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Author Topic: Thoughts on the latest skill changes  (Read 4123 times)

JUDGE! slowpersun

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Re: Thoughts on the latest skill changes
« Reply #15 on: January 02, 2022, 12:48:28 PM »

I think ECM should be provided primarily by ships dedicated to the ECM role rather than a skill that gives all ships a small ECM bonus. It's more interesting that way.

That's a cool idea. Having the option to try and snipe ECM ships, versus just grinding through the frigates until you can match range of heavies.

Seems reasonable, gives player more of an incentive to protect said ships.  Just also need enough of a bonus to incentivize use, otherwise it won't get used.

As for skill changes, I agree that the combat tree seems a little weak-sauce now.  But since so ship use dependent, seems reasonable to maybe also three tier it and make the top tier just contain some of tier 1 bonus crammed into 1 of 2 skills, so player can take the better tier 1 versions they want and then still get less good versions with tier 3 skill that is multi-skill, basically.  Missiles and shields are tier 2 I guess... since so useful but kinda not ship dependent.
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DaShiv

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Re: Thoughts on the latest skill changes
« Reply #16 on: January 02, 2022, 01:58:56 PM »

First of all, I think it's appropriate for Systems Expertise and Missile Specialization to remain top tier skills - they're niche but very loadout-enabling for the targeted builds. If the Combat tree were completely flat, I think it would funnel players toward flagships with missile/Sabot spam and/or systems spam (such as Doom/Radiant) without the need to significantly invest into Combat. Keep in mind that players already use missiles and ship systems much more intelligently than the AI does, and if the skills enhancing them weren't gated behind Combat tiering, then it'd actually reduce flagship diversity since those ships/builds would become no-brainer flagship choices requiring only minimal investment.

I think it'd also be a bad idea to make higher-tier "combination" skills since officers use the same Combat tree, and again it'd become no-brainers to only use officers with higher-tier combo skills, reducing officer diversity.

I think one way to make player investment into Combat more impactful is actually by moving a portion of the base bonuses into the elite portion of the skill. (For example: instead of +10/15/20 for Target Analysis, make Target Analysis only +5/10/15 with an additional +5/5/5 for elite, on top of the other elite bonuses.) Officers have very limited choices in elite skills, whereas the player will have access to elite versions of every personal skill they choose, so a player investing into the Combat tree and having all elite skills will be rewarded with a noticeable edge over officers with only 1 elite skill (before additional bonuses). This would also provide more incentive for players to pilot the most powerful ships in their fleet instead of assigning them to officers, and also provide better synergy with skills providing more elite skills to officers (Officer Training and Cybernetic Augmentation) since IMO those are a bit underpowered right now. It would be nice for elite skills to be actually "better" at their core bonuses and not just provide some random semi-related bonuses.

Lastly, I also think it would be a mistake to simply buff the entire Combat tree - officers are already very strong, and improving the entire Combat tree is just going to make non-officered ships obsolete. The goal should be to reward the player for investing into Combat themselves.
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Megas

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Re: Thoughts on the latest skill changes
« Reply #17 on: January 04, 2022, 07:21:39 AM »

I like Hull Restoration's +max CR.  If I do not take Leadership, then I want the extra CR.

For me, I want to take Hull Restoration because I do not need to reload every time I take a casualty (because I want a pristine fleet at all times).  I can lose half my fleet and not care about d-mods.  If I get automated ships (and the Ziggurat), then I can fix them without paying too much money on Restore.

As for the fourth Industry skill on the way to Hull Restoration, I like the fuel skill so I do not need to think too much about fuel, but I end up taking Industrial Planning because it makes it easier to meet colony demand for self-sufficiency purposes (if I do not exploit alpha admins), especially with overpriced IP admins who want 20k per month.

I will always take Navigation and Gunnery Implants in Technology.

I like Combat skills, but taking Hull Restoration (along with Tech 2) means I cannot get everything I want.  For my current Automated Ships and Hull Restoration game, I only have five left for Combat and Leadership, and I am considering getting Combat 5.
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cassandra112

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Re: Thoughts on the latest skill changes
« Reply #18 on: January 05, 2022, 10:16:01 AM »

I'd be very curious the amount of players that invest in combat, and fly their own ships,  versus those that don't and use auto pilot.

Do players who pilot their own, feel investing in combat is required?    as someone that uses auto-pilot 90% of the time or more. I wonder if its because I skip combat, and go full manager, that I feel so horrible at actually piloting.

I'm inclined to think combat, and all the "piloted ship" skills should be separated, and in their own tree.
make that combat tree, have skills that focus on frigates and destroyers, versus focus on capitals and cruiser.  have some skills focused on carriers. some on energy, someone missiles, some on freighters.  allow the player to tailor their "self" perks to salvage, trade, stealth, or various kinds of combat.  but, not have those self perks, compete with fleet and colony ones.

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Megas

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Re: Thoughts on the latest skill changes
« Reply #19 on: January 05, 2022, 10:37:44 AM »

I tried Hull Restoration and Tech 8, leaving me two points left for Combat, which were not enough.  Radiant flagship was very sluggish, and Phase Skimmer did not recharge fast enough to overcome the lack of base mobility and combat skill power.  If I want to pilot Radiant, I want more than two skill points for Combat, which means no Hull Restoration for me.  Otherwise, I am better off with Paragon.  Combat really helps for some flagships.
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Thaago

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Re: Thoughts on the latest skill changes
« Reply #20 on: January 05, 2022, 11:00:09 AM »

I'd be very curious the amount of players that invest in combat, and fly their own ships,  versus those that don't and use auto pilot.

Do players who pilot their own, feel investing in combat is required?    as someone that uses auto-pilot 90% of the time or more. I wonder if its because I skip combat, and go full manager, that I feel so horrible at actually piloting.

I'm inclined to think combat, and all the "piloted ship" skills should be separated, and in their own tree.
make that combat tree, have skills that focus on frigates and destroyers, versus focus on capitals and cruiser.  have some skills focused on carriers. some on energy, someone missiles, some on freighters.  allow the player to tailor their "self" perks to salvage, trade, stealth, or various kinds of combat.  but, not have those self perks, compete with fleet and colony ones.



Piloting with a weak flagship (whether without ship skills or in a smaller class) is relying on player piloting ability to overcome statistical imbalance, because enemies have skills (and/or a better ship). This is doable, but its hard, and if a player hasn't developed a lot of ability yet (no offense intended: its a hard process and a lot of us have been playing for years honing it) then its going to feel frustrating. As an example of the imbalance, take like a Hammerhead with one of your own high level officers + fleet skills, give it a 'mirror' loadout to the sim Hammerhead, and let them fight. The sim Hammerhead just gets crushed.

When someone is learning piloting, they can't overcome that kind of imbalance yet, and if they don't make their flagship strong they are going to get blown up or be stuck skirmishing instead of killing. When someone has learned piloting they no longer need the strong flagship to win 'even' fights, so in theory they could do without, but... if someone has learned piloting to that degree, then what they can accomplish with a strong flagship is huge, so its worth taking them anyways from a power perspective (and from a fun perspective, players who learn to pilot well often just enjoy flying a strong ship if they aren't doing a special challenge run).

Making the flagship moderately strong in the early game doesn't have to be personal skills because there are some really fantastic fleet boosting skills: early game when the player is piloting a frigate, wolfpack tactics + crew training + coordinated maneuvers (if you have at least 1 officer) is simply better than personal skills AND applies to all ships in the fleet. Wolfpack drops off in effectiveness for destroyers and then entirely for cruisers+, while for slow big ships coordinated drops off, so while this combo is very good early game, more is needed later (unless the player just goes Hyperion/afflictor murdering which is totally viable). But for beyond the early game, there just aren't that many fleet boosting skills that apply to the player flagship, so fleet boosting skills only get the player flagship so far and the next step is the personal skills. They don't have to be in the combat tree (both industry and tech have 2 strong personal skills, even if they are dependent on the ship type for energy weapon mastery and polarized armor), but the combat tree ones are good and stack.
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Draba

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Re: Thoughts on the latest skill changes
« Reply #21 on: January 07, 2022, 02:42:10 PM »

I'd be very curious the amount of players that invest in combat, and fly their own ships,  versus those that don't and use auto pilot.

Do players who pilot their own, feel investing in combat is required?    as someone that uses auto-pilot 90% of the time or more. I wonder if its because I skip combat, and go full manager, that I feel so horrible at actually piloting.
You can get results without combat skills, but I prefer to just use something that doesn't need much at that point (Afflictor for the damage boost, ion beam Falcon, something along those lines).
That way you still have something important to do and stats of high impact ships aren't gimped compared to an officer.

If you want to get more out of your piloted ship it doesn't take too much though. As Thaago mentioned the fleetwides are already nice, crew training and coordinated maneouvers have no requirement and are probably the 2 best ones.
After those grab an Aurora or a Fury. Very strong shields+generous flux pools and high mobility mean they are very forgiving and are excellent with only field modulation+gunnery implants.
High tech generally has a lower skill tax, low really wants ballistics and the various armor boosts to become the awesome bricks of doom they can be in this version.
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Voyager I

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Re: Thoughts on the latest skill changes
« Reply #22 on: January 07, 2022, 03:38:00 PM »

I've never been happy with the player being forced to pick between personal combat skills and everything else. Every player is a ship captain and the heart of the gameplay is controlling a ship in combat, so every player is going to want to develop for it. This is only more true now in the era of officers, where a player that doesn't put at least some focus on combat skills is going to be routinely facing up against opponents with concrete mechanical advantages over them.
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JUDGE! slowpersun

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Re: Thoughts on the latest skill changes
« Reply #23 on: January 07, 2022, 05:17:54 PM »

I've never been happy with the player being forced to pick between personal combat skills and everything else. Every player is a ship captain and the heart of the gameplay is controlling a ship in combat, so every player is going to want to develop for it. This is only more true now in the era of officers, where a player that doesn't put at least some focus on combat skills is going to be routinely facing up against opponents with concrete mechanical advantages over them.

Well, the alternative is that whatever skills/bonuses that player picks could also have a weaker bonus applied to fleet officers.  You know, since the player is training/in charge of the officers.  I mean, officers would still get their own skill sets, but this would basically result in most fleet-wide bonuses being less useful and officers more useful since they would get basically a double stack of skills...

But doing so would basically require redoing at least half of the leadership tree (which actually might work out quite well if player colony skills were to be added back into the leadership tree instead of some additional colony skill tree being added).  But again, would be a huge rework of the skill system, that just went through at least 2 recent big reworks... maybe better to just let it sit for a while, marinate.
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Hiruma Kai

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Re: Thoughts on the latest skill changes
« Reply #24 on: January 07, 2022, 05:39:24 PM »

I've never been happy with the player being forced to pick between personal combat skills and everything else. Every player is a ship captain and the heart of the gameplay is controlling a ship in combat, so every player is going to want to develop for it. This is only more true now in the era of officers, where a player that doesn't put at least some focus on combat skills is going to be routinely facing up against opponents with concrete mechanical advantages over them.

This sounds similar to the various suggestion threads about being able to control an officered ship, retaining that officer's bonuses, or splitting things into a personal and fleet trees.

At the end of the day, all these things alternatives look like a more restrictive skill setup to me.  Right now, you can go almost completely into personal skills (with 2 QoL picks gate keeping some strong personal skills like Gunnery Implants and Ordinance Expertise), or you can go completely without them, skipping all personal skills.  A system which partitions the decision making, by forcing a player to take X personal skills where they like it or not, and Y non-personal skills is just less flexible.

I'm am actually curious if people would be happier if players were forced to pick exactly 5 personal skills, and exactly 10 non-personal skills from the existing skill trees?  That matches the power level of what is currently possible, and would also have players no longer being able to decide between the two types of skills.  Although perhaps I'm misunderstanding what people are asking for in these kinds of alternate skill setups?
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JUDGE! slowpersun

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Re: Thoughts on the latest skill changes
« Reply #25 on: January 07, 2022, 05:45:43 PM »

I'm am actually curious if people would be happier if players were forced to pick exactly 5 personal skills, and exactly 10 non-personal skills from the existing skill trees?  That matches the power level of what is currently possible, and would also have players no longer being able to decide between the two types of skills.  Although perhaps I'm misunderstanding what people are asking for in these kinds of alternate skill setups?

That sounds kinda antithetical to the concept of a sandbox game.  You start limiting player choices, they revolt... might as well add another skill tree and raise level limit to 20.
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Voyager I

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Re: Thoughts on the latest skill changes
« Reply #26 on: January 07, 2022, 07:08:43 PM »

I've never been happy with the player being forced to pick between personal combat skills and everything else. Every player is a ship captain and the heart of the gameplay is controlling a ship in combat, so every player is going to want to develop for it. This is only more true now in the era of officers, where a player that doesn't put at least some focus on combat skills is going to be routinely facing up against opponents with concrete mechanical advantages over them.

This sounds similar to the various suggestion threads about being able to control an officered ship, retaining that officer's bonuses, or splitting things into a personal and fleet trees.

At the end of the day, all these things alternatives look like a more restrictive skill setup to me.  Right now, you can go almost completely into personal skills (with 2 QoL picks gate keeping some strong personal skills like Gunnery Implants and Ordinance Expertise), or you can go completely without them, skipping all personal skills.  A system which partitions the decision making, by forcing a player to take X personal skills where they like it or not, and Y non-personal skills is just less flexible.

I'm am actually curious if people would be happier if players were forced to pick exactly 5 personal skills, and exactly 10 non-personal skills from the existing skill trees?  That matches the power level of what is currently possible, and would also have players no longer being able to decide between the two types of skills.  Although perhaps I'm misunderstanding what people are asking for in these kinds of alternate skill setups?

Campaign skills and personal skills should just be on separate tracks rather than competing with each other for the same resources. The question the player is asked should be "what part of combat do you want to specialize in?" rather than "do you want to specialize in combat at all?" because everyone should be flying ships in combat. The various campaign skills do a pretty good job of letting the player pick their specialization, and to be fair the existent combat skills do too - it's just that frequently a competitive option is not getting to take any of them and then struggling a little bit in what's supposed to the heart of the game.

There's still a lot of room to simulate some of the functionality of the current system. The various combat skills buried in Tech and Industry would probably get moved to combat, but if you wanted to keep their affiliations you could still make them require X points in their respective trees as a prerequisite (and maybe even add a couple for Leadership if we liked that sort of thing).
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SCC

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Re: Thoughts on the latest skill changes
« Reply #27 on: January 07, 2022, 11:53:43 PM »

Campaign skills and personal skills should just be on separate tracks rather than competing with each other for the same resources.
Well, they are competing for the same results.

it's just that frequently a competitive option is not getting to take any of them and then struggling a little bit in what's supposed to the heart of the game.
On the upside, non-combat players don't necessarily miss out on anything.
inb4 Alex buffs flagship skills for the player only somehow

Draba

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Re: Thoughts on the latest skill changes
« Reply #28 on: January 08, 2022, 03:08:40 AM »

I've never been happy with the player being forced to pick between personal combat skills and everything else. Every player is a ship captain and the heart of the gameplay is controlling a ship in combat, so every player is going to want to develop for it. This is only more true now in the era of officers, where a player that doesn't put at least some focus on combat skills is going to be routinely facing up against opponents with concrete mechanical advantages over them.
In some RPGs taking combat skills can make you miss content, I usually don't like that.

For Starsector everything comes down to HOW you want to fight (or pick your fights). You have the option to dump everything into a super playership, into an AFK fleet, or something in between.
Think it adds more variety here, wouldn't change it. Tech/industry are set up in a way so you can reach the top tiers by taking either full QoL or some QoL and combat, that's also flexibility I wouldn't give up.
If getting to hull restoration/derelict operations didn't have polarized armor/ordnance expertise in the way I'd very rarely use them.
« Last Edit: January 08, 2022, 03:23:49 AM by Draba »
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SonnaBanana

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Re: Thoughts on the latest skill changes
« Reply #29 on: January 08, 2022, 03:43:08 AM »

Misgivings about CA and NL but the rest are all fine enough.
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