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[EclipseRanger]

I think the new skills changes are a step in the right direction:agency for the player and emphasis on their general playstyle without forcing absolute overspecialization.

Just one question if it can be answered:Is Auxiliary Support changed in any way???It felt relativey weak in its current implementation,mostly because of the crippling DP limit.6 DP is barely enough to fit one small civilian ship,and since no one in their right mind would run Auxiliary Support to buff,say,a Phaeton,that leaves Combat Freighters,which means an entire skill point is spent making a Gemini somewhat stronger which feel immensely weak.

Removed.

***,for real???Is there any source confirming it?

[Sutopia]

I think the new skills changes are a step in the right direction:agency for the player and emphasis on their general playstyle without forcing absolute overspecialization.

Just one question if it can be answered:Is Auxiliary Support changed in any way???It felt relativey weak in its current implementation,mostly because of the crippling DP limit.6 DP is barely enough to fit one small civilian ship,and since no one in their right mind would run Auxiliary Support to buff,say,a Phaeton,that leaves Combat Freighters,which means an entire skill point is spent making a Gemini somewhat stronger which feel immensely weak.

Removed.

***,for real???Is there any source confirming it?

https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=22185.msg334705#msg334705

[Deshara]

Auxiliary Support

Removed.

you know, originally I was like, "good riddance, my flagship is auxilliary civilian ship and even I don't use that skill" and then I booted SS to actually take a look at how my flagship performs with & without the skill (which you can't do with skills in a regular non-cheated game bc u cant test skills out the way u can a hullmod), and realized what's wrong with the skill; the hullmods that it upgrades, without the upgrade, are joke hullmods. Nobody is taking militarized for +10 armor, nobody is taking escort for +30 PD range, nobody is taking assault package for +10% hull integrity. So, when you propose to someone taking a skill that hinges around using them, they balk. "Why would I take a skill for a series of hullmods that I have never even considered using?".
This is a pretty easy fix; make them only equipable on militarized ships, then shunt all the power the skill gives to the hullmods to the hullmods themselves & make the skill just unlock them, and mmmmmmmmmaybe also an elite tier that upgrades the hullmods for your flagship for those of us lunatics flying a Combat Nebula into a warzone. Since the only skill upgrade for the hullmods would be for the flagship, you wouldn't need the incredibly vague "+% bonus to all affects of several hullmods divided for every ship that could equip it over a DP of 5" description that is completely indecipherable, the elite tier of the skill could just tell you what each hullmod will do if you take it. "Flagship - Militarized Subsystems will increase your flux vent and armor by 10x. Escort package will increase your manueverability and PD range and damage to missiles & fighters by 10x. Assault package will increase the ship's hull, armor and flux cap by 10x."

also, bbbbbbbasically everything the package mods do is done better by normal hullmods you dont need skills for, and most of those things arent things youd even want particularly on a ship you've auxilliarized. I guess the PD range boost is nice, but it doesnt do much without IPDA anyway, and any aux ship I'm planning on fighting with is better off with autocannons instead of LMG, and any aux ship I need PD on where I'm putting IPDA on I'd be better off with a LAG & IPDA instead of a LMG/vulcan and IPDA and escort package. any ship small enough to get anything out of the skill bonus is too small to really need a maneuverability bonus, any ship large enough to need the maneuverability bonus will also be crippled by not being fast enough. Umm, assault package doesnt do much for my flagship as a ship with the durability of two kites is still so fragile it needs to still rely on its maneuverability to dodge shots anyway. ... Idk, even keeping in mind the 10x bonus, I can't think of a single ship that really needs much of anything it offers? I don't think this is an issue with the idea, I think just the bonuses it does give arent a very good combo. They seem focused on shoring up what a militarized ship isn't good at, when the reason we use militarized ships is bc we enjoy hyper-focusing on what they are good at. I fly an A_kite bc I enjoy having a ship that only does torpedo strikes & relies on its engines to stay alive, so the only hullmods I put on it upgrade its torpedo strikes & engines. Maybe the armor would get used by an auxilliary hound?? but then, its flux capacity upgrade isn't getting used, unless you stick a makeshift shield on it to make use of it, and we've circled back around to, the only way to get good use of these mods is to use other hullmods to make up for using them and. idk.
idk how i feel abt it. I can see potential peaking out from inside of it. Something that allows you to get stupid use out of a ship that isnt meant for combat sounds like a lot of fun, it just needs another pass. ... basically it just wants to be safety overrides but different. I cant think of anything I'd replace either of the packages with that isnt just, safety over overrides.

[Undead]

Not sure if this question has been asked already but why the elite effect of polarized armor is in direct conflict of interests with the effects of the skill itself? I mean skill favours you being at high hard flux levels by providing bonuses to armour, but the elite effect makes you vent better, thus youll spend more time in the "no bonus to armor" levels of hard flux. Seems a bit counter-intuitive

[Thaago]

Not sure if this question has been asked already but why the elite effect of polarized armor is in direct conflict of interests with the effects of the skill itself? I mean skill favours you being at high hard flux levels by providing bonuses to armour, but the elite effect makes you vent better, thus youll spend more time in the "no bonus to armor" levels of hard flux. Seems a bit counter-intuitive

Venting in this case refers to active venting with the V key - so after you've driven up the hard flux you can recover faster (and starting firing everything again). It seems to me the skill is boosting both of the options available to players when at high hard flux: either armor tank or vent. Either way, it makes going to high hard flux safer.

[Sutopia]

Not sure if this question has been asked already but why the elite effect of polarized armor is in direct conflict of interests with the effects of the skill itself? I mean skill favours you being at high hard flux levels by providing bonuses to armour, but the elite effect makes you vent better, thus youll spend more time in the "no bonus to armor" levels of hard flux. Seems a bit counter-intuitive

It’s active vent speed, not passive.
When you active vent you want it done ASAP under any given circumstance so you can get your shield back up ASAP.

It’s supplementary to the primary effects so the ship can get back into engagement faster. The main effect benefits mostly low tech ships when they are at high hard flux and has to armor tank some damage. You’re not gonna just active vent right in front of the enemy.

[Morrokain]

Re: Derelict Contingent

I changed it to be both combat freighters and civilian ships that benefit but halved the bonus. Maybe something along those lines could be interesting? Or just combat freighters maybe?

[Alex]

It's certainly more fun to play with over tuned talents than under tuned. Star sector is a single player campaign after all. If it feels like good, fun talents stand out because other trees lack that same punch, it may be worth trying to improve those trees instead.

I mean, it's a question of degrees! Turning godMode on in the settings file and one-shotting everything is not going to be fun for very long, for most people.

I'm not *trying* to over or under-tune anything, you know? What I'm trying to do is to get it right Both over- or under- tuned is less fun than something more properly tuned - pretty much by definition, since the goal of tuning things in general is to make a fun game.

For a player-piloted Radiant, the initial version was rather close to the aforementioned godMode.

The other thing to consider is that when something is over-tuned, that can be *more* dangerous than when it's under-tuned. The worst case scenario when one thing is just way too weak is that no-one uses it. That's not great, but there's all the other stuff you can do. When something is over-tuned, there's a real risk that most players will *only* use that thing, leaving everything else gathering dust. There's also a solid chance that that one thing then makes the game "too easy" and less fun - so these are related, but separate issues. (Important to note that it's "can be more dangerous", not necessarily "will"... everything ends up bring situational, on a case-by-case basis.)

(One more consideration is that the further away something takes you from the game's core gameplay, the more difficult it is to make it work in a way that's good/fun/satisfying/etc. There's sort of a design center where everything comes together, and yeah, you can move away from that with skills, different ship designs, etc, and that can be great. But move away too far, and it will be a problem because the game doesn't "click" anymore. I feel like I didn't do a very good job conveying this last, so I hope it makes some sort of sense. Sort of like - if you made an Onslaught move like a Tempest, it could even be reasonable power-wise in some circumstances, but it'd just fundamentally break the feel of the game.)

So in general - I mean, I hear you. And I feel like all of the top-tier skills stand out in their own way now, and that was very much one of the goals of these skill changes.

For example, safety overrides is one of the most game changing hull mods there is. Perhaps a talent should target it directly? The concept of reckless ship design doesn't fit in leadership, combat or technology. It'd be right at home as an industry skill.

Indeed - and that's Hull Restoration, pretty much! Or Derelict Operations. Either one will do - both make losing ships not hurt and enable SO use on a wider scale.

With s-mods being able to be removed by respec-ing BotB on and off, it would be nice if there was another easier way to remove s-mods, especially from unique or limited ships like Ziggurat.

Might be worth adding that as an option at some point, yeah.

Yeah I was referring to ship clones, or somehow ship stored as variant instead of actual ship, as those may not be referenced by the collection you built.

But I guess that’s mod’s responsibility to keep track of that. Is there an API for mod to log or query the collection?

The tools are there for mods to handle it correctly, yeah.


(Re: Polarized Armor - right, it's active venting speed only.)

Re: Derelict Contingent

I changed it to be both combat freighters and civilian ships that benefit but halved the bonus. Maybe something along those lines could be interesting? Or just combat freighters maybe?

Hmm - I mean, that might work! But I'm not sure there are enough combat freighters/civgrade ships to really base a top-tier skill around. Plus, I just really like the idea of overwhelming the enemy with a large number of junkier ships, which the deployment points reduction from Derelict Operations enables.

[Amazigh]

I mean, this just doesn't hold up in practice! And if you land a single Reaper on a heavily armored capital (i.e. the Radiant, in this case), much of its damage potential will be spent on armor anyway, and calling that a dud is a bit much.

So if i'm reading this right, damage control will reduce the hull damage taken, but have no impact on the armour damage taken?
If so then i can understand it.

The (non redacted) weapons that i can think of that will be hit by this skill are: Hammer, Atropos, Reaper, Harpoon, Gauss, Hellbore, AM Blaster, Mining Blaster  My personal feelings towards the impact of this skill on these weapons:

Gauss/Hellbore/Mining Blaster - all have a low enough fire rate that every shot will likely face the penalty if used singly, but suffer rather minimal damage reduction, so it's no big impact to a ship using these weapons.
Harpoon - these can consistently hit fast enough to avoid the reduction and the actual loss of damage from the reduction is small enough to not really impact their use cases anyway, so can basically ignore the skill.
Atropos - these can fire fast enough to only sacrifice one shot to the penalty, and the per-shot damage loss is not (completely) crippling, so i'd consider these basically in the same category as the harpoon.
AM Blaster/Hammer (single) - can be mounted singly as armor cracking/finishing weapons, and will lose out on a significant amount of damage, making their usage against this skill not great, unless you have more than one.
Single Reaper/Typhoon - Single-fire reapers take a massive penalty to damage, and lack the fire rate on their own to get "past" the reduction, so are massively crippled on ships that are unable to mount more than one, making their usage against ships with this skill something of a waste imo.
Cyclone Reaper/Twin Hammer/Hammer Barrage - these fire multiple shots, so yes the first hit will suffer, but follow-up hits will still deal serious damage, making the impact of the skill not a huge impact (imo) if you can be sure to hit with more than just one of the shots form the burst.

Basically, (in my opinion) you have to deal over 1000 damage per-shot to really suffer from the reduction, and even then it's only a big consideration if you can't get a volley of shots off so you only take it on one of them.

- An added thought i came up with after typing all of the above, is how this "every 2 seconds you take reduced damage from a shot" mechanic is going to be rather hard to advertise to the player, unless there is a visual indication of some sort, and that could quite easily look out of place.
There's also the fact that it's a bit of a... "gamey" mechanic, and to me almost feels a bit out of place in the game.



On the subject of everything else, it's all sounding nice.

One thought though, two of polarized armors bonuses only work with hard flux, so for ships that can't generate hard flux (the new Vanguard for one!) it might be an idea to add a cheap(?) hullmod, that converts some/all of soft flux into hard flux (and/or possibly tie this into shield shunt?)

[Alex]

That all makes sense, yeah! And, right re: hull damage being affected, but not armor.

- An added thought i came up with after typing all of the above, is how this "every 2 seconds you take reduced damage from a shot" mechanic is going to be rather hard to advertise to the player, unless there is a visual indication of some sort, and that could quite easily look out of place.
There's also the fact that it's a bit of a... "gamey" mechanic, and to me almost feels a bit out of place in the game.

Well, it's in the skill description! I'm not sure I see it as "gamey", though - not any more so than just about any other skill effect. And if you wanted to, you could easily come up with a sensible explanation for why this is the case. (Something simple like the damage control teams are only able to respond to major damage being taken every so often, etc. I mean, canonically, a second of game-combat means rather more "real in-world time"...)

On the subject of everything else, it's all sounding nice.

*thumbs up*

One thought though, two of polarized armors bonuses only work with hard flux, so for ships that can't generate hard flux (the new Vanguard for one!) it might be an idea to add a cheap(?) hullmod, that converts some/all of soft flux into hard flux (and/or possibly tie this into shield shunt?)

Hmm - the issue with that sort of thing is it encourages firing randomly to build up flux levels. Still, I do agree that it'd be nice if the skill benefitted unshielded ships.

Edit: made it so that for unshielded/non-phase ships, the skill always behaves as if they had 50% hard flux.

[SonnaBanana]

"Cybernetic Augmentation"? And it's a strikecraft skill.....

Still Alex, it sounds like this along with Best of the Best are skills you could attach colony-related bonuses to if you don't want to add more skills.

[Baqar79]

I'm very much looking forward to trying out the new skill changes!

Really awesome to see the return of in-combat repairs through Combat Endurance.  I loved this skill since it always reminds me of the power of Automated Hull Repair units I built into my starships in Master Of Orion 2.  Will any hull that is currently regenerating when combat ends automatically get their maximum repair?

Sounds good that Phase Coil Tuning now doesn't include non-combat phase ships.  Revenants should provide a decent boost to sensor range without increasing your sensor profile, so they are becoming even better for exploration/salvaging (not quite ready to retire my favourite Apogee just yet though!).

[Alex]

"Cybernetic Augmentation"? And it's a strikecraft skill.....

It's not!

Really awesome to see the return of in-combat repairs through Combat Endurance.  I loved this skill since it always reminds me of the power of Automated Hull Repair units I built into my starships in Master Of Orion 2.  Will any hull that is currently regenerating when combat ends automatically get their maximum repair?

It goes the other way, actually - hull level after combat will be the lowest level that was reached. Makeshift in-combat repairs not suitable for long-term operations etc etc...

(Fun fact: Automated Repair Unit is pretty much a direct MoO2 reference.)

Sounds good that Phase Coil Tuning now doesn't include non-combat phase ships.  Revenants should provide a decent boost to sensor range without increasing your sensor profile, so they are becoming even better for exploration/salvaging (not quite ready to retire my favourite Apogee just yet though!).

Ah - phase ships now have half the normal phase profile of a same-size ship instead of just zero. It made sense to make some numbers work out. Still, for practical reasons a Revenant won't really increase your sensor profile since it's not too likely to be in the top 5, unless your fleet is very small.

[SonnaBanana]

There's a new Technology skill for strikecraft?

* Is T4L the new Ground Operations?

Hmm? Not sure which you mean but I think it's one of the fighter skills.

[Sutopia]

There's a new Technology skill for strikecraft?

* Is T4L the new Ground Operations?

Hmm? Not sure which you mean but I think it's one of the fighter skills.

Since you were talking about GO it was assumed you were talking about "Tier" 4 left of Leadership.

And no.