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Author Topic: Every ship requires officer  (Read 3297 times)

Sutopia

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Re: Every ship requires officer
« Reply #15 on: July 30, 2021, 01:55:05 PM »

Stray thought:
Remove the officer amount limit altogether but officers now request for additional commodities as payment. For example, destroyer or above will ask for domestic goods; cruiser or above will ask for luxury goods; Capitals ask for recreational drugs.
Failing to deliver the commodity requirements reduces maximum combat readiness by 10%/20%/30%.

Officer management skill (or whichever that used to +2 to officer limit) will be able to cut the required commodities by half, and the penalty of missing requirements by half.
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6chad.noirlee9

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Re: Every ship requires officer
« Reply #16 on: July 30, 2021, 02:10:05 PM »

Stray thought:
Remove the officer amount limit altogether but officers now request for additional commodities as payment. For example, destroyer or above will ask for domestic goods; cruiser or above will ask for luxury goods; Capitals ask for recreational drugs.
Failing to deliver the commodity requirements reduces maximum combat readiness by 10%/20%/30%.

Officer management skill (or whichever that used to +2 to officer limit) will be able to cut the required commodities by half, and the penalty of missing requirements by half.
[/quote


i think this is a great idea
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edit: edit: maybe were just falling with style LOL.  make a bubble, make the space in front of it smaller and just fall forward

intrinsic_parity

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Re: Every ship requires officer
« Reply #17 on: July 30, 2021, 02:33:47 PM »

Stray thought:
Remove the officer amount limit altogether but officers now request for additional commodities as payment. For example, destroyer or above will ask for domestic goods; cruiser or above will ask for luxury goods; Capitals ask for recreational drugs.
Failing to deliver the commodity requirements reduces maximum combat readiness by 10%/20%/30%.

Officer management skill (or whichever that used to +2 to officer limit) will be able to cut the required commodities by half, and the penalty of missing requirements by half.
This would not be good IMO. It just creates annoying mandatory but trivial fetch quests in exchange for combat power. The question just becomes how much annoyance/grind are you willing to put up with to become stronger, which is really bad gameplay IMO. That's the complete opposite of the direction I want the game to go. If too many officers is too strong, then there should be explicit limits in some fashion.
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Sutopia

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Re: Every ship requires officer
« Reply #18 on: July 30, 2021, 02:56:07 PM »

Stray thought:
Remove the officer amount limit altogether but officers now request for additional commodities as payment. For example, destroyer or above will ask for domestic goods; cruiser or above will ask for luxury goods; Capitals ask for recreational drugs.
Failing to deliver the commodity requirements reduces maximum combat readiness by 10%/20%/30%.

Officer management skill (or whichever that used to +2 to officer limit) will be able to cut the required commodities by half, and the penalty of missing requirements by half.
This would not be good IMO. It just creates annoying mandatory but trivial fetch quests in exchange for combat power. The question just becomes how much annoyance/grind are you willing to put up with to become stronger, which is really bad gameplay IMO. That's the complete opposite of the direction I want the game to go. If too many officers is too strong, then there should be explicit limits in some fashion.

My og thought was raising the monthly payroll according to the ship they’re commanding but money takes no cargo space and it doesn’t matter when player has infinite money while hurting early game big times.

I don’t see what grind is needed. You’re already bringing heavy machinery and maybe volatile and metal plates and rare metal tubes so I wouldn’t feel much of a hassle to add another three. They’re all products of light industry and shouldn’t be hard to come by.

I am generally against a arbitrary limit on officer count. Currently, it’s 8-10 to distribute among 160-240 DP, which is 16-30 DP per officer, giving cruiser spam or few cap with frigs being the most “optimal” composition of fleet. A lower officer limit simply would encourage more capitals. The point is, people will always try to fill every DP with officered ship or maximum officer level per DP (as you suggested) to max out fleet strength.

A non-officered ship is nothing but cannon fodder. Maybe that will change with the Support Doctrine but ironically it’s the last tier of Leadership instead of Industry, which probably means you’re still able to field a lot of officered ship, considering the removal of wrap-around mechanism.
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Thaago

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Re: Every ship requires officer
« Reply #19 on: July 30, 2021, 04:33:01 PM »

Certain non-officered ships/builds can be quite effective now and I suspect they will be even better with Support Doctrine as you mentioned. Pretty much any carrier, missile ship, skirmishing frigate, or long ranged striker can be effective as an officerless ship: obviously less powerful than with an officer, but still useful and survivable. Brawlers though really do require officers for more than anti-pirate work: the defensive buffs officers provide are huge.
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: Every ship requires officer
« Reply #20 on: July 30, 2021, 06:30:48 PM »

My og thought was raising the monthly payroll according to the ship they’re commanding but money takes no cargo space and it doesn’t matter when player has infinite money while hurting early game big times.

I don’t see what grind is needed. You’re already bringing heavy machinery and maybe volatile and metal plates and rare metal tubes so I wouldn’t feel much of a hassle to add another three. They’re all products of light industry and shouldn’t be hard to come by.

I am generally against a arbitrary limit on officer count. Currently, it’s 8-10 to distribute among 160-240 DP, which is 16-30 DP per officer, giving cruiser spam or few cap with frigs being the most “optimal” composition of fleet. A lower officer limit simply would encourage more capitals. The point is, people will always try to fill every DP with officered ship or maximum officer level per DP (as you suggested) to max out fleet strength.

A non-officered ship is nothing but cannon fodder. Maybe that will change with the Support Doctrine but ironically it’s the last tier of Leadership instead of Industry, which probably means you’re still able to field a lot of officered ship, considering the removal of wrap-around mechanism.
The grind would be looking for all the required resources. It can already be hard to find enough supplies and fuel for a large fleet, when those are available on every planet. Having to search around markets every month to meet your quota for a bunch of random resources would be a major annoyance. If you could trivially find enough resources for a full fleet of officers, then the suggestion is equivalent to removing the officer cap and increasing officer salaries, but with extra steps. To me, it's like having to clear out pirate bases once every few months: it takes you away from what you really want to do, but isn't interesting or challenging.

If the goal is just to have fully leveled officers in every ship, then do that. Resource fetching is not interesting IMO.

Unfortunately, the new battle size mechanics don't work well with unlimited officers in every ship though. That would have the opposite effect of over-incentivizing small ships to maximize the number of officers on the field (and thus the amount of DP available). That's the issue behind why remnant fleets with unlimited officers are so annoying, and the player would certainly want to match officer counts to deal with them if that were possible.

I'm not against having officers in every ship, but the all the mechanics and skills that interact with officers need to be balanced around it. It would probably require redesigning the DP mechanics that just got redesigned.

I think having certain ships feel a bit special and more powerful than the average ships is a good thing too. Maybe something like removing the officer cap, but reducing the max level to 2 or 3, and then having special events or missions that can let you get an extra level on one officer (and also the officer cryo-pods with high level officers that you can already find). That way you end up with a few stronger officers and bunch of low levels officers to fill out the rest of your fleet.
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Sutopia

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Re: Every ship requires officer
« Reply #21 on: July 30, 2021, 06:58:34 PM »

My og thought was raising the monthly payroll according to the ship they’re commanding but money takes no cargo space and it doesn’t matter when player has infinite money while hurting early game big times.

I don’t see what grind is needed. You’re already bringing heavy machinery and maybe volatile and metal plates and rare metal tubes so I wouldn’t feel much of a hassle to add another three. They’re all products of light industry and shouldn’t be hard to come by.

I am generally against a arbitrary limit on officer count. Currently, it’s 8-10 to distribute among 160-240 DP, which is 16-30 DP per officer, giving cruiser spam or few cap with frigs being the most “optimal” composition of fleet. A lower officer limit simply would encourage more capitals. The point is, people will always try to fill every DP with officered ship or maximum officer level per DP (as you suggested) to max out fleet strength.

A non-officered ship is nothing but cannon fodder. Maybe that will change with the Support Doctrine but ironically it’s the last tier of Leadership instead of Industry, which probably means you’re still able to field a lot of officered ship, considering the removal of wrap-around mechanism.
The grind would be looking for all the required resources. It can already be hard to find enough supplies and fuel for a large fleet, when those are available on every planet. Having to search around markets every month to meet your quota for a bunch of random resources would be a major annoyance. If you could trivially find enough resources for a full fleet of officers, then the suggestion is equivalent to removing the officer cap and increasing officer salaries, but with extra steps. To me, it's like having to clear out pirate bases once every few months: it takes you away from what you really want to do, but isn't interesting or challenging.

If the goal is just to have fully leveled officers in every ship, then do that. Resource fetching is not interesting IMO.

Unfortunately, the new battle size mechanics don't work well with unlimited officers in every ship though. That would have the opposite effect of over-incentivizing small ships to maximize the number of officers on the field (and thus the amount of DP available). That's the issue behind why remnant fleets with unlimited officers are so annoying, and the player would certainly want to match officer counts to deal with them if that were possible.

I'm not against having officers in every ship, but the all the mechanics and skills that interact with officers need to be balanced around it. It would probably require redesigning the DP mechanics that just got redesigned.

I think having certain ships feel a bit special and more powerful than the average ships is a good thing too. Maybe something like removing the officer cap, but reducing the max level to 2 or 3, and then having special events or missions that can let you get an extra level on one officer (and also the officer cryo-pods with high level officers that you can already find). That way you end up with a few stronger officers and bunch of low levels officers to fill out the rest of your fleet.

I really like that idea!

In fact, I think player level can be the same way.
Starting at a low level cap and only have access to combat tree, then gain access to new skills and new level caps as some event / storyline progresses.
That would give the feel of progression and more immersion to the world, which may also justify why officers don't have as many levels as you do (because they haven't been through all those)
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Morrokain

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Re: Every ship requires officer
« Reply #22 on: July 30, 2021, 07:07:09 PM »

Maybe I'm missing something that was said, but I'm kind of confused at the moment as to what the gameplay benefits are that this suggestion would bring to the table. From a lore perspective ok it makes sense, sure, but how does this make the game better outside of that?

My immediate concern unless officers were reworked is that it would incentivize capital ships and cruisers way too much. If you can only actually deploy ten ships, then the odds are they will be big ones. That would be the case regardless of the fact that NPC fleets were reduced in size as well.

I feel like this would further restrict gameplay without a tangible benefit atm. I'm not saying the idea is bad, I'm just not connecting the design dots as to why this would be an important change to spend time on. It seems like a hard limit without any payoff.

Thoughts? Counterpoints?
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Histidine

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Re: Every ship requires officer
« Reply #23 on: July 31, 2021, 06:22:04 PM »

I'd prefer to make unofficered ships more useful rather than ban them outright.

I'd add that "no ships without officers" rule for the AI requires every enemy ship to have an officer, which has some serious gameplay implications for enemy fleet size, composition and overall strength that would need to be thought out.
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: Every ship requires officer
« Reply #24 on: July 31, 2021, 11:17:41 PM »

I think the gameplay motivation (for me anyway) is that there is a really big power discrepancy between officered and unofficered ships atm, and it makes unofficered ships feel like fodder/makes a lot of combats kinda trivial/boring.

IMO, requiring officers on every ship would not work without eliminating the officer cap so you could have as many officers as you need for any fleet composition. The idea being that there are no such things as unofficered ships, just ships with weaker officers. Naturally you would need a way to avoid having every ship stacked with 6+ skill officers, so I suggested having a cap on officer skills (i.e. 50 total skills for the fleet that can be distributed among any number of officers up to a maximum number of skills/officer), or having a much lower baseline cap on officers skills (2-3 skills max per officer) and then have a few special ways to get higher level officers.

In any case, I think the desired outcome should be that ships are on a more even playing field, while some still have a clear advantage due to superior officers.

It could possibly ruin the entire DP system that was just implemented, but maybe having DP based on the number of officer skills could be an alternative. It's definitely not a suggestion that could be thrown in without extensive balancing.
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Sutopia

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Re: Every ship requires officer
« Reply #25 on: August 01, 2021, 06:36:07 AM »

I think the gameplay motivation (for me anyway) is that there is a really big power discrepancy between officered and unofficered ships atm, and it makes unofficered ships feel like fodder/makes a lot of combats kinda trivial/boring.

IMO, requiring officers on every ship would not work without eliminating the officer cap so you could have as many officers as you need for any fleet composition. The idea being that there are no such things as unofficered ships, just ships with weaker officers. Naturally you would need a way to avoid having every ship stacked with 6+ skill officers, so I suggested having a cap on officer skills (i.e. 50 total skills for the fleet that can be distributed among any number of officers up to a maximum number of skills/officer), or having a much lower baseline cap on officers skills (2-3 skills max per officer) and then have a few special ways to get higher level officers.

In any case, I think the desired outcome should be that ships are on a more even playing field, while some still have a clear advantage due to superior officers.

It could possibly ruin the entire DP system that was just implemented, but maybe having DP based on the number of officer skills could be an alternative. It's definitely not a suggestion that could be thrown in without extensive balancing.

Doesn’t support doctrine do exactly the second case you’re talking about? It effectively gives every ship a level 3 officer.
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: Every ship requires officer
« Reply #26 on: August 01, 2021, 08:39:58 AM »

Doesn’t support doctrine do exactly the second case you’re talking about? It effectively gives every ship a level 3 officer.
Kind of. It requires investing lots of skill points and you don't get to the pick the skills, but you also don't need to find or pay the officers. It's definitely a similar concept though. Maybe enough to solve the issues raised in the thread.
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Morrokain

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Re: Every ship requires officer
« Reply #27 on: August 01, 2021, 12:55:19 PM »

I was thinking, what about hard limiting the number of total elite skills that a fleet can have? Story points are already kind of a limit, true, but a hard limit could allow NPC fleets to have their officer count and level toned down a bit. That would inherently give a boost to non-officered ships.

Then slightly reduce the number officers that the player can get. It wouldn't even have to necessarily be the fleet itself but just what can be deployed at once.

It might also improve replay-ability by a lot.
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Sutopia

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Re: Every ship requires officer
« Reply #28 on: August 01, 2021, 01:08:46 PM »

I was thinking, what about hard limiting the number of total elite skills that a fleet can have? Story points are already kind of a limit, true, but a hard limit could allow NPC fleets to have their officer count and level toned down a bit. That would inherently give a boost to non-officered ships.

Then slightly reduce the number officers that the player can get. It wouldn't even have to necessarily be the fleet itself but just what can be deployed at once.

It might also improve replay-ability by a lot.
That would only nerf the Remnant fleets and it was intended to let them have every skill elite.
On top of that, most of the benefits come from the base effect, so it’s not going to be effective if at all.
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Morrokain

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Re: Every ship requires officer
« Reply #29 on: August 01, 2021, 02:15:36 PM »

That would only nerf the Remnant fleets and it was intended to let them have every skill elite.
On top of that, most of the benefits come from the base effect, so it’s not going to be effective if at all.

Even after the rework? I thought elites were supposed to be relatively better now.
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