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[Rauschkind]

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.

so the inflexibility of s-mods is meant as a balancing factor. but how much of a balancing factor is it, really? i would argue not at all, the inflexibility does not change performance, but just makes it less convinient to use. the price is high, as it discourages experimentation as it puts a very high price tag on failed experiments, and inconvinience itself is hardly ever a good thing.

there are more issues: its generally best  to use s-mods on the most expensive mods and so s-mod usefulness scales a lot with the price of the mods its used on, so its effect is variable which i would think is not optimal.

i like the idea of adding a permanent cost on ships, but i do not like this sysem all that much. why not replace it? like, maybe let me spend s-points to increase op and/or maybe max vents to elite my ships for story points.

of couse, this might (proabably would) again break overdrives, but id argue that this is merely an indicator for overdrives themself still being problematic.

[Yunru]

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.

so the inflexibility of s-mods is meant as a balancing factor. but how much of a balancing factor is it, really? i would argue not at all, the inflexibility does not change performance, but just makes it less convinient to use. the price is high, as it discourages experimentation as it puts a very high price tag on failed experiments, and inconvinience itself is hardly ever a good thing.

there are more issues: its generally best  to use s-mods on the most expensive mods and so s-mod usefulness scales a lot with the price of the mods its used on, so its effect is variable which i would think is not optimal.

i like the idea of adding a permanent cost on ships, but i do not like this sysem all that much. why not replace it? like, maybe let me spend s-points to increase op and/or maybe max vents to elite my ships for story points.

of couse, this might (proabably would) again break overdrives, but id argue that this is merely an indicator for overdrives themself still being problematic.

So what you're saying is...
S-Only-Mods?

[Megas]

so the inflexibility of s-mods is meant as a balancing factor. but how much of a balancing factor is it, really? i would argue not at all, the inflexibility does not change performance, but just makes it less convinient to use. the price is high, as it discourages experimentation as it puts a very high price tag on failed experiments, and inconvinience itself is hardly ever a good thing.

there are more issues: its generally best  to use s-mods on the most expensive mods and so s-mod usefulness scales a lot with the price of the mods its used on, so its effect is variable which i would think is not optimal.

i like the idea of adding a permanent cost on ships, but i do not like this sysem all that much. why not replace it? like, maybe let me spend s-points to increase op and/or maybe max vents to elite my ships for story points.

For most ships, player can just build another (or loot another in case of automated ships), but this does not work for Ziggurat because it is unique and player cannot replace hero ship Z.  (Guardian could be another limited option if it becomes recoverable.)

Augmented Engines is a very expensive QoL hullmod, and I usually put it on my burn 7 battleships, but I will take it off if I desperately need more power.  I have no problem s-modding that into Onslaught or Paragon, but I do not on Ziggurat because I cannot undo or get another Ziggurat.

Also, Reinforced Bulkheads (expensive on capitals) guarantees recovery of Ziggurat, but depending on skills, that hullmod is unnecessary.

[Sutopia]

so the inflexibility of s-mods is meant as a balancing factor. but how much of a balancing factor is it, really? i would argue not at all, the inflexibility does not change performance, but just makes it less convinient to use. the price is high, as it discourages experimentation as it puts a very high price tag on failed experiments, and inconvinience itself is hardly ever a good thing.

there are more issues: its generally best  to use s-mods on the most expensive mods and so s-mod usefulness scales a lot with the price of the mods its used on, so its effect is variable which i would think is not optimal.

i like the idea of adding a permanent cost on ships, but i do not like this sysem all that much. why not replace it? like, maybe let me spend s-points to increase op and/or maybe max vents to elite my ships for story points.

For most ships, player can just build another (or loot another in case of automated ships), but this does not work for Ziggurat because it is unique and player cannot replace hero ship Z.  (Guardian could be another limited option if it becomes recoverable.)

Augmented Engines is a very expensive QoL hullmod, and I usually put it on my burn 7 battleships, but I will take it off if I desperately need more power.  I have no problem s-modding that into Onslaught or Paragon, but I do not on Ziggurat because I cannot undo or get another Ziggurat.

Also, Reinforced Bulkheads (expensive on capitals) guarantees recovery of Ziggurat, but depending on skills, that hullmod is unnecessary.

For .95.1 a ship is almost always recoverable if it has any S-mod / has an officer or has reinforced bulkhead.
I personally feel that since the most important (?) aspect of RB is removed it can has a lower price tag.
40% hull isn't gonna do much since we're talking about hull ...

[Cyan Leader]

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

Was it really? With the Ziggurat in the game I have to wonder if that was really that much more powerful.

Either way, I'm looking forward to the changes, seems like almost everything is positive.

[Deshara]

going just by statistic it looks like the radiant is just a flatly better ship
https://imgur.com/a/qPZTBkg

[Megas]

@ Sutopia:  I meant the current release.  If I pilot Ziggurat, get it disabled, and change ships, Ziggurat loses guaranteed recovery unless it has Reinforced Bulkheads because the pilot with guaranteed recovery, me, is no longer on the ship.  It is a problem because I either stay in the ship and twiddle my thumbs until the end of battle to guarantee recovery, or change ships and take my chances for random recovery unless I have Bulkheads.  That would be the reason for me to s-mod Reinforced Bulkheads (which is 30 DP I think), so I do not twiddle thumbs if my Ziggurat flagship dies.

I read about the guaranteed recovery changes to come, so Reinforced Bulkhead will not be needed for that purpose.

[Brainwright]

I'm a little sad to see the administrator skills go, as now the administrators are more a matter of what portrait you want to see on your colony screen.

If the skills aren't that important, why not add something else instead?  Administrators could come with a set of contracts that either make certain production more profitable or increase imports for a particular product in addition to what is maximally available.  These contracts can rotate at intervals, encouraging you to move your administrators to other colonies.

You could even start farming administrators from your pool of contacts once you've ground the reputation enough...

[Draba]

And it feels like low tech is getting a lot of subtle buffs from some of these skills.  Polarized armor is an obvious boost to high armor ships, bringing back the 85%->90% max reduction, as well as the +50% armor for calculations (admittedly scaling, but still).  That straight up increases the amount of damage before minimum stops applying by 50% (at 0% flux).  Assuming high flux, say, 75%, I'd guess you'd get 37.5% more effective armor for calculations, which means 1.5*1.37 that overall that minimum damage period lasts twice as long.

IMO the offensive buffs aren't even subtle, ordnance expertise/ballistic rangefinder/ballistic rangefinder look like they really beef up low-tech.
As a guess the range improvements are the more important part, easier to keep multiple ships on the same target despite low tech being slow.
As you said, ordnance expertise on ships with huge OP pools and very low base venting is obviously still great.
Curious how it plays out, seems like Dominator gets a nice consolation price for not having HBI.

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. I do understand your logic here, but I don't think it adds up - and playtesting bears that out. Reapers feel powerful.

I don't like damage control's 60%/2 secs for 3 reasons:
- it's pretty hard to show the player which ships will shrug off tons of hull damage at any given time, certainly clunks up the UI
- AI already has some trouble using missiles, this skill complicates that further
- friendly AI can potentially mess with your shot. You can work around their hellbores/whatever, but it's a new way for allies to annoy the player. No matter how rare it is, the few instances it happens will be remembered

IMO it'd be much cleaner to have a weaker effect, but with no frequency limitation.
More reliable, less ways to get frustrated, easier to handle HIL/strike beams.

going just by statistic it looks like the radiant is just a flatly better ship
https://imgur.com/a/qPZTBkg

This is one of those cases where the stats don't tell the full story:
- Ziggurat can use time dilation+a bunch of strike weapons to hammer anything down in record time
- motes are nasty, and very versatile
- Ziggurat is a phase ship so has very high effective speed

It's well worth the 75 DP, and feels easy mode even for that.

I said it for years, I'll say it again: Starsector is a power fantasy, finding ways to attain excessive power is what makes such games fun, and perfect balance is a detriment in that respect. It seems this realization was almost reached in the Neural Link + Automated Ships section ("it's way too strong but also really fun"), but then a nerf was applied instead. Fun overload detected, deploy emergency nerfs!

Starsector is a power fantasy for you.
Plenty of players enjoy optimizing different fleet compositions against content that's hard enough to require  some attention.
Nothing wrong with having your preferences, but your post basically says those looking for a challenge just don't understand your absolute truth yet.
That's not a good argument, and not a good way of convincing people.

"perfect balance" doesn't happen in any game and as already explained isn't a goal here, either.
The "good enough" threshold for complex single player games is usually very generous anyway.

[Alex]

so the inflexibility of s-mods is meant as a balancing factor.

I wouldn't say that! As you note, it wouldn't be much of one.

i like the idea of adding a permanent cost on ships, but i do not like this sysem all that much. why not replace it? like, maybe let me spend s-points to increase op and/or maybe max vents to elite my ships for story points.

Well - for one, because I do like it But really what you're suggesting doesn't necessarily sound *bad* but it does sound like lateral movement design-wise, if that makes sense.

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

Was it really? With the Ziggurat in the game I have to wonder if that was really that much more powerful.

Either way, I'm looking forward to the changes, seems like almost everything is positive.

I mean, that's definitely a bit of an exaggeration on my part! But: the Ziggurat gets more leeway. I think it's psychologically easier to decide not to use it, where with the Radiant if you want to use automated ships, it's really the pinnacle of that, so you're likely to gravitate to it. The Ziggurat is more of a standalone thing and doesn't have the same kind of impetus being someone really wanting to use it. I think it's also fairly clearly a "you can use this to make the game easier" ship, too... It's a cool story ship, basically, with the up and downsides of that.

And the Radiant also has some things going for it that the Ziggurat doesn't, namely exceptional mobility - which combined with the firepower it has, means a lot.

I'm a little sad to see the administrator skills go, as now the administrators are more a matter of what portrait you want to see on your colony screen.

If the skills aren't that important, why not add something else instead?  Administrators could come with a set of contracts that either make certain production more profitable or increase imports for a particular product in addition to what is maximally available.  These contracts can rotate at intervals, encouraging you to move your administrators to other colonies.

You could even start farming administrators from your pool of contacts once you've ground the reputation enough...

Ah - that sort of thing is just outside of how far I'd want to go while just changing how skills work. I will say that we've talked about some things that are vaguely in the same general area, but it's not something I want to talk about publicly because it's not decided, if that makes sense.

I don't like damage control's 60%/2 secs for 3 reasons:
- it's pretty hard to show the player which ships will shrug off tons of hull damage at any given time, certainly clunks up the UI
- AI already has some trouble using missiles, this skill complicates that further
- friendly AI can potentially mess with your shot. You can work around their hellbores/whatever, but it's a new way for allies to annoy the player. No matter how rare it is, the few instances it happens will be remembered

IMO it'd be much cleaner to have a weaker effect, but with no frequency limitation.
More reliable, less ways to get frustrated, easier to handle HIL/strike beams.

#1 and #2 Hmm, I'm not sure that it's enough of an issue to justify making the elite bonus of the skill boring instead. At least, in playtesting so far, this hasn't been a problem, like, at all. I do see what you're saying, though. Just feels like it's a tradeoff worth making.

#3, I'm not sure how friendly AI could mess with it. Their fire can only help, it can't harm anything as far as you trying to manage this. Maybe I'm missing something?

[Megas]

One annoyance with Ziggurat is I cannot rob or fight people without going to war with them, regardless of stealth.  (I can only use Z for bounty hunting or Ordos hunting in the fringe.)  On the other hand, being unique gives the Ziggurat the feeling of a blatant hero ship destined to be the player's personal flagship for the remainder of the game, like the Vindicator from Star Control 2.

I feel kind of pressured to get phase ship skills because Xenorphica is Starsector's Vindicator once in falls into the player's hands.

There ought to be at least another unique or signature ship to choose from.

[Yunru]

One annoyance with Ziggurat is I cannot rob or fight people without going to war with them, regardless of stealth.  (I can only use Z for bounty hunting or Ordos hunting in the fringe.)  On the other hand, being unique gives the Ziggurat the feeling of a blatant hero ship destined to be the player's personal flagship for the remainder of the game, like the Vindicator from Star Control 2.

I feel kind of pressured to get phase ship skills because Xenorphica is Starsector's Vindicator once in falls into the player's hands.

There ought to be at least another unique or signature ship to choose from.

If only there was a big, reclusive capital ship with a game-changing ability tucked away somewhere in the sector.
And that we could recover.

[Draba]

#3, I'm not sure how friendly AI could mess with it. Their fire can only help, it can't harm anything as far as you trying to manage this. Maybe I'm missing something?

Nope, just a brainfart on my side.
I meant allies can mess your timing up by unreliably triggering the CD, properly thinking about it that's not a problem.

[Alex]

Nope, just a brainfart on my side.
I meant allies can mess your timing up by unreliably triggering the CD, properly thinking about it that's not a problem.

(Aaaah, gotcha, that makes sense!)

[Brainwright]

I'm a little sad to see the administrator skills go, as now the administrators are more a matter of what portrait you want to see on your colony screen.

If the skills aren't that important, why not add something else instead?  Administrators could come with a set of contracts that either make certain production more profitable or increase imports for a particular product in addition to what is maximally available.  These contracts can rotate at intervals, encouraging you to move your administrators to other colonies.

You could even start farming administrators from your pool of contacts once you've ground the reputation enough...

Ah - that sort of thing is just outside of how far I'd want to go while just changing how skills work. I will say that we've talked about some things that are vaguely in the same general area, but it's not something I want to talk about publicly because it's not decided, if that makes sense.

Good to know you're thinking something in the same direction, as it just seems to be something the game wants.  It would be nice if colonies weren't just static entities, but something you could game into higher levels of benefit with some effort.  As it is, we're just locked into eternally killing pirates and pathers...