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[SapphireSage]

The twitter teaser picture shows that the hullmod tooltip description includes the s-mod changes, and I'm quite certain that you don't need to go into s-mod menu or s-mod the hullmod beforehand for that to show up, just like in the gamemod that inspired this mechanic.

Ah okay good. Thanks for letting me know, I remembered the stuff in the lower right, but didn't remember the tooltip display.

[Alex]

also, the "middle ground" for hullmod op cost this system is intended to balance around is 25 OP (at capital size), right? EMR is 30 OP. Why is a 33% debuff to such an important stat as rof for a hullmod that is 5 OP over the middle ground even remotely acceptable? like, other people have said, "building in a 25 op hullmod instead of EMR is equivalent to a 15 OP hullmod that boosts missile rof by 50%" which "might be more interesting" but 1. i disagree that that wouldn't be a no brainer in most circumstances but more importanly 2. is wrong bc it would be the equivalent of a 5 op hullmod

overall a debuff this severe to a stat this important feels just completely out of whack

I'm going to be completely honest here, for some reason in my head the OP cost for the capial tier was 40. ... oops? I think it got mixed up with heavy armor or something, in the "build this in always" tier. So, I'm really glad you brought this up. Let me change it to 20%, at least for the moment; open to suggestions!

For 5 OP, though, 20% feels like it should be alright - perhaps a bit much on the face of it, in pure dps terms. But that's only a concern for some missiles, and in that case giving up 5 OP to build in something else could be fine. And for the more ammo-limited missiles, it wouldn't be that big a deal (nor would it on ships with FMR). So it seems like there are a lot of considerations here which might push it one way or another.

On a side note, if you're looking to nerf missiles overall, then applying a rate of fire penalty to both the OP costing expanded missile racks and the s-mod slot version would make more sense than just the s-mod version, perhaps with an OP cost decrease.  At which point EMR becomes more of a tradeoff hullmod like Unstable Injector.  More speed and less range.  While EMR would be more sustain, less DPS (although more overall damage in the long run, but less good at bursting down shields/armor).

Hmm. Worth thinking about, the I'm not sure that's a direction I want to go with it - I think it would push missiles *overall* towards the other weapon types (if only slightly). I think the option of no-penalty +ammo is a good one to have. And given that it only effectively costs 5 OP on the capital tier...

The twitter teaser picture shows that the hullmod tooltip description includes the s-mod changes, and I'm quite certain that you don't need to go into s-mod menu or s-mod the hullmod beforehand for that to show up, just like in the gamemod that inspired this mechanic.

Ah okay good. Thanks for letting me know, I remembered the stuff in the lower right, but didn't remember the tooltip display.

(Right, yes!)

[BCS]

Thinking about it some more and running the numbers in my head, these seem to be options with new EMR:

 - Missile Specialization: double missiles, normal firing time(2x endurance, normal DPS)
 - Expanded Missile Racks: double missiles, double firing time(4x endurance, half DPS)
 - Missile Specialization + Expanded Missile Racks: triple missiles, half firing time(6x endurance, half DPS)
 - Elite Missile Specialization: double missiles, half the firing time(1x endurance, double DPS)
 - Elite Missile Specialization + Expanded Missile Racks: triple missiles, normal firing time(3x endurance, normal DPS)

So it seems that the entire spectrum is covered, at least as far as endurance is concerned. We'll have to see how it works live(fights only last so long after all, so one of these options will be most optimal)

[Megas]

I'm going to be completely honest here, for some reason in my head the OP cost for the capial tier was 40. ... oops? I think it got mixed up with heavy armor or something, in the "build this in always" tier. So, I'm really glad you brought this up. Let me change it to 20%, at least for the moment; open to suggestions!

For some ship sizes, EMR and Heavy Armor cost the same; 8 for frigates and 20 for cruisers.  Only destroyers and capitals are different; 12/16 for destroyers and 30/40 for capitals.

[Thaago]

Well, I know what the first s-mod I'm building in for the early game flagship is.  I'll take a +25% damage bonus against nearly the entire enemy fleet.

Anyways, the way I view this, and the better deserved s-mods, is not a change of the original hullmods, but rather introducing an entirely new set of hullmods that have a different resource cost (s-mod slots instead of OP).  Especially when you provide bonuses that you simply cannot duplicate with OP.  That are not allowed to stack in the same way Integrated Targeting Unit and Dedicated Targeting Core are not allowed to stack. Those unique bonuses are going to cause competition with hullmods that do not provide additional benefits, irregardless of the OP differences.

...

Agreed! I'm already a fan of advanced turret gyros as a hullmod thats good for its cheap cost. S modding it instead of ITU is essentially paying 2/4/9/15 OP to install +25% damage to fighters/missiles/frigates on top of other bonuses. I'd do that on several ships.

[Alex]

(In all honesty, I think the current gyros effect is a bit too much! I think - and this applies across the board - that it mostly shouldn't be the main thing you get the mod for. I mean, some amount of that is unavoidable if you have interesting effects, but still...)

[Hiruma Kai]

(In all honesty, I think the current gyros effect is a bit too much! I think - and this applies across the board - that it mostly shouldn't be the main thing you get the mod for. I mean, some amount of that is unavoidable if you have interesting effects, but still...)

If you're balancing against 4/8/15/25 cost OP hullmods as the no benefit or no penalty version, and Advanced Turret Gyro only costs 2/4/6/10, then one could argue the s-mod benefit should be the thing you s-mod it for.   Since the s-mod portion is trying to be 2/4/9/15 OP worth in some kind of overall balance sense, which at the cruiser and capital tiers, is higher than the base OP value of the hullmod itself.  It's got to entice the player that much, at least in some builds, or the design effort goes to waste as players won't spend one of their precious s-mod slots on it.  From a balance standpoint, I feel like you can go a little bit more crazy with these new s-mod only hullmods, simply because you're limited to 2 (or 3 with a character skill).

As soon as you start changing what a hullmod does by putting them into a story point hullmod slot, it's not saving OP, it is a different customization option that can not be acquired in any other way.  Which means it kind of needs to stand on its own and be balanced on it's own, separate from the OP costing version.  If you really want people to use one of it's two s-mod slots, it has to be good, like built in ITU good.

Whether +25% is too much, probably not given IPDAI's 4/8/12/20 OP value. 

[Alex]

If you're balancing against 4/8/15/25 cost OP hullmods as the no benefit or no penalty version, and Advanced Turret Gyro only costs 2/4/6/10, then one could argue the s-mod benefit should be the thing you s-mod it for.   Since the s-mod portion is trying to be 2/4/9/15 OP worth in some kind of overall balance sense, which at the cruiser and capital tiers, is higher than the base OP value of the hullmod itself.  It's got to entice the player that much, at least in some builds, or the design effort goes to waste as players won't spend one of their precious s-mod slots on it.

I think ideally, it'd be in the sweet spot of being worth the OP you're giving up, but not being worth the full 5/10/15/25 OP *on its own*. Basically, where it's a good choice to s-mod in, but not so much so that you'd select the mod even if you don't care about its baseline effects at all.

Again, though, with some of the effects being more interesting, I think the value proposition of the effects will be different enough based on the specific circumstances that it won't always fall into that sweet spot. And I don't think making the effects boring to avoid this with mathematical certainty is the way to go. But, still, if an s-mod effect screams "I'll definitely be getting this hullmod just for that", that's probably something to look at.

[Thaago]

I think thats entirely reasonable! To clarify my point from before, I already do think advanced turret gyros is a good buy for its cost (with OP, not S modded), so it wouldn't be entirely for the S mod bonus.

Comparing the "ITU normalized" 2/4/9/15 OP of S modding ATG to integrated point defense AI: if the bonus was 25% to fighters and missiles alone it wouldn't be worth it except for specialized PD ships (like I'd still do it on an officered max PD, max system, max range omen that just swats things down all the time, but thats a really special case), and for late game the +25% bonus to frigates is good but not extreme, especially because skills are already giving scaling damage boosts to larger ship classes. I can see some ships wanting it (slow ships vulnerable to being flanked, hunter/killer flanking frigates) but its not an "always" buy.

It's only early game where frigates make up a large portion of enemy fleets that I'd say the boost is "overpowered"... but in that case its a case of boosting a ship now (with a hard to get resource) in a way that will become less useful over time, which is to me an interesting choice. Its maybe a bit too good, but I think its on the right track.

[Doctorhealsgood]

The idea seems interesting all things considered although not sure how to feel about it. It does give you a reason to S-Mod some more fringe stuff although i do hope it doesn't result on mods that are only ''good'' if S-Modded if that makes sense. And maluses are always kinda upsetting of course. That aside i kinda wish the AI used S-Mods more often. Nothing crazy though maybe one or two ships or something. That would be neat.

[YAZF]

This is an interesting idea. S-mods being a permanent addition to ships has always been too good and they need some sort of rework. I'd be down to try it.

That being said...
Personally I like the idea of S-mods staying as they are BUT being temporary instead, lasting only a month or two. You can view it as taking very special preparations before a big station assault or other decisive battle. It brings S-mods more inline with some other current story point uses, like making special maneuvers or negotiating trade deals; They'll be one time decisions focused around a singular event in your character's "story" rather than flat upgrades forever. 

[Doctorhealsgood]

This is an interesting idea. S-mods being a permanent addition to ships has always been too good and they need some sort of rework. I'd be down to try it.

That being said...
Personally I like the idea of S-mods staying as they are BUT being temporary instead, lasting only a month or two. You can view it as taking very special preparations before a big station assault or other decisive battle. It brings S-mods more inline with some other current story point uses, like making special maneuvers or negotiating trade deals; They'll be one time decisions focused around a singular event in your character's "story" rather than flat upgrades forever.

Please no

[ForestFighters]

This is an interesting idea. S-mods being a permanent addition to ships has always been too good and they need some sort of rework. I'd be down to try it.

That being said...
Personally I like the idea of S-mods staying as they are BUT being temporary instead, lasting only a month or two. You can view it as taking very special preparations before a big station assault or other decisive battle. It brings S-mods more inline with some other current story point uses, like making special maneuvers or negotiating trade deals; They'll be one time decisions focused around a singular event in your character's "story" rather than flat upgrades forever.

You would need to significantly increase the story point gain to make that work.

It would also run a serious risk of making S-mods basically unused, because of the "save it for when I really need it" mentality, in addition to it being such a worse trade than before.
This also lowers the power level of player fleets by quite a bit.

Also, any ship with poor burn speed just gets screwed. All capitals would basically have a -40 OP budget or force your fleet to be super slow. There is a very real chance that most story points being repeatedly used just to keep your fleet moving at decent speed, which is just awful and nullifies the whole point. Ships that really want to S-mod Heavy Armor would also be screwed.

[CapnHector]

also, the "middle ground" for hullmod op cost this system is intended to balance around is 25 OP (at capital size), right? EMR is 30 OP. Why is a 33% debuff to such an important stat as rof for a hullmod that is 5 OP over the middle ground even remotely acceptable? like, other people have said, "building in a 25 op hullmod instead of EMR is equivalent to a 15 OP hullmod that boosts missile rof by 50%" which "might be more interesting" but 1. i disagree that that wouldn't be a no brainer in most circumstances but more importanly 2. is wrong bc it would be the equivalent of a 5 op hullmod

overall a debuff this severe to a stat this important feels just completely out of whack

I'm going to be completely honest here, for some reason in my head the OP cost for the capial tier was 40. ... oops? I think it got mixed up with heavy armor or something, in the "build this in always" tier. So, I'm really glad you brought this up. Let me change it to 20%, at least for the moment; open to suggestions!

For 5 OP, though, 20% feels like it should be alright - perhaps a bit much on the face of it, in pure dps terms. But that's only a concern for some missiles, and in that case giving up 5 OP to build in something else could be fine. And for the more ammo-limited missiles, it wouldn't be that big a deal (nor would it on ships with FMR). So it seems like there are a lot of considerations here which might push it one way or another.

My bad, I also got it wrong. A 20% drop in rate of fire means that the equivalent 5 OP hullmod gives +25% rate of fire. That does again seem like a no brainer on missile boats since 5 OP is very little, worth 1 PD laser. Can't think of a situation where I would not install that hullmod on a missile ship and just skip 1 PD unless specifically trying to make it fire slower.

Here is a table - 1st row is EMR penalty to rate of fire, 2nd row the bonus from the equivalent 5OP hullmod (ie. modding in a neutral S-mod instead and paying OP for EMR is equivalent to installing this 5OP hullmod)

EMR malus%      -50 -47.5 -45.0 -42.5 -40.0 -37.5 -35.0 -32.5 -30.0 -27.5 -25.0 -22.5   -20 -17.5 -15.0 -12.5 -10.0
5OP mod bonus%  100  90.5  81.8  73.9  66.7  60.0  53.8  48.1  42.9  37.9  33.3  29.0    25  21.2  17.6  14.3  11.1
     
EMR malus%     -7.5  -5.0  -2.5
5OP mod bonus%  8.1   5.3   2.6

This one gets trickier to balance. 5OP is so little that even if it just gives +10% ROF it is a strong hullmod for a missile ship. On the other hand if it gives like +2.5% ROF then that makes it very spreadsheet-y and probably gives the player a weird feeling.

And remember that 5OP is for capitals so it's really insignificant OP for the effect. For a destroyer the missile rof boosting hullmod costs 2OP. Basically this risks making S-modding in EMR a newbie trap and a somewhat insidious one, since it's not immediately clear how bad of a trade you're making unless you math it out.

One fix would be what several people have suggested - apply the nerf to EMR whether it is S-modded in or not. Else it's likely going to be always install on missile ships but never S-mod in.

Some alternatives: make the base hull mod actually cost 40OP for capitals so S-modding it in with a slight malus is worth considering sometimes. Or give it the SO treatment that it can't be S-modded in at all, kind of reasonable since it is a hullmod that is basically always a great choice or never never a good choice depending on ship so the choice of S-modding it is not very interesting unless one of the other alternatives is applied. Well, it might be interesting still if the others give bonuses worth considering.

(R code to generate table)

Code

m <- matrix(data=seq(-50,-2.5,2.5),nrow=2,ncol=20,byrow=TRUE)
for (i in 1:length(m[1,])) m[2,i] <- 100*100/(100+m[1,i])-100
round(m,1)

[Hiruma Kai]

That being said...
Personally I like the idea of S-mods staying as they are BUT being temporary instead, lasting only a month or two. You can view it as taking very special preparations before a big station assault or other decisive battle. It brings S-mods more inline with some other current story point uses, like making special maneuvers or negotiating trade deals; They'll be one time decisions focused around a singular event in your character's "story" rather than flat upgrades forever.

Out of curiosity, do you regularly use mercenary officers?  Because they're arguably a bigger temporary buff than a this proposed temporary s-mod situation, and I admit to not using them often.  Alex has also upped the duration of their contracts (effectively reducing story point cost per time) because as I understand it, many people are hesitant to pay story point for temporary buffs.

But yeah, I agree with other responses that you'd have to completely rework the story point gain rate to account for the fact that story points (and the old loadout design before them) was designed to give the player fleet a permanent leg up, so if they go away after a while, you'd need like an order of magnitude more in terms of their earning rate.

Also, any ship with poor burn speed just gets screwed. All capitals would basically have a -40 OP budget or force your fleet to be super slow. There is a very real chance that most story points being repeatedly used just to keep your fleet moving at decent speed, which is just awful and nullifies the whole point. Ships that really want to S-mod Heavy Armor would also be screwed.

Personally, in regard to speed, I just throw fuel at the problem in the form of 4 Ox Tugs (or 6 if I don't have Navigation), and a Prometheus tanker or two.  I'd rather sacrifice credits from my colonies rather than combat power most of the time.