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[vladokapuh]

i think its just gonna feel better if the hullmods that are supposed to get debuffs, just get made cheaper instead
eg majority of ships using heavy armor, are already not agile ships, giving them a penalty that reduces that further and almost requiring you to get aux thruster or mobility from an officer, just feels like a tax.
EMR is also a priority smod pick due to cost if not smodded, but otherwise mods like ITU are prioritized over it as is.
EMR is also another thing that will have an impact on performance or on cost, on many ships that just do not need another penalty.

It would overall feel better if those hullmods just get a bit cheaper and we just skip the bad effects things entirely, because lets be real, even if HA and EMR have same cost as ITU, ITU will be first pick over both anyways.

The ships i see getting hurt the most here would be:
Onslaught, Dominator, Legion, Enforcer; both HA and EMR hurts these, and i do not really feel like these need nerfs
Conquest; EMR, good ship, but not the easiest to make work as is
Odyssey, Aurora; EMR, both good ships in player hands, not that good otherwise, not common picks
Phase ships; HA is often picked on these, and while agility nerf wont be that noticeable on them, these ships already struggle as is (minus doom and ziggurat)

Radiant; here i will not mind as the ship is quite ridiculous anyways (but that one is meant to be)

if gryphon EMR is taken out, that is one ship where i will agree it does need a nerf, but that one also has spare luxury points, so it wont make much impact on it

[Schwartz]

Yep, and it's also kinda funny that they get penalized for costing so much OP - not necessarily because they're so powerful that they're worth their OP cost. So that thing I was suggesting as a joke - just making expensive hullmods cheaper so we wouldn't have to penalize them as S-Mods - actually applies.

To me, there are many top-tier hullmods that are roughly equally useful. Missile Racks, Hardened Shields, Heavy Armor, ITU, Hardened Subs (for frigates) just off the top of my head. And their usefulness also depends on the kind of ship they're fitted to. Are they all receiving penalties to their main functionality as S-Mods? A side-grade is the last thing I'm looking for when I spend story points. I want a bump in usability and some free OP. Although the OP increase is secondary to me not having a bad time when I want to use the ship.

Please think good and hard whether penalties have any place in a storypoint-based ship loadout "elite promotion" kind of system. I'd rather take a hit to the power level of hullmods. I'd rather see their OP costs rejuggled. I'd rather see fewer S-Mods per ship maximum than penalties. Although I think none of these measures are actually necessary in the current state of the game.

[Megas]

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.

Eventually, some slow ships need all the OP they can get for combat stuff, and four tugs and Navigation is the only feasible option for burn 20 with base burn 7 ships.  No way I can squeeze Augmented Engines on Ziggurat when I need Phase Anchor and several other hullmods, especially if I use Omega weapons on it.

I only burn-in Augmented Engines on haulers that never get deployed.  If I need Augmented Engines on a battleship, I pay the 40 OP because I plan for it to be temporary only.

Please think good and hard whether penalties have any place in a storypoint-based ship loadout "elite promotion" kind of system. I'd rather take a hit to the power level of hullmods. I'd rather see their OP costs rejuggled. I'd rather see fewer S-Mods per ship maximum than penalties. Although I think none of these measures are actually necessary in the current state of the game.

Heavy Armor used to give less armor (100/200/300/400, I think).  Maybe the old weaker Heavy Armor can be brought back so that OP cost can be cheaper.  Or just make Heavy Armor ineligible for s-mod like Phase Anchor/Safety Override.

[BCS]

i think its just gonna feel better if the hullmods that are supposed to get debuffs, just get made cheaper instead

If it was up to me all hullmods would have penalties but they would also cost no OP at all. Then you'd simply have 2 hullmod slots, 3 with BotB(although the extra hullmod doesn't really fit the skill but whatever) and you can put whatever you want in there.

But that might just be me copying EVE Online's rig system.

[Alex]

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.

Hmm. I think to me it's more about feel - I'd like it to be something where, you're getting ATG so that your turrets have an easier time tracking speedy targets, and then the s-bonus really drives that point home. A frigate getting ATG to pick on other frigates doesn't really fit the bill here - I think on a frigate, it being good for a specialized escort role feels just about right.

(What I've changed it to is +25% to missiles/fighters, and 5% per size class difference to anything smaller than the ship.)

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.

I think there are many missiles that don't care about the rate of fire very much. They'd care about it being cut in half, sure - that's more qualitative - but maybe not reduced by 20%. Does it really matter if the time between medium Harpoon salvoes is 20% longer? They're probably idling longer than that anyway. Or if the time between one-shot Reapers is 5 seconds instead of 4? And the actual numbers would be lower with elite Missile Spec. Even something like the Annihilator Pod, a lot of its value comes from sustained pressure and not raw dps (though, I mean, that's valuable too); but still a bit of a drop in the rate of fire is not going to be a big deal.

(That said, let me think about making it 10%... it really isn't *that* expensive of a hullmod, except in the bit-of-an-outlier cruiser case. Which, I don't actually remember why that's out of whack; it should probably be 18 or so OP there. Either that, or EMR should be more expensive in the other tiers; missiles *are* very strong, after all...)

Yep, and it's also kinda funny that they get penalized for costing so much OP - not necessarily because they're so powerful that they're worth their OP cost.

I mean, that's a different and potentially productive conversation to have, about the the balance of these hullmods relative to their OP costs - though, I thought they were in a pretty good place prior to story point build-ins. Still, that it's even coming up now means that their OP cost *actually matters* again, which looks like the new system doing its job!

[CapnHector]

I can think of some missiles that don't care about DPS. The obvious example is the Reaper which you mount for its per-shot damage. The more questionable examples are Sabot (also burst damage) and Annihilator ("pressure" effect, though isn't that related to dps?). I don't use small missiles though because I most always field Conquests, so there might be things I'm not thinking of. But on the other hand even this is more nuanced because there are Reaper use cases such as the larger versions of Reaper where you use them on a ship that's supposed to dive in and fire them as often as possible. So it's a fairly nuanced argument overall.

On the other hand, for most missiles, don't you want them firing as often as possible, when an enemy is in range? If so, then regardless of what the base firing delay is and what the per-shot damage is, a reduction to rate of fire is an equivalent reduction to damage output - right? (I know the AI does try to conserve harpoons, but IIRC Vanshilar found it was better to just link them to Squalls on a Conquest to make it not conserve them when fighting double Ordos - can't find the post though)

I am sure you know this stuff so incredibly much better than I, just trying to be helpful with the discussion.

Edit to add: I'll be honest, I don't know how much worse a 20% reduction to fire rate would make harpoons. This seems like the kind of thing that's pretty hard to gauge by gut feeling because it seems like it would be hard to keep track of all the harpoon fire during fleet combat; might need some testing. I do know Vanshilar did find they were firing a significant proportion of the total time in contact with enemy ship here https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=25536.msg380234#msg380234 despite running out of ammo.

[Alex]

I think the rate of fire matters, but it's going to be very non-linear for many (most?) missiles. A lot of what matters is just "how much damage is there in a burst/how well does a burst get through whatever PD the current enemy has" and "how much damage is there total". Something like a Gryphon is going to skew this a bit due to doubling the ammo with its system; if the missile ammo lasts for the whole fight, then I think that benefits a higher RoF significantly more.

I think it's also going to be very hard to answer that question with tests because the tests might pick up on things like "the rate of fire is just a bit too low so the PD of this specific enemy gets an extra round of fire in", or "the duration of the overload is just high enough that a second burst of this missile can get in", etc. It seems to me like a lot of the effectiveness may depend on qualitative breakpoints like this.

[prav]

The difference between your Typhoon overloading a target twice, and overloading it followed by a hull hit, is certainly large, and it's often a very close call.

I can't say that I'm a fan of the debuffs - I'm not really seeing them being worth taking without being generally negligible - and there's corner cases like the Typhoon where it's situationally crippling. The buffs seem likely to have the opposite problem - how much eg. +frigate damage should I really be getting for a few OP? If it's too much you're just moving the problem to the other end - though since there are more cheap generalist mods than expensive ones there's also more room to end up accidentally making something too good, which also creates some kind of diversity...?

[Alex]

I'm not really seeing them being worth taking without being generally negligible - and there's corner cases like the Typhoon where it's situationally crippling. The buffs seem likely to have the opposite problem - how much eg. +frigate damage should I really be getting for a few OP? If it's too much you're just moving the problem to the other end - though since there are more cheap generalist mods than expensive ones there's also more room to end up accidentally making something too good, which also creates some kind of diversity...?

I'm not sure how this is any harder to balance than e.g. the baseline hullmod effects. There'll certainly be some outliers in the initial implementation, but that'll get tweaked in whatever direction is appropriate. I think the balance of these effects is a legitimate concern/topic of discussion, but I don't think it's a fundamental problem, if that makes sense. If the effects are at all in the right ballpark, it's still making more options competitive than the current case.

[prav]

I'm not sure how this is any harder to balance than e.g. the baseline hullmod effects. There'll certainly be some outliers in the initial implementation, but that'll get tweaked in whatever direction is appropriate. I think the balance of these effects is a legitimate concern/topic of discussion, but I don't think it's a fundamental problem, if that makes sense. If the effects are at all in the right ballpark, it's still making more options competitive than the current case.

Well, I'm saying that I suspect that the right ballpark is too small to bother with. What counts as too small here is a judgement call and matter of taste, of course.

[BaBosa]

Missile racks probably should have their OP cost changed to match the other hullmods, especially with this s-mod change, otherwise whether it should be s-modded in depends on hull size which feels weird and frustrating. Either increased to heavy armour level with no base debuff or decreased with the debuff.

[Jackundor]

ok some people seem to suggest that bc of the heavy debuff to s-modding EMR we should nerf normal EMR too and i just can't wrap my head around that logic

[CapnHector]

I think the rate of fire matters, but it's going to be very non-linear for many (most?) missiles. A lot of what matters is just "how much damage is there in a burst/how well does a burst get through whatever PD the current enemy has" and "how much damage is there total". Something like a Gryphon is going to skew this a bit due to doubling the ammo with its system; if the missile ammo lasts for the whole fight, then I think that benefits a higher RoF significantly more.

I think it's also going to be very hard to answer that question with tests because the tests might pick up on things like "the rate of fire is just a bit too low so the PD of this specific enemy gets an extra round of fire in", or "the duration of the overload is just high enough that a second burst of this missile can get in", etc. It seems to me like a lot of the effectiveness may depend on qualitative breakpoints like this.

Funnily enough the very same argument is why I'd argue quantitative testing in a variety of conditions would be useful. That is, because there are so many qualitative factors that if you focus on a subset of them or use a subjective feeling of what should happen then you could argue it any way you want (missiles are used for burst - so sustained DPS doesn't matter; missiles fire a lot, like guns - so sustained DPS does matter; enemy PD decides missile efficiency more than ROF - so ROF doesn't matter that much if the missiles all get shot down; enemy PD decides missile efficiency - so ROF matters a lot so you can overwhelm enemy PD).

I'm sure that people (Vanshilar and Hiruma Kai I believe are the leading experts here) will test it in the sim if the change happens so probably we'll get some numbers someday. If we ever get our program together then that will also give answers about how it works when paired with sets of other weapons, though we're not planning to include PD so it won't be able to answer all questions that the sim can.

[Haresus]

At the risk of not being very constructive, I don't love the S-point Hull mod system. The enemy AI generally doesn't use it (at all? I know some mods change that though), so you end up with objectively stronger ships than the opposition. This makes me question whether my ships are actually good or if I've just stacked enough S-point power boosts to overcome most weaknesses.

It would probably be easy to just not use the S-point hull mod system, but it's in the game so I've tried to understand and enjoy it. But then you immediately run into the same issue that these buffs/debuffs try to solve: You always S-mod the most expensive hull mod that you want installed, so that you free up points for other hull mods that you can then add normally. That was rarely an interesting choice.

Well, now we are getting these extra buffs/debuffs that are there to compensate for the OP difference that S-point hull mods are supposed to ignore... which seems like a solution to a self-inflicted problem. It's probably an improvement to the system overall, although I'm not sure it'll be a dramatic difference. Instead of saving 30 OP points and getting a penalty, we'll probably save 25 OP points on a slightly cheaper alternative without a penalty, or 20 OP points with some nifty advantage that may provide great value with the ship's loadout. At best some ships get indirectly nerfed by a handful of OP points.

Wouldn't it be neat to scrap the S-point hull mod system and instead implement these extra hull mod options into the basic ship system? Imagine choosing between pristine heavy armor, or heavy armor with a penalty but for a lower OP cost. Some of the buffs could be turned into their own standalone hullmods, like the high resolution sensors that provide extra vision. Others could just be integrated completely, and have the OP cost increased to compensate.

Ah well, I look forward to trying out the new things.

[Alex]

Funnily enough the very same argument is why I'd argue quantitative testing in a variety of conditions would be useful. That is, because there are so many qualitative factors that if you focus on a subset of them or use a subjective feeling of what should happen then you could argue it any way you want (missiles are used for burst - so sustained DPS doesn't matter; missiles fire a lot, like guns - so sustained DPS does matter; enemy PD decides missile efficiency more than ROF - so ROF doesn't matter that much if the missiles all get shot down; enemy PD decides missile efficiency - so ROF matters a lot so you can overwhelm enemy PD).

I'm sure that people (Vanshilar and Hiruma Kai I believe are the leading experts here) will test it in the sim if the change happens so probably we'll get some numbers someday. If we ever get our program together then that will also give answers about how it works when paired with sets of other weapons, though we're not planning to include PD so it won't be able to answer all questions that the sim can.

A very good point! And, heck, even a limited test that shows that e.g. a 10% RoF reduction doesn't make much of a difference in a specific scenario (or does!) would be interesting.

... for the OP difference that S-point hull mods are supposed to ignore...

Ah - they're not supposed to! In the current version, it's meant to be balanced out by you getting more bonus XP for building in hullmods that cost less OP. To put it mildly, though, that doesn't work out in practice. (In the new system, you get a flat 75/50/25/0% bonus XP per hullmod, depending on the size of the hull.)