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[BigBrainEnergy]

Instead of sweeping changes to the skill tree I'd like to look at some possible changes that are easy to do and not much different from the current tree to address what I perceive as balance issues.

I think the skills are fine except for a couple things. For starters, combat readiness is way too scarce for how impactful it is. Maxing it out provides 10% increased damage, 10% damage reduction, 10% top speed, 10% maneuverability, and has a significant effect on autofire accuracy. You basically always want a skill setup that reaches 100% CR on most of your ships if not all. The only problem is the limited number of ways to actually get it: combat endurance, support doctrine (which just gives combat endurance to your non-officered ships), crew training, and hull restoration. Considering 2 of these are capstones you're basically forced to take crew training every game. If you don't, you're objectively doing things wrong. The only time it's acceptable not to is if all your officers have combat endurance and you have both botb + hull restoration.

Speaking of hull restoration, there's problem number two: some capstones are underpowered. By "some" I mean neural link and hull restoration. On the economic side of things hull restoration is great, but on the combat side of things it's literally just a worse crew training as a capstone. Even if you have botb it's still worse than crew training because it only applies to s-modded ships. Derelict ops has an economic bonus in addition to the combat bonus and that doesn't hold it back, there's no argument that it's a solid capstone (remember: support doctrine also reduces DP but has no effect on maintenance costs).

Neural link on the other hand is a fun skill but just can't compete with automated ships. The only reason I can think of for why it's a capstone is because Alex doesn't want to make it too easy to combine with automated ships for the legendary player-radiant. There is, however, a glaring flaw with this logic: the ziggurat. It's even more powerful than a radiant, require 0 points to pilot, and doesn't come with a 50 op hullmod tax. Literally the only reason people don't use it is because they don't want to. We want to fly other ships. If all players cared about was the most powerful flagship possible then everyone would always fly the ziggurat instead of wasting their time doing anything else. Similarly, most players won't find themselves using a radiant flagship even if it was easier to combine neural link with automated ships.





For industry: make hull restoration provide 10% cr per s-mod. By itself it provides up to 20% but when combined with botb is 30% replacing the need for crew training or combat endurance. It also brings its power more in line with other capstones.

For technology: move neural link down 1 tier but otherwise leave it unchanged. Of course another skill would have to swap places with it, so I nominate Electronic warfare. A lot of people don't want automated ships in their fleet for roleplay reasons so a nice generic buff works as an alternative. Electronic warfare is currently pretty boring but has potential to gain some much more interesting effects, maybe giving you something like another 5% extra ecm for each point you control on the battlefield or making it so you capture points faster and enemies capture them slower. Maybe it could even cause a fifth control point to spawn that gives the enemy no effect when they control it but gives you some nice bonuses. There's a lot of room here to make something cool (maybe this one isn't "Easy" like I intended but I came up with it while writing this and thought it was cool so cut me some slack ).

For leadership: no changes.

For combat: the elite bonus of systems expertise is really underwhelming compared to 50% missiles rate of fire and 10% missile damage. Tapping back into the scarcity of cr, it could just give you 15% combat readiness. A lot of player flagships don't care for extra ppt or hull repair (odyssey) but still want that 15% cr (odyssey) and they like systems expertise (odyssey) so I think this would give players more flexibility in what combat skills they take. Also, the fact that it's an elite bonus means that officers won't accidentally get stuck with both when you don't want both because you can just retrain it.

[Vanshilar]

I was going to post about what I thought of the capstone skills when I got around to it, but guess I'll just post here instead

First, I like the current system in terms of its structure. I think this new tiered system works well, so I don't see any need for fundamental changes.

However, my understanding is that each capstone is meant to be approximately equal in power, i.e. the player should "want" to take each one about equally as much. But that's not the way it ends up. Going through the list:

Systems Expertise: Good for some ships, fairly useless to others, so it really depends on the particular ship. Giving +15% CR as an elite bonus would be interesting, except then it'd sort of make Combat Endurance superfluous, since Crew Training is in level 1 Leadership without any other prerequisites so it's almost always taken. Perhaps if Crew Training gave +10%, SE gave +10%, Combat Endurance gave +10%, and BotB (more on this later) gave +10%, then that way it's more of a "pick any 3 of the 4" to get 100% would be better. Or perhaps the +CR bonus should be part of the base skill without needing to be elite.

Missile Spec: Way too good. It increases missile DPS by a bit more than 65%, for one skill. For the player it's a capstone skill, but for officers it's basically just "another skill" once they reach level 4 without the attendant capstone tradeoffs. I think it should be more like +10% rate of fire, considering it already gives +10% damage, so you're still getting +21% damage which is still more than the other weapon skill bonuses (most of the time). Maybe +20% rate of fire.

Best of the Best: It's not so much "good" per se as that it's very generalist and "convenient" for just about every build, unless the player is trying to cap in multiple other directions, so it basically gets taken all the time. Pretty much every fleet can use being able to deploy more ships at start and a 3rd s-mod on every ship. Basically like the ITU of capstone skills. I'd switch some of its bonuses around with Hull Restoration (more on this later).

Support Doctrine: Interesting skill, I think it's fine where it's at.

Neural Link: I haven't played with this. However, I'm inclined to say that it's likely a bit weak, because the ship gets the officer skills of the player character, and if the player is already getting the NL capstone, then I don't see that many skill points left over for both the fleet and the player's flagship(s). So I would say, Neural Interface/Integrator should be decreased in cost, Integrator especially. But that's from looking at the skill effects, not personal experience. I'm sure people who have played with it more can give a better perspective on how its power is relative to the other capstones.

Automated Ships: I've only dabbled in this so no strong opinions on this. It depends on how much the automated ships are stronger than regular ships by enough of a margin that it's worthwhile to get this capstone.

Hull Restoration: The bonuses look useful if you're just starting out and don't have your economy set up, but basically not worth it for endgame fleets. So basically, pretty weak. Take at beginning and then respec once you can make enough money if you want to use it.

Derelict Operations: I think the biggest issue is that it *can* be powerful if you're lucky and get the "right" d-mods, but if you just load up on random d-mods, there's basically no net benefit between more d-modded ships vs fewer pristine ships (since some of the d-mods can really hurt). So you have to play d-mod roulette and hunt down the "right" d-mods, whether that's from letting your ships die or (more intelligently) check the d-mods on the ships you can loot/buy until you find the "right" combination. Someone proposed somewhere to allow the player to s-mod in their d-mods, i.e. make those d-mods unremovable from restoring, and I think that would be great for making DO more useful.

So my thought is this. BotB is too "convenient" while HR is too weak. To me, Leadership conveys better officering, crew morale, etc., which should mean the bonuses should be more about CR. While Industry is about the actual physical ship. Then why not switch those bonuses around? It's odd that BotB gives a 3rd s-mod (i.e. being able to make the physical ship itself stronger) while Hull Restoration gives +CR (which abstractly conveys crew ability), when it seems thematically like it should be the other way around.

I would say, have BotB give the deployment bonus and the +5% CR per s-mod, while Hull Restoration gives the 3rd s-mod instead of +5% CR per s-mod. That conceptually fits better with what each skill tree is supposed to be about, and splits up the "overly convenient" benefits of deploying more ships and an additional s-mod into different capstones.

If Crew Training were changed to +10% CR for all ships (instead of the current +15%), then this means that you can get to +100% CR by taking BotB and each ship then taking CE or elite SE, or by each ship taking CE and elite SE but frees up a capstone so that you can get Hull Restoration so all ships can get a 3rd s-mod. (I assume the player still takes Crew Training in either case.) Or, you just accept have 90% CR for that 3rd s-mod. Then it really *does* make it an "interesting choice" of would you rather have more to deploy at the start and CR, or a 3rd s-mod plus side benefits.

[Doctorhealsgood]

Missile Spec: Way too good. It increases missile DPS by a bit more than 65%, for one skill. For the player it's a capstone skill, but for officers it's basically just "another skill" once they reach level 4 without the attendant capstone tradeoffs. I think it should be more like +10% rate of fire, considering it already gives +10% damage, so you're still getting +21% damage which is still more than the other weapon skill bonuses (most of the time). Maybe +20% rate of fire.

not sure if it is nice to nerf a skill because officers get to cheat

[TheLaughingDead]

I agree with nerfing Missile Spec. Its effects are an outlier, even when compared to Systems Expertise (especially when comparing elite effects).

Regarding Neural Link and Automated Ships, while a pretty big change I honestly think that at least Automated Ships should be available via some sort of mission or quest reward. Given how it doesn't so much boost the player's fleet strength/logistics so much as it enables the use of an entire other set of ships, the Automated Ships skill feels as though the game had a set of DLC ships, but to use them the player had to actually spec into them (rather than just buy the DLC). I think if Automated Ships was offered via quest reward or something of the like, and then there was a Tech skill that could boost it, that would make more sense. And I know that technology is supposed to be more of a "wildcard" kind of skill tree with its capstones, but both Automated Ships and Neural Link both seem a bit too out there to require capstones. Really, I think from a flavour and gameplay perspective, Neural Link would function better as a Combat skill (not even as a capstone) or within Technology's second tier for personal skills, because it is weak enough to be easy to access and is more of a personal pilot kind of skill anyway.

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

I would say, have BotB give the deployment bonus and the +5% CR per s-mod, while Hull Restoration gives the 3rd s-mod instead of +5% CR per s-mod. That conceptually fits better with what each skill tree is supposed to be about, and splits up the "overly convenient" benefits of deploying more ships and an additional s-mod into different capstones.

I really like this one.

NOPE to Missile Specialization nerfs. It needs to have a RoF bonus to compensate for all the extra missiles you're getting, otherwise things will get really weird like having huge stockpile of missiles that you'll never be able to fire before combat ends. The RoF was already nerfed this patch with EMR S-mod penalty. If you really want to nerf MS just because Support Doctrine+Derelict Operations make Gryphons too strong(and Gryphons will likely get a Missile Autoforge nerf next patch so that problem, on top of having nothing to do with MS in the first place, is already solved) remove the damage bonus instead.

Electronic Warfare: this skill just needs a straight-up buff, it's the weakest combat skill in the game hands down. Either increase the ECM bonus to 2% or make it scale with ship size the way the ECM hullmod does. Although some people suggested ECM should be reworked in the first place and I agree; the linear way it currently scales makes it an "all or nothing" mechanic. You either stack every ECM bonus you can(and still get out-ECM'd by an Ordo lol) or you just ignore it completely.

[TheLaughingDead]

NOPE to Missile Specialization nerfs. It needs to have a RoF bonus to compensate for all the extra missiles you're getting, otherwise things will get really weird like having huge stockpile of missiles that you'll never be able to fire before combat ends. The RoF was already nerfed this patch with EMR S-mod penalty. If you really want to nerf MS just because Support Doctrine+Derelict Operations make Gryphons too strong(and Gryphons will likely get a Missile Autoforge nerf next patch so that problem, on top of having nothing to do with MS in the first place, is already solved) remove the damage bonus instead.

YES to Missile Specialization nerfs. The skill doesn't need the massive 50% RoF bonus to use extra missiles because if the player finds they have an excess stockpile of missiles, they can decide not to equip Expanded Missiles Racks. And I don't agree that the EMR S-mod effect really nerfs missile RoF that badly, because the player can simply not S-mod it and instead pay the meager extra OP cost.
A number of things on Gryphons:
1. Gryphons don't need Support Doctrine nor Derelict Operations to be extremely capable ships. Vanshilar has shown that a pure Gryphon fleet (minus his Onslaught capital) with neither of those skills can still dominate a double Ordo.
2. If the Missile Autoforge nerf is the one described where it only restores 100% of base missiles instead of all missiles, I still think the ship will be able to beat a double Ordo without losses, should Missile Spec remain the same.
3. I don't want to nerf Missile Specialization simply because of Gryphons. I have nothing against Gryphons, if they are the most powerful ship then so be it, and if I wanted a Gryphon change it would be a new and more interesting ship system.

I want a Missile Specialization nerf because I simply think the skill is waaay too powerful: missiles, which are supposed to be a limited resource that breaks the rules of weapons by passing through friendly ships, not using flux, doing massive burst, etc, are becoming too common (via the Missile Spec skill's +100% ammo), too difficult to shoot down (via the Missile Spec's +50% missile HP) and too easy a DPS crutch (via the Missile Spec's elite effect of +50% RoF). The base effect is too much for one skill, and the elite effect is too much for one elite skill, and the two combined make that choice too powerful relative to investing that skill point or elite skill point into something else. Frankly speaking, I think all the skill's effects could be halved and that would bring it in line with Systems Expertise as a combat capstone.

[Wyvern]

Frankly speaking, I think all the skill's effects could be halved and that would bring it in line with Systems Expertise as a combat capstone.

While this is probably true, I don't want to see it brought in line with Systems Expertise - I want to see Systems Expertise buffed to the point where it's actually competitive as a capstone skill.

Though, there is a fair point to be made that perhaps the elite effects of capstone combat skills should be disallowed for non-player officers (including AI cores) - it's not very impressive as a player capstone if you can just slap an officer in and get it at full power that way.

[Grievous69]

Can't believe no one mentioned missile HP part of Missile spec, that's imo the biggest problem. Some stats you just don't touch because it makes for easy cheese tactics, +50 missile hitpoints means you reach critical mass faster where you can't be stopped by any PD system. For example imagine a version of Ballistics Mastery that increased hit strength of every ballistics weapon, that would be broken as well. Rate of fire is fine, damage bonus is not really needed but alright. But missiles should always have their base hitpoints.

Systems Expertise does need better elite bonuses.

Neural Link is a meme for dual Afflictors or flagship Radiant (and really, like another comment said, why is there a CAPSTONE skill that drains a ton of OP just so I can pilot a ship myself - when Ziggurat exists).

Hull Restoration is a noob trap.

Support Doctrine and Derelict Operations are two capstone I have never picked yet, they just don't sound interesting to me so I have no comments on that.

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

YES to Missile Specialization nerfs. The skill doesn't need the massive 50% RoF bonus to use extra missiles because if the player finds they have an excess stockpile of missiles, they can decide not to equip Expanded Missiles Racks.

The skill itself already doubles your missile amount.

And I don't agree that the EMR S-mod effect really nerfs missile RoF that badly, because the player can simply not S-mod it and instead pay the meager extra OP cost.

Ah yes, the "meager" 8/12/20/30, one of the most expensive hullmods in the game.

Vanshilar has shown that a pure Gryphon fleet (minus his Onslaught capital)

So a "pure Gryphon fleet", except with a capital flagship that does 30% of total damage in the fight, not to mention the player target prioritization(because good luck fielding a monofleet of 8-10 Gryphons against Radiants and Novas) and the effect it has on enemy AI.

are becoming too common (via the Missile Spec skill's +100% ammo), too difficult to shoot down (via the Missile Spec's +50% missile HP) and too easy a DPS crutch (via the Missile Spec's elite effect of +50% RoF)

What you(an many others) seem to be missing is that missiles by default are support weapons - precisely because they have limited ammo, can be shot down and usually have low rate of fire. If you take elite Missile Specialization, and Expanded Missile Racks, and ECCM, then you can turn them into a main weapon system but that's a hefty price to pay.

I mean, no one is complaining that if you take Automated Ships and Neural Link then you can fly a Radiant, the single best ship in the game - because everyone understands that it comes at a cost. But for some reason whenever missiles are involved everyone conveniently forgets about how much you need to do to actually make them viable. No other weapon system requires even remotely as much investment.

[Gothars]

I'm just here to mention that Bulk Transport seems pretty OP, obliterating almost all your logistical challenges for one skill point. Especially the +2 burn for civs means there's almost no reason not to take super-heavy freighters and tankers with you at all times.

I think this is more a bad fix for the fundamental problem of civ ships having no proper role/associated challenge in the game.

[prav]

Nerfing missile spec's ROF would remove the last fun thing from the combat tree.

[Grievous69]

I'm just here to mention that Bulk Transport seems pretty OP, obliterating almost all your logistical challenges for one skill point. Especially the +2 burn for civs means there's almost no reason not to take super-heavy freighters and tankers with you at all times.

I think this is more a bad fix for the fundamental problem of civ ships having no proper role/associated challenge in the game.

But because it doesn't do anything for combat, you can treat it as a pure QoL thing on your path to Ordnance Expertise.

[Buggie]

What you(an many others) seem to be missing is that missiles by default are support weapons - precisely because they have limited ammo, can be shot down and usually have low rate of fire. If you take elite Missile Specialization, and Expanded Missile Racks, and ECCM, then you can turn them into a main weapon system but that's a hefty price to pay.

I mean, no one is complaining that if you take Automated Ships and Neural Link then you can fly a Radiant, the single best ship in the game - because everyone understands that it comes at a cost. But for some reason whenever missiles are involved everyone conveniently forgets about how much you need to do to actually make them viable. No other weapon system requires even remotely as much investment.

A skill and two hullmods? Thats the big price to pay?

If officers couldn't get missile spec that comparison with automated ships + neural link would make sense, but they can, so thats really only relevant in case the player wants to get missile spec as they have to spend 5 skill points to do so. But that's still not really an argument for it just being the best skill on officers unless they're piloting a ship without missiles.

[BigBrainEnergy]

I'm with wyvern that if missile spec is too strong then systems expertise should be made stronger to match it as a capstone combat skill. Missile spec as is works perfectly for the player but if that makes officers too strong then you could make it so the combat capstones are for players only and officers just don't get them. Enemy fleets would only get them on their flagship.

[Megas]

I am fine with Missile Specialization as-is.  It is a capstone that applies only to the piloted ship.  What is not fine is officers treating Combat capstones as cheap as Leadership officer skills, and they can get both capstones at level 5, while player gets only get both at level 8.  I have no problem limiting capstone skills to fleet commanders.  (In 0.65, skills were limited to fleet commanders, and the rest of the fleet was unskilled.)  If Missile Spec gets nerfed, it should demoted be a tier 1 skill like every other combat skill.  Actually, Combat could be the one tree with no capstones (and then there could be separate combat/fleet skill points since maximum fleet power of NPC-controlled fleets seem to be the dominating meta today).

Neural Link should not even be a skill as-is.  Neural Link is mainly a fake Automated Ships skill to insert a fake AI Core (cloning the fleet commander) into a human ship to make it as strong as Remnant ship with an AI core... except for the OP tax on flagship and double.  Pick one of the Neural hullmods, make it available like any other hullmod, and apply to all ships (e.g.,-50 OP to human and AI capitals).  The OP tax is a massive nerf to ships that already struggle with OP budget.  When I use Neural Integration on a human capital like Onslaught, I have to give up a hullmod like ECCM to fit Neural Interface.  It looks cheap on small ships, but it is not really when their OP budgets are small, and I have to give up caps, vents, or hullmod to fix a neural hullmod.  Then add a new Tech capstone to take Neural Link's place.

Hull Restoration is too weak.  Not only the combat bonuses are weak for a capstone (especially without BotB), but it also does not mitigate casualties well enough either.  Some mention that with Derelict Operations, they do not care if their ships die.  With Hull Restoration, that is not the case.  Ships still take d-mods at times, and waiting for d-mods to disappear takes too long when I constantly have a dozen or more d-mods in line to be removed (because I often recover ships from the enemy, especially from AI fleets who have no blueprints to build them yourself).  Eventually, the line gets so long that I eventually Restore smaller ships (that are impossible to build) and leave the d-mods to cruisers and capitals.  Then, there are hullmods that do not get removed short of Restore (like Special Modifications from Executor).  Hull Restoration should get more combat bonuses and campaign power boosted to the point where player does not care about casualties as long as he wins the fight.  Perhaps speed up d-mod removal or make Restore much cheaper (maybe half price) so that Restoring ships becomes the cheapest way to get new ships.  I pick Hull Restoration primarily to shrug off casualties while having pristine ships and remove the pressure of getting flawless victories in every combat, but it does not do a good enough job of that.  (I do not want Derelict Ops because I do not want clunkers at all in my fleet.)

If Industry 3 will never get any significant combat boosts, then the Industry capstones should be more powerful to make up the lack of combat power in Industry 3, much like Industry 2 makes up for no or minimal combat boost in Industry 1.

Industrial Planning is convenient for no-core games (although most people use cores for colonies).  Without Industrial Planning, I feel pushed to using AI cores to meet demand if planet generation was not kind.  In-faction demand seems to expect Industrial Planning.  Would be nice if Industrial Planning was removed from Industry and made into a quest reward.  Then an Industry 3 combat skill can take its place (if Industry capstones will not be buffed enough).

Cybernetic Augmentation should give something that does not require story points, even if it is minor like +1 command point.  I get that the skill is good, but it is disappointing that it does nothing if player does not spend story points.

Electronic Warfare needs help.