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[Lawrence Master-blaster]

The idea that Industry isn't viable for end game is... inaccurate.  It might not work well for a particular play style.

Just because something is "viable" doesn't mean it's not unbalanced. Is current Eagle a "viable" cruiser? Yes. Would you be better off with just about any other cruiser instead? Also yes.

[Megas]

High Industry late in the game is viable, just not optimal.  When most players dump it when it is time to hunt Ordos, then it is underpowered as a whole (despite Ordnance Expert) compared to the other three trees.  The Eagle comparison is apt.

If player wants Ziggurat as his primary ship, then player does not need many skills, just Combat 5, enough Technology for Phase Coil Tuning, and maybe Ordnance Expert if skimping on caps and vents.  Ziggurat build leaves at least five skill points left for whatever the player wants.  On the other hand, if player has an overpowered Ziggurat, then he does not need an Industry capstone because he does not need other combat ships.

(If Ziggurat itself gets nerfed to be more balanced, then its CR and campaign costs need to be cheaper, and perhaps auto-id removed.)

[Hiruma Kai]

I think the combat benefits of Hull Restoration is highly dependent on fleet composition, but there are some reasonable fleets that do well with it.  I often think of a fleet composition or play style (the two are tightly connected), and then consider what changes to the character's skill selection you could make to make the fleet weaker or stronger.  I tend to have a more difficult time considering skills in vacuum, since their effectiveness depends a lot on what they are affecting.  I certainly don't dump the skill for end game Ordo hunting if the fleet has been built around it (especially officers), given it might actually be the most optimal combat configuration for that particular fleet.

For example, Coordinated Maneuvers is great for frigates/destroyers/high tech cruisers, but I often have to reconsider when most of my fleet is composed of things like Legions and Onslaughts, whose burn drive and 0-flux speed boosts are unaffected by the +20% speed bonus.  Going from base 27.5 to 32.5 speed just doesn't help that much when burn drive pushes you up to 210.

I consider the Technology tree to be a pretty weak choice when I'm not running phase ships, high tech, or automated ships.  Your fleet wide combat benefits at that point are Flux Regulation (which only affects base flux stats - which low tech ships are notorious for having very little of), ECM (which late game Ordos pretty much overwhelm with cores in each ship), and Cybernetic Augmentation (+2 Elite skills for officers which can be nice for some ships but others less so).

For example, I've got an ironman save with a low tech capital centric fleet : 2 Onslaught XIV (one player piloted), 2 Legion XIV, 2 Champions, 3 Enforcers XIV, 1 LP Kite (no officer).  Logistics train was 6 Ox, 3 Revenants, Prometheus and a spare LP Kite.  Interestingly I had no colonies, but did take a Hegemony commission that run. With that commission it was running net positive passive income of ~8000 credits per month and apparently had accumulated 6 million in the bank.

Skills in that save (elite where applicable):
Combat 5: Impact Mitigation, Point Defense, Ballistic Mastery, Target Analysis, Missile Specialization
Leadership 5: Tactical Drills, Crew Training, Carrier Group, Officer Training, Best of the Best
Industry 5: Bulk Transport, Ordinance Expertise, Polarized Armor, Containment Procedures, Hull Restoration

I probably should have retrained for Field Repairs but hadn't spent a story point to retrain at all.

Officers were seven level 6s and one level 7 (in a Champion) tailored to ships.  For example, Onslaught XIV officer was Elite Impact Mitigation, Target Analysis, Ballistic Mastery, Missile Specialization, Elite Ordinance Expertise, Polarized Armor.  Level 7 Champion officer was Elite Helmsmanship, Elite Impact Mitigation, Target Analysis, Elite Ballistic Mastery, Systems Expertise, Elite Missile Specialization, and Elite Energy Weapon Mastery.

I'd be interested in knowing how people would change skill picks away from the Hull Restoration + Best of the Best combination to improve that particular fleet's performance for Ordo hunting, keeping in mind that it's an ironman save without any colonies.  Assume it's okay to hire and train up new officers with difference skills and spend the 24 story points to do so (presumably you're Ordo hunting for a reason, and without colonies, training up new officers is about all one has to spend points on).

Since I was piloting an Onslaught, Ordinance Expertise is basically required on the character, and provides about 400 flux dissipation and 4000 capacity.  Compare that to Flux Regulation's 390 flux dissipation and 9,000 flux capacity spread over all the ships in that particular fleet.  Elite Polarized Amor is only a little farther behind the Ordinance Expertise benefit with the +25% vent speed.  So I can't really see going lower than Industry 2 or 3.  I'm running quad reapers on the player Onslaught, so having a refire rate on them of ~10 seconds with Missile Specialization is quite nice, given you can refire within the overload duration from the previous salvo on a capital, so I'm hard pressed to think of some combination that helps more than Combat 5 as well.

Splitting between the Industry and Tech trees still requires taking a total of 2 campaign layer skills which doesn't actually reduce the number of campaign layer skills taken.  Also Navigation is kind of weak given the fleet already has a non-sustained burn speed of 13.  Gunnery Implants is nice, but not really required on a player piloted capital with ITU, Ballistic Mastery and burn drive.  The AI needs the extra range more than an aggressive human pilot.

I'd also be interested if players were restricted from using save/reload to go back in game time but only used it save after a play session (i.e. ironman mode), does the value of the skill go up?

As for some of the ideas for allowing you to do a restoration away from a dock, I will point out if you are at the point where credits are of no concern and removing d-mods is only spending money, you can bring along a couple Starliners, and drop a colony on a nearby planet, restore all, and then abandon the colony. 2 Starliners will let you do that 3+ times.  Or even leave it there for awhile if farming Ordos in a system.  You'd want to do that anyways if you're using a Ziggurat to farm Ordos to get back to 100% CR instantly. Virtually any system where you are going to be fighting a lot has a planet you can do that at.

In regards to Derelict Operations, it's most powerful when combined with Support Doctrine and you spam ships that don't care about line of sight, specifically carriers and missile ships.  Spammed Moras is the classic meme (3 wings and 2 harpoon missile pods is kinda crazy for 11 DP), but you can augment that with Legion XIVs (22 DP but got to find them), Gryphons (11 DP) and Condors (6 DP for 2 wings and a missile pod).

Both of Industry's tier 5 really need the Leadership capstones to give their best performance due to stacking or synergy.

Overall, assuming Ordinance Expertise and Polarized Armor maintain their strength for low tech ships, I think Hull Restoration is in a reasonable place.  It's effectively +1 non-elite skill (i.e. Combat Endurance) to your whole fleet (without DP limitations). I kind of view an s-mod as approximately +1 skill as well - hardened shields vs Field Modulation, Impact Mitigation vs Heavy Armor, Helmsmanship vs Auxilliary Thrusters, etc.  So in my mind the combat benefits of Hull Restoration is on par with that of Best of the Best, at least when combined.  The campaign benefit is crazy good compared to nearly anything else on the campaign layer.

However, I will say if Ordinance Expertise gets nerfed in the next release, then I would definitely want to see combat buffs elsewhere in the Industry tree.

[Megas]

If I was forced to play Ironman, I would copy and backup save files, then if something goes wrong, restore the saves out of the game.  Old fashioned save scumming.  With the time it takes to build up a character, I do not have time to play a new game after losing days' worth of gameplay from a fleet wipe.

Overall, assuming Ordinance Expertise and Polarized Armor maintain their strength for low tech ships, I think Hull Restoration is in a reasonable place.

Without enough Leadership, stopping at tier 2 in Industry is a better idea.  I would rather get Crew Training for one skill point than Hull Restoration for two.  Hull Restoration may be fine as is provided there is a tier 3 Industry combat skill, which is not there.

If I had to build a character without high Industry, I probably would go Combat 5/Leadership 5/Tech 2/Industry 3.  I want Combat 5 to have my flagship skills up to par with my officers and enemies, Leadership 5 for BotB, probably Tech 2 for Gunnery Implants, and Industry 3 for both tier 2s.  Could trade away Polarized Armor for Phase Coil Tuning or a sixth Combat or Leadership skill if I need that more.  The reason why I want Hull Restoration and a Tech capstone is they are fun, but getting those means I give up too much combat power (by not taking any Leadership).

When piloting flagship, I prefer to have maximum shot range with whatever I pilot.  I want to fire guns from a ship, not lightsabers or metal sticks posing as guns from a mecha or gundam posing as a ship.  Also, reduced recoil from Gunnery Implants is very nice when I use inaccurate weapons like Mark IXs or Devastators.
 The really inaccurate stuff really needs both - one is not really enough.

Yes, Navigation is not much, but if I had to choose between that and Sensor to get the Gunnery Implants I highly desire, I will take Navigation every time.  Also, Navigation is the first skill I pick in every game because waiting until late in the Janus line to get T. Jump is too long for me.  I think bringing four tugs is too many to bring burn 7 ships up to speed 20 with s.burn, but it is better than bringing six tugs.

Ordnance Expert is good for everything, not just low-tech, even if low-tech benefits a bit more.  Without BotB, Ziggurat needs Ordnance Expert to support Omega weapon loadouts if it needs to sacrifice caps and vents to fit those weapons.  Polarized Armor, aside from being mandatory for no-shield ships, I like being able to vent fast, and I have considered taking Polarized Armor for the elite effect alone because it feels good like in the old releases with stronger skills and vent spamming.

[PixiCode]

Hull resto is powerful the same way the other money making skills are powerful. Minimizes the penalty of failure/bad luck (frigates blowing up).

I don’t see the issue Personally. Not everyone wants to play with the themes of D-mods.

[basileus]

@Hiruma Kai

Informative post.

WRT the Technology tree, Electronic Warfare is particularly weak because it's not even the best skill for ECM.  I actually do prioritize ECM; however, that causes me to take Cybernetic Augmentation.  I can put Elite Gunnery Implants on a few frigate officers to get more ECM value I than would by using EW, and I still get all of the remaining value of all the additional Elite skill selections.

"I probably should have retrained for Field Repairs but hadn't spent a story point to retrain at all."

I always end up thinking that at some point.

I'd also be interested if players were restricted from using save/reload to go back in game time but only used it save after a play session (i.e. ironman mode), does the value of the skill go up?

I'm not sure.  A fleet wipe is just as devastating either way, right?  The knock on Industry is that it's not "optimal" or "efficient" enough, but being forced to do a single extra reload or RTB (return to base) would presumably wipe out realized shorter combat time of numerous fights on most realistic circumstances.

"For example, Coordinated Maneuvers is great for frigates/destroyers/high tech cruisers, but I often have to reconsider when most of my fleet is composed of things like Legions and Onslaughts, whose burn drive and 0-flux speed boosts are unaffected by the +20% speed bonus.  Going from base 27.5 to 32.5 speed just doesn't help that much when burn drive pushes you up to 210."

That's true.  Moreover, if you are not hard carrying in your flagship, the bigger benefit of CM becomes the extra Command Point generation from frigates.  If you want to play fleet commander rather than superhero, then you almost have to take this skill and field frigates so that you have enough CPs to micromanage your fleet, especially in the battles where you are badly outnumbered.

@Megas,

Do you save scum the omega fights until you get the optimal drops for your solo Ziggy loadout?  If so, I begin to understand why you are so loathe to start new saves and favor an extended late game.  I can imagine that being a frustrating process.

[Megas]

Do you save scum the omega fights until you get the optimal drops for your solo Ziggy loadout?  If so, I begin to understand why you are so loathe to start new saves and favor an extended late game.  I can imagine that being a frustrating process.

I tried savescumming, but the results do not change much.  The large weapons seem set no matter how many times I replay the fight, so it is the smaller weapons I may scum for, namely AMSRMs and Rift Lances.  I want at least four AMSRMs and two Resonators for Ziggurat.  Of course, I would like to get at least six and four, but that may be too hard or impossible.  I would like to get two Rift Cascade Emitters, but I only ever got one per game.  The only large Omega weapon I looted more than one for is Volatile Particle Driver.

Ziggurat can solo an endgame fleet or even two Tesseracts with human weapons only, but Omega weapons elevate it to 0.7a Onslaught power levels that can solo multiple fleets or the entire simulator.

[Vanshilar]

Eh Derelict Operations absolutely could be really powerful, but it depends a lot on the fleet and on the specific dmods the ships get, so it depends on how willing the player is to either savescum or spend a lot of time letting ships die and seeing if they get the "right" set of dmods. From doing this with a LP Brawler fleet (i.e. nearly 30 ships), I can say that it's not too hard to get 2-3 dmods that you "want", but it's really hard to chance getting more than that.

I *think* there's something about having smods decreasing the chance of losing a ship permanently when it dies. At any rate, all my LP Brawlers had 3 smods, and as long as I lost 3 or less LP Brawlers per battle, I was always able to recover all of them. 4 or more though and sometimes they would be lost permanently if disabled/destroyed. So I just made to sure send in the ones that I wanted to die first, keeping them in front, since I didn't care if they died, while the ones that already had the "right" dmods were sent in after them to take less damage. If nothing else, I went and killed them myself toward the end of the battle, as long as I stayed within the limit of 3 LP Brawlers lost.

Since each dmod decreases the DP by 6%, then as long as the dmod decreases the ship's effectiveness by less than this, you come out ahead. Depending on your ship and fleet strategy, each ship has a number of dmods that really doesn't affect their combat effectiveness, and a number that do.

Take the LP Brawler for example. I max out its capacity with Hardened Shields and Solar Shielding so it's largely relying on shields to survive, so its armor and hull don't matter as much. Its weapons are on hardpoints, so Damaged Weapon Mounts don't matter either. So it doesn't really affect the combat effectiveness if it has Compromised Armor, Compromised Hull, Structural Damage, or Damaged Weapon Mounts. The remaining dmods (Degraded Engines, Faulty Power Grid, Glitched Sensor Array, Unreliable Subsystems, Increased Maintenance, Erratic Fuel Injector, Faulty Automated Systems, Degraded Life Support, Degraded Shields) *will* affect it to some degree so it's a matter of whether or not I'm willing to accept any of those. So there's 4 out of 13 that don't matter, and 9 that do. So it's a matter of playing roulette over and over and hoping for the "right" combination of dmods.

For SO ships, oftentimes (depending on the weapons) Glitched Sensor Array doesn't matter much. Note that GSA reduces the weapon range first, before the SO range constraint (1/4 of weapon range beyond 450) is applied. So my flagship SO Medusa, with Cryoblasters (base range 600) and Light Dual Machine Guns with the elite PD skill (+200 base range), has base ranges of 600 and 500 respectively. With SO, their ranges become 487.5 and 462.5. With SO and GSA, their ranges become 472.5 and 450. So it hardly matters, so that's an acceptable dmod to have.

For non-SO ships, if you're fighting battles that aren't too long, then Unreliable Subsystems (-30% peak time, 30% faster CR decay) may not matter. So that becomes an acceptable dmod as well.

So you can look through your ships and decide on which dmods are okay to have and which aren't, and then play roulette to see if you get ones that are fine to have.

Trying this out, currently my flagship Onslaught XIV + 6 Atlas2's with dual Squall/Mjolnir/Railguns with BRF (184 DP, fighting at 370 battle size, so deploy all at start) can beat double Ordos in 292 seconds, with the Atlas2's averaging 434 DPS. This is with 3 points into Technology for Gunnery Implants and Flux Regulation, and 2 points into Industry for Ordnance Expertise. Setting up 8 Atlas2's, each with 3 random dmods (using the "adddmod" command from the [urlhttps://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=23024.0]Additional Search Commands[/url] mod) and thus 20 DP (200 DP, fighting at 400 battle size, so deploy all at start), I beat it in 295 seconds, with the Atlas2's averaging 325 DPS. So they basically lost about a quarter of their power from the dmods, but the additional Atlas2's made up for it. I had to take out GI and FR to get Derelict Operations, but it was no big loss in overall fleet effectiveness.

If I now choose the dmods, by making all of them have Unreliable Subsystems, Compromised Hull, and Compromised Armor (note that this means each ship retains all offensive power, but lose defensive power), I beat the same double Ordos fleet in 275 seconds, with the 8 Atlas2's averaging 386 DPS. The Atlas2's in total increased from 2.6k DPS (6 Atlas2's, regular) to 3.1k DPS (8 Atlas2's with 3 selected dmods and Derelict Operations), nearly 20% more overall DPS. The main limiting factor was that the Atlas2's were killing stuff as fast as they could move into range, so the time it took for them to move to the next ship in range limited their overall DPS. There was also a lot more overkill (ships dying while projectiles were en route, which counted as a miss and no damage was done) since there were fewer enemy ships that the Atlas2's could attack at any given time.

This run also had the lowest damage taken I've ever had with this double Ordos test fleet; it only did around 72k damage to my fleet the entire battle (and uh my flagship was responsible for about 40% of the damage taken, heh, due to some carelessness with some Reapers). Typically they do around 200k-500k damage to my fleet, with a full fleet of Gryphons still taking around 120k damage. There was just so much offensive power that they couldn't really do anything.

So yeah it's quite possible to make Derelict Operations work. It just depends on how much time the player wants to spend trying to get the "right" dmods.

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[Megas]

I *think* there's something about having smods decreasing the chance of losing a ship permanently when it dies.

Putting an s-mod on the ship almost guarantees recovery of the ship like Reinforced Bulkheads or Hull Restoration does.

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

I'd be interested in knowing how people would change skill picks away from the Hull Restoration + Best of the Best combination to improve that particular fleet's performance for Ordo hunting, keeping in mind that it's an ironman save without any colonies.  Assume it's okay to hire and train up new officers with difference skills and spend the 24 story points to do so (presumably you're Ordo hunting for a reason, and without colonies, training up new officers is about all one has to spend points on).

They probably wouldn't, but that's kind of beside the point. No one ever argued that the Ordnance Expertise and Polarized Armor are bad skills.

But even in your own example, you have both Bulk Transport and Containment Procedures. Since you are obviously not shy to brute-force logistics(what with SIX Oxes) then you could absolutely do without either of these skills. Except you can't because you need four skills total to unlock Hull Restoration. The point being, you didn't take these skills because you want to, you took them as filler.

On top of that, as per your own admission, you mostly(or only) take Hull Restoration for the CR bonus, which is not the "intended" function of the skill. And even then you need BotB, a capstone from a completely different tree, to get most out of it.

Bulk Transport? Just get more logistics ships in your fleet.
Salvaging? Three Salvage Rigs basically give you the skill.
Field Repairs? No actual way to simulate it, but also almost completely irrelevant.
Containment Procedures? Just bring more fuel.
Makeshift equipment? Just bring more supplies. And more Surveying Equipment.
Industrial Planning? Completely obsoleted by AI Cores.
Derelict Operations? D-mods are random and can only be obtained by losing ships which forces the player to deliberately play badly to get a good fleet(what?)

These are the problems with the Industry tree. "But money" is not an argument, black market lets you print just about any amount of money. "But respec" is not an argument either, if Industry is good in the early game but bad in late game then it's a bad skill tree. All the real challenges are in late game. Hell, you can even skip early game completely by grinding standings with Pirates.

With all that said, I generally like the way Hull Restoration skill works. It's QoL("bad") on its own, but becomes good if combined with a skill from another tree. This makes it quintessentially an Industry skill but still sometimes worth having. I could see all the listed Industry skills getting such a bonus.

[basileus]

Ziggurat can solo an endgame fleet or even two Tesseracts with human weapons only, but Omega weapons elevate it to 0.7a Onslaught power levels that can solo multiple fleets or the entire simulator.

How interesting.  I've never once fielded the Ziggurat because I was afraid that it would be that powerful.

On top of that, as per your own admission, you mostly(or only) take Hull Restoration for the CR bonus, which is not the "intended" function of the skill. And even then you need BotB, a capstone from a completely different tree, to get most out of it.

Maybe Alex will helpfully put the particular parts of skills that we're intended to consider when designing fleets in bold.

It seems like Industry is the skill tree equivalent of the Conquest.

--

Everyone agrees that Industry is very strong in the early game.  No one is calling to change the balance in the early game.  Some people want Industry to be stronger for combat the late game so that they can derive value from it.

So how do we redesign the skill tree so that it has extra pep only in the late game combat?  That sounds devilishly hard to do.  The only obvious approach I see would be for Alex to do the opposite of what he usually does with skills tied to total fleet combat DP, and give some skills benefits that only reach their full potential when you have a large, late game fleets.  That wouldn't help Megas out in a solo Ziggurat, but it could make Industry more combat viable in a traditional late game.  What sort of benefits would make sense?  And how pronounced would they need to be?

[Megas]

The main reason I use Ziggurat was to beat Ordos while avoiding min-maxing officers AND having no Leadership skills.  The officers are the biggest problem because they need to be built specifically for the ship, but they take too long to cultivate, which makes changing ships in the fleet painful because the new ships usually need new officers.  Ships are the real main characters analogous to a jRPG.  The officers are the ship's (stat stick) equipment.

If I want to use a conventional fleet, I need Leadership; and if I want my flagship to be on par with the enemy, I need Combat.  No way around that.  That leaves Tech and Industry as the optional trees.

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

If I want to use a conventional fleet, I need Leadership; and if I want my flagship to be on par with the enemy, I need Combat.  No way around that.  That leaves Tech and Industry as the optional trees.

You don't need to use a flagship at all though. Or you can use one that doesn't benefit much from combat skills, like a carrier. Also you get 15 skillpoints, which theoretically lets you pick three capstones in three different trees leaving only one out.

[Doctorhealsgood]

If I want to use a conventional fleet, I need Leadership; and if I want my flagship to be on par with the enemy, I need Combat.  No way around that.  That leaves Tech and Industry as the optional trees.

You don't need to use a flagship at all though. Or you can use one that doesn't benefit much from combat skills, like a carrier. Also you get 15 skillpoints, which theoretically lets you pick three capstones in three different trees leaving only one out.

Not everyone is fond of the armchair general style.

[Serenitis]

Eh Derelict Operations absolutely could be really powerful, but it depends a lot on the fleet and on the specific dmods the ships get, so it depends on how willing the player is to either savescum or spend a lot of time letting ships die and seeing if they get the "right" set of dmods.

This keeps coming up, and it's just not a requirement at all.
But it certainly is frustrating, and if you're doing all this you're inflicting it on yourself.