »
Logged

Undead

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 89
    • View Profile
Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #145 on: July 05, 2021, 04:05:49 PM »

One fun use was to slap Escort Package on double Mercuries. Arm it with extended PD lasers, build-in range improving mods and advanced optics. Optionally piloted by point defense admirals. All of that makes a normally useless civilian ship into a fearsome little escort with something close to 2k range.

The funniest use of auxiliary support is the antimatter missile kite with huge (thanks to assault package) flux pool. Also somebody mentioned that a single venture with the skill becomes quite a formiddable battle ship, despite being 10 deployments point above the skill limit. Who knows, perhaps the skill will come back some day (or will be modded in)
Logged

FooF

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1378
    • View Profile
Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #146 on: July 05, 2021, 06:22:43 PM »

I won't shed any tears over losing Aux. Support. I still haven't even tried it in any run so far. It's not that I don't "get it," it's just not something ever appealed to me.

Re: the Fighters/Carriers discussion

Personally, whenever I tried to pilot a carrier, it never felt all that satisfying. You either had enough firepower to kill your target in the first few waves or you didn't and then attrition would make success harder and harder to achieve. There was very little granularity and player skill really didn't matter (unless you count perfecting your loadout a part of player skill). It just wasn't "active" enough for me and that's why I never piloted an Astral, even when you could abuse mass bomber loadouts and dedicated carrier skills.

With the removal of "piloted ship" carrier skills, I will admit that it begs the question "If I pilot a carrier, why don't any of the skills seem to apply to me?" but really, it's more of a polite way of nudging the player into a more active ship. "Pure" carriers like the Drover and Astral have little in the way of active involvement besides (potentially) when to use their ship system. At least a Heron can kite other ships with long-range weapons and battlecarriers  can get into the thick of things, but a ship that predominantly relies on fighters as its offensive firepower will never be more than a support ship, unless the method of controlling fighters is drastically changed.

Kind of like the Phase skills we have now, the only thing per-ship Carrier skills add is an opportunity to complain that the level 7 Officer you found has a specific skill that kills their usefulness. If you keep carrier skills fleet-wide, you don't have to respec your skills every time you jump from a warship to battlecarrier. I think there's room to buff carriers but doing so on a per-ship basis just emphasizes an all-or-none philosophy when it comes to officers or the flagship. You either have "Carrier" or "Non-Carrier" officers/flagships and not specializing is grossly sub-optimal.

I think the "carrier skills" argument comes more from a basis of principle than gameplay necessity ("We're neglecting a huge portion of ships." "Look at all the weapon skills, why not fighters?" "Why even pilot a carrier, then?") They're fair questions but unless piloting a carrier becomes more active somehow, I have a hard time believing that they will ever be more than support. Effective, even powerful support, but never the stars of the show. I'm good with that, though others might not be.

Logged

Voyager I

  • Captain
  • ****
  • Posts: 353
    • View Profile
Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #147 on: July 05, 2021, 06:40:37 PM »

A pretty big fan of the changes so far, especially switching the skill distribution to broader tiers from the current version, since this greatly reduces the risks of the player being forced into bad choices like having to take a skill they didn't care about at all simply to progress down the path or being unable to pick complementary skills on the same node without having to do unpleasant things to their character progression. If I'm being frank, looking over the development of the various skill / aptitude systems we've seen over the years, it looks like you've come pretty close to reinventing the wheel here. There has been a lot of iteration to come with what is probably one of the most common systems of character development.
Logged

Megas

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 12118
    • View Profile
Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #148 on: July 05, 2021, 06:51:20 PM »

I won't shed any tears over losing Aux. Support. I still haven't even tried it in any run so far. It's not that I don't "get it," it's just not something ever appealed to me.
Main problems are it uplifted one or two ships to warship level and it competed with a generic damage boost.  If I wanted Leadership, I will take Gunnery Drills.  Similar reason why I take Flux Regulations first over Phase Corps even in a pure phase fleet.

Personally, whenever I tried to pilot a carrier, it never felt all that satisfying. You either had enough firepower to kill your target in the first few waves or you didn't and then attrition would make success harder and harder to achieve. There was very little granularity and player skill really didn't matter (unless you count perfecting your loadout a part of player skill). It just wasn't "active" enough for me and that's why I never piloted an Astral, even when you could abuse mass bomber loadouts and dedicated carrier skills.

...

I think the "carrier skills" argument comes more from a basis of principle than gameplay necessity ("We're neglecting a huge portion of ships." "Look at all the weapon skills, why not fighters?" "Why even pilot a carrier, then?") They're fair questions but unless piloting a carrier becomes more active somehow, I have a hard time believing that they will ever be more than support. Effective, even powerful support, but never the stars of the show. I'm good with that, though others might not be.
This is why I dislike fighters and Expanded Deck Crew eating too much OP.  After getting good fighters and Deck Crew, there is not enough OP left to get ITU, flux stats, and good weapons to be a passable warship (Legion excepted).  If fighters were effective enough while carrier could fly around and bully small warships or standoff against an equal-sized ship, then I would pilot carriers (like during pre-0.7a releases).  Dedicated carriers (other than Condor) could use fighters and brawl like a warship back in the day.  Today, carriers are merely dedicated freighters or logistics ships that carry fighters instead of cargo or fuel.

Fighters need to be good enough unskilled and durable enough to last longer than missiles to be worth using over a warship.  Otherwise, just grab some good missile lobbers and pretend Sabots/Locusts/MIRVs are suicide bombers.  Fighters should not become Pilums v2.
Logged

SonnaBanana

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 867
    • View Profile
Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #149 on: July 05, 2021, 09:10:30 PM »

Can we all agree that we could use more fighter-related hullmods?
Logged
I'm not going to check but you should feel bad :( - Alex
Pages: 1 ... 8 9 [10] 11 12 ... 16