I appreciate all the feedback here! Going to respond where I can; if I don't respond to your point specifically, my apologies and rest assured I've definitely seen it.
I agree that dedicated carrier skills are not a good idea. My issue is that it rarely feels worth having an officered carrier because they don't really leverage skills very well IMO, and the officers would just do more on a combat ship. Unofficered carriers however feel really weak/squishy like every unofficered ship, so I end up in a place where I just don't want to use carriers. It would be nice if there were carrier specific buffs built into existing skills similar to how phase skills were reworked, so that I could build a good carrier officer. Something like adding bomber damage boosts to missile spec, fighter damage buffs to some existing damage skills, fighter survivability buffs to existing survivability skills etc.
Another issue with this is that fighters as they are can very easily focus fire on a single target, and relatively minor performance increases get *way* out of hand when multiplied like this, in a way that ship-specific buffs simply don't. It's easier to keep it under control with a few fleetwide skills that give a large bonus when there's not too many carriers in the fleet; this *works*, and per-ship fighter boosts are trouble.
As for carrier-officer-skills, hmm. I do understand what you mean, though I wonder if it's a question of perception or actual reality. If you've got 8 officers (or even 10), there's a solid chance that your "first line" - all you can deploy to start a fight - consists only of ships with officers. In that case, the presence of officers is not the limiting factor, the DP cost of the ship is - so you're better off putting an officer on a carrier, even for a relatively smaller boost, just to strengthen your initial and critical deployment.
And it does feel like a lot of the skills have reasonable applicability to carriers - Helmsmanship, Systems Expertise (depending), Point Defense (also depending), Missile Spec (some carriers have heavy missile armaments), Field Modulation, Ballistic Mastery (ok, a bit of a stretch, but the Heron would benefit a good bit from that one), Gunnery Implants (for range of standoff weapons, and the EW bonus). Combat Endurance (currently Reliability Engineering) is probably the biggest one since it actually buffs fighters directly by bumping up their CR.
I should try to find some time to playtest this specifically. It *feels* like a combination of these would boost a carrier more than it sounds like it would, but I'm not fully certain. But, after all, a combat ship can be made much stronger without any skills that directly boost its offense, so the same seems like it might hold for carriers - with, of course, the crucial difference that a dedicated carrier is less likely to need defensive skills, but... well. It seems worth looking at.
Carrier skills, there aren't that many interesting ships to pilot - Astral, Legion, Heron.
To me this feels like confirmation that Converted Hangers is in need of a buff, TBH. I'd like to use it, but I've yet to find a ship where the OP cost is worth the investment.
Hmm, I don't think that's related; I wouldn't expect one fighter bay to be something you build skills around.
Now if RCE has a significant special ability, like its explosions partially ignoring shields
It kind of does, though! By wrapping around the target. That gives me an idea; perhaps making the additional explosions progressively stronger could be good - both to emphasize the short-range preference for this weapon, and to improve its "going around shields" aspect.
I guess since it's my discord post being quoted I'll pitch in that I actually do like the Reality Disruptor a lot, but I don't think I've ever seen anyone else praise it ever. I guess most people strongly disagree with the thought of paying premium OP for support weapons, however specialized (I imagine the same line of thinking is part of what leads people to dismiss the Proximity Charge Launcher).
Anyways, despite me liking it lots, I guess it could use some buffs to make it more attractive to use - any combination of lower OP, slightly higher range, perhaps even shield piercing arcs so it has non-zero utility against 360 degree shields.
Ah, that tracks. I can see reducing the OP cost some, for example.
I feel like bumping the Hyperion up to 20 DP hurts the non-SO variant excessively, which feels acceptable at its current cost. An SO-specific nerf like giving Phase Teleporter a cooldown/charges would be far more preferable, even if it'd look less awesome for the gifs :p
(also would make SO Hyperions less annoying to fight, which a DP shift doesn't do, if that's a consideration)
This is a really, really good idea - I'm just about sold in adding charges to the teleporter and changing the supply cost back to 15.
Also I guess the elephant in the room when it comes to weapon balance is still Sabots; the Pods in particular are still far and away the best medium missile (and probably best non-Omega weapon in general). Penny for your thoughts on its current state? I still find suggested changes like removing the arcing effect or the EMP effect entirely to be pertinent.
I'm not sure how excessively good they actually are if you don't consider the Falcon (P). Which, to be fair, *is* a ship, and it's a troublesome one balance-wise, but it's also fun. Still, it's definitely not a ship on whose existence I'd want to base any evauluation of missile effectiveness. Beyond that, Sabots still only do mostly temporary damage, and e.g. removing the EMP component would make it possible to make firing them mostly a waste by just turning shields off.
Just to jump in about sabots, they are still the best missile, and it's been said a million times, the situation is damned if you shield damned if you don't. So I agree with rubi, nerf it's effectiveness against armor/hull. If you want a good anti shield missile, then it also shouldn't be great against not-shields
Right - I have a feeling that if they *don't* have some impact in either case, they might swing too far the other way. ([size=8]Plus, if we're being honest, I just like the EMP effect on 'em.[/size])
Edit: also I forgot to mention, but I see that Ordnance Expertise got its effect slashed in half. Was it really excessive in testing? The Elite effect especially seems extremely underwhelming, probably amounting to less than 2000 additional capacity on even an Onslaught.
Ah, that's an error in the notes - I think I'd typed them out before the effect got doubled by the time I'd written the blog post. It's +2/+20.
Visually, though, I'd be happier if installing two of them would have the rifts arc in opposite directions around the target, rather than both going in the same direction.
Let me make a note about that.
No, the only other Omega weapon that I think needs a buff is the Rift Beam - there are some setups where you can get it to actually perform its job as a point-defense weapon... but there aren't very many of them, it doesn't fill any roles other than point-defense, and even as point-defense you're probably better off with a regular Heavy Burst Laser. At a minimum I'd suggest increasing its range to somewhere around 600-800; make it capable of doing its job without needing to be in a turret slot right at the very front edge of the ship it's mounted on.
Hmm, a bit of a range increase might not be a bad idea, yeah.
Giving them some benefit from the skills of the carrier's captain makes as much sense as having a single "Field Modulation" skill that provides benefits to both shields and phase cloaks ...
The key difference being that it's impossible to make use of both shields and phase cloak bonuses (some kind of mod-ship excepted, perhaps).
So, the post!
My complaint is about the value of having carriers vs. just getting more combat ships. They're already seen as underperforming right now, and officers not being worth putting on them means they'll fall off even harder than now. Also it makes carriers seem like they're just less important. Second-class. Filler. Those kind of adjectives.
"Seen as underperforming" I think is a key point. I think they're in a pretty good place power-wise; to me the main question here is of "feel" in that it would feel pretty nice to have an officer'ed carrier feel like it's part of your core force. On the other hand, having
unofficered carriers make better support ships - since they lose less from not having an officer - is also a reasonable niche. And fundamentally, carriers - especially dedicated carriers - are support ships.
I don't think more fighter-specific skills are really desirable, for the same reason that the phase and shield skills were merged. But it'd be nice if they got a partial benefit from the existing combat skills.
In the scenario where 'normal' combat skills also benefit fighters, I don't think the notion that players would feel compelled to use fleet or battle carriers checks out. Consider: when a skill gives bonuses for both ballistic and energy weapons, we don't say the player feels compelled to use midline ships. The carriers would be trading off combat ship traits (guns, but also things like making use of its personal armor, shields and speed) that benefit from skills, for fighters that benefit from the same skills.
Players might feel compelled to use midline ships if energy mounts were both uncommon and offered way more power per ordnance point, though. Which is what we've got with carriers. Though, it's a question of how the ships in question are balanced. Are they balanced around having the fighters be boosted, or baseline? If it's the former, then what you're saying makes sense, but it runs into the problems I mentioned earlier with fighters being boosted and how that stacks up too quickly. (Also, if you haven't read it, please see my point earlier in this post about fleetwide skills and carriers!)
So I guess to sum up my thoughts on carriers (which, sigh, it feels like I forget some aspect of it every time it comes up, and have to re-remember over the course of a few posts): fleetwides with max effect at a low number of bays seem like a *much* better way of boosting fighters because of how fighters work with regard to force concentration. In fact, it seems like the only safe way of doing it. The other stuff, while still a consideration, isn't actually as much of one as this.
The only thing I had to presume was perfect accuracy (like the HVD) but the rest of the stats are known. I really like the sound of the triple shot: it sounds like a true cannon.
It's not perfect accuracy, but it's *very* good. And, yeah! That was actually one of the main goals, to make it sound/feel like an high-impact weapon, rather than an inaccurate long-range plinker. I feel like it lost that feel that it had originally, along the way. (And, yeah, it can get accurate with Gunnery Implants, but then it also gets into "oppressive long-range HE weapon" territory. Which is in general why GI's recoil bonus got half of it moved onto Armored Weapon Mounts, to help keep recoil a more relevant balancing stat for weapons...)
I suggest replacing Assault Package with 2 hullmods: one super-buffs flux capacity, the other super-buffs hull. In exchange they neuter all of the ship's logistics stats and have a high enough OP cost that most civilian ships can't fit both.
I don't think I'd want to reduce their logistics support capacity! The ideal for me is to feel like you can use your logistics train in combat under certain conditions, not repurpose it from its main role entirely.
First, Alex this update looks amazing and almost a major update in it’s own right.
The skill rework looks *mwah* magnificent, the less variable weapons load out for all ships will be great if it works like it did for redacted.
The new low tech ship and rugged constructed hullmod is exactly what low tech frigates have been missing.
Max level officer retraining, cheaper cargo pod stabilisation, patrol distractions, defend assignments, thumper burst changes, HSA rework are all awesome and amazing and aren’t the only small but great changes so thank you.
Thank you!
Question, why Scarab OP reduced?
It felt a little too strong to me. I don't think it's a major change; we're talking -50 flux dissipation - which, ok, it matters, but its base dissipation is so high that it's not going to feel that nearly as much as most frigates.
With carriers, I actually think how they are is pretty good. They’re frankly, boring to use, they can be fun to watch but I don’t think personal skills are necessary for that. I suspect why some people really want them is because they used to be really strong and they have fundamental advantages over weapons with much longer ranges and don’t produce flux or have limited missiles.
Not really having any reason to add officers to them is a bit of a problem though. A possible idea is a officer only skill that gives the fleet wide skill effects onto just their ship and remove that ship’s fighter bays from the fleet wide skill count. That will also help if we just want 1 carrier or all carriers. Which could actually be fine if the reduce weapon variability means more consistent point defence. Then 4 other skills can then be filled by the likes of system expertise, helmsmanship and ballistic mastery.
Otherwise I think if someone wants to focus on fighters that may be better suited for mods.
Now that gives me an idea, hmmmmm! As I mentioned earlier, fleetwide fighter bonuses seem like the only way to go for fighters. But what if *those* were, say, doubled by the presence of an officer on the ship? That'd certainly make you feel like putting an officer on a carrier was worthwhile, without getting into all the problems of personal skills boosting them. Really liking this, actually! Would have to tweak the specific skill numbers some, of course.
Maybe im off base here but i have strong opinions on this:
On the Hull Restoration skill and similar effects: To me, this just seems way too stacked in terms of usefulness, it basically nullifies ship losses, removes d mods on obtained ships and even gives you a significant CR boost. With how easy it is to also scoop up salvageable ships thanks to story points, overall i feel like its too easy and cheap to obtain and repair ships compared to 0.91 which was the polar opposite.
As far as I am concerned, this is easy: the cost of Hull Restoration is not getting the skills that actually improve your fleet's performance. In a choice between, say, Automated Ships and Hull Restoration, I will definitely go with Automated Ships.
That's part of it! But also, it would enable you to play in a way that generates more ship losses, which should open up some qualitatively different strategies.
That said, maybe it'll end up being too strong; I guess we'll see. I definitely want to have the top-tier skills be very high-impact and playstyle-changing/defining, though!
Alex, where is my perfect play AI?
(That'd be an ironic way to ruin the game...)
They interesting thing would be to expand the list. Have administrators with specific abilities, like boosted volatiles production specifically, or something that reduces specific penalties, or similar. Basically, just more specific, so you're trying to find the right administrator for each of your worlds.
Thinking along vaguely similar lines, here.
Auxiliary Support: removed
Boooooooo.
Fair enough
Maybe the assault/escort package could be preserved to change their role to an emergency option by increasing deployment cost. For me civilian ships never really made sense as part of my regular combat force. But I have sometimes resorted to deploying them when I'm about to lose a fight, as distractions. That was actually fun, it felt like a "really giving it my all" sort of thing. Hullmods that support and expand that would be great. Maybe they increase deployment cost so much you can only deploy a civ ships once, in an emergency, but then in acts like an SO ship.
Hmm - I'm not sure that this is a case that it works to design something like this around. If a battle's gone so far off the rails that you're about to bring in civilians... chances are this isn't a case you've specifically outfitted them for, at the expense of logistics hullmods, right?
Radical idea: Turn all the dedicated logistics ships into carriers and greatly expand cargo for current carriers that are expected to spend most OP on good fighters and deck crew. Currently, most carriers feel like dedicated logistics/civilian ships that haul fighters instead of cargo.
Probably a bit too radical! But, points for outside-the-box thinking.
While we're on the same step here what does bar_events.csv's tags imply? Can I enter in faction id to make them require certain faction id just like the person_missions.csv?
Same as person_missions. I think you're mostly on point about how these work, but a detailed discussion feels like a bit much for this thread. Would you mind reposting it in Modding? Someone else might be able to help out with that, too, but I'll see if I can find the time to break it down at some point.
A lot of this (possibly all?), you can answer by opening up PersonMissionSpec in an IDE and then seeing where the getters for the various properties are used.