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Author Topic: Likes/Dislikes on the current skill choices, and some suggestions.  (Read 553 times)

#Negi

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Ordnance Expertise: I love the new Ordnance Expertise, I like that it’s not another flat percentage boost equally good on everything, but instead I’m considering different combinations for different circumstances.  The biggest discount is naturally for the Storm Needler, but there are plenty of situations where I cannot afford or do not want a Storm Needler, so it has me considering many options on many ship types.  And behind the scenes (spoilers, turn away if you like Ordnance Expertise) if you take the time to do the math on every weapon, it’s all very nearly even in effect as weapon op and flux costs are typically even with each other, so nothing stands out as overpowered with this skill.

Polarized Hull: I like this skill, but I think it invalidates Impact Mitigation, especially on shieldless ships where it’s always better than IM.  I don’t like Damage Control either at the moment: no ship lasts long while taking hull damage, almost nothing hits for over 500 and that not by much, and all crew die on explosion anyways, so faster repairs is the only real benefit.  If I had to make a suggestion, I’d say merge IM and DC in some way to make them more appealing, and so that it and Polarized Hull do different (if overlapping) things. 

Bulk Transport: I do not like the current version of this skill.  I buy my first Colossus, and I get another half a Colossus for free?  And that’s free of cost, crew, fuel, and maintenance, no increased sensor profile, nothing.  Sure, the caps reduce its value into the late game, but by then its other bonus is pulling double duty.  A free Augmented Drive Field that stacks with Augmented Drive Field?  With this it’s easy to get an Atlas up to speed 11, without any Ox Tugs.  No, this is bad, Atlas is slow and it takes work to compensate.  This skill is too good by far. 

Hull Restoration: I like it, but I also note between this and Crew Training, there’s little reason for officers to take Combat Endurance anymore, as you can’t go over 100%.  Don’t get me wrong; I like that there are multiple ways to get to 100% CR, I’m just noting that Combat Endurance is the weakest of the options, as the other two skills apply to your whole fleet and don’t take up valuable officer skills, while providing a lot of other buffs on the side.  I could build-in Hardened Subsystems and get much the same effect. 

Target Analysis: I do not like Target Analysis, I look at it and ask ‘what’s the point of being big while this thing exists?’, it diminishes the advantages being a thiccc boi with lots of armor.  I hear it and other skills are designed to incentivize smaller ship classes, but I don’t like this solution, battleships can take it just as easily as frigates, and make better use of it to pound other battleships into dust, it becomes a must-have skill against larger targets, it doesn’t incentivize frigate play.  Fleets are limited by ship count, and so are officers, so making the most of each individual ship beats out swarms of midgets.  I play with a mod that changes that fleet limit to be DP based rather than ship count based, so that takes care of some of the problem for me.  Unfortunately the alternative I can think up isn’t an easy one to implement; give small weapon slots limited tools to hurt big ships that are ineffective against smaller ships (like reaper and squall) and take away some of the big ship’s ability to combat smaller ships (like removing small slots and making large slots turn slower) so that capital ships can be effectively swarmed, flanked, and harassed if they don’t have more nimble and precise escorts of their own, (even if that’s a frigate-hunting light cruiser) so that the various sizes must work together to cover their weaknesses.  Frigates and Light Destroyers are supposed to be flankers after all, play into that role rather than buffing their stat-sticks. 

Wolfpack Tactics: same as Target Analysis.

System Expertise: System Expertise is in a good place, but I think it could be better; there are some vanilla and many modded systems that do not have charges, cooldowns, or ranges.  A cost reduction would make this skill useful to Fortress Shield, Terminator Sequence, and other such systems, without pushing other systems as very few systems have a combination of costs and cooldowns. 

Carrier Group: I do not like how it is capped to fighter bays across your whole fleet.  Ships like the Shepherd have built in wings, Shepherds are useful scavengers into the late game but their combat falls off quickly so I won’t willingly take them into combat vs cruisers on up.  But they are a wing in my fleet reducing the effectiveness of my actual carriers.  It also encourages few carriers all around, disregarding built-in wings like the Shepherd.  How about this; tie the maximum bonus to the number of fighter bays currently in combat.  That way Shepherds don’t steal resources, and I can keep some carriers in reserve to swap out when Peak time expires. 

Fighter Uplink: same as Carrier Group.

Best of the Best: I’ve held since the creation of S mods that they take away from the gameplay.  Ships were interchangeable, and losing one may hurt but it made you vary your tactics and try new things, and you can always go find another ship of that type if it meant so much to you.  The ships in your fleet were your tools, not your babies.  However, with S mods, ships aren’t interchangeable anymore.  I’ve put limited resources into that ship, I’m much less willing to let it go.  The skills that make officer/modded ships always recoverable I think are treating the symptom not the cause, and the problem remains I am now overly attached to ships.  Having played with S mods for a while now, I begrudgingly accept them as a fun addition, but I still think they have that deep flaw of changing the way I relate to ships. 

Energy Weapon Mastery: this skill has anti-synergy; it rewards you for high flux, then reduces flux generation.  Ya its not a big deal, your enemies will be helping you raise that flux level, but it’s still an odd skill.  Other than that I like it's risk/reward setup.

In general I prefer skill design that avoids straight damage buffing, I like nuance in the implementation, like Energy Weapon Mastery and Ordnance Expertise.  I’d like to see a ship system or hullmod that reduces energy weapon fire rate in exchange for hit strength, accuracy, range, or something like that.  A toggled ship system that rapidly regenerates charges while disabling your shields/weapons.  Because both of those ideas to me are more interesting than accelerated ammo feeder, high energy focus, or targeting feed; flat damage buffs with few considerations beyond timing.  What do the rest of you think? 
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Megas

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Re: Likes/Dislikes on the current skill choices, and some suggestions.
« Reply #1 on: May 11, 2022, 10:54:56 AM »

Bulk Transport is nice, but if I can only take one of the tier 1 Industry skills, I would likely take Field Repairs over Bulk Transport.

How does Polarized Armor diminish Impact Mitigation?  From what I have seen, shieldless ships need every armor buff to last as long as they can, and even then, it is not really enough for ships without above average armor.  Also, once player starts attacking Ordos, he will need Impact Mitigation anyway just for the extra durability for weapons and engines (because nearly every Remnant will have elite Target Analysis).

Not fond that Wolfpack Tactics requires officers instead of a DP pool like the carrier skills because of Support Doctrine.  If player does not want officers to maximize Support Doctrine and/or bonus +xp%, then there are only four Leadership skills that do not depend on officers:  Gunnery Implants, Crew Training, and both Carrier skills.  Wolfpack Tactics should rely on a DP pool to give another option toward Support Doctrine.

I dislike Energy Mastery because of the range restriction.  It has reduced effect from range 600 to 1000, and no effect for 1000+ range.  It is only useful for frigates with small weapons and do not exploit ePD+IPDAI for more range, or SO ships.  Big ships that use ITU and ePD+IPDAI to extend range into something respectable will be robbed of their bonus damage if they take advantage of their range.  I would prefer Energy Mastery to give bonus damage regardless of range, just like Ballistic Mastery.  The only thing good about Energy Mastery is the elite effect to reduce flux use, but that practically restricts it to the player and AI cores.

Hull Restoration: I like it, but I also note between this and Crew Training, there’s little reason for officers to take Combat Endurance anymore, as you can’t go over 100%.  Don’t get me wrong; I like that there are multiple ways to get to 100% CR, I’m just noting that Combat Endurance is the weakest of the options, as the other two skills apply to your whole fleet and don’t take up valuable officer skills, while providing a lot of other buffs on the side.  I could build-in Hardened Subsystems and get much the same effect.
As someone who puts no points in Leadership, being able to reach 95% CR with Combat Endurance and Hull Restoration is nice.  I like that Hull Restoration can act as a substitute for Crew Training.  Also, if player wants to use alpha core Radiant, then having all three is handy to put max CR over 50%.  Also, it is nice that Hull Restoration has the max CR feature.  Without it, Hull Restoration would probably outlive its usefulness.  Wished that Derelict Operations had something similar.

Combat Endurance is still good for extra PPT and slower CR decay.

As for Crew Training, without Hull Restoration, Crew Training feels like a must-have skill.

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Best of the Best: I’ve held since the creation of S mods that they take away from the gameplay.  Ships were interchangeable, and losing one may hurt but it made you vary your tactics and try new things, and you can always go find another ship of that type if it meant so much to you.  The ships in your fleet were your tools, not your babies.  However, with S mods, ships aren’t interchangeable anymore.  I’ve put limited resources into that ship, I’m much less willing to let it go.  The skills that make officer/modded ships always recoverable I think are treating the symptom not the cause, and the problem remains I am now overly attached to ships.  Having played with S mods for a while now, I begrudgingly accept them as a fun addition, but I still think they have that deep flaw of changing the way I relate to ships.
This has to do with s-mods, not Best of the Best per se.

In the current release, you get the rest of your bonus xp refunded if you scuttle or lose the ship.

The most annoying part of s-mods is Ziggurat.  There is no easy way to erase unwanted or obsolete s-mods.  The only way to erase one s-mod from a ship is to reassign skills twice to toggle BotB.

At least BotB has an effect if you do not spend story points on s-mods (50% DP floor instead of 40%).  Cybernetic Augmentation does nothing if you do not spend story points.

In general I prefer skill design that avoids straight damage buffing, I like nuance in the implementation, like Energy Weapon Mastery and Ordnance Expertise.  I’d like to see a ship system or hullmod that reduces energy weapon fire rate in exchange for hit strength, accuracy, range, or something like that.  A toggled ship system that rapidly regenerates charges while disabling your shields/weapons.  Because both of those ideas to me are more interesting than accelerated ammo feeder, high energy focus, or targeting feed; flat damage buffs with few considerations beyond timing.  What do the rest of you think? 
If there is no damage buffing, then there better not be damage reduction either because bricks are no fun to fight.  Also, normal Energy Mastery is lame because is offers nothing aside from damage in case weapon range is too long (which is easy to exceed).  Ballistic Mastery is better, with more damage and range.
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#Negi

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Re: Likes/Dislikes on the current skill choices, and some suggestions.
« Reply #2 on: May 11, 2022, 02:20:40 PM »

From what I have seen, shieldless ships need every armor buff to last as long as they can, and even then, it is not really enough for ships without above average armor. 

If there is no damage buffing, then there better not be damage reduction either because bricks are no fun to fight.

How do you reconcile these two thoughts?  +50% armor for calculation, and -25% armor damage taken, both outweigh 10-20% damage.  I also write against both the armor and hull skills in addition to damage, and I'll point out I spoke against flat damage boosts as uninteresting, not against damaging skills as a whole.  Let me rephrase; I find the projectile speed increase to be more interesting than the damage increase, projectile speed helps with evasive targets, so it could be looked at as an indirect damage, range, and flux efficiency buff, as you can now land hits at greater distances and take down those elusive targets faster.

As for Energy Weapon Mastery, I can accept a few of your points, but I would change them to this; Missile Specialization and Ballistics Mastery give generally applicable buffs, while Energy Weapon Mastery has limits.  It is odd that Energy Weapons got the skill tailor made for Safety Overrides, it means Ludd and all the best SO ships can't use it.  So in that light I would appreciate a more generalized Energy weapon skill, but then I would ask that an SO skill be kept around in some form, preferably usable by Ludd, unless restricting the skill from the common SO ships was for balance purposes, which it may be, in that case disregard the request.

So, what shall this new energy weapon skill be?  So as to no be a bland copy-paste of Ballistic Mastery, something that considers the unique position of energy weapons; energy damage, emp, beam and soft flux damage, rare and high-tech, etc.  If you were to design a skill to get players as excited about Energy Weapon Mastery as I was excited about new Ordnance Expertise (see original post), where would you take it?
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Megas

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Re: Likes/Dislikes on the current skill choices, and some suggestions.
« Reply #3 on: May 11, 2022, 03:21:10 PM »

How do you reconcile these two thoughts?
I do not expect damage boosts to disappear, but if they did but not damage reduction, then all that happens is fights take longer to finish because serious enemies have all of the skills.

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+50% armor for calculation, and -25% armor damage taken, both outweigh 10-20% damage.
More like if the ship without shields does not min-max armor, it dies too quickly (or gets EMP'ed out of commission if it did not stack enough resistance).  Extra damage does not matter much if the ship explodes before can fight long enough.

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So, what shall this new energy weapon skill be?
Simply remove the range restriction.  If that is too much damage, lower the max damage at max flux to 20% and move the elite effect to normal, then add another buff to elite, just like Ballistic Mastery.  Energy Mastery should be generally useful to anyone that uses energy weapons, not limited to ships with no shot range to speak of (like AMB Afflictor).  It does not need to be flashy, just do something useful anytime energy weapons are fired.  Ballistic Mastery is useful enough that I do not mind taking it for high-tech ships that can use ballistics in few critical mounts.
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