Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Hiruma Kai]

As long as building hullmods in reduces OP cost to 0, the most expensive, and most general hullmods will be on my to-built-in list. The only way to change that is, personally, either:

• Remove OP cost reduction, but instead increase the benefits of each hullmod (say flat out +20% to all hullmods), or
• Have a flat cost reduction, dependent on a ship class (say -4 for frigate, -6 for destroyer, -8 for cruiser and -10 for capital size).

Doing both (remove OP cost as per vanilla right now, but increase bonuses like BDSM does) feels too gimmicky to balance, as you need to look into each hullmod in comparison to others.

I'll point out there's no way to do a flat numbers buff to all hullmods that get the s-mod treatment and do it in a balanced way.  Not all numbers impact ship performance linearly, and not all stats are equally worth while.  Not to mention the base OP cost of the hullmod at the very least means if they are currently balanced, a 40 OP hull mod getting +20% is like 8 free op, while a 15 OP hullmod is like getting 3 OP free.  12% extra range on an ITU capital is worth a lot more than 8% more hull on a reinforced bulkhead capital, let alone the 6 less heavy machinery needed for performing surveys with a surveying equipment capital.

Also, in the given example, only a 20% buff while removing the OP cost removal is going to be a straight up reduction in maximum player ship strength relative to most enemy fleets in the game.  While it also reduces the danger of a couple end game and campaign fights, if a given players is currently struggling, this is going to make it worse.  Take the new hardened shields.  -15% versus -18% damage taken to shields, versus getting 4 more flux capacitors (+800 flux capacity on a frigate).  0.85/0.82 =1.036 more effective shield, which on a Tempest is like 90 to 126 flux capacity.  (2500+800)/0.8/0.85= 4852 damage capacity for the no buff, 0 OP cost version versus 2500/0.8/0.82=3810.  That's like a 27% reduction in shield hit points when you trade +20% for the 4 OP cost.

A 20% shift is not sufficient to maintain current relative player fleet maximum strength, except maybe in the case of ITU, because it's highly non-linear effect on overall ship effectiveness in combat.

This isn't saying it is not possible to do a hullmod+ system, but it's going to be harder to do right than what we have now, and effectively twice the work of balancing current hullmods, since you must hand balance the s-mod version as well.  You can't just apply the same buff numbers to all hullmods.

In 0.95a, I've used s-mods on Integrated Targeting Unit, Hardened Shields, Heavy Armor, Expanded Missile Racks, ECCM package, Hardened Subsystems on various combat ships, and even spent some s-mods on cargo ships with things like Solar shielding and Surveying Equipment.  Which also allows me to use lesser used hullmods more, simply because I have the OP to spare on them.  I don't look at which s-mods are built in when considering variety, I look at the total list of hullmods I'm using on a ship.  The s-mods don't define the entire ship's performance - all the hullmods you've installed do.  If you remove the OP reduction, that by definition means fewer hullmods actually selected normally, and you're doubling down on the hullmods you already select.  A poor implementation of hullmod+ without OP reduction will lead to less hullmod variety on ships (not s-modded, but simply used normally) because you're going to double down on the hullmods which you absolutely need, as opposed to the quality of life, nice to have ones.

Edit:  Another way to put it is extra OP doesn't affect maximum values, but instead lets you max out in more different categories.  Hullmod+ without extra OP lets you break current maximums in one or two category (range, speed for example), while relatively speaking, weakening you in others (less flux or turn speed, for example).

[Jaghaimo]

I'll point out there's no way to do a flat numbers buff to all hullmods that get the s-mod treatment and do it in a balanced way.  Not all numbers impact ship performance linearly, and not all stats are equally worth while.  Not to mention the base OP cost of the hullmod at the very least means if they are currently balanced, a 40 OP hull mod getting +20% is like 8 free op, while a 15 OP hullmod is like getting 3 OP free.  12% extra range on an ITU capital is worth a lot more than 8% more hull on a reinforced bulkhead capital, let alone the 6 less heavy machinery needed for performing surveys with a surveying equipment capital.

My assumption is that all hullmods are balanced around their cost. So either making:

• S-Modding improve (multiplicatively) the effect. No cost change.
• S-Modding increasing max OP (by flatly reducing OP cost of built-in hullmod). No effect change.

Preserves the balance across the board. As for actual numbers, I will not comment on those - they require playtesting and careful balancing. The above were just an example to make the idea clearer to understand.

I can see your point regarding higher OP costs gaining more (via multiplication) and affecting the performance non-linearly.

I can also acknowledge your observation on potential reduction in hullmod viability in case of removal of OP-reduction.

Perhaps:

S-Modding increasing max OP (by flatly reducing OP cost of built-in hullmod). No effect change.

With unlimited s-mods, and exponential cost could work them (like we do with colony story point upgrades)?

[Alex]

so, can we hope to ever see this type of functionality as part of vanilla? its probably one of the easiest fixes to implement (although ive never had professional experience with a language higher than SCL so idk anything about ss development) and would allow more diverse and specialized builds - which is also an issue people have due to op restrictions - while removing the nobrain process of trading in a SP for EMR or HS or ITU for some spare op

Maybe! It's an interesting direction to go, but I want to look at combining it with a couple of other things. (A lot of the work involved is coming up with interesting and at least somewhat balanced effects for the hullmods; there's... a lot of them.)

The way I feel about this is "build in the most expensive hullmods" isn't a problem, but there is an opportunity here to make things more interesting. But I'd also want to approach it carefully and maybe knock a few different things out at once. Sorry to be so cryptic about it; not something I want to get too into right now details-wise

I'm blushing from a comment made by yours.

By all means, I would not mind you stepping on its toe and taking its footstep since it will encourage other modders to follow in the mod's footstep if it's implemented in vanilla! I'm confident you can come up with a better and cleaner implementation when I usually hit a wall on some of these hullmods!

I appreciate your being so understanding! And, hahah, no pressure... I do have an unfair advantage in being able to adjust the UI more, though. But coming up with interesting and compelling (let alone even vaguely balanced) effects for that many hullmods, it's a daunting task indeed.

In 0.95a, I've used s-mods on Integrated Targeting Unit, Hardened Shields, Heavy Armor, Expanded Missile Racks, ECCM package, Hardened Subsystems on various combat ships, and even spent some s-mods on cargo ships with things like Solar shielding and Surveying Equipment.  Which also allows me to use lesser used hullmods more, simply because I have the OP to spare on them.  I don't look at which s-mods are built in when considering variety, I look at the total list of hullmods I'm using on a ship.

(Just want to say, this is exactly what I'm getting at when saying that even if one always builds in the most expensive mods, it's not a problem per se.)

[Vanshilar]

Hardened shields getting downsized in combination with the unique experience of this brilliant mod makes me think were on a slippery slope here, and it should have been apparent from the start really: when you think in a granularity of 1/hullmod instead of hullmod effectiveness/OP, youre naturally inclined to just slap on the most expensive mod; weve seen it with SO, now HSh is getting the bat, and heres whats going to happen next: heavy armor will be the most expensive one and everyone will build in that, so then it will get reduced, then it will be expanded missile racks, then it will be ITU, then it will be RB, etc etc ad finitum you get the idea. eventually this would leave us with all hullmods costing the same amount of OP and an aspect of the ship customization granularity being cut out since you dont have to consider the balance of mod OP vs weapons/caps/vents OP anymore when all mods will inevitably cost the same.

No. I don't agree with this premise. Only the most expensive 2 or 3 hullmods are s-mod'ed, not all of them. So this just means that there's an effective ceiling in the cost of hullmods. When a new system is introduced there will naturally be some oversights and balance changes. So some of the extremes naturally get tuned. SO not allowed to be built-in is an example; it's supposed to be very expensive for a reason, which gets bypassed if it were built-in. That doesn't mean that everything gets adjusted to be the same. Rather, only the most extreme ones need to get adjusted to fall in line with the upper end of the scale, while the rest can stay put.

Making this a bit more concrete, Alex likely had some rough numbers in mind of how much s-mods would be worth in terms of OP. Let's say around 30-40 OP for cruisers, or 45-60 OP if you get the Special Modifications skill for a 3rd one. This just means that the most expensive hullmods that could be built in should be in the 15-20 OP range, and it's the hullmods in that range or above that needs to be looked at, not all of them. There are only a small number of such hullmods, but -- importantly -- there are more such hullmods than what the player is allowed to build in. So, just like Tier 5 skills, the player needs to pick and choose.

Keep in mind built-in hullmods are permanent. So the player can't change them unless and until the player has resources for another ship (either buying it off the market, recovering from battle and then restoring it, making it from their colonies, etc.). So the player has to choose between how generally good it is, versus if it's more specialized but not necessarily always useful, when deciding what to s-mod.

For example, take Expanded Missile Racks. It costs 20 OP for cruisers. Do you want to build it in for an Aurora? Well, it really depends on what your build is for the Aurora. If you want to make use of its missiles, maybe. But the Aurora has many other good loadouts that don't involve missiles. So if you s-mod it in, you're basically committing that Aurora to a missile-using build. Since that's a relatively specialized build, the hullmod can be more powerful and cost more OP, "knowing" that it'll likely be built-in. Whereas if you want a more generally-useful hullmod, you might pick Integrated Targeting Unit instead, knowing that it's always useful (except for SO builds) regardless of your build. Since the s-mod is permanent, the player is forced to decide between a "better" but more specialized hullmod, giving up flexibility in ship loadouts, versus a more general hullmod. That's part of what makes it interesting.

Similarly, pretty much all the more expensive hullmods tend to be rather situational. For example, for cruisers, the hullmods listed by OP are:

Safety Overrides (45 OP, can't be built in)
Operations Center (30 OP) -- if the player needs more command points (relies on the tactical and issues commands often)
Augmented Drive Field (24 OP) -- if the player wants the ship or fleet to travel faster in the campaign
ECM Package (20 OP) -- if the player wants to decrease the enemy ships' weapon range (and increase their own ships' weapon ranges, by comparison)
Expanded Missile Racks (20 OP) -- if the ship uses enough missiles to warrant it
Heavy Armor (20 OP) -- if the ship takes a significant amount of armor/hull damage, and/or relies on armor/hull tanking
Nav Relay (20 OP) -- if the player wants the ships to go faster in combat
Hardened Shields (18 OP) -- if the ship is on the front lines often

None of the above hullmods are "must haves" for a given ship, it really depends on if the build needs it or not. So the player may be better off choosing some of the hullmods which are 15 OP instead (of which there are a dozen). It really depends on the build. So no, the player doesn't just choose the most expensive hullmods to s-mod, the player choose the most expensive hullmods for the desired build.

The 40 hullmods that are 15 OP or lower are essentially unaffected by s-mods, unless the player for some reason doesn't choose at least 2-3 hullmods that are 15 or more OP, to resort to building in hullmods that are worth 12 OP or less. That's over 80% of the hullmods that aren't affected.

All this is "priced in" in terms of game balance. So all ships, which in version 0.9.1a could get +10% OP (via Loadout Design level 3), can now get +35-40 OP (for cruisers) instead. So overall it was somewhat of a buff to ships.

-----

Hardened shields being nerfed may or may not be related to s-mods. It's just a really, really strong effect in general. Shields taking -25% damage effectively means +33% "shield hit points" (i.e. flux), but, importantly, this multiplies with other modifiers. For example a mythical ship with 10,000 flux and 1.0 shield efficiency can absorb 10,000 points of damage to its flux. If the ship has 100% CR (10%) and has an officer with Shield Modulation (20), the shield efficiency decreases (improves) to 1.0 * 0.9 * 0.8 = 0.72, so now the ship can absorb 10,000 / 0.72 = 13,889 damage. If it now has Hardened Shields, the shield efficiency drops to 1.0 * 0.9 * 0.8 * 0.75 = 0.54, so now the ship can absorb 10,000 / 0.54 = 18,519 damage, an increase of 4630 damage that it can absorb. Hardened Shields, despite being advertised as "-25% damage to shields", actually gives the ship an additional 46% of its base amount of damage it can absorb in this case. That's huge, so it shouldn't be surprising that it gets a nerf.

-----

Keep in mind that Story Points are basically just experience points, and thus spending SP for s-mods is basically just an extended leveling system, where as you do more stuff with your fleet (mainly, killing other ships), your fleet gets better over time. You essentially get more OP to spend on your ships. So another way to extend the s-mod system would be, after an s-mod is built-in, you can spend another SP on the hullmod to unlock an elite effect, similar to elite effects for skills. That would create another avenue for leveling up and further customizing each ship.

[rabbistern]

Hardened shields being nerfed may or may not be related to s-mods. It's just a really, really strong effect in general. Shields taking -25% damage effectively means +33% "shield hit points" (i.e. flux), but, importantly, this multiplies with other modifiers. For example a mythical ship with 10,000 flux and 1.0 shield efficiency can absorb 10,000 points of damage to its flux. If the ship has 100% CR (10%) and has an officer with Shield Modulation (20), the shield efficiency decreases (improves) to 1.0 * 0.9 * 0.8 = 0.72, so now the ship can absorb 10,000 / 0.72 = 13,889 damage. If it now has Hardened Shields, the shield efficiency drops to 1.0 * 0.9 * 0.8 * 0.75 = 0.54, so now the ship can absorb 10,000 / 0.54 = 18,519 damage, an increase of 4630 damage that it can absorb. Hardened Shields, despite being advertised as "-25% damage to shields", actually gives the ship an additional 46% of its base amount of damage it can absorb in this case. That's huge, so it shouldn't be surprising that it gets a nerf.

this is so offensively wrong that i dont even know how to reply without some moderator probably bitching about forum rules
do you seriously not realize what the *** you just said? that 46% number youre getting is including fleetwide skills for +15% cr, officer skills for +15% cr, and officer skills for shield efficiency. what the *** is your point? the damage reduction is still a multiplier of 0.75, your officer skills dont have *** to do with the hullmod.
you should also see about getting some gradeschool-level math tutor, a reduction in 25% of damage doesnt mean an increase of 25% of SHP, its a multiplier of 0.75 to fpd, therefore increasing effective shp by a factor of 1.333 or 33%, so argument from false premises etc

[Thaago]

That was completely uncalled for. Pointing out that something is against the rules does not absolve the rulebreaking in the slightest. This is an official warning.

[Baqar79]

Building on the idea that slowpersun had where having a separate Ordinance Point pool for s-mods, but instead have enough s-mod OP to put the 3 most expensive mods on a ship; however the residual points could be used to buff those s-mods passively (sort of borrowing from Jackie's idea there...I don't normally run mods, but even a look at what they were doing is pretty interesting).

Say for example a battleship could have 120 OP for s-mods (I think that should allow 3 of the heaviest most OP rich ones installed).  We then install 3 mods in a Paragon (Augmented Drives, Hardened Shields & Solar Shielding) which costs 85 s-mod OP points leaving 35 remaining (roughly 30%).  All other 3 modifications would get a small buff based on the remaining space:

-Augmented Drives (alright bad choice here, but perhaps having at least 50% of free s-mod OP space could grant +3 to burn speed instead, so in this case it would be unaffected)
-Hardened shields (1.3x so 15% shield damage reduction is increased to 20%)
-Solar Shielding (1.3x so combat readiness penalty increased to an 81% reduction; energy damage taken increased to 26%)

I prefer buffs, but you could add small penalties for not having enough s-mod OP free (eg penalties kick in if less than 50% s-mod OP space is available).

EDIT:
Just looking now through the screenshots of Jackie's Better Deserved S-Mods and I think I like the approach of having unique s-mod modifiers over something more generic like what I'm suggesting (though those unique benefits could be influenced as above).

[Rojnaz]

Isn't simpler to make "S-mod" increase Ordinance Points depending on Ship Type(Frigate, Destroyer, etc.)?
Most people seem to try to use high cost Hullmods, so it could be balanced around one "normal cost" hullmod for the first S-mod and one "high cost" hullmod for the second.
example:

Ship Type| 1 s-mod  | 2 s-mod | total
Frigate    | +5 OP    | +8 OP     | +13 OP
Destroyer| +10 OP  | +15 OP   | +25 OP
etc.

It is less OP than using 2 high cost Hullmods but it can be used on weapons and flux stats... and Safety Overrides.

[Hatter]

Hardened shields being nerfed may or may not be related to s-mods. It's just a really, really strong effect in general. Shields taking -25% damage effectively means +33% "shield hit points" (i.e. flux), but, importantly, this multiplies with other modifiers. For example a mythical ship with 10,000 flux and 1.0 shield efficiency can absorb 10,000 points of damage to its flux. If the ship has 100% CR (10%) and has an officer with Shield Modulation (20), the shield efficiency decreases (improves) to 1.0 * 0.9 * 0.8 = 0.72, so now the ship can absorb 10,000 / 0.72 = 13,889 damage. If it now has Hardened Shields, the shield efficiency drops to 1.0 * 0.9 * 0.8 * 0.75 = 0.54, so now the ship can absorb 10,000 / 0.54 = 18,519 damage, an increase of 4630 damage that it can absorb. Hardened Shields, despite being advertised as "-25% damage to shields", actually gives the ship an additional 46% of its base amount of damage it can absorb in this case. That's huge, so it shouldn't be surprising that it gets a nerf.

Wouldn't it still be +33%? 4630 is 33% of 13,889, which is what you're taking the increase from. It looks like your math is off because you're comparing the increase brought on by hardened shields while under the effect of CR/shield modulation to a base capacity unaffected by them. In practice, All you're demonstrating is that the added effective shield HP is also increased by 38.9% from a +3,333 ESHP at 10,000 ESHP to a +4,630 ESHP at 13,889 ESHP. which is the same +38.9 % bonus as applied to the base ESHP by shield modulation and CR bonus. (10,000 -> 13,889).

Hardened shields gives the same +33% bonus to ESHP regardless of other factors.

[Thaago]

Its a question of the absolute increase when comparing hardened shields to the equivalent number of capacitors, as some of the time ships aren't at max capacity and can make the choice between that and HS. Normally this is computed assuming no other bonuses, but other skills change the count.

Its also a bit of an odd side effect of how bonuses and penalties are applied: almost always, thing that decrease a value are multiplicative (to avoid the asymptote of approaching 0 by addition), and things that increase a value are additive. Since in almost every case adding to values is good and reducing is bad, in practice this means that buffs are usually independent (as an example, getting +10% damage from one source and +15% from another gives a final bonus of 25%, not 26.5%: they don't cross buff) while penalties multiply. For most player skills then you can compare the bonus to the base to get the net increase, no other steps needed. But in this case, reducing a number is a buff, which means that the various buffs shield ARE effecting each other, so the HS is giving better than what you'd expect from a bonus that said, for example "+33% capacity for the purposes of shield hitpoints" (what a mouthful). Its not broken at all, but it is unusual and a bit counterintuitive.

[Vanshilar]

you should also see about getting some gradeschool-level math tutor, a reduction in 25% of damage doesnt mean an increase of 25% of SHP, its a multiplier of 0.75 to fpd, therefore increasing effective shp by a factor of 1.333 or 33%, so argument from false premises etc

I don't know if you realized, but this is exactly what I said:

Shields taking -25% damage effectively means +33% "shield hit points" (i.e. flux), but, importantly, this multiplies with other modifiers.

Wouldn't it still be +33%? 4630 is 33% of 13,889, which is what you're taking the increase from.

Thaago already covered it, but yes, I was comparing relative to the base flux capacity, with the important point being that Hardened Shields (and other such shield efficiency buffs) multiply with each other, whereas most bonuses in the game (such as Blast Doors or Reinforced Bulkheads) add a fraction of the base value instead. Thus when stacked together, these multiplicative bonuses can very quickly buff a ship beyond what's reasonable.

For example, CR gives 10%, Hardened Shields gives 25%, Shield Modulation gives 20%, and Solar Shielding gives 20% versus energy damage. So the naive player might see this and think it means the ship can absorb 10% + 25% + 20% + 20% = 75% more damage. But in reality, it's 1 / (0.9 * 0.75 * 0.8 * 0. ~ 2.315, so the shield will actually be able to take 131.5% more damage with these bonuses. Couple these with the ship's inherent shield efficiency and the effective shield hit points can get pretty obscene; my SO Apogee with Flux Regulation (+20% flux capacity) and 5 points into capacity has 15,400 flux capacity. It has a base shield efficiency of 0.7, so along with CR (10%), Hardened Shields (25%), Shield Modulation (20%), and Solar Shielding (20%), its shield efficiency becomes 0.7 * (0.9 * 0.75 * 0.8 * 0. = 0.3024 against energy weapons, so it can absorb 15,400/0.3024 = 50,926 energy damage. A 5-tachyon Radiant burst does 11,250 base energy damage, so that's not even a quarter of the flux capacity. It basically makes shields too strong.

Another way to look at it is that the Apogee has 15,400 flux capacity, but a 5-tachyon burst would do 11,250 * 0.3024 = 3402 damage to it. The Apogee's flux dissipation (thanks to SO and Flux Regulation) is 1680, and since tachyon is soft flux, it will have dissipated that flux in about 2 seconds. Meanwhile the Radiant just gave itself 15,000 flux (or 13,500 if it has Energy Weapon Mastery). The best way the Apogee has of driving up the Radiant's flux is to just get in its face and start face-tanking! Fortunately the Apogee AI will readily do this if it has SO. The Apogee's high flux capacity (the highest for cruisers), second-best shield efficiency (only Brilliant is better, and the Apogee is tied with Fury for second best for cruisers), third best flux dissipation (only the Aurora and Doom are better for cruisers), and low DP cost (only 18) make the SO Apogee a very, very formidable tank.

[Hiruma Kai]

Thaago already covered it, but yes, I was comparing relative to the base flux capacity, with the important point being that Hardened Shields (and other such shield efficiency buffs) multiply with each other, whereas most bonuses in the game (such as Blast Doors or Reinforced Bulkheads) add a fraction of the base value instead. Thus when stacked together, these multiplicative bonuses can very quickly buff a ship beyond what's reasonable.

I'd be interested in knowing specifically what reasonable means in this context.  Given Hardened shields is only dropping to 15%, even multiplied out, it's only an overall drop of about 12-13% in relative total shield strength (2.315 drops to about 2.04), so when looked at from Alex's balancing point of view, unreasonable is about 12%.

A 5-tachyon Radiant burst does 11,250 base energy damage, so that's not even a quarter of the flux capacity. It basically makes shields too strong.

Tachyon lances (and soft flux beams in general) are arguably not the weapon of choice to take against SO shielded ships.  Tachyon Lance is even labeled a suppression weapon, not an anti-shield or general weapon.  It is kind of worse even than using explosive ballistics to punch through shields.  You might as well say that firing on a maxed out Onslaught with needlers means armor is too strong as well, given every section of armor can each take roughly 65,000 damage (tiny packets of kinetic damage mind you), and spread over the entire ship might mean half a million, before even taking into account the hull. 

On the other hand, a single Reaper will blow a hole in the armor in a single shot, so there's literally orders of magnitude differences in effectiveness in weapons against armor.  Shields are kinda like that too.  5x Tachyon lance might not even be capable of killing an SO Apogee.  Other weapons can though.

If you swap that 5x Tachyon Radiant for a 5x Autopulse backed up by 4 Sabot pods, that strikes me as a very different story for the Apogee.  You probably should also include offensive skills given many Radiants are going to be packing Alpha cores.  Let's say, Reliability Engineering + Crew Training from the fleet Admiral (100% CR), Target Analysis, Energy weapon mastery, and Missile specialization.  Expanded Magazines while we're at it, for a 57 pulse burst in 6 seconds.  Two waves of sabots can be fired in that time period as well, but well, it doesn't really need it.

Each pulse, at say 25% average flux, deals 150*(1+0.1+0.15+0.075)=198.75 energy, or 0.3024*198.75=60.1 hard flux.  So we're assuming the Radiant ends up at least at 50% flux and has closed in to the right range (which it can pretty much do with 3 jumps).

5*10*60.1 = 3005 hard flux damage per second (up to a maximum of 5.6 seconds for 56 pulses each, or 3.7 seconds and 37 pulses without expanded magazines)
A wave of sabots clocks in at 4*2*5*200=8,000 kinetic damage (which sees (0.7*0.9*0.75*0.8 ) = 0.378 * 2 = 0.756 hard flux per kinetic damage)
8000*0.756 = 6048 hard flux

(15400-6048)/3005 = 3.11 seconds.
Soft flux build up on the Radiant from firing 32 pulses each over 3.2 seconds is 125*32*5*0.9=18000 flux - 3.2*1500 dissipation = 13200 flux.  14437/25000 = 52.8%, so the 25% average flux is a good estimate.  So 3.2 seconds to completely overwhelm such an Apogee's shields.  Doesn't even need the expanded magazines apparently to cause an overload.  Roughly 1.1 more seconds of fire, and the 750 armor and 9000 Hull are gone, so about 4.3 seconds to completely remove the Apogee from the field.  The Radiant would be ready to do it again after dissipating flux and fully recharging the Autopulses in about 17 seconds, and have 11 more sabot salvos (or 17 if expanded missile racks are added).

So to reiterate my earlier question in slightly different form, I'd be interested in how long people would want a maxed shield tank but slow cruiser to last against appropriate weapons fire to make the shield be not too strong.  The hardened shield changes is going to shift 3.2 seconds down to 2.8 seconds until overload for this particular example.

[Thaago]

I think thats a great example of the differing weapon effectiveness vs shields, but I'll add that a quintuple autopulse, 4x sabot, alpha core radiant is probably the most dangerous alpha strike vs shields ship in the entire game by a decent margin. Roughly a similar alpha strike to 2 Astrals filled entirely by Longbows (I think the Radiant actually wins in deliverable damage to shields if the burst plays out longer? I'd need to math it out).

I'm not really sure I'd put that as the benchmark for appropriate weapons fire vs a cruiser, even a tank one. As a comparison point, say you have an Eagle with 3 heavy autocannons and a 25% bonus to damage, that would be 214*3*1.25*2 = 1605 DPS vs shields. With the shield efficiency of .387, thats 606.7 flux to the Apogee per second. Vs 15400 capacity as given, thats 25.4 seconds of continuous fire to bring down. Less if the energies are dealing hard flux, but thats not always viable for Eagle's flux wise and they are very close ranged so it probably won't bring them to bear.

To me that seems a bit long, but on the other hand under AI control an Apogee can't actually beat an Eagle in this white room we're fighting in. It can survive and harass with a missile and a HIL/Tach, and if it has a Squall to deal hard flux it will probably be able to push the Eagle back multiple times and vent in the interim - that would be a very long fight.

[Hiruma Kai]

Well, I kind of went to the absolute largest burst I could think of because it conveniently gives me the other end of the spectrum, from unable to actually take the shield down to fastest take down from a single actual ship the player faces regularly (or might have in their fleet with an integrated gamma core).

As you point out, this is white room theorizing.  In an actual battle line, you have multiple ships focusing fire on a single ship sometimes, and sometimes no one is firing at the ship despite being on the line.  25.4 seconds becomes 12.7 if it happens to be two Eagles that engage said Apogee.  25.4 seconds likely becomes 100 seconds if the Eagle's weapons shift from kinetic to HE (Heavy mortars for instance).  Or maybe it's relying on a heavy blaster and some harpoons or breech missiles for armor crunching.

Or say, two SO Hammerheads up against this SO Apogee, as that's only 20 DP instead of 22 DP.  An Anti-shield configured Hammerhead (which I've run sometimes) with heavy machine gun, 2x dual light machine guns, heavy mortar, plus some HE missiles of some flavor (Harpoon, Reaper, Hammer, Breech).  Ideal officer is a level 6 or 7 that wrapped around to grab both Target Analysis and Elite Point Defense (for that extra bit of range on the machine guns), along with Reliability Engineering and Crew training (100% CR), and Gunnery Implants (again for extra machine gun range).

Once those ships are in range and activate accelerated ammo feeder, you've got 20 DP worth of ships spitting out:
320+208+208=736 * 1.25 skills * 2 ammo feeder * = 1840 * 2 ships = 3680 kinetic damage * 2 * 0.387 = 2848 hard flux/second
Throw on a heavy mortar as well:
220 * 1.25 * 2 ammo feeder = 550 * 2 ships = 1100 explosive damage * 0.5 * 0.7 (shield modulation) * 0.387 = 149 hard flux/second
15400/2997 = 5.14 seconds, or 5 seconds of ammo feeder, and about 0.28 more second at normal damage rate.

HE missiles then let the Hammerheads finish the cruiser of quickly after that. On the other hand, those Hammerheads really short range, and benefit from outnumbering the entire enemy fleet, to spread return fire around.  Although, if it's an SO Apogee, it'll need to come into the SO Hammerhead range.

If you really want to micromanage a fleet, you could go all machine guns, then have support capitals throwing Hurricanes and HE bombers, which you order to exterminate once the Hammerheads close in, to provide the HE kill shots after the Hammerheads remove the shields.

Or take a sabot+heavy blaster Aurora.  Missile specialization + Expanded Missile racks, 4 small sabots plus 2 medium sabots by themselves can spit out 16 sabots in like 3 seconds.  That's 16*1000*1.25=20000 kinetic damage, or 15,480 shield hard flux damage to the Apogee, with Heavy Blasters for the anti-armor/hull work.  And still have enough small sabots to do it 2 more times (since it just needs 3 out of 9 rapidly fired).  The large sabot pods fire every 6 seconds, so will last 108 seconds of continuous fire (18 salvos).

Or take a 15 DP Venture with all sabot loadout, plus heavy blaster/heavy mortars.  Can't force engagement with a standard Apogee, but against an SO Apogee, sure.

There's a whole range of possibilities, which have varying range, damage, odds of hitting and so forth.  If we're going to allow for long range slower take downs (i.e. ITU Eagle with HVDs or Heavy ACs), then presumably short range quick take downs are going to be significantly faster.  It is an entire continuum to consider, and changes to shields shift that continuum together - unless you start tweaking weapons and change the damage output scale.  Making an long range Eagle take less time also means the Hammerheads and Radiant take less time.  Which is why I was curious what people wanted to see.  I'm not sure there's a single best answer - it's what players prefer in their engagements.  Perhaps 25 seconds for same class ships is reasonable when they are long ranged?  That means multiple ships will focus fire easier. 

It comes down to play testing and how the game feels against a variety of enemies.  Also keeping in mind one of the core concepts of the game is that the fleets fighting each other provide a background for the player to come in and change the outcome with their own piloting or orders.  If the player only has time to intervene in one fight personally, because everything else gets settled in 20-30 seconds, that is perhaps less interesting of a game, which potentially sets the lower end of things.  As it stands now, I'm not sure a +100% (factor of 2) or +131% is actually too strong a customization, given there's already a factor of 4 built into the game simply from choosing the right or wrong weapon damage types for the job, and further factors of like 2 to 10 depending on the actual ship classes and ship systems and weapons.  Maybe it is too much variation for people, and damage scales and skills should be compressed all around?

[Ad Astra]

tl;dr: Do we know if SP=S-mod gives more or less build variety than SP=simply more OP?
If yes: Is SP investment meant to be an easy thoughtless choice, or a hard ponder worthy one?
If the choice should be hard, then the current system or even a more complex one would be superior, if the choice should be easy, then making it a generic OP investment would provide the best results.

The long one:
When I read BDSM in Starsector context I must admit my imagination started running wild about Artemisia....but let's not get derailed.

The discussion about built in mods can be endless if we don't properly conceptualize what they are and why do they exist, in this regard, one characteristic must stand above others to know in which direction to head towards while fine tuning them.

On one hand they could be considered simply buying OP with SP, but with the added restriction of not being able to change what you bought. This adds an interesting conflict of specialization vs generalization when you decide which mod you are building in.
"Do I lose a little of OP but gain a versatile ship or do I specialize and min-max but restrict my future possibilities"
This mechanic makes it a more delicate matter than just "put SP make ship better".

On the other hand, since mods can be used to enhance every single stat of the ship, "buying the most OP" becomes the best way to experiment with better weapons, or flux stats.

If we consider however, the possibility of each investment adding more variables, then it gets even more interesting.
The idea of built in mods being an enhanced version of themselves would definitely add specialization beyond simply "clearing OP space", and would further commit to the idea of a "hard decision" instead of a generic improvement of the ships capabilities.

I think power wise, building in mods is the middle ground in versatility between what we would get if we could build in weapons (super specific single purpose ships), and buying OP and flux stats (generic and risk-free).

If you put it in simpler terms, the notion of buying OP through S-mods as a "problem" comes from contrasting the perceived build variety you would get between this and "simply more OP".

To conclude, without playtesting both possibilities we can't know if the current implementation is ship-build restrictive, and if it were, then we'd have to contrast that with how important the commitment to a specific S-mod is meant to be.