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Author Topic: Skill Changes, Part 2  (Read 24406 times)

Rain

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 2
« Reply #45 on: July 16, 2021, 01:09:18 AM »

Okay, largely looks reasonable to me. One of the few moment to moment gameplay issues I've had has been phase ships being really irritating, mostly due to speed and zipping around at mach 10 being kind of un-fun in general to my aging brain (incidentally a problem I've had with temporal shell and other modded time dilation ships, to the point of where I've been digging into the files and replacing their active system, but I guess that's a separate thing). Having them slow down at least somewhat sometimes has my support, for what that's worth.

Re the solution to permanent skills, I never really had any issue with them and they made sense to me, so to me it looks like questionably-necessary effort, but I guess this is fundamentally a QoL improvement either way, so, yay?

Re the colony stuff I reckon the angle where admins are necessary and players don't govern at all feels to 'make the most sense', with perhaps having a player skill allowing for recruiting more of them; then you also have that 'design space' for some potentially-interesting NPC-only skills there to differentiate the admins and put them up next to and compare to alpha cores which could still do their "all skills +1" shtick there, consistent with their superhuman ship command ability. Doesn't get around there inevitably being some players who really like the idea of governing themselves ending up disappointed, though I might note that as time has gone on I've rather ended up feeling the game plays in a more interesting way when there's at least some pressure to keep getting earning more money and the passive income of built-up colonies kind of ends up removing that. Of course, that self-same pressure I imagine a lot of people might just feel they particularly want to be rid of... So I guess have fun sorting that out. :)

Question: does Polarized Armor "turn off" when a ship is overloaded or is it passive-passive to the point of protecting you a bit during such unfortunate circumstances too? I guess it'd be weird to have a skill 'disabled' in such a way, but it's not exactly completely unprecedented (the no-flux-generate speed boost ended up doing that, IIRC?) so I could see that one go either way.
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AcaMetis

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 2
« Reply #46 on: July 16, 2021, 01:23:14 AM »

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If you really need to know, you can actually tell what skill the enemy officer has when you target it! Anyway, from experience firing a ton of Reapers recently vs things that ALL had elite Damage Control, they're still fine and great and Hammers don't really compare. Just not enough raw damage.
Huh, wasn't expecting that. And how are Reapers still worth it despite getting their damage reduced to 1900, whereas an individual Hammer punches for 1800 and has two shots for the same OP as a single Reaper? Purely firing at armor rather than as a finisher against hull?

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Actual equip cost. And yeah, this interacts with HBI.
Hmm...on the surface it sounds like that gives HBI a negative synergy with that skill, but "get the benefit of two guns for the price of one gun" isn't a negative, so...playtesting needed...

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I forget exactly. Not too rare?
Well, previously there only existed a single two skill admin in the Sector at any given time, and finding this one person when you actually needed them was improbable if not impossible. So hiring early, long before you needed them, and just eating the unassigned salary and hiring bonus years before you could start to begin working on getting a return on that investment wasn't an unreasonable idea. The configurable odds of X-skill admins spawning also didn't work anymore, or something like that? I don't exactly remember, either way so long as I'm no longer tempted to hoard good admins I'll be happy.

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I forget exactly what the cost is. Right now APC is pretty cheap and Phase Anchor (in addition to needing a rework) is more expensive, but we'll see.
Making them cheap is probably the best solution, at least the best one I can think of. Something like Expanded Deck Crew you could easily make standard and just completely remove the mandatory OP tax for dedicated carriers, but a choice between two distinct playstyles is a lot harder to manage that way.

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IIRC I'd tweaked that a while ago.
Excellent.

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I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but it's really for both of these reasons, so if there's sarcasm, I'm not sure it lands :)
Me and sarcasm have a long and storied history of being unable to meet up somewhere sensible, so let's just call that Schroedinger's Sarcasm ;).

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Trust me, it's not!
Speaking as someone who prioritizes campaign QoL (meaning ADF, EO, etc.) over pure combat power I'm sure that -50OP for manual control will sting greatly. Still, I'm sure there's a budget build I can make work.

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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.
I'll echo what others have said and mention that this does indeed sound like a good idea, worth testing at least. Just make sure that good admins aren't an absolute pain to get within a short window of time (the game can't tell when a player is ready to put down colonies, after all) as they are in the current version, otherwise hiring/hoarding good admins early becomes a thing.

And yes, some easy way to keep colonies at size 3 also really needs to be a thing. With everything and the kitchen sink waking up to kill you when you reach size 4 some means of giving yourself time to build up would be very useful.
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SonnaBanana

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 2
« Reply #47 on: July 16, 2021, 04:34:31 AM »

New industry skills are good too.
Love Ballistic Mastery, far more AI-friendly than LRS  :P
You still haven't revealed what T4L does.

I agree with other players on Colony Skills: That the player shouldn't be able to govern anything personally, that any purchasable colony skills should have a wide purview instead of only affecting a single colony.

What if Phase Anchor's effects are inverted: Less TD and more top speed?

Any changes to Shield Shunt?
« Last Edit: July 16, 2021, 05:38:56 AM by SonnaBanana »
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Sutopia

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 2
« Reply #48 on: July 16, 2021, 06:13:50 AM »

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I forget exactly. Not too rare?
Well, previously there only existed a single two skill admin in the Sector at any given time, and finding this one person when you actually needed them was improbable if not impossible. So hiring early, long before you needed them, and just eating the unassigned salary and hiring bonus years before you could start to begin working on getting a return on that investment wasn't an unreasonable idea. The configurable odds of X-skill admins spawning also didn't work anymore, or something like that? I don't exactly remember, either way so long as I'm no longer tempted to hoard good admins I'll be happy.

Totally false. The admin is generated on the fly and it’s about 1 out of 15 freelance admin having two skills. You’re just not checking comm frequently enough.
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Megas

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 2
« Reply #49 on: July 16, 2021, 06:19:40 AM »

And yes, some easy way to keep colonies at size 3 also really needs to be a thing. With everything and the kitchen sink waking up to kill you when you reach size 4 some means of giving yourself time to build up would be very useful.
There should be growth freeze option aside from removing Spaceport until the growth bar declines to an acceptable level before rebuilding it.
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AcaMetis

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 2
« Reply #50 on: July 16, 2021, 07:32:42 AM »

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Totally false. The admin is generated on the fly and it’s about 1 out of 15 freelance admin having two skills. You’re just not checking comm frequently enough.
Could swear that freelance admins were generated at game start and periodically "moved around", effectively, since one would be removed and another generated elsewhere as a replacement, and only if the two skill admin was removed could a new one spawn somewhere. Is it officers that work that way, or is that an older mechanic? I don't think I completely made up that whole idea.

Either way, two skill admins in the current game are too rare. Especially if you need them on short-ish notice.
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Sutopia

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 2
« Reply #51 on: July 16, 2021, 07:39:27 AM »

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Totally false. The admin is generated on the fly and it’s about 1 out of 15 freelance admin having two skills. You’re just not checking comm frequently enough.
Could swear that freelance admins were generated at game start and periodically "moved around", effectively, since one would be removed and another generated elsewhere as a replacement, and only if the two skill admin was removed could a new one spawn somewhere. Is it officers that work that way, or is that an older mechanic? I don't think I completely made up that whole idea.

Either way, two skill admins in the current game are too rare. Especially if you need them on short-ish notice.
Admin skill may change if you load a game saved prior to visiting the planet.
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Hiruma Kai

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 2
« Reply #52 on: July 16, 2021, 07:40:59 AM »

What if Phase Anchor's effects are inverted: Less TD and more top speed?

Wouldn't that favor the assassin style over the brawler style?  Getting into position for less peak performance time sounds good for assassins, given most of their phase time is spent positioning properly.  Having light needlers and lances take 50% more real time to cycle until the next burst sounds like it would hurt the brawler style.

The more I think about it, the more I think an additional speed penalty on top of the of the 1/3rd at high flux sounds like a bit too much stacking penalty.  If I understand it correctly, from the pilot's perspective, a Harbinger with Phase Anchor and 50% or higher hard flux moves at a speed 13.3 (80/3 -> 26.6/2 -> 13.3), which roughly half the speed of an Onslaught for a human pilot.  That's going to feel painful to pilot a destroyer at.  Even reducing it to 25% means speed 20 (26.6*0.75 = 20), although which with 4x time dilation means standard out of phase speed of 80.

The benefits of 4x time dilation relative to 3x are: 25% faster soft flux dissipation, 25% faster weapon cycling, 25% faster ship system cycling, and 25% faster movement speed relative to real time.  Adding a speed reduction eliminates the last advantage, literally turning it into faster gun/system cycling at the cost of player patience while trying to move.

The disadvantages are 25% faster hard flux accumulation, and 25% faster peak performance time tick down.  Say it's a 25% speed penalty from the Anchor mod, so real time speed stays the same.  The hard flux cost per unit distance covered in phase has gone up by 33%.  Which means such a mod makes it more likely you simply get killed when it comes time to run away as your hard flux will be higher than compared to a ship that didn't have that hull mod.

To put it to some hard numbers, a Harbinger with maxed vents (9000 flux capacity, 250 activation, 200 flux/second phase cloak), can stay cloaked for 23.75 seconds in it's own time frame.  At base speed 80, in 12 seconds it can cover 640 distance units (assuming smooth ramp from 0% to 50% speed penalty, going from 1.0 to 0.33).  So in 4 seconds real time, it goes 640 units and is now sitting at 50% hard flux.  On retreat it can cover a further 320 before hard fluxing out.

With anchor, in 12 seconds it can cover 320 distance units, in 3 seconds real time.  Then it's at 50% hard flux, and can back out a grand total of 160 distance units over 12 seconds and then fluxes out.  Reducing the speed penalty to 25%, still puts you at only 480 distance units, in 3 seconds real time, and then at 50% hard flux, 240 distance units until flux out.

Compared to what we currently have, which is cover 960 units on the way in and 960 units on the way out in 8 seconds realtime.  So new phase rules means you can go half as far in phase.  Proposed phase anchor can go one quarter as far in phase as we can now.  Even a 25% penalty phase anchor can go 37.5% the distance we can go now.  Those are certainly non-trivial number changes.  The  change is perhaps warranted, but given how important positioning is to phase ships, I can't see using a hull mod that means the ship can go even less of a distance while phased.  It makes the approach that much more dangerous having to do it out of phase if you want to have any chance of escape later.

Brawlers care about escaping just as much as assassin builds at high flux - they just don't spend time trying to get behind to a weak spot.  Adaptive Phase Coils with it's reduction of the speed penalty is almost always going to be better on a brawler because it means it can still escape if things go south.  Anchor basically means escape is not possible.  Phase ships already have good burst damage with a 3x multiplier.  25% more burst damage on top already good burst damage combined with less distance in phase just doesn't seem like a worthwhile trade to me.  And the benefit goes away if the autofit doesn't include burst weapons.

One possible suggestion is the hull mod simply decrease weapon cycle times while phased by 25%, which eliminates the other phase ships simply wait you out issue and peak performance time changes.  That is still misses the 25% faster soft flux reduction/25% faster ship systems, but on the other hand, you don't have 25% more hard flux generation from your phase cloak (from a real time perspective).  Assassins already spend so much time maneuvering that faster cycle times wouldn't be much of a benefit I should think.
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Megas

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 2
« Reply #53 on: July 16, 2021, 08:14:19 AM »

For a phase ship to be a brawler, it needs to be able to attack without taking hits back (or heal damage taken).  Old cloak with no cooldown was great for that, and current Ziggurat with Phase Mastery is close to that.  Doom can brawl because it can distract the enemy with mines and fire while enemy is distracted.  (Before Doom got mines, it was an expensive and underperforming punching bag.)  Harbinger with combat skills can use QD from medium range to stun the enemy then fire blasters or lances.  (Without skills, Harbinger is better as an easier-to-use assassin Afflictor.)

With old cloak, Afflictor could phase though shots and pump the enemy full of holes with ballistics.  With new cloak, Afflictor is pigeonholed into Reaper or AM Blaster assassin.  Trying to brawl will get it killed.  For Shade, it used to be a ghost tank that can stand off and phase through shots possibly giving it more longevity than Monitor tanking everything with Fortress Shield.  Now, Shade is a poor-man's Afflictor trades offense for PD through its system (poor trade for assassination).

Phase ships are high-tech, which means they generally get into the range of other enemy ships, and if they cannot distract the enemy with motes, mines, or something, then phase ship will take hits and should not brawl.  If it cannot brawl, then assassin build is the only logical choice.

Last release, Doom was fun because it was the only viable brawler phase ship.  Everything else was pigeonholed into an assassin build.  Today, Ziggurat is clearly a brawler, and Combat skills can uplift Harbinger into a brawler.  Frigates are still assassins because they cannot brawl without dying.

Also, AI is terrible at assassination.  It works much better as a brawler.  Phase ships that are capable only as assassins are useful only as playerships, and unless they are overpowered (like Afflictor), then they are useless because they are not strong enough to compete with a battleship or high-end cruiser.

Phase anchor speeding up time shift is bad for brawling.  Endurance is important for brawling too (especially with and against cowardly AI), and faster time shift guts endurance.  If anything, faster time shift would be more useful for assassination.  Assassins tend to use limited ammo weapons or other alpha strikes and spend them before PPT is up, and those weapons tend to have long reload times (AM Blaster, Reapers) and faster time shift helps with that.  Brawlers just want to slug it out with the enemy, possibly with near continuous fire weapons like pulse lasers or many ballistics.
« Last Edit: July 16, 2021, 08:17:37 AM by Megas »
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Alex

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 2
« Reply #54 on: July 16, 2021, 09:32:32 AM »

About skills in general: i m exited! I mean: the last patch was interesting, but now i feel like i want 40 skill points  ;D

:D

About phase ships: may be i m wrong, but i feel that they ll be even more OP now.

Hmm - genuinely not sure what you mean! I'm not seeing how any of these changes would make them "more OP".

Spoiler
About administrators: How about making specialisations? A mean: officers have different behavior (steady, agressive, etc.). Why not make admins different? For example, AI is OP, but it has no emotions. While admin can sometimes make strange decicions, but it may lead to better outcome.

Also i d like to see skills, affecting colonies in some ways, like:
- bonuses to specific industry
- bonus to pop growth
- bonus to combat
- bonus, allowing to deal with ludds/pirates better (like: admin automatically goes to bar, buys a drink to a pirate and sends a fleet to eliminate pirate base)
- bonus, adding extra industry by some high price (not money, but something else... maybe malus to pop growth)
- bonus, decreasing enviroment penalties

Also. Why not add people happyness system in future updates?
- if planet is happy, people from other planets might want to migrate there (maybe even people from different factions, if they will not prevent that). It also will allow to create colonies specially for pop export (i mean: you anyway cant get colony bigger than 7 now).
- your people will be more happy if there is no war with other factions
- admins might have skills to boost happyness
- some planets might have exotic fauna which boost happyness
- miners will have some other ways to enjoy life, not just by medicine
- higher happyness rate if luxury goods are cheap (so, you need to choose: low price and happy people or sad people, but more income)
- etc.
[close]

All possible ideas! We've actually got some ideas for roughly this sort cooking, too :) I just don't want to come up with a bunch of mechanical stuff if it all boils down to "more or less credits at the end of the month"... well, we'll see.

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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.

Yeah, the more I think about this, the more I like it.

I'd suggest, rather, making it so that colonies can't get to size four without an admin.

That sounds really good.


...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.

Yeah, I get that. I mean, you could get Phase Coil Tuning for half that bonus, and Unstable Injector is there, etc, but yeah. That one stings a bit but I don't think there's any good way around that.


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.

I'll just say, if admins don't use skills the player can get, then that opens up some possibilities for what sorts of things those skills could be/represent...



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

It should be, yeah. I still need to double check but I think I fixed that.

And it feels like low tech is getting a lot of subtle buffs from some of these skills.

Indeed :)

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

It does, yeah.

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.

Hmm, there's no one-size-fits all here, or with hullmods in general. It feels like the other concerns with using an Odyssey have more importance than the OP cost, though, maybe? Worth thinking about/keeping an eye on, though.

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

Because "a" stands for "alpha" :)


Phase Anchor seems useless.

... I mean, I literally said in the blog post that it's getting re-worked :)

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.

Just to clarify, the speed reduction *maxes out* at 50% hard flux. At 25% flux, you'd be at -33% speed. But yeah, these things are still quite doable, which is intended.


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)?

It's done when you confirm the changes. Just pressing the reassign button doesn't *do* anything aside from letting you press some buttons.


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.

I feel like what you're suggesting - "marking a hullmod as extra built in" - is basically the same thing I'm doing, as far as keeping track of things. And the part about it being trivial to give ships s-modded ships to players is also already true.

Question: does Polarized Armor "turn off" when a ship is overloaded or is it passive-passive to the point of protecting you a bit during such unfortunate circumstances too? I guess it'd be weird to have a skill 'disabled' in such a way, but it's not exactly completely unprecedented (the no-flux-generate speed boost ended up doing that, IIRC?) so I could see that one go either way.

It doesn't!

(For Helmsmanship, technically it wasn't a change to the skill to make it not apply, but a fix to an oversight in the underlying mechanics!)



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If you really need to know, you can actually tell what skill the enemy officer has when you target it! Anyway, from experience firing a ton of Reapers recently vs things that ALL had elite Damage Control, they're still fine and great and Hammers don't really compare. Just not enough raw damage.
Huh, wasn't expecting that. And how are Reapers still worth it despite getting their damage reduced to 1900, whereas an individual Hammer punches for 1800 and has two shots for the same OP as a single Reaper? Purely firing at armor rather than as a finisher against hull?

Hmm - maybe you didn't catch the part about the skill being changed so this damage-reduction effect only procs at most once every two seconds? Because with that, you fire two Reapers, the first one takes down the armor and also procs the effect, while the second one just deals full damage. Hammers... things get a lot messier trying to use Hammers. It's not just a DPS-on-paper thing, you know?

Hmm...on the surface it sounds like that gives HBI a negative synergy with that skill, but "get the benefit of two guns for the price of one gun" isn't a negative, so...playtesting needed...

I mean, getting 10 OP to spend is generally going to be better than getting 20 flux dissipation (and, what, 200 capacity?), since that's just 3 OP worth of vents/caps. So unless you're maxed on vents and caps and have flux distributor/coil adjunct, HBI is just strictly better than not having it (which isn't even a choice in the first place since it's built-in, so that's a bit of a moot point anyway). And even if flux stats are maxed, chances are you can get more out of the extra OP.


Me and sarcasm have a long and storied history of being unable to meet up somewhere sensible, so let's just call that Schroedinger's Sarcasm ;).

Hah!

Speaking as someone who prioritizes campaign QoL (meaning ADF, EO, etc.) over pure combat power I'm sure that -50OP for manual control will sting greatly. Still, I'm sure there's a budget build I can make work.

Yeah, a budget build with 4 Autopulse Lasers, a Plasma Cannon, and maybe 4 Tyhpoons to round it out... :)


You still haven't revealed what T4L does.

(Sadly, that notation no longer makes much sense. Maybe we can call it, like... T3C. Or just T33.)

That skill is called "Cybernetic Augmentation", but beyong that, :-X

Any changes to Shield Shunt?

Nope.

The more I think about it, the more I think an additional speed penalty on top of the of the 1/3rd at high flux sounds like a bit too much stacking penalty.  If I understand it correctly, from the pilot's perspective, a Harbinger with Phase Anchor and 50% or higher hard flux moves at a speed 13.3 (80/3 -> 26.6/2 -> 13.3), which roughly half the speed of an Onslaught for a human pilot.  That's going to feel painful to pilot a destroyer at.  Even reducing it to 25% means speed 20 (26.6*0.75 = 20), although which with 4x time dilation means standard out of phase speed of 80.

The benefits of 4x time dilation relative to 3x are: 25% faster soft flux dissipation, 25% faster weapon cycling, 25% faster ship system cycling, and 25% faster movement speed relative to real time.  Adding a speed reduction eliminates the last advantage, literally turning it into faster gun/system cycling at the cost of player patience while trying to move.

The disadvantages are 25% faster hard flux accumulation, and 25% faster peak performance time tick down.  Say it's a 25% speed penalty from the Anchor mod, so real time speed stays the same.  The hard flux cost per unit distance covered in phase has gone up by 33%.  Which means such a mod makes it more likely you simply get killed when it comes time to run away as your hard flux will be higher than compared to a ship that didn't have that hull mod.

...

What I'm thinking about is having it reduce the hard flux threshold instead, so that it hits max speed penalty at 25% instead of at 50%. That way you'd have a tougher time getting into an "assassinate" type position, but would have enough room to back off and vent, especially with some support to hide behing. Reducing the phase cloak cooldown could be good here, too, or perhaps just overall reducing the damage taken. And perhaps combining all this with a 5x multiplier. Need to try a bunch of things and see how it all feels, though - that's just assorted ideas at this point, nothing concrete.
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Yunru

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 2
« Reply #55 on: July 16, 2021, 10:12:04 AM »

I always felt the player colony fleet size skill would of benefited from also applying in a similar way to the player's fleet.

AcaMetis

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 2
« Reply #56 on: July 16, 2021, 10:27:16 AM »

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Hmm - maybe you didn't catch the part about the skill being changed so this damage-reduction effect only procs at most once every two seconds? Because with that, you fire two Reapers, the first one takes down the armor and also procs the effect, while the second one just deals full damage. Hammers... things get a lot messier trying to use Hammers. It's not just a DPS-on-paper thing, you know?
I did, but I don't know how I'm supposed to consistently deal a 500+ damage hit at most two seconds before landing a Reaper to get the full damage out of it. Using a second Reaper is only possible if I've got multiple Reapers slotted and is a huge waste of ammo/damage potential if I do besides, to the point where I'd be better off using that same OP to fit Hammers and using them to dance with the damage nerf. A small hammer torpedo slot comes with 2 ammo and a 1 second reload time, so (in theory, decent aim permitting) it can trigger the damage nerf and sneak in a full damage shot by itself, whereas that same OP worth of Reaper either needs support or gambles with hitting the damage nerf and turning into a dud.

I can believe that playtesting shows otherwise, but on paper I'm just not seeing how Reapers aren't knocked down to Hammers in terms of usefulness. To say nothing of every other weapons that are suddenly going to eat a massive damage nerf every two seconds.

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I mean, getting 10 OP to spend is generally going to be better than getting 20 flux dissipation (and, what, 200 capacity?), since that's just 3 OP worth of vents/caps. So unless you're maxed on vents and caps and have flux distributor/coil adjunct, HBI is just strictly better than not having it (which isn't even a choice in the first place since it's built-in, so that's a bit of a moot point anyway). And even if flux stats are maxed, chances are you can get more out of the extra OP.
Yeah, on paper it seems silly that HBI lowers the bonus you get from the skill but in practice you're better off using that OP elsewhere anyway. Unless someone manages to create a physical incarnation of the Platonic Ideal of all meme builds, I suppose. There's a reason I wouldn't call myself a master theorycrafter.

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I'll just say, if admins don't use skills the player can get, then that opens up some possibilities for what sorts of things those skills could be/represent...
Random thought: Faction specific(/inspired?) colony skills? Like a Luddic Church admin might have something farming/handcrafting related, whereas a Tri-Tachyon admin might boost Tech Mining/AI Core usage/etc.? Don't know if admin skills should get that specific, but there might be a decent idea in there.
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Mordodrukow

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 2
« Reply #57 on: July 16, 2021, 10:32:05 AM »

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Hmm - genuinely not sure what you mean! I'm not seeing how any of these changes would make them "more OP".
Same ability and cloak CD, more HP and armor. You think that speed limit after 50% flux will do the thing, but under 50% there is no difference. And then you allow to install mod for 75% cap. What could go wrong?

Possible solutions:
- ability and cloak CD are the same, as i said
- progressive speed limit. May be cut the speed by 33% at 25% flux and another 33% at 50%. Hull mod increases both caps by 25 (50% and 75% respectively)
- reasonably high cost of hull mod

Just test things against phase fleet and keep in mind that you can see the situation as "ok" while a lot of people dont want to go refit entire fleet just to fight some submarines.

Fighting Harbinger which can turn your shield off 3 times per second is special "joy" indeed. Thats why i suggest to combine the cooldowns.

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I just don't want to come up with a bunch of mechanical stuff if it all boils down to "more or less credits at the end of the month"...
I agree. I d like to see more QoL stuff and, may be, some more ways to attack other factions from different "angles". Culture victory by making every citizen happy? I ll take 2! =)
« Last Edit: July 16, 2021, 10:34:53 AM by Mordodrukow »
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ubuntufreakdragon

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 2
« Reply #58 on: July 16, 2021, 10:35:47 AM »

Phase anchor sound really weird to me. It makes phase ship impossible to escape and tick down PPT much faster. It sounds like ... uh... bad life decisions.
The main purpose of this hullmod is for brawling phase ships right?
How about let a phase ship vent hard flux prior to soft flux when unphased? (Is it possible?)

Hah! Hmm, that's an interesting idea, actually. It's not currently possible but it's *likely* doable without too much trouble - I'll see how my threshold-altering idea goes, then maybe try this too, if needed. I mean, reducing the "lowest speed" threshold to 25% hard flux should hopefully hit some of the same goals - enough mobility to get away if you're part of a battle line.
There is another skill that could really use this mechanic, the 10% hardflux dissipation while shields are up hardly do anything, as you a normally using your guns while your shields are up, so you are only venting softflux anyway.

I don't get the point of an super expensive neural link hullmod for radiants, just S-Mod it.

why remove the third S-Mod anyway on skill removal, just have the cheapest cost its normal op, done.
if you get to over spend op just add a penalty of both a cap and a vent per op, so overspending 1 op costs 2 op worth of flux stats.

I had the idea of a virtual inspired offices skill, you can with a skill inspire an officer to one choosable (like for AI Cores) extra skill, if the office levels this skill is more likely to be offered, if you respec you inspiration just the inspired skill goes away.

All colony skills should be gone.
You should finally be able to hire as much admins as you wish/need.

About the Ziggurat it's quite useless for typical phase ship tasks for it being recognizable, the main point of phase heavy fleets is to sneak in and do something nasty, but this ship gives away your identity.

And I think the AM-blaster should become medium and get some ammo-reg.
There are too many unconventional uses for AM-Torpedos on ships that have small energies with point defence in mind.

Shield shunt should get negative op costs.
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Sutopia

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Re: Skill Changes, Part 2
« Reply #59 on: July 16, 2021, 10:40:47 AM »

Hmmmmm
Cybernetic Augmentation... is not an officer skill

I have a few guesses

1. Increase the upper limit of coordinated maneuvers and EW
(Same effect as 0.91 Command Control level 3)

2. Allow officer elite skill reassignment and pick any personality (shown in Twitter)

3. Increase auto-fire accuracy across the board (including fighters)

4. Increase weapon hit strength during armor damage calculation

These are all just old skills but missing in latest (except for #2.)
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Since all my mods have poor reputation, I deem my efforts unworthy thus no more updates will be made.
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