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[rabbistern]

It seems to me that the solution here is to change how S-mods work.  Instead of making them free, they improve what the mod does.  Hardened Shields for example, as an S mod, still costs normal OP but might grant a slight decrease in flux per damage over the normal, or maybe just extend the shields a little bit.

This would definitely be the most optimal solution IMO, as it would both maintain the hullmod power balance by op, and provide reasonable hyperspecializations and boosts in what you're looking for, without having to cut into other factors balanced by OP such as weapons etc.
however im afraid most wouldn't like that, as since the "character tax" OE3 is gone, all ships feel op-starved, and story points saving OP in hullmods is supposed to offset this. perhaps a flat 1/3/5/7 or so point reduction (or 10-20% depending on whether the boni are always of equal power level, or downscaled according to op saved like in the linked mod) when built in + custom specialization boni based on hullmod could appease most S-mod connoisseurs without alex needing to bring all hull mods to the same powerlevel
 

Spoiler

off topic, but I am convinced thatheavy armor actually needs a significant rework due to shots never doing less than 15% of their damage, right now it's purely armor hp and doesn't add any more extra resisual armor to lowtech due to the hardcap on reduction

[close]

[Megas]

however im afraid most wouldn't like that, as since the "character tax" OE3 is gone, all ships feel op-starved, and story points saving OP in hullmods is supposed to offset this.

Yes.  I think most if not all ships are OP-starved without Loadout Design 3 (and some are starved even with LD3).  One s-mod is like LD3.

I would rather have SP improve the ship directly by increasing max OP (by 5/10/15/25 per SP), so that hullmod cost does not matter, instead of s-mods on the ship.

[Lucax]

I would rather have SP improve the ship directly by increasing max OP (by 5/10/15/25 per SP), so that hullmod cost does not matter, instead of s-mods on the ship.

I was thinking the exact same thing, almost word for word and numbers too. Though Alex might surprise us with a new mechanic that elegantly solves this design problem and several other at once, as he has done before.

[SCC]

off topic, but I am convinced thatheavy armor actually needs a significant rework due to shots never doing less than 15% of their damage, right now it's purely armor hp and doesn't add any more extra resisual armor to lowtech due to the hardcap on reduction

Heavy Armour has bigger issues of being really expensive and having the manoeuvrability penalty. Being "flat HP" (against kinetics maybe, but against stronger HE and energy damage it's hard to hit the cap) is not really an issue, but simply the mechanic works. Same for residual armour; for some of the weaker hit strength weapons even unbuffed armour is enough to hit the armour damage reduction cap. But for, say, 50 hit strength,  you would need over 5600 base armour to hit the 15% cap, and 50 hit strength weapons are considered poor for dealing with hull and armour anyway.

[JUDGE! slowpersun]

I would rather have SP improve the ship directly by increasing max OP (by 5/10/15/25 per SP), so that hullmod cost does not matter, instead of s-mods on the ship.

This seems reasonable.  Likely controversial, but reasonable.

[Alex]

It seems to me that the solution here is to change how S-mods work.  Instead of making them free, they improve what the mod does.  Hardened Shields for example, as an S mod, still costs normal OP but might grant a slight decrease in flux per damage over the normal, or maybe just extend the shields a little bit.

I'll just say two things here!

1) I don't think that "you generally only build in the most expensive hullmods, and they tend to be the same couple of hullmods" is particularly a *problem". It might be more interesting if this wasn't the case, but it's also not actually a negative that it currently is.

2) I really, really, like this idea, whether or not that'd be coupled with also making the mods free or not.

[intrinsic_parity]

If s-mods became hullmod+ (I like the idea in concept), then ships would need a base OP increase IMO. Right now s-mods are basically ordinance expertise from last patch, and without that, ships will be very tight on OP.

Honestly, I think I prefer that solution. Having ships be balanced around their base OP rather than trying to balance around an unknown number of extra OP from s-mods seems much easier, and the hullmod+ concept seems like it could encourage a lot more s-mod diversity and cool builds.

[FooF]

S-mods boosting hullmod functionality would be awesome (and a lot of work/balance) but boosting OP could still be an option, as Megas suggested. Is boosting Hardened Shields, as an example, the equivalent of freeing up 5/10/15/25 OP, though (if the hullmod wasn’t free and there was an option to simply boost OP)? I’d be pretty torn, which means meaningful choice(!), but OP is such a universally useful resource the boosts would need to be pretty novel/powerful to compete at a meta-level.

Or do halvesies. Some boost plus half OP cost reduced.

[Thaago]

I might be the minority opinion here, but I don't think ships are OP starved without S mods. I can't always fit premium weapons, multiple high cost hullmods, and max vents/caps all at the same time, but that doesn't make the ships starved, it just means that I actually have to make good builds with performance tradeoffs instead of just putting in the best of everything.

[Alex]

Yeah - I could see arguments for specific ships possibly benefitting from more OP, but in general I don't think ships without s-mods are "OP-starved" at all. There's room for subjectivity regarding that, of course, but I personally don't think an across-the-board increase in OP is likely, or would be a good thing.

[Hiruma Kai]

If s-mods became hullmod+ (I like the idea in concept), then ships would need a base OP increase IMO. Right now s-mods are basically ordinance expertise from last patch, and without that, ships will be very tight on OP.

Honestly, I think I prefer that solution. Having ships be balanced around their base OP rather than trying to balance around an unknown number of extra OP from s-mods seems much easier, and the hullmod+ concept seems like it could encourage a lot more s-mod diversity and cool builds.

I'll point out there's a significant difference between a base ship OP change, and the current player centric or explicitly harder than normal fight s-mod mechanic, in that you are making the player's fleet relatively weaker against typical enemies.  If base OP is shifted to match what we can do right now with s-mods, well, that's like turning all NPC ships into 2 s-mod player ships.

While you could make up for it with a hullmod+ concept, the hullmod+ would essentially need to buff every single hullmod by a sufficient amount to be worth something like current s-mod savings.  A frigate hullmod+ would need to be worth the base 5 or 6 OP you're paying, plus another 5 or 6 OP, to maintain current difficulty levels.

To make it concrete, let's take a Tempest.  You might take hardened shields for 6 OP and hardened Subsystems for 5 OP.  50 base OP becomes effectively 61.  Now imagine we tweak all Tempests to have 60 OP base line and s-mods no longer reduce OP cost.  NPC's  Tempests just became as strong as our old 2 s-mod Tempests.  Now you need hardened shields++ and hardened subsystems++ to cost 6 and 5 OP, and be combined worth another 23 OP or so.
60+23-11= 72.  72/60=1.2, or 20% more OP effective.  Compared to the old 61/50=1.22, or 22% more OP effective.

So it couldn't be a small tweak to hardened shields, it'd need to provide something like 12 effective flux capacitors instead of 6.  So instead of a 25% reduction in damage, it'd need to be like a 40% reduction.  Not sure what you'd do to hardened subsystems to make it worth 12 OP or so.  I fear you'd still run into only a few hullmods getting the hullmod+ treatment, which affect combat the most, assuming you were trying to keep relative power levels the same.

Alternatively, you could simply accept that you are making the base campaign game harder, which would let you make hullmod+ be easier to balance tweaks and might see more variety.  Even then, some hullmod+ choices are going to be better than others presumably, which will tend to lead to limited "optimal" selections.

My more general question to the thread is, how different will ships play from currently with fixed OP per story point or other potential changes?  And how will that gameplay be better (or worse)?  Will final load outs actually be meaningfully different, other than a few OP here and there?  If you eventually put all the same mods on, because those are the hullmods which help the ship, it doesn't really matter all that much in how they're paid for in terms of OP and story point accounting.

[Megas]

I am weary of the idea of s-mods boosting hullmods.  It would probably lead to overspecialization and unbalanced/overpowered loadouts, which would probably lead to watered down hullmods in the following release (like Hardened Shields adding +10%), and player will need to boost them to get to what we have (+15%), just to avoid overpowered results.

It could also turn story points more into Vespene Gas than it already is.

P.S.  The skill system before 0.95 is sort of like the boosting hullmod idea, but with skills (3 levels).

[Grievous69]

@Thaago
As soon as I saw "Thaago" as the last reply in the thread, I knew what your take was gonna be lmao, no offense or anything btw.

And while it's nice to have different points of view, I couldn't disagree more. Yes you can make OP starved ships work while making trade offs, and sure they'll be okay, but they feel incomplete. Like some sort of autofit derp, there's always something missing to make a certain build "click". And this is the case with a lot of ships. S-mods help greatly with that, and while I have my qualms with how they work, I'd much rather have the current system than no OP boosts coupled with S-mods costing OP. I don't care that much about fancy hull mods if I can't fit decent weapons and max out my flux (no, not the elite weapons, middle of the road). Otherwise ships feels anemic and they take longer to do meaningful things in combat.

The idea for extra benefits for some hullmods seems really cool tho, but as mentioned already seems like a nightmare to balance.

Story points giving a flat OP boost to ships seems dumb.

Aaaaand since people responded while I was thinking what to write, Hiruma makes pretty good points. So in the end it seems like the best decision is to leave everything as it is and not experiment with such big changes that would affect every single thing in combat this late in the dev cycle. It would take waaay too much time and we'd never see 1.0.

[Megas]

And while it's nice to have different points of view, I couldn't disagree more. Yes you can make OP starved ships work while making trade offs, and sure they'll be okay, but they feel incomplete. Like some sort of autofit derp, there's always something missing to make a certain build "click". And this is the case with a lot of ships. S-mods help greatly with that, and while I have my qualms with how they work, I'd much rather have the current system than no OP boosts coupled with S-mods costing OP. I don't care that much about fancy hull mods if I can't fit decent weapons and max out my flux (no, not the elite weapons, middle of the road). Otherwise ships feels anemic and they take longer to do meaningful things in combat.

Also, low OP means more empty mount ships and especially carriers.  What is the point of mounts if there is not enough OP to fill them up and get the rest of the necessities?

Story points giving a flat OP boost to ships seems dumb.

s-mods mostly do this already (in a roundabout way) if ships always pick the usual suspects of optimal hullmods.

[SCC]

Story points giving a flat OP boost to ships seems dumb.

s-mods mostly do this already (in a roundabout way) if ships always pick the usual suspects of optimal hullmods.

Depends on the case. I always wait with s-modding until I am certain I will want a given hullmod in my loadout (mostly by s-modding something I already wanted in anyway, free or not), so it is functionally indistinguishable to flat OP increase - unless I discover some new radical strategy for ships I already have and I need to retool loadouts entirely... Which isn't common for me at this point, but is more common with mods.