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[Uomoz]

Or limit the respec to the latest 3 SKILLS changes. Aptitudes should be fixed and unchangeable imho.

[Faiter119]

I vote no for respeccing. Having a person suddenly change? Dossnt really make any sense, and that people can change by paying? Makes no sense.

[Reshy]

I hope the bonuses are small enough to not be game breaking, sort of like how the 'Reward Perks' in new vegas worked.  Killing 200 enemies increased damage by 1%, killing 500 gave +2%, killing 1000 gave you +4%.  I believe the bonuses shoudl be small and not absurd enough to break the game, only really slightly tilting the favor.  


Also sinc ethere are admiral upgrades, will there be ship upgrades?  Things that you can buy tha greatly increase the performance but only on a single ship and if that ship is lost then you lose the upgrade on it along with the ship itself.  It could be something like 2500 credits gets you a MK2 Lasher Engine that boosts speed by ten units with no drawback or cost other than credits.  Small, and you can't buy 5 of them to get 50 speed, but it's a small bonus to make things more interseting.  This also can allow you to compensate for lacking technology and combat trees, you can compensate with your industrial ability to create credits to make up for the lack of technology in that area.


Also you said there are ten skills, are they applied to all ships in the fleet, only yours, or do you have to pay to apply them to a ship?  Part of me wants the flagship to always get all the bonuses but for other ships in the fleet you have to upgrade them at cost, but much MUCH lower and conveniant than going out for a ship modder factory that overcharges you for meager upgrades to system performance.  Some should also simply not be available or possibly free to those who heavily invest in such an area.



Also can we get a summary of what each tree involves in terms of it's bonuses so we can have some sort of idea what we're getting ourselves into?

[Talkie Toaster]

That makes a lot of sense. Whether the details work out is another question, but it seems promising. Aptitudes are broad strokes that even a new player is unlikely to get *that* wrong...  Still... could be the kind of thing where if you allow it at all, it'd be weird/frustrating not to allow it all the way. Well, I'll definitely keep that in  mind

Thanks . The selling point for Starfarer for me is how well-thought out and considered everything is, so I look forwards to seeing what your eventual solution to the quandry is. I know J.E. Sawyer from Obsidian had some interesting posts on the topic of respecs/mechanical transparency on his Formspring, but Formspring is a bugger to search through.

I vote no for respeccing. Having a person suddenly change? Dossnt really make any sense, and that people can change by paying? Makes no sense.

It's a perfectly normal thing for people to shift their skillset over the course of their career and for their old skills to go rusty (for example front line to management, or switching research disciplines). In order to represent this you need some degree of abstraction; given IRL people don't distribute skill points at discrete points in their lives there's already a lot of abstraction in the system anyway, and since the whole point of respeccing is to allow you to avoid a permanent penalty to your character a non-permanent cost fits well (and money is the main replaceable resource in most games).

[sidetrack]You could allow 'realistic' continual respeccing at a limited rate as you level, but it'd be awkward and also mean some of the finite amount of respec opportunities would be wasted by people who're still learning the system and don't yet realise they need to respec as their skill choices don't suit their playstyle or fit the character they're trying to RP; and after all, these are the main people who *need* to respec. [sidesidetrack]I guess you could get around that *and* the instant respec cost issues by having players accrue a stock of 'respec points' as they level, but that means adding another resource to worry about that ideally shouldn't see any use.[/sidesidetrack][/sidetrack]

[CrashToDesktop]

And believe it or not, this game is still in alpha state. Very good progress you've made here, and Alex, you are one damn good listener to the community. Just don't let us change every aspect of the game, ok?

My take on respeccing is that players should be allowed to do so, or at the very least be able to recieve a stat reset every milestone or so.

[PCCL]

maybe something like how dwarf fortress does it... respeccing is possible but only via learning new things and gradually forgetting old ones.

If a dominator commander suddenly got a 10 year assignment to the captaincy of an Atlas he's not gonna come out half the warrior he once was... That said, he shouldn't be able to respec to fit both roles perfectly within days, or even weeks...

that means skills will slowly degrade (probably to be made negligible if you do anything to practice them every so often) and you probably won't get the point back even if the skill completely degraded

[naufrago]

Things brings up a slightly off topic question about the campaign: how many hours would you envision a game running (by which I mean the character progresses and the sector evolves to some sort of endish state)? I'm guessing that somewhere around 12-16 hours would be satisfying as a player: long enough to really get into it, but short enough that a whole bunch of playthroughs with different builds are possible.

TBD, but I don't think it'll be a fixed number. I can see things spiraling out of control quickly in one playthrough, and a much more gradual decline in another - depending both on your actions, and on what happens in the sector. We'll see, though.

Slightly off topic, but the way you're phrasing that, you make it sound like the ultimate downfall of humanity in the sector is inevitable. I knew you were going for dark, but... am I just reading into your words too much?

[PCCL]

I think it is inevitable... barring a miraculous reactivation of the gate system (may or may not happen), the sector is basically screwed...

[naufrago]

I think it is inevitable... barring a miraculous reactivation of the gate system (may or may not happen), the sector is basically screwed...

Well, I'd certainly like a way to avert disaster so I can continue playing my characters. =p

If I invest so much in a character, I'd be disappointed if I felt I had to stop playing due to everything else dying out. If all those suppressed alien civilizations experience a resurgence and are the ultimate reason for humanity's destruction, I'd hope that I can at least befriend/pillage them (or exterminate them instead, to avert disaster... maybe even reactivate the gate system by investing heavily in Technology).

[PCCL]

ya...

I think the main plot (if there is a main plot) will probably have something to do with the gate system...

or maybe a way to crack UAC's and save the sector that way...

if the whole gate network is back then there's the map would have to go a heck of a lot bigger... not sure if it's practical since the one alex is planning is already like 1000+ systems....

[Rowanas]

As much as I'd like to re-establish the gate system (at least out of the one sector), I'm going to feel:

Gipped if I can do it but the game ends.
Gipped if the game doesn't end, but I can't use them.

Opening the Gates should be work for another game, one specifically designed for the gates to be opened, rather than this one, which looks to be a full and complete game without the Gates.

[Squigzilla]

Maybe the gates are just permanently destroyed. The technology to repair them might not even exist anymore, so humankind will never reclaim the full splendor of the Dominion. Instead, the sector is doomed to a slow descent into anarchy, each victory only serving to delay the oncoming darkness. There is no hope for progress or enlightenment, and all of humanity will eventually perish.

Warhammer 40K fans, eat your heart out

[PCCL]

maybe it's just a limited reactivation? (A few gates within the sector are back on, altering the political and economical situation greatly)

This way you can use it without the game ending, also ends the game on a hopeful note (if these can be reactivated, maybe the others can too)

[harrumph]

You could allow 'realistic' continual respeccing at a limited rate as you level, but it'd be awkward and also mean some of the finite amount of respec opportunities would be wasted by people who're still learning the system and don't yet realise they need to respec as their skill choices don't suit their playstyle or fit the character they're trying to RP; and after all, these are the main people who *need* to respec. I guess you could get around that *and* the instant respec cost issues by having players accrue a stock of 'respec points' as they level, but that means adding another resource to worry about that ideally shouldn't see any use.

I like that, actually, and I think I can improve on it—you could make it so that this mechanic only kicks in after the level cap. Once the player reaches level X, each further level allows, rather than the selection of a new skill, the reassignment of an old skill to a new slot. All of the fussy extra mechanics are hidden from a new player, and as the kind of player who would want to respec a beloved character is also the kind of player who'd want to keep progressing past the level cap, the two elements dovetail nicely.

For what it's worth, even though I'm the one who brought up the idea of respeccing, I'm not particularly in favor of it; I think the the rest of the game mechanics will determine whether it makes sense and whether we'll even want it. It's hard to imagine WoW without respecs, but like Alex said, WoW is an entirely static world. By the same token, I don't think any Civ 5 players are clamoring to be allowed to reassign culture unlocks, because the development of a civ's culture is an integral part of the dynamic progress of each playthrough. In this respect, I'd much rather see Starfarer turn out like Civ 5 than like WoW.

[IIE16 Yoshi]

Although the name of the game eludes me at the moment, there's that one MMO game being developed with a couple hundred skills in one huge circular tree. I imagine that the skill tree is gonna be like that, reading the blog so far.