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Author Topic: DP vs OP chart  (Read 12634 times)

Megas

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Re: DP vs OP chart
« Reply #90 on: June 16, 2022, 05:27:15 PM »

Not necessarily, you don't need leadership to get elite gunnery implants you just need to decide it's worth more than whatever other elite options you have.

It sounds like you really just hate leadership. In the current format of the skill system leadership is the best at boosting your overall fleet power because it doesn't do anything else. If you ignore it, your fleet is less combat effective.
I always get elite Gunnery Implants because it helps my flagship, but since I usually pilot a capital, it is only +1%.  My other ships would get either elite Point Defense or elite Missile Specialization.  I only have one elite skill choice (unless I take Officer Training or Cybernetic Augmentation, which I do not).  However, since I think I will fire the officers sooner or later (because they are specialized for the ship), and I do not like my fleet effectively locked-in, and burning story points like this only to throw them anyway leaves a bad taste in my mouth, I do not give officers any elite skills.  The only ones with elite skills in my fleet are my character and AI cores.

No elite skills on officers are a pain because I cannot change their behavior until I give them an elite skill to unlock "Retrain".

I like Leadership, but I like the other trees more.  I like Industry because the two combat skills are QoL, and I like Hull Restoration because I do not like d-mods, and Hull Restoration does a great job mitigating the pain of death, plus it has a mini-Crew Training effect once I put s-mods on my ships.  (The campaign Industry skills before Hull Restoration are QoL too.)  For Technology, I want Navigation, Gunnery Implants, and Flux Regulations, if my flagship is a phase ship, I want Phase Coil Tuning too, and after that is one point to either Neural Link or Automated Ships.  Automated Ships is fun.  (Neural Link has potential but is ruined by hullmod tax.)  I like Combat because it is flagship QoL (flagship is very sluggish without Combat).  I take the first three, and the other two vary by flagship and weapons.  That leaves Leadership, but I have no points left for it after I take Combat/Tech/Industry 5.

I really can't understand where you're coming from here. If you want to take more skills that boost your flagship, you can do that. If you want to take skills that boost your economic efficiency, you can do that. If you want both AND you want to take leadership you can do that. But you can't do all three and ALSO go into technology. You have to make a choice somewhere. Hell, once you have lategame cash you don't need industry at all anyways.

If you don't like that then this isn't an issue with Ordos being too strong, it's an issue with the skill system being too restrictive.
It is an issue of running out of skill points.  I need to cut somewhere, and for me, Leadership is the weakest link and on the chopping block because I like the skills in the other tree more.  If I do not want to pilot Ziggurat (but I do because it is so strong and fun to use), I can probably stop at Flux Regulations or Gunnery Implants.  For Industry, if I could tolerate d-mods, and I do not need +1 commodities from Industrial Planning, I could cut Industry at Ordnance Expert and/or Polarized Armor (elite is great for venting QoL).

If I had to pick a favorite skill, it is Hull Restoration.  It has massively cut down on abusive save-scumming I would normally do without it.  (If victory was not flawless, I would usually immediately reload because I do not tolerate any d-mods in my fleet.)  Massive, MASSIVE QoL.  Also nice for restoring exotic ships (Ziggurat and automated ships) that cannot be bought or built for free.  For me, unless I start playing solo Ziggurat (in which flagship death is fleet wipe), I want Hull Restoration, but even with solo Ziggurat, if I need Industrial Planning to support the two or three colonies my guy manages, then taking Hull Restoration for the +max CR instead of Crew Training is an option.  +95% CR instead of +100% CR is not optimal, but not a major problem.

You could try raising the level cap, it's very easy to do and sounds like it would solve a lot of your complaints. Unless you want to play strictly vanilla. But if you really think the baseline game is fun but gets ruined by the Ordo difficulty spike then I don't see what's stopping you.
Until I want to try double Ordos, I do not need to burn hard-earned resources (story points) or mold officers into specific ships to beat human fleets.  I can easily swap ships to whatever I want and win.

I play strictly vanilla.  What is stopping me from playing double Ordos?  It is not fun.  Why is it not fun?  It is a massive commitment that locks-in your choices in an unfun way.  Officers and the loss of story points that could have gone into colony improvements.  It is better than earlier releases when the choices were permanent and the only option was to restart the game, but the current way is not much better.

For example, I take BotB and Officer Training, then spend a bunch of story points to emulate an Ordos killer fleet from a video.  Great, victory dance.  Now I do not want to play it anymore.  I lose a bunch of story points permanently (from lost third s-mods and officers with elite skills) once I respec to something else.

Also, if I lose ships and I do not have Hull Restoration, I will get d-mods on the recovered ships, and it will cost a lot of money to remove d-mods.

So far, the least painful way of fighting double Ordos is soloing them with Omega Ziggurat with map size 200.  Ziggurat can solo up to triple Ordos before running out of PPT.  Solo Ziggurat is also good for getting high +xp% from endgame human fleets.

This is just... wrong? If you don't have the automated ships skill you still get the salvage from them. You only miss out on the opportunity to restore them.

But ok, let's say you want to collect every remnant ship you can. Mothball them. If you aren't using them to fight, just mothball them. Bonus XP is influenced by the CR of your ships, so the lower it is the more bonus XP you get, and mothballed ships don't contribute to fleet strength at all. Mothballed ships also don't count towards skill caps, so it won't harm your other automated ships.

TL;DR: deez nuts
Thought about this, and remembered that I have done this sometimes, although doing so blocks T. Jump.  Mothballing ships can be inconvenient at times, and with Field Repairs putting ships nearly ready to fight out-of-the-box, I occasionally want to keep ships online to not kill the free 30+% CR and maybe send them to fight on the next encounter.

And mothballing them does not block Hull Restoration, at least for now.  I mothballed a Remnant ship and Hull Restoration removed the d-mod anyway days later (passing newly recovered check).  Alex knows about this and has fixed the bug already.
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BigBrainEnergy

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Re: DP vs OP chart
« Reply #91 on: June 16, 2022, 06:00:22 PM »

Ok, I can see where you're coming from a bit better now.

It sounds like Ordos aren't actually too hard, but double or tiple Ordos are extremely limiting. Which... yeah, once you stack up enough of anything it's gonna push the limit of what's viable.

If I understand correctly, you feel like the game obligates you to fight double Ordos because:
1. You need to spend a ton of story points anytime you want to try something different
2. The exponential story points required for colonies

Not sure what to do about #1 but I believe having a way to "store" spare officers would at help at least a little. For #2 I think DoctorHealsGood has the right idea:

2^N Story point for things is absolute agony. I really wish it capped at some point.
Capping it at 8 is probably fair.

*Edit*
Another thing I've noticed is that between levels 14 and 15 you get 1 story point per half-million XP but after level 15 it's 1 story point per 1 million XP. Maybe keep it at 1 story point per half-million once you reach max level.
« Last Edit: June 16, 2022, 06:05:21 PM by BigBrainEnergy »
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: DP vs OP chart
« Reply #92 on: June 16, 2022, 06:05:10 PM »

Capping at 8 is pretty much the same as not capping it. 2^8 is 256 story points...

You would need to cap it at like 4 at most. Even 16 SP is pretty grindy.

Personally I almost never spend story points on colonies. I just don't see the point when colonies already make more money than I can spend.
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BigBrainEnergy

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Re: DP vs OP chart
« Reply #93 on: June 16, 2022, 06:11:11 PM »

Personally I almost never spend story points on colonies. I just don't see the point when colonies already make more money than I can spend.
I personally feel the same. I story point 1-2 buildings then leave the rest.

Capping at 8 is pretty much the same as not capping it. 2^8 is 256 story points...

You would need to cap it at like 4 at most. Even 16 SP is pretty grindy.
I didn't mean "cap it after doubling 8 times" I meant "cap it at 8 story points per building."

So 2+4+8+8+8+8+8+8=54 for eight buildings.
« Last Edit: June 19, 2022, 05:50:39 PM by BigBrainEnergy »
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Megas

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Re: DP vs OP chart
« Reply #94 on: June 16, 2022, 06:48:29 PM »

Part of the fun of Starsector is growing an empire and making my colonies the best they can be.  I do not care for 4x4 or spreadsheet gameplay.  Something relatively fast and simple is nice, and colony management Starsector is not too complicated or obnoxious.  The worst part is babysitting worlds from invaders (although more often than not this is usually Core Worlds that are worse defended than mine), but such annoyances were massively toned down since the pre-0.95 releases.

I want to attempt full sector colonization one day, but it is something I only want to do once, and I do not want to do it until the game is more finished that it is.

Getting colony improvements vaguely reminds me a bit of item farming from Diablo II.  Got to have that +1.

That reminds me, if I did not get Industrial Planning for my character, I would need either colony improvements or alpha core admins to meet demand.  At least colonies in my current game did not need both IP and improvement to make a world produce enough to meet demand.

In my current game, I did not story point my colonies yet because I did not decide if I really want to keep all of the building at their current locations, and my character is eating a management penalty for breaking a limit.  Plus, I could not decide which industry I want to boost.  (I would boost production industries so that dumping Industrial Planning on my character is a viable option.)  But, if I ever decided what I wanted to boost, I would sink nearly all one hundred or so story points into several buildings across all of my colonies in an instant.
« Last Edit: June 16, 2022, 06:50:32 PM by Megas »
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Thaago

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Re: DP vs OP chart
« Reply #95 on: June 16, 2022, 10:24:46 PM »

The uncapped improvements are a mental bear trap for a certain type of player. There's barely any reason to take any; sometimes 1 for missions or to fulfill an item demand, but you can make gobs of money without any at all. But because they are there, some people will want to sink lots of points into them.
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Megas

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Re: DP vs OP chart
« Reply #96 on: June 17, 2022, 04:49:59 AM »

The uncapped improvements are a mental bear trap for a certain type of player. There's barely any reason to take any; sometimes 1 for missions or to fulfill an item demand, but you can make gobs of money without any at all. But because they are there, some people will want to sink lots of points into them.
If player wants to use Free Port AND Commerce, he will want improvements in Pop & Inf. and Star Fortress, just for +2 stability to partially offset -6, and another for Commerce to bump the measly +25% to +50%.  Unless player uses Dealmaker (or kills the Core Worlds and needs +income%), Commerce is a trap.  Better to use cheaper industries (Battlestation instead of Star Fortress if I do not need stability) and maybe break management penalty by 1 for extra colony instead of using Commerce.

As for improvements, it is not just about the money, it is also having the perfect green improved colony, just like Diablo players trading much more for a great item with perfect stats than a great item that is -1% less than perfect.

I generally want +stability (if planet has decivilized subpop. or I want Free Port and Commerce or extra colonies), +1 production to critical industries, and maybe +fleet size for colonies.  That is easily about four improvements, or 30 story points per colony.  (I do not have 150 story points for five colonies.)  I did not even touch the money ones like +accessibility, which could also be vital for far fringe gate systems that need accessibility to raise import/export limits for demand purposes.

For me, story points are mostly for colonies.  But because I have not decided what to improve yet, I have close to a hundred story points left unspent, but I am not spending them until I decide what to improve because colonies have an insatiable appetite for them.

Capping at 8 is pretty much the same as not capping it. 2^8 is 256 story points...
It is more than that.  2+4+8+16+32+64+128+256 = 510.  And that is for one colony.  I want four or five more colonies similarly improved if I managed to do that for one.

Also, historian should not have the escalating cost for colony items.  Instead, he should be time limited.  Four (or five or ten) points for an item, cost is constant, but historian will not offer another item until two or three years after each purchase.


Another thing, colony improvements is the sort of thing that should be paid for with credits, not story points.  (This, along with s-modding ships, is the reason why I call story points Vespene Gas.)  If story points will remain the way to improve colonies, there should be a different limit than the escalating soft cap.  It is no better than the old level soft cap of earlier releases.
« Last Edit: June 17, 2022, 04:55:18 AM by Megas »
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Megas

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Re: DP vs OP chart
« Reply #97 on: June 17, 2022, 06:59:33 AM »

It sounds like Ordos aren't actually too hard, but double or tiple Ordos are extremely limiting. Which... yeah, once you stack up enough of anything it's gonna push the limit of what's viable.
Double Ordos is the bar because it gives (close to) +500% xp even if I use a fleet instead of solo Ziggurat or something similarly small and cheesy.  If I fight anything else (like any human fleet), I get significantly less than +400% xp if I use anything more than a single Ziggurat (plus 25 DP worth of transports) in the fleet.  XP and story point gain is slow unless bonus xp is at or close to max.  Single Ordos, while harder than high-end human fleets, is beatable with anything that can win against said high-end human fleet without casualties.  But single Ordos does not give much more xp than the humans.  That is why I am interested in double Ordos if I want to use a fleet instead of lone Ziggurat.

Also, when it is time to farm Ordos, they usually appear in huge clumps.  It can be tedious to peel off one from a clump, but not as hard to peel off two or three.  If the fleet is small enough, Remnants will automatically limit themselves to two or three fleets instead of piling on the entire clump of seven or more.
« Last Edit: June 17, 2022, 07:26:06 AM by Megas »
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BigBrainEnergy

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Re: DP vs OP chart
« Reply #98 on: June 17, 2022, 12:49:26 PM »

I'd rather make it easier to farm story points than make it easier to fight double-ordos. You shouldn't be required to fight double ordos to get a decent number of story points late game.
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BigBrainEnergy

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Re: DP vs OP chart
« Reply #99 on: June 18, 2022, 12:59:07 AM »

I'm quite passionate about this because I think the strength of Ordos is a core part of the experience: diving into red zones and needing to carefully peel off one fleet from the horde just to give yourself a fair fight (and even then it's harder than human fleets) tells you a lot about the story through pure game mechanics. This is waaaaay better than making you read stuff like some kind of nerd.

I can't get invested in your lore when it interrupts my gameplay, but I can when it is my gameplay.
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Vanshilar

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Re: DP vs OP chart
« Reply #100 on: June 19, 2022, 04:14:38 AM »

The issue is that remnants don't just require "better ships or weapons", they require specific strategies.

Remnants is endgame. Do you think any game's endgame accepts throwing any random party and any random strategy at it to win?

The excessive advantage they have forces the player into a tiny subset of working strategies, requiring them to drop their favourite ships and playstyles and adapt the "meta" approach.

Highly disagree. Yes, you can't just do random strategies, you have to come prepared and know how to handle them. But there are tons of different strategies to handle them, and it's easy enough to look on Youtube and find all sorts of different strategies that players have come up with to farm Ordos fleets. I haven't bothered with content mods since 0.95a simply because I still haven't explored all the various ways to beat Ordos in vanilla, because there are so many different ways to try.

From a game design standpoint, arguing that it's a player's favorite ship or playstyle as a basis for game changes is not useful, because these can be completely arbitrary. A player can go on the forums and say "I really like spamming Cerberuses with vulcan cannons, how come I can't beat triple Ordos with them, this game is bad and needs to cater to that" etc. Also, these types of arguments deceptively assume that a player's favorite playstyle etc. is not effective (i.e. "favorite" implies "not good at endgame"), when generally speaking players like doing what's effective, not what's not. It would be more persuasive to actually present what the favorite playstyle is and examine why it doesn't work against Ordos fleets (and why it should), instead of relying on some vague notion of "I can't use my (unspecified and undefined) favorite playstyle therefore the game should change".

The fact that most of these strategies boil down to spamming a monofleet of overpowered ships, all with the exact same "optimal" loadout doesn't help the fun either.

Highly disagree. I don't think I've ever used a monofleet for any of my Ordos farming fleets (although Drover spam way back when was pretty close to one, except my flagship was a different ship, and multiple types of fighters were used). Monofleets are generally not as effective as having different types of ships because different ships have different roles, and a single ship is not going to fulfill every possible role effectively. Chances are a monofleet could be improved by having a different ship in it. My LP Brawler fleet was much improved with the addition of several Falcon XIV's to provide Xyphos cover and help against larger targets, not to mention me as the player in a Medusa to jump around to different hotspots.

So it is not just pigeonholing ships, but skills too.  (Want QoL skills like Helmsmanship, Industrial Planning, or Containment Procedures? Bad player!)  Just about every video that kills Ordos, aside from those featuring Omega Ziggurat, have BotB (and officer skills) and thus Leadership 5.

It's funny that you perjoratively call taking Leadership 5 as pigeonholing, when you undyingly choose to take Hull Restoration and then complain about how you don't have enough skill points left over to take the other skills that you want. Have you considered that maybe it's because people generally find BotB to be very useful for a large variety of different skill layouts and that it complements other skills very well, and that generally people can just get rid of d-mods using credits which are essentially infinite, and thus don't have to use valuable skill points for that? Maybe people aren't as concerned as you are about losing that 3rd s-mod from respec'ing away from BotB because they don't see any reason to ever not use it.

Or quit and wait for a better release if it is not fun anymore.  I made a better fleet to defeat a double Ordos, but the game became unfun because I used what I needed to instead of what I want, and if I wanted to change the fleet, I would need to fire all of my officers and spend at least a day to hire and train new ones.  Not doing that!  So far, the easiest way to avoid that nonsense is abuse Omega Ziggurat and map size if I feel like grinding Ordos.

Yes you keep saying this in multiple threads. Apparently:

1. The game is fun and you get to do what you want how you want to do it until you get to Ordos.
2. All fleets capable of defeating (double) Ordos are categorically deemed "unfun". There's never any discussion of just what your preferred playstyle is or why it doesn't work against Ordos fleets, or why you don't like any of the many different ways to defeat Ordos fleets, but any possible player fleets are automatically considered "unfun" if they can beat Ordos fleets.
3. Non-Ordos fleets don't give enough XP to fuel your desire to put improvements on all colony structures despite the 2^n cost, whose purpose is intentionally to dissuade players from trying to put improvements on all colony structures.
4. Therefore, Alex should make it so that regular fleets give millions of XP or you'll quit the game. Oh, and the skill cap should be increased because you want to be a fighter who can also cast spells like a mage, heal like a cleric, and sneak around like a thief.

You know, you can always just go into \starsector-core\data\config\settings.json, and edit "xpGainMult" to 10, 100, or whatever you want if you want to get millions of XP from easier fleets. You can also set "playerMaxLevel" from 15 to 40 if you don't want to deal with the burden of actually have to decide between skills. But these are set the way they are so that the game provides an adequate amount of challenge for the typical player.

Putting 12 Gryphons on autopilot requires zero skill, yet is one the best anti-remnant (anti-everything really) strategies.

I haven't played much with missile ships, what is your Gryphon fleet build that can autopilot through Ordos fleets?

I would argue that remnants should be beatable with ANY 240 dp combination of ships, as long as loadouts/officers/orders are employed well.

I don't see why Alex should guarantee that the player can beat endgame content with any arbitrary set of ships that total 240 DP. Different ships serve different roles, and there's no guarantee that any arbitrary set of ships will be able to cover all the roles for a fleet. The player is supposed to figure out the right tools for the job, not assume that any random tool would work for any job, especially the hardest in the game. This is endgame content here. When you look at the endgame content for any other game, do you also assume that they can be beaten with any arbitrary party composition etc.?

Although...as an aside, this sounds like a fun mission if someone wants to code it in. A random enemy Ordos fleet is generated, a random player fleet is generated, and then the player has to figure out how to beat that fleet with the given ships.

2^N Story point for things is absolute agony. I really wish it capped at some point.

It's a not-so-subtle hint that you should only use a couple of them per colony and not try to spam them. It's a soft cap instead of a hard cap. Besides, for colony improvements, most of the improvements just means the colony makes more credits. So you're trading SP (which are harder to acquire) for additional credits (which are easy to acquire). That's generally a bad decision, especially since once you have colonies up and running you essentially have infinite credits (you have more credits than you can use).

Getting colony improvements vaguely reminds me a bit of item farming from Diablo II.  Got to have that +1.

You know, maybe you should consider "just because you could, doesn't mean you should." Alex seems to be moving toward soft caps rather than hard caps for some of the game boundaries, so that players can "slightly exceed" those boundaries cheaply but going far beyond them quickly becomes painful. For example you can fly around with a 100-ship fleet now if you want, if you want to eat that additional supply cost. But just because you can, doesn't mean it's something worth doing. That's just part of good decision making, deciding what are the things that are more valuable to do.

XP and story point gain is slow unless bonus xp is at or close to max.  Single Ordos, while harder than high-end human fleets, is beatable with anything that can win against said high-end human fleet without casualties.  But single Ordos does not give much more xp than the humans.  That is why I am interested in double Ordos if I want to use a fleet instead of lone Ziggurat.

I get around 3 million XP (i.e. around 3 SP) per Ordos fleet with my current LP Brawler fleet, and it takes around 3.5 minutes of game time according to Detailed Combat Results, but roughly 10 minutes of actual playtime total, since I pause to give commands during the fight (this also includes collecting statistics on the Ordos fleet, i.e. recording number of ships, cores, etc., which also involves reloading the game to record the fleet's FP). So in my current playthrough that's around 18 SP per hour of play. My fleet is intentionally oversized to collect XP data so it should be 4 million XP per fleet if I were at max XP bonus. From some previous testing, my fleet would also get through Ordos fleets around 30% faster if I did it as double Ordos instead of single Ordos (fighting two fleets together took 70% of the time of fighting each fleet one at a time).

So if I did my math right, this means that if this fleet were farming double Ordos, it would be gaining over 34 SP per hour (over because I wouldn't be bothering to record all the Ordos fleet statistics). And I'm sure this isn't the fastest Ordos farming fleet possible. That's enough to put 2 s-mods on every ship in the fleet within 2 hours of play. In my current playthrough, I've already put 3 s-mods on all 30 ships in my fleet (including logistics ships), have multiple ships in storage with 3 s-mods, and have over 100 SP saved up, and I'm less than halfway through my target in terms of gathering statistics on Ordos fleets. All my previous playthroughs also ended up with plenty of SP left over and nothing particularly useful to spend them on.

Gaining enough XP for all the player's SP needs for regular use is pretty trivial, unless the player does a lot of frivolous or unnecessary SP use. At that point it's a spending problem, not a revenue problem.

A single Ordos fleet gives around 55% more base XP than level 10+ (i.e. max level) deserter bounties (692k vs 445k from my most recent testing, assuming doubled XP from SP bonus), and has around 66% more DP for XP bonus purposes (1105 vs 666 from my most recent testing). So a single Ordos fleet will give more than 2.5x the XP than a max-level deserter bounty for all but the largest or the smallest player fleets. That's a big difference. For a medium-size player fleet, deserter bounties would give around 750k XP each while Ordos fleets would give around 2 million XP each.
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Megas

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Re: DP vs OP chart
« Reply #101 on: June 19, 2022, 06:29:40 AM »

It's funny that you perjoratively call taking Leadership 5 as pigeonholing, when you undyingly choose to take Hull Restoration and then complain about how you don't have enough skill points left over to take the other skills that you want. Have you considered that maybe it's because people generally find BotB to be very useful for a large variety of different skill layouts and that it complements other skills very well, and that generally people can just get rid of d-mods using credits which are essentially infinite, and thus don't have to use valuable skill points for that? Maybe people aren't as concerned as you are about losing that 3rd s-mod from respec'ing away from BotB because they don't see any reason to ever not use it.
It is pigeonholing because if I must take Leadership 5 to be optimal, while I want other skills, then it hurts.  It tells me Leadership is stronger than the other three trees, but I need to give up flagship or campaign QoL to get it and makes the game less enjoyable.  I like the skills in Leadership, but there is not enough skill points for everything.  Something needs to be cut.

I take Hull Restoration because it is massive QoL.  Makes the game more fun by eliminating much of the annoyance when my ships die and looting pristine ships directly from the enemy a feasible option.  (Also, the extra max CR effect is nice too.)  Navigation is another good QoL skill, but at least that one is a prerequisite to Gunnery Implants (which I want for flagship) and Flux Regulations (which I want for the fleet).  Hull Restoration is a capstone skill.

I would not take Hull Restoration if it was the only thing in Industry I want.  But both combat skills in Industry are powerful, and the other QoL skills in Industry are nice, especially Containment Procedures (less crew loss, less fuel use, no CR loss on EB) or Industrial Planning.

Yes you keep saying this in multiple threads. Apparently:

1. The game is fun and you get to do what you want how you want to do it until you get to Ordos.
2. All fleets capable of defeating (double) Ordos are categorically deemed "unfun". There's never any discussion of just what your preferred playstyle is or why it doesn't work against Ordos fleets, or why you don't like any of the many different ways to defeat Ordos fleets, but any possible player fleets are automatically considered "unfun" if they can beat Ordos fleets.
3. Non-Ordos fleets don't give enough XP to fuel your desire to put improvements on all colony structures despite the 2^n cost, whose purpose is intentionally to dissuade players from trying to put improvements on all colony structures.
4. Therefore, Alex should make it so that regular fleets give millions of XP or you'll quit the game. Oh, and the skill cap should be increased because you want to be a fighter who can also cast spells like a mage, heal like a cleric, and sneak around like a thief.
Double Ordos is not fun mainly because I need to make a massive commitment that takes days to undo (by grinding up more SP and leveling up several new officers) if I want to change the fleet.  It is not much better than skills choices being permanent in previous releases and the only way to respec back then is to restart the game from the beginning.

1) Officers.  For a conventional fleet, I need to mold an officer to a specific ship.  Because officers cannot respec like the fleet commander, if I change the fleet later, the officer will probably get fired and I need to level up a new one for the new ship.  Leveling up new officers is tedious.  Took me hours (which is a day for me, since I cannot play all day) to level up four or five officers to max and two more up to level 3 or 4.

2) Leadership bias.  Every video I have seen that does not involve Ziggurat with Omega weapons has officer skills and BotB.  That tells me some skills in Leadership are overpowered like various ships are.

3) Story point loss without refund.  If I take BotB and/or officer skills in Leadership and/or Cybernetic Augmentation in Technology, I do not want to spend dozens of story points on third s-mods and/or elite skills on officers I will fire soon only to lose the points without refund after I get through farming Ordos, and I want to change the fleet.  I guess I could escape BotB SP loss by scuttling the ships, but I would lose those ships instead of bonus XP.  No such recourse for officers fired, though.  Also, each respec costs one SP without refund.

4) Weaker combat ships that are meant to be peers to other combat ships that are powerful but cannot punch above their weight either die or cannot damage the enemy fast enough before PPT runs out.

S-mods are a commitment too, but at least the player is fully refunded through bonus XP after scuttling them, but I keep such ships in storage until I want them back later.  Paying off bonus xp is slow unless player builds for maximum xp gain or grinds double Ordos.

You wrote all fleets in your #2.  I only had time to try one (well, two if I include solo Ziggurat with or without Omega weapons).  I am not spending more time searching for new officers and grinding fleets to train them up to max level than the time it takes to beat up double Ordos for a few test fights per configuration.  Nor do I want to burn a huge chunk of story points I reserved for colonies if it involves BotB or elite skills for officers.

You know, you can always just go into \starsector-core\data\config\settings.json, and edit "xpGainMult" to 10, 100, or whatever you want if you want to get millions of XP from easier fleets. You can also set "playerMaxLevel" from 15 to 40 if you don't want to deal with the burden of actually have to decide between skills. But these are set the way they are so that the game provides an adequate amount of challenge for the typical player.
Then it is a modded game that alters gameplay.  Not interested in that.

I haven't played much with missile ships, what is your Gryphon fleet build that can autopilot through Ordos fleets?
Someone made a video with a Gryphon monofleet exploiting linked Squalls and Harpoons.  The screen gets blotted with Squalls and Harpoons, and enemies just die before most of them can get close enough to threaten the Gryphons.  It was about as silly as Drovers and Sparks killing quad Ordos in earlier 0.9a releases, and Pilum spam fleets years ago before 0.7a.

You know, maybe you should consider "just because you could, doesn't mean you should." Alex seems to be moving toward soft caps rather than hard caps for some of the game boundaries, so that players can "slightly exceed" those boundaries cheaply but going far beyond them quickly becomes painful. For example you can fly around with a 100-ship fleet now if you want, if you want to eat that additional supply cost. But just because you can, doesn't mean it's something worth doing. That's just part of good decision making, deciding what are the things that are more valuable to do.
I think soft caps are generally bad.  It is a temptation to play longer and longer just to achieve whatever a player may greatly desire.  Temptation and greed can trump reasoning.  I have done it, and I have seen many others succumb similarly during Diablo II's heyday (especially for one event on a race to level 99).  Never underestimate the lengths players will go through to achieve what they want.

Also, soft caps give an advantage to players with significantly more free time than others.  We used to have a soft level cap, and people with enough time eventually leveled to 70+ (when expected endgame cap was 40 to 50) and people got almost all the skills.

... <long Ordos math> ...
Being harder than human fleets, Ordos farming in red systems is something done late.  If player is fighting human fleets, he will not fight nearly as much because they do not clump like Ordos.

34 SP per hour sounds like a lot unless player is spending 32+ SP for each colony improvement.
« Last Edit: June 19, 2022, 06:32:21 AM by Megas »
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Thaago

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Re: DP vs OP chart
« Reply #102 on: June 19, 2022, 10:18:51 AM »

Re: capping story point spending on colonies:

No colony improvements are needed for ordinary money making, though one or two for an immediate income boost can be good return on investment. Maybe one or two on a single colony would be required if you want a special structure to be running and meet it's 10 demand. But I haven't run across anything that needs more than that.

So the way to not spend ever increasing story points is to not spend ever increasing story points if you want them for something else.
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Megas

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Re: DP vs OP chart
« Reply #103 on: June 19, 2022, 10:56:00 AM »

So the way to not spend ever increasing story points is to not spend ever increasing story points if you want them for something else.
Not much help when I want better colonies, and I do not want to respec the fleet too many times because doing so drains story points unnecessarily.

The way to not lose too many story points from respecs is not respec too much, especially when it involves additional story point spending through BotB and elite skills for officers.

I do not improve colonies much for money purposes, unless it is Commerce (which needs it because only +25% income out-of-the-box is lame when it also gives -3 stability).  I use improvements primarily for weakness patching (stability, fleet size, commodities on low yield planet).  Sometimes there are planets that are good to colonize only if I have Industrial Planning, colony improvement, or both to boost resources high enough.  (Or alpha core but I do not use those most of the time.)  I guess improving stability or commodities is ultimately more money, but I see that as a byproduct, not the main point of those particular improvements (of meeting demand, improving defenses, or support one more colony despite mismanagement penalty).  Accessibility, if far enough from core (or player is hostile with everyone), is more than just money making, it is also for meeting demand too.  It hurts when colony cannot import or export enough because accessibility is too low.

Another thing to keep in mind:  Boosting Heavy Industry also adds to maximum production limit.  Being able to build more in a month or less is convenient.
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BigBrainEnergy

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Re: DP vs OP chart
« Reply #104 on: June 19, 2022, 06:12:37 PM »

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TL;DR deez nuts
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