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[SpoonWasAlreadyTaken]

Been reading through the forums just to see whats happening. And a lot of what I see is people complaining about skills and wanting to raise level caps etc.

Through out all of these posts it always comes down to the same problem: Combat skills are trash compared to everything else.

This is because of a single reason. Skills that affect multiple ships and or colonies are way better, if you can have a load of credits you can just spam out ships, and who doesn't want to travel faster, pay less for supplies and fuel etc. Moreover the other skills that aren't QoL are way better as they give you more value, this wouldn't be the case if it was feasible to play the game with a single combat ship but its not. So you are left to get skills that work on most if not all ships in your fleet.


I my self find going for almost the exact skills every time except if its a heavily "themed" playthrough.  I always take like 7 skills in industry and then got for automated ships (The one that lets you control remnant) only because if I can throw a few useless ships to get a Paragon and make my life exponentially easier. As a Paragon works both as a tank and damage dealer, while I just use the insane millions of credits to pump out endless amounts of Scarrabs or Tempests and just swarm my enemy.

I have previously tried a playthrough with the only combat ship I use is the Ziggurat as that was the only feasible thing to use as a single thing, especially to fight end game stuff. I used mostly combat skills and what not to just get it to peak power and while I could beat everything in the game with a few attempts it became very repetitive very quickly, even more so than sticking to swarming things as that's at least fun to watch unlike perfectly timing phasing and un-phasing with your weapons just so you have even a chance at defeating the 40 or so remnants swarming you.

And if you thought that all I did was complain you would be wrong as I offer a fix which has yet to be suggested (from what I could find) and some mods have done this (unintentionally). The fix is simple, add Capital ships that feel like capital ships or as some mods call them Super-Capitals. They give you enough of an impact in battle to be worth taking combat skills. Combine that with taking another look at combat skills and skills in general and you would be golden. A lot of games suffer from some options being easier and better, some of these games don't even try to fix them.

I ramble too much. TLDR: Combat skills < Industry, Leadership and Technology skills.

[Yunru]

Combat skills have far more impact than anything else... if you're good at using them.
I'm not, personally, so I much prefer non-combat skills. But having those skills (especially when elite) means you can do much more with less ships, effecting your logistics, and can take higher bounties with less overhead, effecting your income.

There are still areas that lack overlap, such as removing D-Mods (although one could argue combat skills make it harder for you to get those), but I find that a good thing.

At the end of the day, it will boil down to where you fleet focus is. If you focus on your personal flagship, with the rest of the fleet as ancillary support, the combat skills will be of most use to you. If, however, you prefer less load on yourself personally (maybe even not taking part at all beyond pressing E), then they're only going to be better than an officer in that you can have more of them, with more being elite.

[Grievous69]

No offense but this thread feels like a copy paste of another (always the same notes). If you read so many posts, how the heck did you conclude that combat skills are trash?

It goes like this: Someone bad at combat claims combat skills are inferior > another comes in and says they're good, and crazy good on some ships > OP demands to split the combat and fleet skills > eventually whole thread falls apart because apparently it's not simple to get that other playstyles exist.

I've seen way too many comments saying Industry skills are OP, especially Hull Restoration. When in reality, it's almost all QoL. You pay precious skill points to suck less, instead of straight up being better. Having Missile Spec on a missile ship makes more impact than whole other trees (except maybe Technology).

Also Ziggurat solo run sounds like the most miserable and boring experience you could've chosen. Big slow ship that bleeds supplies and takes forever to complete fights. I don't understand how a broken ship being broken is connected to the discussion of skills here.

For example I usually never invest much in Leadership, but I don't think it's nowhere near as to be called trash. It's clearly potent but just not for me and the way I play.

[Thaago]

The value of combat skills depends a lot on the individual player and the ship selected. In general I find them to be quite good, behind only a few of the leadership skills in value: the ones that also boost the player ship as well as a combat skill would. Crew training, wolfpack if I'm piloting a frigate, or coordinated maneuvers once I have a few officers. Industry in particular is quite poor when it comes to combat: it's only the "combat" player piloting skills that add to combat power before the highest tier ones (and they are weak themselves for combat).

Paragons are a poor choice for a player ship IMO as they are too slow to take advantage of player piloting skills (as opposed to flux management/target selection which still benefit a lot) and they don't benefit very much from either of the high tier combat skills as they have few missiles and a system which doesn't boost.

However, piloting something like an Onslaught Conquest, Odyssey, Doom, Aurora, or any of the high performance frigates - IE ships with many missiles, a system that gets lots of value from system expertise, or just high mobility and firepower in general (in early game just a Hammerhead does fine)- shows the power of the combat tree. The player, with a few combat skills and a good ship for it, can expect to score as many kills as the rest of the fleet combined (and in early game engagements significantly more), and most of those kills are going to happen during the critical early stage of the battle, tilting the fight towards the player side, at which point the rest of the fleet starts to win and claim kills themselves.

And I'm not talking about playing with a single ship: its a fleet combat game after all, and the rest of the fleet puts in work, both in getting kills themselves but also by creating situations where the player can get kills. Good piloting and taking advantage of opportunities is a multiplier on ship power, making anything the player flies much better, so stacking skills on top of that is a great deal of value.

In terms of capital ships feeling like capitals... if I have a build which includes a decent number of combat skills and am flying an Onslaught, it absolutely feels like piloting a Capital ship (with a capital C) as I can 1v1 literally anything in the game (yes including alpha core radiants and tesseracts), or bowl my way through entire formations of smaller enemy ships. (Sometimes literally: I've never had as much fun as burn driving straight into a group of 4 Fulgents, spinning them around so their weapons pointed the wrong way, and then exploding them as they helplessly flailed about trying to turn back to me).

[Vanarion]

In my opinion the value of combat skills has two extremes:
- Least value, if you always set the player ship to auto.
- Most value, if you steer your ship manually, exploit the strength of the ships and their builds and build your fleet around that.

Given that, the skill system is OK for me. Especially because I for myself only really need a few combat skills and can also live without a couple of fleet / global skills.
With 15 points I'm forced to making a descision. Give up one thing to have the other. The strength of the current system is that it is no binary choice, still your choice is impactfull.
Skills can easily be reasigned for story points of which we get plenty.
Also there is a mod to raise the level cap that I can use, when I feel like I want it all.

[Alex_P]

I think the combat skills feel better when you're playing with mods. Because you can go through more options to find the ship that feels really perfect for you.
In vanilla, for example, I don't like the Paragon or Onslaught as much as I like the Apogee. But that's a smaller ship so committing to it as my flagship means I tend to keep my whole fleet leaner overall as well. With mods… there's like half a dozen capitals or heavy cruisers that I really like to fly personally, and getting improved range, massive missile power, or huge energy efficiency on a shiny flagship makes me way, way happier than wrangling up a Radiant for my fleet, even though objectively it might have higher flux stats and more guns.

[Kos135]

I always put my PC in a Pristine Kite with built-in Operations Center. I take zero combat skills, all leadership/technology with just a couple industry.

The skill tree has been radically changed multiple times over the years. Officers are wonky at best. I would love to see a commander-oriented PC skill tree, and separate skill trees for officers. No more randomization for which skills officers can take, just give us skill trees so we can have what we want.

[FooF]

To agree with what others have said: Combat Skills are dependent on player skill. Nothing more, nothing less. If I choose to take a bunch of them, it is tantamount to saying "My ship is going to do all the heavy lifting" and if you can exploit it well, you don't really need to boost Fleet strength. That being said, sometimes you want your fleet to take the lion's share, so you invest in Leadership and Tech, or you don't want to care about losses so you invest heavily in Industry. They're all viable.

The Combat Tree isn't "less than" though. On a pick-by-pick basis, grabbing a Combat skill probably feels less than at times. Why take Combat Endurance when Crew Training does basically the same thing for the whole fleet? Why take Helmsmanship when Coordinated Maneuvers can achieve the same thing for the whole fleet? etc. In short, the Elite parts of the Combat Skills really to start to snowball if you start stacking them. Elite Combat Endurance turns bricks like the Onslaught into regenerating bricks. Elite Helmsmanship allows you to press "X" and gain 50 speed. Then you get Systems Expertise and Missile Specialization that can transform entire playstyles.

I guess the real question being asked is "Does max Combat compete favorably against other skill builds?" and the answer is a disappointing "Yes and no." It can exceed other builds in many ways but if your piloting isn't up to the task, than no, a more fleet-based build would probably take you further.

 

[Kos135]

The Combat Tree isn't "less than" though.

Yes it is lol, unless you are intentionally running a small fleet where a combat-specced PC would count more than a fleet-specced PC that invests in fleet-wide buffs.

[Hiruma Kai]

The Combat Tree isn't "less than" though.

Yes it is lol, unless you are intentionally running a small fleet where a combat-specced PC would count more than a fleet-specced PC that invests in fleet-wide buffs.

Can you explain how it is "less than"?  How does one go about determining that?  Is there some challenge the game presents that players can do only with a fleet focused character build?  As you seem to suggest, there are some fights you can only handle with combat skills (i.e. intentionally small or solo fleets).  I'm pretty sure there are some self imposed challenges that can only be done by an at least somewhat combat focused character (i.e. at least 5 points into Combat), but I'm hard pressed to think of any challenges only a fleet focused (i.e. no points in the combat skill tree) character can accomplish.

[BCS]

Um, is this a joke? Some kind of meme I'm not aware of?

You(OP) have this completely backwards. It's the QoL/Industry skills that are "trash". Any skill that does not directly benefit either your fleet or your flagship in combat is technically worthless and a noob trap because a) money is not a limiting factor in the game and b) strategic map scales pretty much indefinitely - you can always bring another hauler or another tanker and just eat the cost.

It is the battles that are limited by the 160-240 DP pool and if your ships aren't good enough within that limited DP pool then you are simply going to lose. And no amount of extra cargo space, sensor strength, burn speed, supplies/fuel, etc. is going to change that.

[Serenitis]

I'm hot garbage at combat, but I still take combat skills because they:

• Make it easier to do stuff in combat
• "Raise the bar" for mistakes so fewer bad plays have a harshly negative effect
• Regardless of how bad I am, zooming about shooting stuff is fun

You(OP) have this completely backwards. It's the QoL/Industry skills that are "trash".

Nah.
Just because something gives you <power x> instead of <power y> doesn't make it "useless" or "a trap".
It's just different priorities. Logistics power is still power.
Also

Any skill that does not directly benefit either your fleet or your flagship in combat is technically worthless

Repairing ships for nothing, recovering CR faster, not being affected by certain things, and just straight up not needing as many of your 30 ships to be support. All because not only can your existing ships carry more stuff, but all your ships use less stuff so you can skew your fleet even harder toward combat ships without impacting it's range or speed.
This all benefits your fleet and flagship. Even if some of it is indirect, it's still a benefit.

[Megas]

It's the QoL/Industry skills that are "trash". Any skill that does not directly benefit either your fleet or your flagship in combat is technically worthless and a noob trap because a) money is not a limiting factor in the game and b) strategic map scales pretty much indefinitely - you can always bring another hauler or another tanker and just eat the cost.

It is the battles that are limited by the 160-240 DP pool and if your ships aren't good enough within that limited DP pool then you are simply going to lose. And no amount of extra cargo space, sensor strength, burn speed, supplies/fuel, etc. is going to change that.

This is the biggest problem with the skill system.  Specifically, anything above Ordnance Expert/Polarized Armor.  The QoL skills that make the game more enjoyable to play do not give enough combat power to deal with the strongest enemies (i.e. multi-Ordos).

You(OP) have this completely backwards. It's the QoL/Industry skills that are "trash".

Repairing ships for nothing, recovering CR faster, not being affected by certain things, and just straight up not needing as many of your 30 ships to be support. All because not only can your existing ships carry more stuff, but all your ships use less stuff so you can skew your fleet even harder toward combat ships without impacting it's range or speed.
This all benefits your fleet and flagship. Even if some of it is indirect, it's still a benefit.

That does not seem as useful as not dying or losing less ships in the first place.

I say/write this as a big, BIG fan of Hull Restoration.  Being unable to take Leadership because I have points tied up in Industry (for anti-save-scum) and high Technology (for content-unlocking) really hurts, and the only thing that makes that tolerable is Ziggurat (with Phase Anchor and Omega missiles) being overpowered enough to kill everything singlehandedly and making Leadership less necessary.

Without Leadership and without Ziggurat cheese, it is hard to build a fleet with only 160 DP (and ships at full DP cost) that can fight against double Ordos without dying.  No BotB and no Leadership boosts that make the fleet better really hurts.  Hull Restoration occasionally lets the player recover every ship lost without d-mods (and sometimes new near-pristine Remnant ships if player got Automated Ships too) which mitigates casualties, but it feels worse than not dying in the first place.

The biggest things I miss from not having Leadership is Wolfpack Tactics and Carrier Group.  Frigates do not have enough PPT, and Combat Endurance alone is not enough (and Hardened Subsystems cost too much).  Without Carrier Group, most fighters (all bombers or less durable interceptors) drain to 30% too quickly, making pure carriers (those without guns) useless and only some battlecarriers (built like warship-lite) with more durable fighters viable.  Crew Training would be another if I do not get Hull Restoration.  Having at least two boosts to max CR (among Combat Endurance, Crew Training, and/or Hull Restoration) are a must with Ziggurat and Radiant with Beta+ core.

I'm hot garbage at combat, but I still take combat skills because they:

• Make it easier to do stuff in combat
• "Raise the bar" for mistakes so fewer bad plays have a harshly negative effect
• Regardless of how bad I am, zooming about shooting stuff is fun

I like to take at least the mobility Combat skills for the flagship because the controls and ships feel very sluggish without them.  Having ships feel weaker or less responsive than playerships in other games does not feel good.

I would only ignore Combat if I would leave the flagship on autopilot.  If I need to pilot the ship, a lot of personal skills (in all three trees) are a must, especially when the enemy gets progressively more skilled and player wants the skills just to keep up.

Also Ziggurat solo run sounds like the most miserable and boring experience you could've chosen.

It gives high +xp% multiplier for anything less than double Ordos.  Also, it is relatively simple to build, and does not need too much story point investment that may get erased upon respec.

[Acro]

This thread is an absolute dumpster fire. ALL ARE VIABLE. Don't forget, Starsector is a space exploration game.

Do what you want. Want to become a fabled bounty hunter across the galaxy? Small things like extra manoeuvrability, speed, etc or double missile storage can completely change the way you see combat, exploration and even Starsector as a whole.

It's is based off of your playstyle. If you prefer a more laid back game style invest in leadership or technology. Want to make exploration easier? Use the Industry line to make things less harsh or make extra cash off of colonies.

If you want to make a critique or complaint about skills then you can't roast the dev's design choice because you believe a skill tree is better, not based off of statistics but purely because your gameplay is not well adjusted to the gamestyle.

Sure, some skills provide a better advantage or outcome but to say other skills/skill trees are bad/useless/irrelevant, is extremely biased. I remember during my first time playing, I only ever invested in combat because I thought it'd be vital. Sure it's nice but I got punished, I would find myself being crippled because I hadn't accounted for how I would play Starsector.

Combat skills aren't bad. In order to criticise the combat skill you need to at least know what your game plan is. Sure a lot of the work is done by the rest of your fleet, but still a single ship can create a huge impact on the field even if it's vanilla if built and wielded correctly. It's a worthy investment to have officers and skills, allowing more interesting and a wider strategies. Again it's based off of your gameplay. The double missile storage turns my Gryphon in long battles from a danger to a nightmare. The 50% extra manoeuvrability making my slow capital into a helicopter. Also how are you surprised that playing a solo phase ship, designed to have max potential by essentially slowing how time works around you and then complaining that combat is boring/bad because YOU decided to play with a single super-ship. Just because you can't become an absolute unit that can curb stomp anything or anyone really isn't the basis for an argument or even conclude that combat skills are bad. Sure Paragon is good, but there are many other capitals that can provide a better advantage. You shouldn't even be fighting with remnant at early levels in particular.

Been reading through the forums just to see whats happening. And a lot of what I see is people complaining about skills and wanting to raise level caps etc.

Through out all of these posts it always comes down to the same problem: Combat skills are trash compared to everything else.

This is because of a single reason. Skills that affect multiple ships and or colonies are way better, if you can have a load of credits you can just spam out ships, and who doesn't want to travel faster, pay less for supplies and fuel etc. Moreover the other skills that aren't QoL are way better as they give you more value, this wouldn't be the case if it was feasible to play the game with a single combat ship but its not. So you are left to get skills that work on most if not all ships in your fleet.


I my self find going for almost the exact skills every time except if its a heavily "themed" playthrough.  I always take like 7 skills in industry and then got for automated ships (The one that lets you control remnant) only because if I can throw a few useless ships to get a Paragon and make my life exponentially easier. As a Paragon works both as a tank and damage dealer, while I just use the insane millions of credits to pump out endless amounts of Scarrabs or Tempests and just swarm my enemy.

I have previously tried a playthrough with the only combat ship I use is the Ziggurat as that was the only feasible thing to use as a single thing, especially to fight end game stuff. I used mostly combat skills and what not to just get it to peak power and while I could beat everything in the game with a few attempts it became very repetitive very quickly, even more so than sticking to swarming things as that's at least fun to watch unlike perfectly timing phasing and un-phasing with your weapons just so you have even a chance at defeating the 40 or so remnants swarming you.

And if you thought that all I did was complain you would be wrong as I offer a fix which has yet to be suggested (from what I could find) and some mods have done this (unintentionally). The fix is simple, add Capital ships that feel like capital ships or as some mods call them Super-Capitals. They give you enough of an impact in battle to be worth taking combat skills. Combine that with taking another look at combat skills and skills in general and you would be golden. A lot of games suffer from some options being easier and better, some of these games don't even try to fix them.

I ramble too much. TLDR: Combat skills < Industry, Leadership and Technology skills.

You seriously think QOL/Industry is bad? Nope. As I said I invested a lot into combat but I found myself being crippled by fuel and supply usage going into the hundreds. I tried Industry and it's really helpful, being able to cut up to 50% of my supplies and fuel usage, or that extra 2 burn speed for civ ships is really helpful. I am baffled to be in a world where someone says money is 'not a limiting factor', like NO?? Money is one of the biggest limiting factors, supplies and fuel can chunk a massive amount of money when playing. You don't need to automatically invest in combat related skills to make fights possible. Even without skills, a player and their fleet can still be just as deadly with the right gameplay. Plus most of your time will be spent exploring, early game to the point that combat should be avoided. You should. Sure, I'd win fights but at what cost? 100+ supplies per second for repairs, hundreds of fuel being used just for a small trip?, almost no salvage to make up for the deficit. Industry isn't meant to make you a power house in battle.

Um, is this a joke? Some kind of meme I'm not aware of?

You(OP) have this completely backwards. It's the QoL/Industry skills that are "trash". Any skill that does not directly benefit either your fleet or your flagship in combat is technically worthless and a noob trap because a) money is not a limiting factor in the game and b) strategic map scales pretty much indefinitely - you can always bring another hauler or another tanker and just eat the cost.

It is the battles that are limited by the 160-240 DP pool and if your ships aren't good enough within that limited DP pool then you are simply going to lose. And no amount of extra cargo space, sensor strength, burn speed, supplies/fuel, etc. is going to change that.

Thaago, has a good point.

Another thing that ticks me off is how people argue and bicker about level caps. Like THERES LITERALLY A MOD CALLED 'Skilledup'. Just choose what your level cap will be out of the selections from the forum. Just pop that on instead of dropping such rants on the mods/devs.

I am no modder or reviewer myself, but even some basic understanding of what Starsector is truly meant to be can really give some insight.

I agree with what this says, in fact quite a lot (though you didn't have to do the ziggy like that).

No offense but this thread feels like a copy paste of another (always the same notes). If you read so many posts, how the heck did you conclude that combat skills are trash?

It goes like this: Someone bad at combat claims combat skills are inferior > another comes in and says they're good, and crazy good on some ships > OP demands to split the combat and fleet skills > eventually whole thread falls apart because apparently it's not simple to get that other playstyles exist.

I've seen way too many comments saying Industry skills are OP, especially Hull Restoration. When in reality, it's almost all QoL. You pay precious skill points to suck less, instead of straight up being better. Having Missile Spec on a missile ship makes more impact than whole other trees (except maybe Technology).

Also Ziggurat solo run sounds like the most miserable and boring experience you could've chosen. Big slow ship that bleeds supplies and takes forever to complete fights. I don't understand how a broken ship being broken is connected to the discussion of skills here.

For example I usually never invest much in Leadership, but I don't think it's nowhere near as to be called trash. It's clearly potent but just not for me and the way I play.

Play Starsector > Find a style that suits you > Try another style > Get surprised when said style is underwhelming because you aren't used to it > Instead of getting good at it, immediately correlate bad results as a bad skill tree > Talk about it on the forums > Someone argues the opposite > Repeat from step 2

[SpoonWasAlreadyTaken]

No offense but this thread feels like a copy paste of another (always the same notes). If you read so many posts, how the heck did you conclude that combat skills are trash?

It goes like this: Someone bad at combat claims combat skills are inferior > another comes in and says they're good, and crazy good on some ships > OP demands to split the combat and fleet skills > eventually whole thread falls apart because apparently it's not simple to get that other playstyles exist.

Also Ziggurat solo run sounds like the most miserable and boring experience you could've chosen. Big slow ship that bleeds supplies and takes forever to complete fights. I don't understand

A: In a white room situation where you are perfectly average at combat. Combat skills are objectively worse, only because other skills are exponentially better. Why? Because they give you something for most or your entire fleet and it doesn't put as much pressure on you being at peak performance. Combat skills by them self's are amazing, god like even and they are a lot of fun. Especially if you can spam dozens upon dozens of missiles, or use ship specials all the time to just ships get incinerated. But the problem is they are there with the other skills and have to compete with them. And no I don't suggest to split them apart or whatever nor do I suggest to make them better because they are good, what I suggest is making them matter more. Not everyone is a "God-level gamer", some people like to play the game a lot more relaxed than others and some play the game to just blow stuff up and use as much of their personal skill as much as they can.

B: Playing as a Ziggurat solo was fun at first and then it did become a nightmare, but I already said that. So I have no idea why you felt like you need to say it again. I simply chose the Ziggurat as that was at that time the best ship I new and was fairly confident I could do a successful single (combat) ship run.