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

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Author Topic: Skill Changes, Part 2  (Read 24400 times)

SonnaBanana

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 2
« Reply #30 on: July 15, 2021, 07:48:33 PM »

Called it on the colony overhaul!
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Morrokain

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 2
« Reply #31 on: July 15, 2021, 07:58:03 PM »

I did tweak it a bit to be aware of what it's actual speed is/is going to be, for the attack runs calculations. It seems... fine? I haven't spent *that* much time with it but also haven't seen any obvious problems. And for example a pack of phase frigates was just rapidly deleting remnant frigates I right-clicked them on.
Gotcha. Sounds good. My only suggestion would be to test out 1v1 a bit. That's probably where it would show up the most. It's not relevant as much as general fleet behavior, but it can be annoying in specific circumstances where the player is engaged elsewhere and relying on an isolated phase ship.

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These are already a thing - what they do is take away the stability penalty from having too many colonies under your direct personal control.
Ah ok right so that's their standard function now rather than colony bonuses. (At least the majority of the time anyway.) That makes sense.

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I'm not sure what you mean exactly. Oh, "line" being "aptitude"? If so: the skill points required etc are in skill_data.csv.
Oh yeah sorry I meant aptitude. And great!

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If colonies were completely excised from the player skill system, though, and if running colonies yourself was just not an option - you *had* to have an admin... hmm. This sort of thing could make sense and be good.
Hmm, I actually think that could be a very good idea. Not sure about any potential pitfalls off the top of my head, but it's intriguing to separate the two in order to give more spice to admins - and therefore cores as well. (Though cores are already pretty interesting by themselves.)

It also makes a bit more sense to me that the player doesn't govern their own colonies directly and rather hires administrators to oversee them, since, they aren't actually present most of the time. And that doesn't necessarily mean that the player couldn't have skills that sort of tie into colonies (like the detachment idea that was mentioned) without directly affecting them.
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Wyvern

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 2
« Reply #32 on: July 15, 2021, 08:13:49 PM »

If colonies were completely excised from the player skill system, though, and if running colonies yourself was just not an option - you *had* to have an admin... hmm. This sort of thing could make sense and be good.
I'd suggest, rather, making it so that colonies can't get to size four without an admin.


...On the phase ships thing, I'll just say that the current phase mastery elite bonus is very much a quality-of-life thing for me; I don't like playing phase ships without that because the fastest way to travel is using phase... and that costs you your zero flux speed boost, making it feel slow. Losing that will be annoying.
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FooF

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 2
« Reply #33 on: July 15, 2021, 08:30:07 PM »

Great stuff. I can’t wait to try it.

Re: colonies/admins. It makes too much sense to simply not let the player govern. Keep colony skills as-is but up the number of base admins to 4. Make non-skilled admins plentiful and 1-skill admins still relatively common. 2 skill admins would be rare/found (as an aside, these rare ones that cost $25k a month cripple early colonies. All admin salaries need to be pro-rated based on colony size). Also, Beta Admins should be a thing (2-skills but no hypercognition). Industrial planning in Skills could just be Colony Management and increases Admin count by 2 and gives all colonies under Admin control (but not Cores) some kind of bonus to their existing skulls and/or a reduction in their cost to govern. I think Cores are simply no-brainers at this point and paying admins should have an upside.
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Hiruma Kai

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 2
« Reply #34 on: July 15, 2021, 08:51:05 PM »

Quite an interesting read and looking forward to when it all gets released.

I don't want to think about the coding headache removing the permanent skills was, but yeah, I agree it is much cleaner from a player perspective.

I'll have to play with the new phase ship rules before being able to make a sensible statement about them.  Although clearly at 50% and higher hard flux, the only reason to be in phase is to avoid incoming ordinance that would connect otherwise.  Retreating becomes the same in phase and out - and in fact with the 0-flux bonus from Helmsmanship it is faster to retreat out of phase

I like how phase coil tuning says "Combat phase ships", which gives me hope the logistic phase ship issue has been handled.

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.

It does raise the question, does the scaling armor for calculations apply to damage hitting hull (in terms of minimum armor?).

And Ordinance Expertise is amazing on high OP high weapon mount count ships like the Enforcer, Dominator and Onslaught.  I typically am sitting at a little over 180 OP on weapons on an Onslaught, which would be +360 flux dissipation and +3600 flux capacity.  That's like if flux regulation was +60% dissipation and +20% capacity on an Onslaught, which seems good.  At this point, there's probably too many skills I'd want on an Onslaught.

Combat Endurance (Elite), Damage Control, Impact Mitigation, Polarized Armor, and Field Modulation all look like they'd boost it's survivability significantly.  Then there is Gunnery Implants, Ballistic Mastery, and presumably Target Analysis stacking range and damage.  The generous missile mounts basically demand Missile specialization.  And Ordinance Expertise is just extra flux which helps everything.  Lastly Helmsmanship is buffing an Onslaught XIV from speed 23 to 30, but more importantly making it turn 50% faster.  Sadly can't take everything I'd want in such a case, but having choices feels good.  And officers are going to feel very different from a defensive build going to an offensive build.

To be honest, a pair of Neural linked Onslaught XIVs with a pile of personal skills looks like they should be terrifying.  Combat 7, Tech  5, Industry 3 sounds crazy to me initially, but 10 personal skills buffing them both feels like low tech ballistics with old release armor survivability and probably around 1600 flux dissipation each (and potentially with resistant flux conduits+elite polarized armor, 4800 dissipation while venting, for a 4-5 second vent from full flux).

I will say, the 25 OP cost for Neural interface isn't that bad for an Onslaught, but for say a Legion or Odyssey, 25 OP feels a bit steep.  Battle carriers, which tend to feel to many players to have insufficient OP for fighters and guns, are going to probably pass on being Neural linked.   I guess you're worried about double capitals being the optimal use, given the DP limits on instant swap, and the large jump in OP costs on the hull mod.  I'm wondering if I'd bother to use it with an Odyssey, for example.  That tends to require attention 100% of the time, the AI isn't quite as good at handling some player centric builds, plus it is a 9% hit to OP.  Certainly looking forward to trying it at least getting a feel for how much of a benefit fast swap is on those kinds of ships.
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SonnaBanana

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 2
« Reply #35 on: July 15, 2021, 09:07:36 PM »

Are the core worlds now even more easily destabilized by pirates than ever?
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SonnaBanana

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 2
« Reply #36 on: July 15, 2021, 09:35:36 PM »

Doubleposting here because a new user posted in the old one:

Ah, good point/something to be aware of. <looks at Bulk Transport> (I actually kind of want to replace that one with something more interesting; right now it's definitely a bench-warmer.)

Finally registered a forum account after a year playing this game to reply to this: Bulk Transport is definitely not a bench-warmer for my playstyle; It's either the 2nd (after Navigation) or the 1st skill (if I'm playing the turtorial) I take. It's good at the start, it's good in midgame, and it's good in the endgame (the high cap on the personnel capacity helps with the marines needed for raids against high end targets.)  It opens up new possibilities for play (an early tanker can be skipped if you have exploration ships, you can afford more crew losses, it really takes the sting out of the crew capacity/minimum crew D-mods, and the +1 burn for civ ships means militarization or Augmented Drive fields is not necessarily mandatory for most of them to keep up with fleet speed. I could go on for a while 8-))

If you wanted to nerf/change it because you thought it was *too good*, I'd understand. But please don't get rid of it because you think it's a bench-warmer 8-)

Thank you for making a great game with loads of replayability.
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JUDGE! slowpersun

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 2
« Reply #37 on: July 15, 2021, 10:31:26 PM »

If colonies were completely excised from the player skill system, though, and if running colonies yourself was just not an option - you *had* to have an admin... hmm. This sort of thing could make sense and be good.
Hmm, I actually think that could be a very good idea. Not sure about any potential pitfalls off the top of my head, but it's intriguing to separate the two in order to give more spice to admins - and therefore cores as well. (Though cores are already pretty interesting by themselves.)

It also makes a bit more sense to me that the player doesn't govern their own colonies directly and rather hires administrators to oversee them, since, they aren't actually present most of the time. And that doesn't necessarily mean that the player couldn't have skills that sort of tie into colonies (like the detachment idea that was mentioned) without directly affecting them.

Re: colonies/admins. It makes too much sense to simply not let the player govern. Keep colony skills as-is but up the number of base admins to 4. Make non-skilled admins plentiful and 1-skill admins still relatively common. 2 skill admins would be rare/found (as an aside, these rare ones that cost $25k a month cripple early colonies. All admin salaries need to be pro-rated based on colony size). Also, Beta Admins should be a thing (2-skills but no hypercognition). Industrial planning in Skills could just be Colony Management and increases Admin count by 2 and gives all colonies under Admin control (but not Cores) some kind of bonus to their existing skulls and/or a reduction in their cost to govern. I think Cores are simply no-brainers at this point and paying admins should have an upside.

Very much agree that colonies should basically always require an admin to run, and player never runs any colonies (at least until the inevitable addition of the fifth skill tree for colonies with max level cap being increased to 20; some sci fi voodoo neural ansible skill will therefore eventually allow player to again administrate some colonies).  This would also reward player for later swapping in better admins as time passes and colony income can handle the increased admin cost, though this essentially demands that admins have skills (and alpha core just get skills AND a weaker hypercognition.  Or no skills and stronger hypercognition).  Having a Beta AI core as a weaker admin than an Alpha core is an interesting idea, though I guess should get a weaker cognition skill than Alpha ("advanced cognition," maybe?).

But NO ONE has asked the most important question of all...



Why would an update with such a massive change to the skill system be titled 0.95.1a instead of 0.95b?

But all in all, the skill changes detailed in both this post and the previous blog post appear to be a massive improvement over the current 0.95a skill system, though perhaps I'm just biased because I just straight up hate the wrap-around mechanic.

Edit:  grammar... the quiet sibling of spelling.
« Last Edit: July 15, 2021, 10:35:00 PM by slowpersun »
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SonnaBanana

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 2
« Reply #38 on: July 15, 2021, 11:12:56 PM »

Why would an update with such a massive change to the skill system be titled 0.95.1a instead of 0.95b?

But all in all, the skill changes detailed in both this post and the previous blog post appear to be a massive improvement over the current 0.95a skill system, though perhaps I'm just biased because I just straight up hate the wrap-around mechanic.

Edit:  grammar... the quiet sibling of spelling.
Because it's not a comprehensive overhaul (by Alex's standards).
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TaLaR

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 2
« Reply #39 on: July 15, 2021, 11:20:55 PM »

Phase Anchor seems useless. It inherits the weakness of previously existing 4x time skill (when 2 phase ships fight, the one which can out-wait the other has immense advantage) and adds speed reduction on top. This is a huge "kill me please" advert to all enemy phase ships.

Also, I don't think speed reduction at 50% hard flux is actually a notable nerf to player-piloted assassin builds - I rarely go above 25% hard flux in current version.  Short approach ( a bit hard flux) - unload AMs (soft flux close to the cap) - short retreat (a bit more hard flux) - vent - repeat.
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Deshara

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 2
« Reply #40 on: July 15, 2021, 11:29:48 PM »

alex i think were missing a trick here.
phase ships are baseline too powerful in a lot of situations bc of the affect of their time dilation.
so, nerf the crap out of their time dilation so that a phase ship by default isn't faster moving or faster reloading, just faster-breaking (only its CR is sped up while phased), & is basically just a low-tech ship with an upgraded fortress shield, then shunt that power back into the phase ships via officer skills.
Now, phase ships (which shouldnt be that numerous in a fleet anyway) aren't capable of being top of the line ships unless they have a competent officer at the helm. You still get a lot of the asymmetrical benefits of a phase ship without an officer, but they don't turn into fleet-killers without one.
Plus it might be fun to customize phase ships to be exactly what you want them to be with skills, while being encouraged not to just take all of them with a malus being inflicted by phase skills. They already have one baseline, delicate machinery, you could make each phase skill multiply the affect of delicate machinery to represent over-stressing the ship's systems, or have each phase skill add a new malus to delicate machinery (one skill increases deployment CR cost by 50%, another increases sensor profile by 50%), and/or you can do both -- if you take the CR skill then it just increases CR cost by 50%, but if you take the sensor profile skill then it gets 100% increased CR cost and 100% increased sensor profile
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SonnaBanana

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 2
« Reply #41 on: July 16, 2021, 12:06:12 AM »

Phase Anchor seems useless. It inherits the weakness of previously existing 4x time skill (when 2 phase ships fight, the one which can out-wait the other has immense advantage) and adds speed reduction on top. This is a huge "kill me please" advert to all enemy phase ships.

Also, I don't think speed reduction at 50% hard flux is actually a notable nerf to player-piloted assassin builds - I rarely go above 25% hard flux in current version.  Short approach ( a bit hard flux) - unload AMs (soft flux close to the cap) - short retreat (a bit more hard flux) - vent - repeat.
Same thoughts here.
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00lewnor

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 2
« Reply #42 on: July 16, 2021, 12:29:04 AM »

When does the forced removal of the “permeant” effects take place? i.e. if I want to swap my skills from phase ship to carrier skills do I go through that dialogue (and lose stuff) when I press the reassign button or after I have re-spent my points and re-brought the skills (therefore to no effect)?
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Scar

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 2
« Reply #43 on: July 16, 2021, 12:59:35 AM »

I see no one talking about the very complicated built in hullmod undoing system.

Alex, I think you're getting yourself into a mess there - keeping an extra list of all ships that remembers what to undo when the skill is unselected? That sounds like a nightmare to maintain, and also very opaque to the player.

I suggest instead that when a player has the relevant skill and builds-in a hullmod, these are marked as "extra built-in" - so it's clear to the player that these are the ones that go away, and the data is stored together with everything else. No second master list of ships!

This makes it trivial to give ships to players that never owned them. Imagine a mod adding an event that gifts a ship - the mod creator can kit it out with the extra built-in hullmods, knowing that if the player doesn't have the appropriate skill they'll just be removed.
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SonnaBanana

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 2
« Reply #44 on: July 16, 2021, 01:08:47 AM »

I see no one talking about the very complicated built in hullmod undoing system.

Alex, I think you're getting yourself into a mess there - keeping an extra list of all ships that remembers what to undo when the skill is unselected? That sounds like a nightmare to maintain, and also very opaque to the player.
??????
What do you mean extra list?
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