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Author Topic: Reduce the number of starting officers to improve skill balance  (Read 1722 times)

SCC

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Re: Reduce the number of starting officers to improve skill balance
« Reply #15 on: May 22, 2023, 08:21:40 AM »

Besides, it didn't "work" back then either, which is precisely why it has been changed.
Then why did it work for me? I played the game back then, too. The comparison I could use is for a character without any skills at all (I used to play 0.9.1 and earlier without skills for fun), the game became harder as officers became more commonplace and I had to rely on my fleet more. Though I have to admit, there was no equivalent to mercenary fleets back then and Remnants weren't as aggressive.

Instead of suggesting some arbitrary change and trying to guess how it would affect things, start by identifying the problem you want fixed.
The issue is that without skills, ships with officers are significantly more important than the flagship or unofficered ships, and playstyles not focused on officers top out on the same power level as the officer-centric playstyle (since even if it's boosted the same by skills, it starts out stronger). This has the additional issue of discouraging new players from piloting the flagship, since non-officer-centric playstyles require lot of investment just to catch up to the power that officers offer.

That's funny, because I keep reading how broken various flagships are, with people soloing mid-tier bounties with a single Aurora or something.
Can you point me to an example of such a post? I've been trying to beat a fleet of 1 Nova, 2 Radiants, 5 Fulgents and a dozen frigates for a couple of hours and haven't managed it with just the Aurora. If I kill the Nova, I can't kill the Radiants, and if I kill the Radiants, I can't kill the Nova. I think I need to carry more missiles.

I also remember a series of posts on Reddit recently of a guy blowing up every single star fortress with a single Afflictor. And let's not forget the poor Ziggy, F for that guy for all the various ways he's been humiliated by flagships.
I don't care about phase ships, they aren't fun to fly.

It's like, how much power do you even want? Should ALL combat skills be automatically unlocked for the player?
Previously, if I invested everything, I could solo Remnant ordos with a Conquest, but it's no longer possible. I think it has more to do with Remnant aggression more so than officers, so the change I propose wouldn't bring that back.

Fewer officers by default would push everyone towards capital ships. Why spend a skillpoint to get more officers when I can simply put the 4 officers I already have in larger ships? At least 8 officers lets people use cruisers. No-flagship fleets usually already take Flux Regulation because it's simply a good skill, and it leads to Automated Ships which is also a good skill for no-flagship fleets as it lets you break the 8/10 officer limit(without mercenary respec shenanigans; I don't know how intended that is, seems like cheese to me)
In that case, Grievous's idea of reducing the number of skills officers get by default would perhaps be better.

Alex

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Re: Reduce the number of starting officers to improve skill balance
« Reply #16 on: May 22, 2023, 08:26:49 AM »

Hmm. I think IF one accepts the premise that combat skills need a relative boost in terms of being player picks (which is a particularly subjective point, with it being so dependent on player skill, ship choice, etc), then the more direct ways of adjusting that would be, imo:

1) Reducing the maximum officer level (along with probably AI core level), (fake edit: as Grievous mentioned) and
2) Increasing the power elite skill effects and/or possibly transferring some of the base effect into the elite effect

Of the two, the latter seems least disruptive, and possibly more fun.
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Amoebka

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Re: Reduce the number of starting officers to improve skill balance
« Reply #17 on: May 22, 2023, 08:30:06 AM »

The latter would make the matter worse, no? Now your standart officers are even further behind AI cores you fight, so you feel even more pressured to take skills that make them better.
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kenwth81

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Re: Reduce the number of starting officers to improve skill balance
« Reply #18 on: May 22, 2023, 08:38:14 AM »

Hmm. I think IF one accepts the premise that combat skills need a relative boost in terms of being player picks (which is a particularly subjective point, with it being so dependent on player skill, ship choice, etc), then the more direct ways of adjusting that would be, imo:

1) Reducing the maximum officer level (along with probably AI core level), (fake edit: as Grievous mentioned) and
2) Increasing the power elite skill effects and/or possibly transferring some of the base effect into the elite effect

Of the two, the latter seems least disruptive, and possibly more fun.

I am not in support of buffing Personal combat skills. Personal combat skills becoming overpowered and overvalued will result in it becoming "mandatory" again.
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Wyvern

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Re: Reduce the number of starting officers to improve skill balance
« Reply #19 on: May 22, 2023, 08:42:09 AM »

I think that reducing default officer counts would be good for the game; for those people objecting that this would push the player to officer only the largest, most impactful ships: This already happens - not just from officers, but also from the fleet limit being set by number of ships rather than DP of ships.

I would also much rather have fewer, more impactful officers than large numbers of less-skilled officers. I'm not sure what the best balance point would be, but, for example, if I could set my skills in a way that let me train up four level 7 officers rather than eight level 6 officers (and assuming this didn't cripple battle deployment points), I'd absolutely take it.

-----

That said, Alex's option two is also appealing to me. Several of the existing skills have elite effects that are just meh, and I'd love to see that improved on. Though I'm not coming at this from a perspective of "personal combat skills need to be buffed", but instead "several of these traits aren't fun or change gameplay priorities in annoying ways."
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Wyvern is 100% correct about the math.

Grievous69

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Re: Reduce the number of starting officers to improve skill balance
« Reply #20 on: May 22, 2023, 09:00:54 AM »

Did we somehow miss the entire "AI cores become even more insane" part... As it is right now I rarely fight bigger Remnant fleets (I stopped caring about cores) since it gets boring fighting the same fleets with 8 elite skills. I don't want that part becoming even more extreme. Unless the part of the plan is to also make AI cores have less elite skills.
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Please don't take me too seriously.

Lawrence Master-blaster

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Re: Reduce the number of starting officers to improve skill balance
« Reply #21 on: May 22, 2023, 09:06:46 AM »

Quote from: Wyvern
I think that reducing default officer counts would be good for the game; for those people objecting that this would push the player to officer only the largest, most impactful ships: This already happens - not just from officers, but also from the fleet limit being set by number of ships rather than DP of ships.

Let's assume 5 logistic ships in fleet, then 240/25=9.6 DP per ship. Or in other words, you can have a fleet of 25 Hammerheads if you want. You think THIS pushes players towards "only the largest, most impactful ships"? The 25 ship limit has almost no practical impact on fleet composition unless you run a meme fleet. There are also very good technical reasons why it's in place(pathfinding)

I don't care about phase ships, they aren't fun to fly.

Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you were trying to make a balance argument. Were you just ranting to try and get the game to fit your personal playstyle more? You probably shouldn't do that in the Suggestions subforum then.
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Amoebka

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Re: Reduce the number of starting officers to improve skill balance
« Reply #22 on: May 22, 2023, 09:09:11 AM »

Yeah, AI cores are a problem. If I remember the blog post right, elite effects were meant as a balance lever to make personal skills on players better than on random enemy officers. But with AI cores having all skills elite, it doesn't work. You can't buff elite effects to make players better without making all AI fleets better by even more.

The main reason I feel obligated to take fleet skills isn't combat ones being weak. It's every lategame enemy officer having leadership skills and/or limit breaking officers. Battles are very large now, and most ships are controlled by AI, same for every side. But enemy ships have numeric stat advantages, so unless you match them with fleet skills, your ships will be pushed back and killed everywhere on the battlefield. This turns battles into stressfull and unfun games of trying to be everywhere at once with your flagship, trying to help your hopelessly outmatched allies.
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Megas

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Re: Reduce the number of starting officers to improve skill balance
« Reply #23 on: May 22, 2023, 09:12:12 AM »

For me, it is either get the fleet skills in Leadership (and give up Combat, high Tech, and/or high Industry that I did not want to give up) or abuse solo Ziggurat.  Since Ziggurat takes less commitment and work, my final fleet in last release was Ziggurat, and I plan to try Z again this release too.
« Last Edit: May 22, 2023, 09:13:44 AM by Megas »
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Alex

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Re: Reduce the number of starting officers to improve skill balance
« Reply #24 on: May 22, 2023, 09:13:04 AM »

If I remember the blog post right, elite effects were meant as a balance lever to make personal skills on players better than on random enemy officers.

The point of elite skills is to make players better than *their* officers, so that taking combat skills is "special" compared to having an officer. How it relates to enemy fleet power is a totally different, though interesting and important, question. But there are plenty of levers for managing that.
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Megas

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Re: Reduce the number of starting officers to improve skill balance
« Reply #25 on: May 22, 2023, 09:15:32 AM »

A player that gets Combat 5 and a few from other trees is equivalent to an Alpha core.  Player that gets Officer Training and Cybernetic Augmentation (6 skills, 4 elite) has eight (or ten) officers nearly equivalent to a Beta core.

Player (with 8 elite skills) is much stronger than baseline officers with only 5 skills and 1 elite; but I have my doubts with meaningful power difference between Alpha player and several Beta officers with 6 skill and 4 elite, if they fly simple ships.

Not everyone who wants to pilot a ship wants to pilot an optimal ship that AI struggles with.  Some may want to pilot a ship because it looks cool or, in case of a few ships, they are iconic to the game, and the ship may be one the AI can use very well.  In some earlier releases (before 0.8a), Onslaught was the most powerful ship (at least in some 0.7a releases), and player Onslaught with all the skills (because there was no level cap then) could solo multiple endgame fleets at the time because of the massive skill difference between player and NPC, and AI behaved more recklessly.  While player could abuse a few tricks to help a little, Onslaught was mostly about raw power with more range than Paragon (after it lost 2500 range lances and did not have ATC until later).
« Last Edit: May 22, 2023, 09:33:10 AM by Megas »
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: Reduce the number of starting officers to improve skill balance
« Reply #26 on: May 22, 2023, 10:59:19 AM »

I think fundamentally, the balance of having individual skills competing with fleet wide skills will be on a knifes edge, and it will never be balanced across different player skill levels. If it is balanced for very skilled players, then average players will feel individual combat skills are not good enough. If it is balanced for average players, then skilled players will dominate/solo with heavy personal skills and feel the fleet wide skills are noob traps. As someone else also pointed out, fleet-wide skills still benefit the flagship, so individual combat skills need to be even better to be worth taking instead.

Maybe there is some perfect balance in the middle, but I feel like it would be so much easier to just have a separate combat skill progression for the player, or have a 'first officer' in the flagship that is like the other officers (and maybe there can be a couple skills that let your first officer become more powerful, like letting them take extra skills or extra elite skills etc.).
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Megas

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Re: Reduce the number of starting officers to improve skill balance
« Reply #27 on: May 22, 2023, 11:27:59 AM »

As someone else also pointed out, fleet-wide skills still benefit the flagship, so individual combat skills need to be even better to be worth taking instead.
But part of the (fleet superiority) problem is officers having the same skills as the player, elite level too if given Officer Training and Cyber Aug.  Aside from no-officer Support Doctrine fleets, player will have eight to ten officers with almost the same skills his character can have.

Individual combat skills benefit the whole fleet if the fleet has enough officers, which is fleetwide focused builds with buffed officers and especially enemy Ordos that have alpha cores in over half their fleet (and the rest with beta and gamma cores).  Possibly human bounties too if they have a lot of officers.  (I recently fought a human bounty fleet with 14 level 6 officers.)
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: Reduce the number of starting officers to improve skill balance
« Reply #28 on: May 22, 2023, 12:04:42 PM »

As someone else also pointed out, fleet-wide skills still benefit the flagship, so individual combat skills need to be even better to be worth taking instead.
But part of the (fleet superiority) problem is officers having the same skills as the player, elite level too if given Officer Training and Cyber Aug.  Aside from no-officer Support Doctrine fleets, player will have eight to ten officers with almost the same skills his character can have.

Individual combat skills benefit the whole fleet if the fleet has enough officers, which is fleetwide focused builds with buffed officers and especially enemy Ordos that have alpha cores in over half their fleet (and the rest with beta and gamma cores).  Possibly human bounties too if they have a lot of officers.  (I recently fought a human bounty fleet with 14 level 6 officers.)
Yes I totally agree.

One big gameplay issue for me is if I don't invest in more or better officers and fleet wide skills (or in unofficered ships/the d-mod skill), then the rest of my fleet feels weak and outclassed against late game humans and remnant fleets, meaning even if my flagship is a beast, I have to spend the whole fight trying to keep my weak fleet alive (or solo) which can be frustrating. It feels like buffing your fleet is much more effective at avoiding losses than buffing your flagship, even if your flagship is strong enough for you to carry with good piloting.
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BaBosa

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Re: Reduce the number of starting officers to improve skill balance
« Reply #29 on: May 22, 2023, 02:59:43 PM »

I was thinking of making a post just like this. Unless you're really skilled or using a cheese ship, combat skills feel hard to pick over the other skills.
But the issue others mention about having only a few officers making them just use a few ships is a problem.
Reducing the max level of officers would help because then it wouldn't take as many skill points to be better than officers.

Though what about not having the same max level for all officers?
Either through different officer skills adding like 1, 2, 5 officers with max level 7, 5, 3 and 5, 2, 0 elite skills.
Or make it so instead of having a base of 8 officers with max level 5. You can have any number of officers up to a collective total level of 40 levels.

I feel most elite effects are in a good place though a few could use some love.
Some skills definitely use a tune up though, mainly because there are like 3 skills for armor/hull tanking but tankers still need the shield skill and all the other ones so it is especially hard to justify them when I could just focus on shield tank, mobility or damage. Maybe give the armour tank skills some benefit to their shield like making damage control's elite effect apply to shields as well. Or just consolidate them, damage control and impact modulation are very similar. Though tbh my opinion of armor skills might be because I didn't spend much time with them
« Last Edit: May 22, 2023, 03:09:38 PM by BaBosa »
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