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[Space Cowboy]

I realize I'm casting a wide net with the title of this post, but I'm going to be focusing on things that specifically effect end game meta.

1) Fleet Size Limit(FSL):

The way it works presently, the player is forced to spam capitals which is expensive, slow, and gets old very quickly. I usually quit the game and start a new one once fleets are scaled up to this point bc it just isn't very fun. I know many people have already asked for an increase in FSL, and while I haven't scoured every post on the topic, I'm assuming there are reasons why that can't be implemented. My suggestion is instead to make frigates count as 1 ship, destroyers as 2, cruisers as 3, and capitals as 4 or maybe even 5. I think this would diversify fleets a great deal. If the cap could be bumped up to 40 or 50 that would help as well.

2) Talents:

Talents are another factor forcing players into capital spam. Many of the talents revolving around smaller ships are really cool in theory, but are not viable in the late game so I'm going to go through some specifics and what I think should be different about them.

 -Wolfpack: It works quite well until the late game when all the CR bonuses in the game won't be enough to make the limit of 10 officers hold out long enough in smaller ships to take on 10
  capitals. I think a. players need access to more officers (which I believe is something that is in the current dev build) and b. this talent needs a scaling modifier to make it viable at all stages. For
  example, it could scale off of the player's level or the same mechanic that scales enemy fleets. This talent would also be buffed by the FSL change above.

 -Coordinated Maneuvers: It's difficult to notice the effect of nav rating and ecm rating so tbh I'm not sure how well this one works. In theory it seems good but the same issues with FSL and
  officer limit apply here.

 -Tactical Drills/ Flux Regulation: The DP cost limit does not really work, even fleets of smaller ships will end up over this limit and the bonus feels negligible. Instead of dp cost limit, it should just
 give a larger bonus to smaller hulls. To keep it from being broken in the early game, it could also have a scaling mechanic based on player level or the enemy fleet scaling bonus.

 -Best of the best: I'd like to see a ship size element to this talent. For example: capitals are unaffected, cruisers can build 1 extra s mod, destroyers 2, and frigates 3.

[Thaago]

Why are players forced to spam capitals?

[Space Cowboy]

Why are players forced to spam capitals?

Well that's sort of what the whole post is about. Because npc fleets spam capitals, all hull sizes count the same towards fleet size limit, and the talents aimed at smaller hulls do not scale and are hurt by the cap on # of officers.

[BigBrainEnergy]

I've never felt the need to spam capitals even against end game fleets so I can't say I understand. The only reason you would need to up the fleet size limit is if you were spamming frigates. The only time 10 officers isn't enough is if you're spamming frigates. Are you trying to spam frigates?

And how is it that we're forced to go over the 240 dp limit? You should be just fine with a total combat fleet of 240 dp unless you're trying to take on like 5 ordos at once.

What exactly are you fighting that you need 400 dp of nothing but capitals?

[Grievous69]

Guess I'm a fool for using only 2 capitals in the end game. One important question to ask here is on what battle size do you play?

[Space Cowboy]

Guess I'm a fool for using only 2 capitals in the end game. One important question to ask here is on what battle size do you play?

You can run 2 capitals and a bunch of cruisers but I'm talking about a fleet comprised of all smaller hulls. I play on max battle size.

I've never felt the need to spam capitals even against end game fleets so I can't say I understand. The only reason you would need to up the fleet size limit is if you were spamming frigates. The only time 10 officers isn't enough is if you're spamming frigates. Are you trying to spam frigates?

And how is it that we're forced to go over the 240 dp limit? You should be just fine with a total combat fleet of 240 dp unless you're trying to take on like 5 ordos at once.

What exactly are you fighting that you need 400 dp of nothing but capitals?

I'm fighting late game bounty fleets and large faction fleets like these (which are actually pretty average, there are much larger ones):

Spoiler

[close]

Even just the first line of ships from the first fleet is over 400 dp.

[BigBrainEnergy]

I now realize my error, I should have opened with "how many mods do you have active?"

Vanilla isn't going to get re-balanced around crazy bounties that only show up in modded games. You should look for mods that increase the officer limit / fleet limit. I don't use them myself but I know they're out there.

[Space Cowboy]

I now realize my error, I should have opened with "how many mods do you have active?"

Vanilla isn't going to get re-balanced around crazy bounties that only show up in modded games. You should look for mods that increase the officer limit / fleet limit. I don't use them myself but I know they're out there.

I will look for those mods, I appreciate the suggestion. It's been a while since I played vanilla but I have done on the current build and I remember having similar issues, if not necessarily to the same extent. Regardless, the fact remains that fleets comprised of larger ships have far greater combat power due to the way FSL works. Perhaps it's not necessary to change vanilla due to the lower difficulty but that doesn't mean it's balanced.

[Sandor057]

My two cents on this is that there seems to be a definite direction development is aiming for and that is to favour specialised, gimmicky ship and fleet builds in smaller-scale battles, contrary to huge brute force fleets (however fun they are). Few capitals, a strong force of cruisers, some destroyers I guess and a few specialised frigates. I don't think it will change a lot in future releases, so the preferred playstyle will either be balanced fleets (for early to midgame) or specialised fleets (for mainly REDACTED hunting).

That said, I don't much enjoy the arbitrary deployment limitations of the DP system and have messed around with the fleet size limit as well. Technically you can adjust both stats (and way more, including officer limits) in the settings.json file, but if you don't know it's possible it's not exactly obvious. Also, no way to adjust it from the game's settings.

Spoiler

You need to go to here within your Starsector folder: \starsector-core\data\config
Then open the settings.json file and find these:
   "maxShipsInFleet":30,
   "maxShipsInAIFleet":30,

Change the numbers to one you feel would be better, save and you're done.


If you want more ships though chances are you will need more deployment points as well. It is sufficient to change the "maxBattleSize" variable for that in the same file.


For officers you have two variables. One for the AI and another for the player, them being:

        "officerAIMax":10,
   "baseNumOfficers":8

[close]

[BigBrainEnergy]

Regardless, the fact remains that fleets comprised of larger ships have far greater combat power due to the way FSL works. Perhaps it's not necessary to change vanilla due to the lower difficulty but that doesn't mean it's balanced.

My suggestion is instead to make frigates count as 1 ship, destroyers as 2, cruisers as 3, and capitals as 4 or maybe even 5. I think this would diversify fleets a great deal. If the cap could be bumped up to 40 or 50 that would help as well.

This bit is a decent idea, I'd say bump it up to a solid 60 and scale how many fleet "slots" a ship uses according to its size. Maybe something like 1/1/2/3. I don't think we desperately need this tweak, but it's a nice QOL upgrade.

[SCC]

Considering mods can change battle size and ship cap, while vanilla values are balanced well enough for vanilla fights, I can already imagine Alex's stance on the issue is "mods broke it, mods fix it".

[BigBrainEnergy]

Technically you can adjust both stats (and way more, including officer limits) in the settings.json file, but if you don't know it's possible it's not exactly obvious.

Is there also an easy way to modify the bonus from officer management/other player skills? It's not that hard mess around with how the skill tree is organized but I don't know how to tweak the skill effects.

[Sandor057]

Is there also an easy way to modify the bonus from officer management/other player skills?

Changing skills is a bit more technical. There's info on how to do it here and an in-depth explanation here.

The short of it is that you need to go into the ...starsector_folder\starsector-core\starfarer.api.jar file. Inside there you can change the skills directly at \com\fs\starfarer\api\impl\campaign\skills. For most skills a little coding know-how should be sufficient to increase or decrease the existing effect, or change the thresholds, but on the whole java knowledge is preferred. As that language is an abominat... I mean something I'm not quite proficient with, I did not meddle with skills all that much. There are some mods which assist with e. g. changing skill thresholds. So best of luck if you give it a go.

Also, start with making a copy of starfarer.api.jar. Just in case.

[Space Cowboy]

Considering mods can change battle size and ship cap, while vanilla values are balanced well enough for vanilla fights, I can already imagine Alex's stance on the issue is "mods broke it, mods fix it".

That's fair, if ya'll think it's fine in vanilla I'll take your word for it. I'll try messing around with the ship and officer caps. That seems easy enough to do, thanks for all the replies.

[Amoebka]

The main aspect of running destroyer swarms that I loathe isn't even the officer limit. Support Doctrine takes care of that. It's the story-point grind. Fully s-modding a 240 DP fleet of 10 capitals/cruisers costs 30 points, which you get easily just from leveling. Fully s-modding 240 DP of destroyers costs 90, which requires tons of grinding past max level.