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[tseikk1]

Changing combat personality costs a story point, up to THREE if going from timid to aggressive for example.

Choosing the skills you want costs a story point. But you still aren't guaranteed to get what you want. Trained an officer to level 6 all the way from 1? Didn't get the skills you wanted, even after spending a point? Too bad.

Making skills elite costs a story point PER SKILL.

Promoting promising officers from fleet costs a story point.

No way to change officers skills, leaving 99% of cryopod officers entirely useless, even the rare level 7's.

Officers are still uncommon enough that it takes me a good chunk of midgame just flying from place to place looking for level 1 officers.


What is the purpose of the current officer system? It for sure can't be lore, in the story the player is surrounded by incredibly competent crew. Surely we can have someone equip the new kid with Gunnery Implants, or tell them not to pilot their ship as if they're suicidal without these being considered "exceptional feats".
An argument could be made for balance... Except the newest update just added a way of getting 100+ DP worth of ships piloted by alpha cores for no skill investment.
Is it vision? Are officers supposed to be scarce? Then why is every non-player fleet (even pirates) and their dogs running with more and higher leveled officers than the player could get?

If you didn't guess, I'm not a big fan of how officers work in this game. I think they should be less rare, I should be able to choose their skills and personalities freely and I should be able to retrain them if I wanted to.

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

I don't agree with all the complaints but yeah, some of the offier mechanics are kinda weird.

The big one for me is that from level 4 onwards every officer will be always offered both capstone skills, which means that officers without capstones are noticeably harder to roll. And Ludd help you if you didn't Mentor them.

They could also be a bit more common, yeah. You basically have to hunt them from the very beginning of the game "in advance" of getting ships for them.

[Grievous69]

They could also be a bit more common, yeah. You basically have to hunt them from the very beginning of the game "in advance" of getting ships for them.

Ughh this one in particular. Every playthrough I come to a point where I have more officers than combat ships, so when I eventually get more ships, I can immediately put an officer in and let it level up. Because fighting a tough battle with half your fleet having lvl 1-2 officers is a pain.

[Zsar]

Huh. I'd rather have them be much more rare and able to die or leave you in other ways, but get rid of the ridiculous hard cap on them that the AI does not even respect. - It hurts somewhat that, after getting the first ten guys, everyone else I meet or could promote just has to be left behind because I am artificially forced to have no command to give them. Yet I find the guys by the dozen when exploring. Who needs all these people, I could crew several frigates with just officers sometimes!

... But yes, I too think the Story Point costs invested into the individual officer are somewhat steep, as well. Given that they are characters, though, why can they not get their own story points? That would alleviate this issue nicely, I think.

Could go with a system like in the old D&D Fantasy Empires or the Warlords series, where you have to send your heroes (here: officers) on quests for big advances (here: their own Story Points); and maybe, sometimes they do not come back.

[hagibear]

One potentially interesting thought, I've read several times that the red combat skills are seen as having not enough/no fleet impact. What about making it so that when an officer levels up you can choose to teach them one of your known skills instead. If that's too powerful perhaps require the skill to be elite?

Give the red line some lead by example flavour as opposed to the other lines where it's much more about creating the perfect environment and circumstances for your subordinates.

[Talinoth]

One potentially interesting thought, I've read several times that the red combat skills are seen as having not enough/no fleet impact. What about making it so that when an officer levels up you can choose to teach them one of your known skills instead. If that's too powerful perhaps require the skill to be elite?

Give the red line some lead by example flavour as opposed to the other lines where it's much more about creating the perfect environment and circumstances for your subordinates.

Holy *** that's an awesome idea. Indeed, if the fleet commander has learned a skill, "Mentoring" should let you teach an Officer everything you know so a combat-focused player can finely tune their subordinate Officer combat skills.
As it stands, you have to often have to boot a few Officers out the airlock especially if they were missing key skills they needed for a particular ship. You're not going to run an armour-tank ship without an Officer using Impact Mitigation and Polarised Armor are you?
This is especially frustrating when you're playing a faction or modded playthrough and you only want officer portraits from that particular faction. It's heartbreaking to let a cool-looking fella go because they just didn't fit into the fleet plan.

[Megas]

My problem with Combat skills is everyone has them, and Ordos has the most, but endgame human fleets are no slouches.  Also, officers cheat and have access to both Combat capstones at levels 4 and 5.  Player needs heavy investment in Combat just to keep up with everyone else if he wants to pilot a ship as strong as theirs, and the player does not have the same access to combat capstones as officers do.  No wonder that videos posted lately dump Combat and demote the fleet commander's flagship into a miserable toady or mascot while the rest of his fleet has all the fun.

Back on topic...

My problem with officers is they need to be tailored for the ship, but the mechanics fight this.  Officers are treated as NPCs, but in Starsector, this is backwards!  Ships are the NPCs not the officers (human or AI core), and officers are the stat bonus accessories for the ship, like jewelry in a typical RPG.  (Think of your ships as Transformers, and your flagship is Optimus Prime... or Megatron.  Puny humans are mascots.)

Officers are slow to level, and as I play through the game, my fleet and loadouts change, but my officers cannot adapt to an ever-changing fleet.  By endgame, I find that I need to fire most if not everyone before I lock-in my final fleet.  But there should not be a final fleet just because officers are inflexible and cost too many story points to bring them up to snuff, only for them to be disposed of when they become obsolete after a fleet change.  And woe to the player that does fire everyone, for then he needs to spend too much time grinding levels from 1 to 5 or 6 for several new officers and very likely more story points (without refund) to make skills elite.

Retraining should be available at max level (or even earlier if mentored), even if no skill is elite.  Currently, player cannot retrain to change behavior until a skill is elite.  There is no need for this.

Retraining should be able to change skills, just as it can change behavior and/or which skill is elite.  Cost could be one story point per skill changed, and +100% bonus xp per point spent, just like behavior.

Officers should obey the same rules as the player with respect to capstones.  They need to get four Combat skills to get one Combat capstone, just like the player, and since they cannot be level 8, they cannot get two capstones.  That should at least block 9x missiles on Gryphon.  (Then again, if Missile Spec. gets nerfed and Systems Expertise does not change, then Combat should not have any capstones, and all skills could be tier 1.)

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

Also, officers cheat and have access to both Combat capstones at levels 4 and 5.

I can name exactly one ship on which you'd want both MS and SE.

No wonder that videos posted lately dump Combat and demote the fleet commander's flagship into a miserable toady or mascot while the rest of his fleet has all the fun.

You mean all these CHALLEGE videos by CapnHector where he CHALLENGES himself to beat 5 Ordo with ONLY AI ships? Gee I wonder why don't these videos have any flagships in them?

[Megas]

I can name exactly one ship on which you'd want both MS and SE.

Gryphon is obvious, but that does not mean it cannot be used by others.  I have considered both capstones on few other ships.

You mean all these CHALLEGE videos by CapnHector where he CHALLENGES himself to beat 5 Ordo with ONLY AI ships? Gee I wonder why don't these videos have any flagships in them?

Yes, Hector does many of them, but I saw few others that were not from him.

Still, if the challenge videos are best done without the flagship, that is a problem.  It tells me that either Combat is underpowered or (more likely) everyone else has too much (Combat) skill power.

[Vanshilar]

Officers should obey the same rules as the player with respect to capstones.  They need to get four Combat skills to get one Combat capstone, just like the player, and since they cannot be level 8, they cannot get two capstones.

No, the gameplay reason why the player gets capstones at 5/8 and officers get them at 4/5 should be fairly obvious, i.e. since the player has to worry about fleet skills and different skill trees while officers don't. Should officers be prevented from taking capstone skills unless they already have 4 Combat skills too?

Still, if the challenge videos are best done without the flagship, that is a problem.  It tells me that either Combat is underpowered or (more likely) everyone else has too much (Combat) skill power.

It's a huge leap in logic to go from "someone showing that 5 Ordos CAN be beaten without player flagship" to "beating 5 Ordos is BEST done without player flagship". If anything -- not to take anything away from CapnHector's excellent videos -- they show the limits of not having a player flagship. The fights often took multiple rounds, with all but one lasting more than 30 minutes of total battle time, there is usually at least one ship death, and a number of them feature Omega weaponry.

By comparison my flagship Onslaught / 4 Conquest / 2 Gryphon vs 5 Ordos battle was on first try (just went with what I *think* would work without going through multiple iterations trying to optimize the setup), single round, took under 14 minutes, no deaths, and didn't use Omega weapons. There is a vast difference in player fleet effectiveness depending on whether or not the player chooses to pilot a flagship.

[DuckFlux]

No way to change officers skills, leaving 99% of cryopod officers entirely useless, even the rare level 7's.

It's quite rare for a level 7 to have even 4 of the appropriate skills you want for a particular ship. It feels bad dismissing a level 7 in order to train up a level 6 that has 6 skills that you want.

I think it would be nice if you could at least send your level 7's into reserve so that they don't count against your officer limit, just in case you want to build a ship around them one day, as unlikely as it is.

[CapnHector]

It's a huge leap in logic to go from "someone showing that 5 Ordos CAN be beaten without player flagship" to "beating 5 Ordos is BEST done without player flagship". If anything -- not to take anything away from CapnHector's excellent videos -- they show the limits of not having a player flagship. ...

I did finally beat all of my 5 ships vs 5 Ordos challenges without Omega weapons, completing the Executor with a Gigacannon build! I don't disagree with you here though. The fact that I don't use a playership is just my playstyle, and originally started out of laziness (I play with a clickpad) and wanting to focus more on the strategic rather than the piloting aspects of the game, and also a kind of "look I can do this using only AI ships" challenge mentality. Your video clearly demonstrates how much more a playership can do, I think it took out more than a third of the five Ordos by itself despite being a 40 DP ship?

It would actually be interesting to see how these fleets I built would work with a skilled player pilot. With the Executors it might actually be immensely strong with 2 of them having Neural Link, so you could have High Energy Focus active permanently dealing 50% more damage. On the other hand with the Astral fleet I don't know if piloting one would make much of a difference. But then you could build one intended as a playership to use fast bombers to snipe unpleasant things I suppose.

[Megas]

No, the gameplay reason why the player gets capstones at 5/8 and officers get them at 4/5 should be fairly obvious, i.e. since the player has to worry about fleet skills and different skill trees while officers don't. Should officers be prevented from taking capstone skills unless they already have 4 Combat skills too?

Yes.

Human officers can reach level 5, and if they should get a capstone, they should pay the same price as the player (by pumping four in Combat).  Player cannot get two capstones unless he already has seven skills in Combat, but officers can mix-and-match three skills in the three trees to get the first capstone, and four skills for the second capstone (if the player wants that).

The only break I understand officers getting is bypassing Tech/Industry 1 campaign skills for Tech/Industry 2.

[Draba]

You mean all these CHALLEGE videos by CapnHector where he CHALLENGES himself to beat 5 Ordo with ONLY AI ships? Gee I wonder why don't these videos have any flagships in them?

Yes, Hector does many of them, but I saw few others that were not from him.

Still, if the challenge videos are best done without the flagship, that is a problem.

No flagship is a massive handicap, much weaker than a similar fleet with the player piloting something high impact.
It's just an alternative playstyle, not something done because it's strong.

And yeah, getting officers is a bit tedious and they make fleet compositions too rigid.
Some story points for fully upgrading a new ship are pretty eay to get, but if it doesn't need the same skills then finding, hiring and upgrading an officer is a pain.
As mentioned special pod officers are ~guaranteed to be bad, that's also not optimal (not the end of the world though).

[Vyn]

Going off on a small tangent here, but the problems with officers brought up by the original poster can all be resolved with the Officer Extension mod. While it would be nice to see the base game improve its officer system, the availability of this mod right now does make life much easier in the meantime, and I would highly recommend it to all players.