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Author Topic: split skills for fun (piloted ship) and the rest into separate categories / etc.  (Read 2218 times)

Alex

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In absolute agreement from a gameplay perspective. From a player mindset, however, routinely being less powerful than your subordinates is a weird place to be in. I choose quite a few combat skills most runs but more often than not, my flagship is the weakest vessel in my fleet “on paper.” Why? Because officers don’t have to choose between fleet and combat skills.

Elite skills are supposed to help with this - even with a few combat skills, you'd still have more elite effects than most of your officers. Hmm. What's "quite a few" that if you make them all elite, you still feel weaker than let's say a level 6 officer with 2 elite skills?

Regardless, though, the solution to that - if required - would be to shift more of the combat skill power into the elite effects, imo, since that's what they're there for.

I don’t think we need another skill revamp or anything like that but I would love for there to be opportunities to earn Combat traits (and exclusively Combat) via missions or quests that don’t eat into other skill points. The Galatia quest line grants your transverse jump and neutrino detector without spending skill points. Why not earn portions of Combat skill traits in a sort of piece-meal fashion? Maybe 3-4, tops. It could be completely optional but for those combat-minded, you’d have an alternate path to improve the flagship passively, albeit not as quickly or powerfully as actual Skills. Maybe you have to spend a Story Point too. Just spit-balling.

Ah, interesting! I think that would devalue the actual combat skills, though.
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FooF

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During my "Only Destroyers and Frigates" playthrough, I only had Energy Weapons Mastery and Ordnance Expertise (because they were on the way to other skills!) Meanwhile, my Officers were all Level 6 with 3 Elite skills. Granted, that's an extreme playstyle but I was always looked like the weakest link in the fleet. Normally, I try for 4-5 Combat skills, which puts me on par with other officers but often another Combat Skill feels like it has less impact than a fleetwide one by the time you have a large fleet.

Regarding the "earn Combat perks" idea, if there were 3-4 missions (total) that granted say, "+10% top speed", or "+50% damage to fighters" or "50% faster in-combat weapon and engine repairs"...basically, single lines of actual Combat Skills and nothing Elite, you could kind of have a watered-down version of the Combat Tree that supplements the few picks you do have.

Would it devalue the actual skills? I guess it depends on when you do the quest line. If you do it early, you'd probably be tempted to skip the Combat Skills you have "partials" of. If you did it late, after you're at max skill, you'd pick the ones you know you probably won't get otherwise. There's some min/maxing of timing in here I'm not particularly fond of and we'd have to figure out if you get to pick these combat perks, if they're awarded at random, or you go on a questline specifically for a certain perk. If there was a bar mission/contact that had as a reward "+50% maneuverability for the flagship," I'd jump at the chance. (Perhaps this has more to do with more varied mission rewards than it does with flagship power but the two could be intertwined).
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intrinsic_parity

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IMO, it's not about the player being arbitrarily more powerful (or that being fun), it's about the opposite end of the power spectrum (being too weak without enough skills) and relative power to other ships in the game. By mid-end game, most enemies have lots of officers with lots of skills, and if you don't have lots of personal combat skills, then your ship will be frequently outmatched which just feels bad. But you also have to drop really strong high tier fleet-wide skills to get relatively less impactful low tier combat skills, for instance two extra officers (10/12 more skills) vs one personal combat skill, or an alpha radiant (8 skills) in my fleet vs one combat skill. Player skills are not worth 10x more than a skill in AI hands IMO. And skills like crew training or flux mastery also feel like an extra skill on every ship in the fleet. Plus som really good combat skills (gunnery implants and ordinance expertise) require an extra point a non-combat QOL skill to reach, so they almost cost 2 skill points if you are not going down that tree.

Another idea is to just have some skills be worth more than one skill point, and increase max level to compensate. That would let you make it cheaper to grab combat skills, and just gives another lever for making skill balanced overall.
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Candesce

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Player skills are not worth 10x more than a skill in AI hands IMO.
Don't think I agree with this.

The player's ship is going to be the most influential ship on the battlefield if they're even half trying, and because concentrated power counts for more and allows more aggressive play, increases in power for the player ship have an impact that's much more than linear.

If you're just setting your ship on autopilot and playing admiral, maybe you're not going to get much use out of the Combat tree, but that's really not a gameplay issue. You've picked a strategy that doesn't reward combat skills, so don't take them; sit down in an Astral and provide fire support.
« Last Edit: August 15, 2022, 06:00:44 PM by Candesce »
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intrinsic_parity

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Of course skills are worth more to the player. A lot more. Probably ~5x more usually IMO (although they definitely stack non-linearly). But 10-12x is way too high of a bar for a combat skill to be balanced against some of the top tier fleet wide skills. Maybe if you go full combat skills, you can solo everything, but I don't think that combat skills are individually balanced against those tier 4/5 fleet skills outside of that edge case of going all-in on combat skills and soloing.

Just to be clear, I always take combat skills and pilot my flagship.
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Hiruma Kai

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My general take away from these discussions of splitting the options into two categories is by definition limiting your choices when compared to the current single skill tree.  If you're going to advocate raising the level limit, then just raise the level limit, but don't change the system to something where you're forced to take player skills or forced to take fleet skills, dumping some players into a playstyle they don't care for.

From my experience in vanilla, you can be successful with the no personal skill style as well as the 13 player skill style, or anything in between, assuming you have an appropriately designed fleet for the skills you chose.  It's a single player game, so absolutely perfect balance isn't necessary - simply good enough balance such that you can have fun with different character and fleet builds.  I consider more builds being viable to be desirable since it means more replayability and variety.  Also, I think that it's great that different skills have different values to different fleet compositions.

If I'm running 2 Onslaughts XIV, 2 Legion XIV, a Fury and 4 Hyperions, adding +2 officers provides literally zero benefit, while adding a player skill is likely a nice bump in effectiveness.  Support Doctrine also adds no benefit, so there's no point going for double T4 leadership.

The fact that the same system also lets you run a destroyer and frigate fleet with 25-30 combat ships that are getting maximum benefit from grabbing eight or more skills in the leadership tree while neglecting personal skills, is a strength of the system, not a weakness.

The original suggestion requested an equivalent maximum level of 21 to 23 (8 to 9 points in combat skills, and 13 to 15 in non-combat skills).  How is that 8/13 split (or 5/10 split with the current max level 15) better than just putting 21 points where you want?  That results in more types of fleets and more types of play styles, which is generally what I want in a game.
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intrinsic_parity

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If you're going to advocate raising the level limit, then just raise the level limit, but don't change the system to something where you're forced to take player skills or forced to take fleet skills, dumping some players into a playstyle they don't care for.
I don't think raising the level cap fixes the issue. It just results in you taking more fleet wide combat skills IMO. I think it's fair to argue that splitting combat skills off would eliminate some possibilities (taking no combat skills), and there are probably better approaches. I guess my favorite idea is making skills cost different numbers of skill points as way to balance them without having to gut the strong skills, or try to make all skills equally strong.

From my experience in vanilla, you can be successful with the no personal skill style as well as the 13 player skill style, or anything in between, assuming you have an appropriately designed fleet for the skills you chose.
Success is a super poorly defined term. You can do a ton of stuff that could be called 'success' (make arbitrarily large amounts of money, clearing most fights etc.) without any skills. Does that mean that skill balance doesn't matter since you can do most stuff regardless? IMO it's important to think about the direction that the game balance moves you in, even if the balance is not perfect. In other words: what is the game incentivizing you to do and is that good? If the system creates the possibility of playing in fun ways, but incentivizes you to play in unfun ways, I think there is a problem (obviously fun is subjective, but there are definitely some generally agreed upon ideas, particularly of what is unfun).

Abstractly, the game is pushing you towards doing the 'strongest' things, so it's important to consider what those are and try to make sure they are not unfun. I think the game pushes you towards using minimal combat skills, which is arguably a balance issues with top tier fleet wide skills being really strong compared to individual combat skills, and I would like there to be some mechanic or adjustment that address that.

RE 'my good fleet can't use these strong fleet-wide skills'
From the perspective of pure optimization, the response would be that the fleet is probably worse than another fleet that can use those skills, and you should just use different ships (for instance just remove some capital ships and add more hyperions to use the extra officers). You can of course do many things that will work, but I am trying to talk about what the game is incentivizing you to do, which is the 'strongest' thing.
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Amoebka

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I don't like the idea of nerfing fleet-wide skills. The player needs them overpowered to stay competitive in the late game.

IMO one of the main reasons for fleet-buffing feeling mandatory is the difficulty level. Enemy always has more ships than you can realistically fly around, since there are no logistics for AI. Enemy always has better officers, because the game assumes they have maxed out XP and fully elited skills, while players need millions upon millions of XP and tens of SP to achieve the same (not to mention the incredibly fun and balanced level 8 alpha cores). And most importantly, enemy doesn't care about losses. You don't just have to win fights, you have to win without any significant losses. If AI blew up one of your cruisers and it got 2 d-mods, you lost. Doesn't matter if the end battle screen says otherwise.

Enemy ships now have mostly good loadouts and s-mods, so you can't gain an advantage there either. And both fleets use the same braindead AI that can't even remotely cope with being outnumbered, which the player always is, unlike the enemy fleets.

You either use the overpowered fleet-buffing skills to stand a chance, or pilot an unfair super-flagship and kill everything yourself. Neither is fun.

The problem is with the difficuty curve and late-game design, not the skills.
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Grievous69

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It's time to realize that if you value fleet skills that much higher than combat ones, you're just not very good at combat it seems. That's it, there's no fancy philosophy here.

Come on now, having Missile Spec on an appropriate ship is literally stronger than any other t5 skill, ok maybe not Automated Ships. But you get my point, I'll be doing fights much easier if I'm having 5-6 elite skills than my whole fleet having 1 more s-mod, having a bit cheaper DP, or those trap Industry capstones. And again this is just MY experience. Someone will do the opposite and claim combat skills are a trap. Let them play that way then.

EDIT: @Amoebka
I find the difficulty curve just fine, in fact there's a number of players wishing for more end game stuff that's challenging as well.
« Last Edit: August 15, 2022, 10:57:59 PM by Grievous69 »
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Amoebka

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There are better ways to implement challenge than bloat the raw numbers on emeny ships and demand the player copes with it by "being good in combat". I shouldn't be expected to single-handedly take out half a fleet, regardless of whether or not I can.
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Grievous69

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That's nowhere near what I said, you can literally use autopilot and win every fight in the game, if you choose so by picking only fleet skills. That's the point I'm making.

There's youtube videos of players not even present on the map and just giving orders.
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FooF

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It's time to realize that if you value fleet skills that much higher than combat ones, you're just not very good at combat it seems. That's it, there's no fancy philosophy here.

I would disagree with this. I’m very good at combat but when comparing the benefits of adding Support Doctrine (with my 10 unofficered ships) vs. Ballistic Mastery for my flagship, the impact of the former is magnitudes higher than the latter. And this a real choice the game gives you. All Tier 0 Combat Skills ultimately compete with T3/T4/T5 skills for your skill points.

It’s not about valuing fleet skills more to me: it’s getting the most bang for my buck. At a certain point, fleet skills flat-out have more impact and are more competitive for skill points than flagship skills. Early on, it’s the opposite.

It’s just not a great feeling knowing that you’re making the suboptimal pick. The problem is, at a certain size fleet, every Tier 0 combat skill feels suboptimal individually (even if getting them in conjunction would actually have a greater net effect). It’s more the psychology of the pick than the skill itself.
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Grievous69

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That's a very bad comparison. First you're comparing a t5 skill to a combat skill you can pick whenever. Better comparison would be either Systems Expertise or Missile Spec.

Secondly, the power of combat skills is their combination on a single ship. Your flagship can have a number of combat skills (all elite), along with the fleet buffs that affect all ships. It's weird to compare a single combat skill to a single fleet skill in a vacuum, there's very little context.

But compare investing 5 skills into combat versus investing 5 skills into industry.

EDIT: Random idea: ok so if a chunk of people think personal skills are meh, just make them a slightly stronger version of officer skills?
« Last Edit: August 16, 2022, 05:26:39 AM by Grievous69 »
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Megas

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And most importantly, enemy doesn't care about losses. You don't just have to win fights, you have to win without any significant losses. If AI blew up one of your cruisers and it got 2 d-mods, you lost. Doesn't matter if the end battle screen says otherwise.
This is a reason why I love Hull Restoration.  It is not guaranteed, but there is a good chance ships get recovered without any lasting damage.  It makes casualties acceptable.

The problem with it is if I want to use solo flagship (Ziggurat), then Hull Restoration is good mostly for the +5% CR per s-mod, although being able to recover and repair Remnant ships if I happen to have Automated Ships (or other ships if I fight human bounties) is nice too.

Overall, I agree on the "you lost" point.  The game is balanced on player getting flawless victories.  Without Hull Restoration, I usually reload the game immediately when one of my ships blow up (because I just lost all profit I would get from combat).  With Hull Restoration, casualties become acceptable.

I guess Derelict Operations would thrive on d-mods, but I never liked playing with clunkers, so I doubt I will ever touch that skill.  All ships in my fleet must be pristine.

I am not too fond that the premium QoL skill is a capstone Industry skill.  It is somewhat tolerable that the tier 2 Industry skills are strong.  Ordnance Expert is obvious, and elite Polarized Armor is great for flagships that want to vent spam (although it is also must-have for armor tanks without shields).

Enemy ships now have mostly good loadouts and s-mods, so you can't gain an advantage there either. And both fleets use the same braindead AI that can't even remotely cope with being outnumbered, which the player always is, unlike the enemy fleets.
s-mods on enemies seem limited to special fleets (mercs, infamous phase fleet, Omega bounty).  I do not see any on the random non-merc fleets, Ordos or otherwise.  And that one unique Omega bounty is not harder than a multi-Ordos fight.


I would disagree with this. I’m very good at combat but when comparing the benefits of adding Support Doctrine (with my 10 unofficered ships) vs. Ballistic Mastery for my flagship, the impact of the former is magnitudes higher than the latter. And this a real choice the game gives you. All Tier 0 Combat Skills ultimately compete with T3/T4/T5 skills for your skill points.
I agree for some ships.  If I do not have Omega missiles for Ziggurat, elite Point Defense and Ballistic Mastery are more valuable to me than either Systems Expertise or Missile Spec.  Only if I get Omega missiles that I respec and grab Missile Spec. (to make up for not enough Omega missiles to fill all mounts.)

Meanwhile, for other trees, capstones are better than lower skills.  Combat is an exception, aside from specific ships.  (System Expertise is game-changer for Doom and Radiant.  Missile Specialization for Gryphon or anything with Omega missiles.)
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FooF

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That's a very bad comparison. First you're comparing a t5 skill to a combat skill you can pick whenever. Better comparison would be either Systems Expertise or Missile Spec.

Secondly, the power of combat skills is their combination on a single ship. Your flagship can have a number of combat skills (all elite), along with the fleet buffs that affect all ships. It's weird to compare a single combat skill to a single fleet skill in a vacuum, there's very little context.

But compare investing 5 skills into combat versus investing 5 skills into industry.

EDIT: Random idea: ok so if a chunk of people think personal skills are meh, just make them a slightly stronger version of officer skills?

It’s an extreme example but it is an actual choice the game puts before you. If I have Support Doctrine unlocked, the choice is Support Doctrine vs all other skills (T0 Combat Skills among them) for that skill point.

But that’s what I’m saying. T0 Combat skills start off strong and meaningful and by the time you’re rolling with a fleet, they seem less and less competitive relative to their fleet-wide counterparts. It’s not that Combat skills or fleet skills are under or overpowered but the timing of when you get them greatly influences their overall effect. I personally don’t think there’s any real problem with how the skills are set up or their worth but what skills are “optimal” changes dramatically over the course of a play through.
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