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Author Topic: Skill Changes, Part 1  (Read 29135 times)

TaLaR

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #180 on: July 08, 2021, 08:38:28 AM »

I assume the best way to use neural linked Radiants would be to deploy 2 Radiants + player shuttle. Transfer from shuttle to one of Radiants, then retreat the shuttle. Only 2 linked ships left on field, both get the bonus and both are Radiants. And still probably have more CR than single alpha-cored Radiant (4x penalty...).

If having 3 linked ships on field initially is a problem, then 2nd Radiant would have to enter after shuttle leaves, rest remaining same.
« Last Edit: July 08, 2021, 08:41:13 AM by TaLaR »
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Undead

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #181 on: July 08, 2021, 10:19:02 AM »

The whole neuron transfer thing is a bit too confusing. I would have made it either a regular hullmod, or a skill without the need for hullmod. I mean, we already can do the same thing the neural transfer does - which is transferring yourself in a shuttle pod, it just takes a bit more time. And spending a whole skill point plus needing to install a hullmod plus having that 2 ship limit just feels too much for something that just saves a bit of time
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SCC

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #182 on: July 08, 2021, 10:20:13 AM »

Regular shuttle transfer doesn't let the other ship enjoy your flagship skills at the same time.

Undead

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #183 on: July 08, 2021, 10:32:50 AM »

Regular shuttle transfer doesn't let the other ship enjoy your flagship skills at the same time.

Oh, so thats the catch of the skill. Still, I feel sceptic about the skill, and this doubling of your combat skills. I was hoping that the skill would actually not transfer your skills, and would have kept the skills of the officer of the ship you have transferred yourself to. So this way you could have invested in other trees than combat, while also having the opportunity to contribute to battle on a piloted ship that wouldnt suck because you have no combat skills. And something like that feels like something that can compete with the redacted skill as alternatives for the end of tech tree. This way you still can pilot the radiant, but youd have to spend 10 sp for that. Or you can have a strong tech/leadership combo, taking command of the fleet as a general aboard kite in the back, transferring yourself back and forth from time to time to make adjustments to your ship positioning/venting/etc.
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Megas

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #184 on: July 08, 2021, 10:46:15 AM »

Neural linked ships cannot have officers in them, according to the blog.
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Sutopia

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #185 on: July 08, 2021, 10:53:13 AM »

It also would make NL Radiant somewhat balanced because you won’t be able to get both missile spec and system spec and is capped at level 9 officer equivalent assuming you invested 7080.

Question: does support doctrine apply to NL target?
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Hiruma Kai

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #186 on: July 08, 2021, 10:59:41 AM »

I was hoping that the skill would actually not transfer your skills, and would have kept the skills of the officer of the ship you have transferred yourself to. So this way you could have invested in other trees than combat, while also having the opportunity to contribute to battle on a piloted ship that wouldnt suck because you have no combat skills.

My guess is that would be unbalanced and leads to undesirable incentives in skill allocation.  Trading in 1 character point to get the equivalent of 5 or 6 from another tree seems to completely defeat the purpose of that other tree.  We've got access to 8 officers baseline, losing 1 isn't a big deal for many fleets, so Neural Link would become mandatory, and you'd grab 2 more tier 5's, and ignore combat completely every time.

In my view, it is much better to have synergy between trees as opposed to outright obsoleting another tree.  As it stands, if you never use the switching, at a minimum it's the equivalent of +1 officer.  If you do use the quick switching, it potentially gives you a hard to quantify force multiplier.

And something like that feels like something that can compete with the redacted skill as alternatives for the end of tech tree. This way you still can pilot the radiant, but youd have to spend 10 sp for that. Or you can have a strong tech/leadership combo, taking command of the fleet as a general aboard kite in the back, transferring yourself back and forth from time to time to make adjustments to your ship positioning/venting/etc.

I'll note it is actually 8 skill points according to the blog. 7 points invested lets you grab the 2nd top tier skill, for a total of 8.  And combining an Alpha Core Radiant that has 8 elite combat skills with player piloting with no investment in combat skills would be crazy strong.  8 Tech, 7 leadership would be optimal every time.  All the fleet bonuses, all the officers bonuses, and a top tier combat skilled 60 DP flagship. Spending points in the combat tree with such an ability in play would be a mistake, since you could always get exactly the same bonuses plus more bonuses on top of them with Neural Link.

Also, I'm not quite understanding the "General piloting a kite" play style being combined with Neural link.  If you want to occasionally tweak a ship, you can do that now.  From what I understand, as soon as you leave the ship to transfer command, it goes back to it's previous officer. So if you just want to order a vent, you can transfer in by being close by in your kite, order the vent, then transfer back, with the ship maintaining officer bonuses before and after.
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sector_terror

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #187 on: July 08, 2021, 11:09:46 AM »

why do you do this to me Alex? Why do you make updates so interesting and well written I stop wanting to play the current release and play the new one instead? This is the third time you've done this. Stop doing this me! The hype is not good for my brian!
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Alex

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #188 on: July 08, 2021, 12:38:58 PM »

The use case for Neural Link that comes to mind is disposable (or ECM/Nav buff) 3 DP shuttle flagship and Radiant.  Swap to Radiant immediately, let the original flagship die (or hide it in the corner), then pilot (maybe) overpowered Radiant for the rest of the battle.

Hmm - I'm not sure why you wouldn't just use a good ship at that point and have it also benefit from your presumably-heavily-invested-in personal ship skills. Unless you're planning to solo something with the Radiant, in which case, fair enough! But probably looking at an easier fight in that case anyway.

Question:  Given a fleet of two ships, Radiant and X.  X is the flagship, and Radiant is the ship player will Neural Link to.  If ship X dies but Radiant lives - basically only ships left alive after battle are automated, what happens?  Does player get shunted to Radiant as its new captain, or will it be a fleet wipe and respawn?

It would be the same thing that happens in that same situation without Neural Link being involved. Which <checks> - weird, you get a fleet without a flagship. That might crash under certain circumstances, actually. Let me make it so that this becomes a respawn.

Given three ships all with Neural Interface: A (Flagship), B and C

Transfer from A to B, A and B receive bonuses. Then transfer to B to C, is it B and C with bonuses or is it A (Flagship) and C which get bonuses?

You can only transfer between two ships at any given time. If all three are on the field, then you'd only have A and B linked and receiving bonuses.


I assume the best way to use neural linked Radiants would be to deploy 2 Radiants + player shuttle. Transfer from shuttle to one of Radiants, then retreat the shuttle. Only 2 linked ships left on field, both get the bonus and both are Radiants. And still probably have more CR than single alpha-cored Radiant (4x penalty...).

If having 3 linked ships on field initially is a problem, then 2nd Radiant would have to enter after shuttle leaves, rest remaining same.

Ah, good point! Funnily enough, the game already tracks the player's physical location (for purposes of where the "transfer command" shuttle takes off from), so... I think makes sense for Neural Interface to only function when you're physically present on one of the ships. Thus if your original flagship gets destroyed, you'd have to transfer command to a ship with NI before you can link. This both makes more sense, and takes care of the "two Radiants" case which - having just tried it for a decent bit! - is definitely verging on "optimal".


It also would make NL Radiant somewhat balanced because you won’t be able to get both missile spec and system spec and is capped at level 9 officer equivalent assuming you invested 7080.

Worth noting - you're likely better off getting System Spec for the Radiant because only the actual flagship benefits from +100% ammo, much like tranferring command also doesn't carry over that bonus.

(And, System Spec with its phase skimmer is... good.)

Question: does support doctrine apply to NL target?

It does when you deploy it and then it stops applying just about immediately when the link is established. No easy way around that because which ship actually gets linked is up to a script with hasn't run at that point. Though, hmm - I suppose NI could just get rid of the Support Doctrine bonus! Yeah, let me do that. Nice catch!


Spoiler
I was hoping that the skill would actually not transfer your skills, and would have kept the skills of the officer of the ship you have transferred yourself to. So this way you could have invested in other trees than combat, while also having the opportunity to contribute to battle on a piloted ship that wouldnt suck because you have no combat skills.

My guess is that would be unbalanced and leads to undesirable incentives in skill allocation.  Trading in 1 character point to get the equivalent of 5 or 6 from another tree seems to completely defeat the purpose of that other tree.  We've got access to 8 officers baseline, losing 1 isn't a big deal for many fleets, so Neural Link would become mandatory, and you'd grab 2 more tier 5's, and ignore combat completely every time.

In my view, it is much better to have synergy between trees as opposed to outright obsoleting another tree.  As it stands, if you never use the switching, at a minimum it's the equivalent of +1 officer.  If you do use the quick switching, it potentially gives you a hard to quantify force multiplier.

And something like that feels like something that can compete with the redacted skill as alternatives for the end of tech tree. This way you still can pilot the radiant, but youd have to spend 10 sp for that. Or you can have a strong tech/leadership combo, taking command of the fleet as a general aboard kite in the back, transferring yourself back and forth from time to time to make adjustments to your ship positioning/venting/etc.

I'll note it is actually 8 skill points according to the blog. 7 points invested lets you grab the 2nd top tier skill, for a total of 8.  And combining an Alpha Core Radiant that has 8 elite combat skills with player piloting with no investment in combat skills would be crazy strong.  8 Tech, 7 leadership would be optimal every time.  All the fleet bonuses, all the officers bonuses, and a top tier combat skilled 60 DP flagship. Spending points in the combat tree with such an ability in play would be a mistake, since you could always get exactly the same bonuses plus more bonuses on top of them with Neural Link.

Also, I'm not quite understanding the "General piloting a kite" play style being combined with Neural link.  If you want to occasionally tweak a ship, you can do that now.  From what I understand, as soon as you leave the ship to transfer command, it goes back to it's previous officer. So if you just want to order a vent, you can transfer in by being close by in your kite, order the vent, then transfer back, with the ship maintaining officer bonuses before and after.
[close]

Right on, on all points!


why do you do this to me Alex? Why do you make updates so interesting and well written I stop wanting to play the current release and play the new one instead? This is the third time you've done this. Stop doing this me! The hype is not good for my brian!

Hahah, I'm sorry! For what it's worth, I know the feeling.
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Deshara

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #189 on: July 08, 2021, 01:58:40 PM »

Question:  Given a fleet of two ships, Radiant and X.  X is the flagship, and Radiant is the ship player will Neural Link to.  If ship X dies but Radiant lives - basically only ships left alive after battle are automated, what happens?  Does player get shunted to Radiant as its new captain, or will it be a fleet wipe and respawn?

It would be the same thing that happens in that same situation without Neural Link being involved. Which <checks> - weird, you get a fleet without a flagship. That might crash under certain circumstances, actually. Let me make it so that this becomes a respawn.

i find it interesting that you can fight battles without deploying your flagship just fine but throw in NL'ing a radiant & suddenly it becomes an issue lol. Maybe putting NL on a droneship could give it a +1 to crew size (the player character just sticks themselves into a gap in the droneship that's relatively free of moving parts if they have no non-automated ships left) so that losing everything but droneships isnt a game over, but if it happens then u cant pilot any ships in combat & have to rely on your AI to carry you until you can get a regular ship to put crew & NL on to RESUMING DIRECT CONTROL. winning then getting a game over would be weird, i could forsee a lot of feedback posts about it; "I ran a fleet with an s-kite & a bunch of captured remnants. my kite ate a stray pilum, i won then after the battle the game deleted the rest of my fleet & told me i got a game over. wtf"
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Sutopia

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #190 on: July 08, 2021, 02:13:54 PM »

Question: does support doctrine apply to NL target?
It does when you deploy it and then it stops applying just about immediately when the link is established. No easy way around that because which ship actually gets linked is up to a script with hasn't run at that point. Though, hmm - I suppose NI could just get rid of the Support Doctrine bonus! Yeah, let me do that. Nice catch!

What about the 15% max cr from reliable engineering? Or is the skill changed as well?
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Alex

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #191 on: July 08, 2021, 02:27:52 PM »

What about the 15% max cr from reliable engineering? Or is the skill changed as well?

That's back to being "Combat Endurance" now, but, that (intentionally/as expected) doesn't apply to NL'ed ships at all since +max CR is an out-of-combat effect and NL/NI only applies conditionally in combat.

Edit: re the "respawn" thing, I wouldn't expect this to come up much since just having some logistics ships would prevent the scenario from happening. Definitely not something I want to add extra code/complications to "make work".
« Last Edit: July 08, 2021, 02:29:50 PM by Alex »
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Megas

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #192 on: July 08, 2021, 02:50:12 PM »

Hmm - I'm not sure why you wouldn't just use a good ship at that point and have it also benefit from your presumably-heavily-invested-in personal ship skills. Unless you're planning to solo something with the Radiant, in which case, fair enough! But probably looking at an easier fight in that case anyway.
Because Radiant is the good ship I really want to use.  The original flagship is simply the (car) key to piloting that (high-performance sports car) Radiant!  If I can only pilot one ship at a time, why would I trust my original ship in AI hands?  (Especially if my old flagship zips all over the place under AI control and greet my return with possible disorienting snapback if I Neural Link back.)  The idea is I Neural Link to Radiant immediately after deployment and I do not care what happens to the original flagship.  (I do not plan to neural back to my old flagship.)  I can retreat the old flagship immediately or let it suicide at first contact with the enemy.  The end result is I pilot the overpowered SNK boss ship Radiant, which was the main reason why I want Neural Link to begin with.  In short, instead of using Paragon as my flagship, I choose Radiant, and I just take an extra step to do so.

Of course, if the old flagship dying or retreating breaks the neural link and ejects the pilot from Radiant in the process, the plan above would not work.  In that case, player probably wants a good flagship and not want a disposable car key to Radiant.
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Alex

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #193 on: July 08, 2021, 02:55:45 PM »

Hmm, I don't think that makes sense? Unless the only ship you want deployed in that combat is the Radiant. No-one's making you transfer back to the original ship, so at that point all you're doing is giving up essentially a ship with a superior custom-made officer for no reason that I can see.
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Megas

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« Reply #194 on: July 08, 2021, 03:01:19 PM »

Hmm, I don't think that makes sense? Unless the only ship you want deployed in that combat is the Radiant. No-one's making you transfer back to the original ship
That means if my old flagship explodes or retreats from battle, my pilot is still in the Radiant?  Nice!

The car key flagship would be sub-five DP frigate who is not meant to fight in the first place.  (It could be the Shepherd I haul around as a campaign stat stick.)  After I deploy cheap frigate and Radiant, then swap to Radiant via Neural Link at the earliest opportunity, the frigate has done its job and I no longer need it in battle.

I am not using Neural Link to jump between two ships as needed and attempt tag-team shenanigans.  I am using it to make normally unplayable (and overpowered) AI ship playable.
« Last Edit: July 08, 2021, 03:04:41 PM by Megas »
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