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[Megas]

Aside from piloting Radiant, is Neural Link strong enough to be useful?

Lately, I have been trying it and linking with human ships for tag-team duo (like say, two Onslaughts).  The biggest problem is the neural hullmod tax.  I have no problem spending all OP on a ship without the Neural Interface hullmod tax.  Thus, despite adding what is effectively an alpha core to a clone, both ships feel mildly gimped because I need Neural Interface on two ships.

Neural Reset feels irrelevant much of the time.  Some ships do not have a system that can exploit it, or the system is minor enough that it does not matter much.

Instant Switching is sometimes a liability (not because of Instant Switching per se, but simply letting AI take control of your ship).  After I switch ships, the AI sees all the missiles I saved on my flagship and launches them freely.  I do not want to switch unless I need to force a vent or limited movement on my clone to fix dumb behavior.

If I answered the question, I would say Neural Link is not as useful to me as another skill mainly because I desperately want the OP that would be spent on a neural hullmod on at least two ships elsewhere.

If you could buff Neural Link, what would you do?  One thing I may like to see is to reduce the DP cost of the flagship (and maybe the current linked ship too) to sort of offset the OP lost to Neural Link hullmods.  Now there could be more fun things like linking with multiple ships and T toggles through all of them, but that would probably be too strong if every linked ship had the player's personal (elite) skills.

[Delta_of_Isaire]

The biggest flaw of Neural link is that being able to instantly (more or less) switch player control to a different ship really isn't that powerful. It's mostly a gimmick.

Admittedly I never actually tried Neural Link, but I struggle to think of a 2-ship combination that achieves anything a single playership does not. The obvious use is instantly switching player control to a ship on the opposite side of the battlefield, but that isn't as useful as it sounds because a single playership will likely be where the action is anyway.


Without any synergy from piloting two ships more-or-less simultaneously, Neural Link is outperformed by Officer Management and Automated Ships, even if you ignore the hullmod OP tax.

[Hiruma Kai]

The biggest issue with Neural Link is it is not actually piloting two ships simultaneously.  It's piloting two ships sequentially, with the other one always under AI control.  Which leads to a host of mini-problems with trying to do tightly aligned maneuvers.  Also jumping between high DP cost ships definitely feels sequential.  The way Neural Link is weakened out of the gate makes the assumption that player control of 2 ships is much better than AI control.  Hence the Tier 5, OP hullmod cost, and not carrying over to other ships if one gets blown up.  But since Neural Link doesn't actually give you control of 2 ships, it feels way over priced to me.

Even switching to the other side of the battlefield is highly situational.  And encourages a typically bad battle plan, which is splitting your forces instead of focusing.

In terms of officers it is also possible to be a trap choice, since if you don't go heavily into combat skills, the spare officer can theoretically be worse than an AI officer (an AI officer I might add that you can't seem to change the aggressiveness of), on top of OP costs which weaken the 2nd ship further, on top of 2 skills losing half effectiveness (Combat Endurance and Missile Specialization).

I've for example tried it with an Afflictor/Onslaught pair.  Run in with Afflictor, drop Entropy Amplifier, switch to Onslaught, drop 4 point blank Reapers.

But it doesn't work out that way.  If you run with the Afflictor, the Onslaught is out of position.  So you switch to the Onslaught, and now the way too fast Afflictor is out of position.  You can't precisely control two ships simultaneously because the AI is going to be fighting you every step of the way.  And if you try to utilize command points to make it better, you run out nearly instantly trying to perform such coordinated manuevers.

Not to mention I seem to get the same fleet performance just focusing on the Afflictor or the Onslaught 100% of the time.

On the other hand, it all feels reasonable when applied to jumping in a Radiant.  That ship breaks enough vanilla rules (assuming you have Systems Expertise) that it's probably worth the hoops you jump through (OP for hullmod, 2 tier 5 skills).  Plus the bonus of a couple Alpha core Remnant frigates doesn't hurt.

Probably the skill should assume that ship switching in and of itself provides next to no benefit, and treat it more as a gimmick, and then be balanced from that viewpoint, while leaving the current interactions with automated ships the same, since that does provide benefit.  I.e. leave the OP cost for the Remnant hullmod alone.

[Megas]

I found Radiant flagship only overpowered if it gets Systems Expertise and enough mobility skills.  Without any Combat skills, Radiant is effectively Paragon without ATC.  With mobility skills only, it is mobile, but without Systems Expertise, it is not too overpowering, not Ziggurat with Phase Anchor overpowered.  Once it gets Systems Expertise, it can jump all over the place and it feels overpowered.  However, Combat 5 and Technology 8 is a massive investment.  Only two skills left.

The cost of Neural Integration feels justified only when I put it on Radiant with Systems Expertise.  For anything else, the OP cost of the Neural hullmods are a major downside.

[Grievous69]

Yeah Neural Link is too gimmicky to be a tier 5 skill, although I understand the reasoning behind being able to pilot a Radiant. Other top tier skills are vastly superior, and don't require a ton of other investments (combat skills). Just be done completely with OP taxes from hullmods and maybe it'll be worthwhile to pick it up sometimes when you're not going for Radiant flagship build.

[Thaago]

For me the biggest issue is the AI of the swapped ship being steady. I've done some tag team style piloting and while I can sometimes pull good things off, my 'other' ship not staying in position is so very very painful.

[Alex]

I've been thinking about this a bit; I definitely get how frustrating it is to try to tag-team something and have the AI-controlled ship do the wrong thing the instant you switch away.

Two things I've been thinking about:

1) Possibly adjusting the behavior of the allied AI ship to somehow... take cues from what the player is doing? The most obvious one to try would be sticking with the target for at least a few extra seconds if the ship the player switched to is also attacking it, for example, I'd really have to mess around with that and see if that's at all promising, though.

2) Having Neural Interface provide some sort of fun bonus (in line with its OP cost and NL being a tier 5 skill) in addition to the switching. No specific thoughts yet on what that might be, though. This bonus would probably not be applied by the automated-ships version.

Definitely open to hearing some thoughts and ideas!

[Megas]

I need to take back when I wrote about Radiant being very overpowered.  It is strong, but it is nowhere near Ziggurat (Phase Anchor) strong.  I tried to solo a fleet that Ziggurat flattened with Radiant.  I could not do it.  Radiant run out of PPT.  While Radiant can avoid fights, it has some trouble against some targets.  Fighting phase frigates while PPT ticks down because of the presence of other ships is draining, and two Paladin PD is not enough to zap all missiles and multiple wings of fighters at the same time (had no Point Defense skill).  Meanwhile, Ziggurat and Onslaught with Point Defense and a bunch of smaller weapons can shut down a lot of that.

Later, I tried Onslaught and Radiant (with me piloting Radiant or else why else get Neural Link), and it was not noticeably better than using two Onslaughts.  At least I can take out endgame human bounties with two Onslaughts, but I do not get as much bonus XP as with one Ziggurat, but it is more rewarding than Onslaught plus Radiant, and if I want Onslaught and Radiant, just forget Neural Link and stuff an AI core into the Radiant.

If anything, Onslaught feels more like a 50 DP ship.  Radiant is maybe a bit better than Paragon, but not enough to justify spending extra skill points to get Neural Link after Automated Ships.

As for Neural Link inself, probably best to scrap the skill but keep the Neural hullmods.  In other words, no need for a skill to use Neural Link as it is today.  The OP tax from getting the hullmods alone is enough of a penalty.

[Alex]

Hmm - just in general, I wouldn't use the Ziggurat as any kind of power-measuring stick; it's a one-off outlier so I don't think it makes for a particularly useful point of reference.

For the Radiant, I think it might depend on the skills you had? Systems Expertise in particular is really useful. I remember having a much easier time vs high-end ordos when I was using it, to the point where it felt borderline OP. None of the ships I was using were particularly optimized, though, so maybe that changes if you squeeze more out of the Onslaught(s) than I'd been getting...

[Megas]

Hmm - just in general, I wouldn't use the Ziggurat as any kind of power-measuring stick; it's a one-off outlier so I don't think it makes for a particularly useful point of reference.

For the Radiant, I think it might depend on the skills you had? Systems Expertise in particular is really useful. I remember having a much easier time vs high-end ordos when I was using it, to the point where it felt borderline OP. None of the ships I was using were particularly optimized, though, so maybe that changes if you squeeze more out of the Onslaught(s) than I'd been getting...

Ziggurat with Phase Anchor may be too strong, but two Onslaught XIVs are not far behind for only 80 DP.  They just get less bonus xp.

Phase Anchor (plus Experimental Phase Coils) is what pushes Ziggurat over the top.  Other phase ships, not so much.

The skills I had, since eight are taken by Tech, the non-tech skills are Helmsmanship, Combat Endurance, Impact Mitigation, Field Modulation, Systems Expertise, Field Repairs, and Ordnance Expert.  I wanted Point Defense and/or Target Analysis but not enough points left.

I used Systems Expertise, and all it did was let me run away from things that Radiant would otherwise get killed by.  It is great for pouncing on a target in a duel, but I do not get too many opportunities to do that when a large chunk of the enemy fleet is constantly pressuring my ship.  I do not know if Radiant can put out the kind of PD Onslaught can, at least not without Omega's Rift Lances/Minipulsers plus IPDAI.  Also, I had Volatile Particle Driver in one of the large mounts.

[Hiruma Kai]

I've been thinking about this a bit; I definitely get how frustrating it is to try to tag-team something and have the AI-controlled ship do the wrong thing the instant you switch away.

Two things I've been thinking about:

1) Possibly adjusting the behavior of the allied AI ship to somehow... take cues from what the player is doing? The most obvious one to try would be sticking with the target for at least a few extra seconds if the ship the player switched to is also attacking it, for example, I'd really have to mess around with that and see if that's at all promising, though.

2) Having Neural Interface provide some sort of fun bonus (in line with its OP cost and NL being a tier 5 skill) in addition to the switching. No specific thoughts yet on what that might be, though. This bonus would probably not be applied by the automated-ships version.

Definitely open to hearing some thoughts and ideas!

I'm not going to comment on the AI portion, because, that's hard.  Especially where the player might want different behaviors in the case of a using a phase ship as pure support from the safety of phase, or as an attacker hitting the rear.  And other uses one might imagine for a variety of ships.  Reading the players mind is going to be hard.  Command points help a bit, as the player can give suggestions to the AI of what they are thinking, but in general I don't know how I'd approach it.

As for point 2?  I suppose we could try doing some brainstorming.  Ideally, its not simply duplicating an already existing hull mod, so simple stat boosters to the equipped ship are probably out.  I feel like the neural reset was a good, and different, step in the right direction, but as Megas points out, its not universal, nor game changing most of the time.  I'd probably still keep it though as it does at least remove one annoyance (which is poorly timed ability usage by the AI).

We do know the player does at a minimum have 2 ships out though.  Which means you could lean into something like an AoE fleet buff.  A small increase in range for nearby ships (+10-15% or something), for example.  Or alternatively, a mini-entropy amplifier effect on ships hit by the player's ship's weapons (i.e. +10% damage dealt by allied ships to the affected target for 3 seconds after being impacted by a weapon).

Or maybe a fleet wide buff instead of AoE centered on the flagship.

What I'm trying to get at is the hardware you've installed for projecting the player's presence should also be useful to transmitting targeting data to nearby allies, or perhaps receiving it.  Feels like it should be a high tech/experimental version of an Operation Center in some sense.  Instead of a room full of analysts feeding you information, you've plugged yourself directly into the ship sensors and communications so you can project your consciousness to the other vessel and command it like you're there.  You're getting the data feeds directly.  So some form of optimization or efficiency boost to working in groups would make sense to me.

Of course, the bonus maybe hard to balance against 3/6/9/25 OP costs.  3/6/9 is like Armored Weapon mounts, but 25 is like hardened shields.  And things which mostly affect the fleet equally depending on size tend to be flat, like Operations Center's 30/30/30/30.

[Linnis]

To me, I feel while ziggy is no doubt the most powerful, radiant is the better ship in end game. Ziggy's inability to deoply back to back really limit what you can do campaign wise. Also radiant with plasma cannons can burst down any target that's not a paragon in moments, tanky enough with 360 shield to simply let the the enemy frigates stick on your butt. The phase with system expertise makes it faster than most desotryers but much more mobile aswell.

While Ziggy is amazing as solo ship, radiants firepower and mobility allows it to abuse distracted captials while ignoring smaller threats. If you teleport to the side of the enemy captials and get a quad plasma cannon burst in you have already won that engagement, enough to snow ball the fight.

Radiant with neural definitely feels like the new conquest. Mobile with massive firepower, except better in both aspects.

Ziggy on the other hand is boring and end fights too slow. Horrible campaign stats also ruins it for me.

[FooF]

The OP tax on NL has been a bit of a downer but I like the idea of the hullmod having some sort of boon beyond the actual hopping ship mechanic.

The thought occurred to me that some kind of Scarab-like time dilation could exist for a few seconds while switching. “Hyper-cognition that slows everything down and increases reaction time.” That way the ship you are jumping from has a moment to position/act and the ship you’re jumping to has a few seconds to react accordingly. I don’t know if this possible or what it would like but it would make the play style unique.

[Null Ganymede]

Maybe for rolling up flanks with superfrigates/superdestroyers? Exploit player attention on a maximum portion of the battlefield by maximizing distance between the two "player" ships.

[Hiruma Kai]

Maybe for rolling up flanks with superfrigates/superdestroyers? Exploit player attention on a maximum portion of the battlefield by maximizing distance between the two "player" ships.

Except that doesn't actually work in practice.  Player attention is always on one portion of the battlefield at a time. Neural Link doesn't change that fact, and doesn't really let you enforce your will at two places at once, although it's kinda priced like it does.

In the example you provide, as soon as you jump out of the super frigate on the left flank to go deal with the right flank, that super frigate is going to back off the left flank, because it's unsupported.  If you try to spend only a few seconds in one ship at a time, and then switch immediately to other to try and influence two places on the battlefield simultaneously, it just ends up being even less effective even than just staying in one ship.  You wind up in a situation where the ship is just wasting time going forward and backwards, as you close the distance the AI had just backed off.  Combined it kind of looks like an AI that can't make up it's mind whether to advance or retreat.  You're essentially fighting the Steady AI behavior when you do that.