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[Dadada]

@ Powercreep, Powerlevel:
Vanilla I'd say we are still okay, mods make players far too strong. I am enjoying the vanilla outliers but still, I am much more concerned about their power level, I mean look at phase stuff and other over performing ships.
Also: I play the game mostly only as an rts/colony sim/ship "builder" but even I with my very meagre piloting skills can beat "everything" with only a decrepit rust bucket, so I am not thaaat concerned about power creep. Just give the enemies or some enemies what players have and we are golden. **

The officer thing: Only relevant for fights against redacted (Remnant/s) to cap DP/deployed fleet I'd say. One could also argue that "must pick" skills are bad design, but I think the skills are fine. (I'd certainly enjoy an even wider variety of skills but I am greedy and would probably bloat the game...) ***

>reduce player peak strength somehow
Meh, I don't like this such an idea, feels kinda wrong to me but maybe I am just being pig headed, I'd rather buff muh enemies.

Oh yeah, a recoverable but nerfed Guardian would be kinda neat.

**: Or divide and conquer tactics with orders, so a mid game fleet can take a full Ordo, while it takes quite long (the fight can easily take 5 or 10 times as long), a few capitals, fast cruisers and some meat will do it, without much in terms of skills, officers or S-mods...

E2: *** Don't get me wrong, more options are often good I think.


E3: Quite the brutal approach and I think I dislike it, but lowering the power level of outliers (and mod factions), the outliers here are just my opinion, nerfing the eradicator (less speed or more DP or nerfing the dps somehow etc.), nerfing phase ships, nerfing monitors, nerfing fortress shield etc. etc, not sure what to do about Remnant ships in the player fleet, not sure what to do about skills and unique ships, could help a bit.

[Wyvern]

What tools might exist to make harder fleets through quality rather than quantity?

• Better officers (higher-level, and/or with unique skills)
  • Players would complain that we can't get them too; AI cores circumvent this somewhat but would be lore-inappropriate in most cases

The game already does this, and it's annoying. Unless the player spams mercenaries, they're going to be behind on officer count and quality.

Honestly, I'd say the best option would be to scale down fleet sizes across the board, and re-introduce a logistics-based fleet size soft-cap for the player. (And have it as an actual soft cap, where going a bit over the limit just means a few percent less max CR / slower CR recovery / more supplies spent, as opposed to the 30 ship limit where going over it by even one means your supplies drain like crazy.)

And then maybe have four-ish different things that boost that limit:

• raw player level, regardless of skill selections
• a leadership skill
• mercenaries (with diminishing returns if you start stacking multiple)
• colony support, either from player-controlled colonies or from having a commission
  • possibly via new industry or structure, possibly tacked on as an extra effect for waystations or patrol HQs or star bases
  • bonuses from player colonies & commissions would not stack with each other

Making the AI fleets more commonly use s-mods wouldn't be too bad, either.

[Dadada]

Sounds good I guess. So, what would even be the cap? Somewhere between 300 and 500 DP I assume? And the max amount of ships for the player probably stays the same I assume?
We could do it differently and give a bonus for low ship count/DP size or for staying below a certain inherent supply consumption...

E: I assume the easier way is just to Smod, fleet skill and officer the enemies and buff their loadouts or at least for some fleets. Might take a while to tweak the loadouts, mmmm.


E2: "Easier", huh? Maybe for the player who doesn't have to work with a DP limit for the fleet size. Mmmm.

My first rash, haphazard thoughts about your post were something like: Double base maintenance costs, below level adequate logistics skill of 100+lvlx10 = sleek and -50%/x0.5 supply use and +15% cr, adequate between 1 and 100 supply above that limit, no penalty or bonus, high, overstretched between 100 and 200 above the limit, +50%/x1.5 supply use and -15%cr. Well, took my like 10s to come up with that, meh. I think I'd rather have buffs to muh enemies and maybe, maybe an additional DP cap to our ship cap.

[Alex]

Interesting thread, I'll keep an eye on it! I do think that scaling things down somewhat might be the better way to go, though the "how" of that can get pretty murky. One could see using the 240-dp skill effect threshold being adjusted down to nudge things in that direction (as well as toning down some of the fleetwide skills a bit), but it being at 240 - the max you can deploy - is nice. Hmm. I feel like the game overall probably works better with comparatively smaller player fleet sizes, though some of this is definitely personal preference.

• S-mods
  • Barely used in vanilla
  • The current CoreAutofitPlugin doesn't pick very good S-mods, it currently just S-mods whatever hullmods the ship has, then a few 'generically good' but often not particularly strong hullmods (starting with Flux Distributor and Flux Coil Adjunct)
  • Also for some reason S-mods aren't considered in autoresolve strength?

Funny - just a few months ago, made s-mods count for autoresolve! Picking them more intelligently is considerably more complicated/labor-intensitve, and it feels like just the OP savings from getting some "generally good" ones for free covers much of the power boost.

...as opposed to the 30 ship limit where going over it by even one means your supplies drain like crazy.

(Oh yeah, that's only a soft cap in the UI sense; gameplay wise it's functionally a hard cap. Much more straightforward to do it this way than having to have checks everywhere that might possibly add a ship to the player's fleet.)

[BaBosa]

It'd be cool to have a few admirals with simple special abilities like reducing the deployment points of all their ships by 1/3 or their ships' speed increases with flux. If it's unique then it doesn't feel so bad not to have access to it. Could give remnant fleet admirals a increase officer ability to explain why they get so many officers.

[Wyvern]

Sounds good I guess. So, what would even be the cap? Somewhere between 300 and 500 DP I assume? And the max amount of ships for the player probably stays the same I assume?

Numbers are, of course, subject to playtesting, but if I had to pick numbers out of a hat, it'd probably go something like:

• 58 DP as initial soft-cap at level one; this should allow a new player to run with either of the 'fast start' options and not have issues with the soft-cap during the tutorial.
• +8 DP per level, bringing a level 15 character with no other bonuses to a soft-cap of 170 DP of fleet - smaller than the 240 most skills soft-cap at. (Reference note: as I mentioned originally, the intent here is to make fleets smaller in general.)
• +40 DP from Salvaging
• +50 DP from Industrial Planning
• +60 DP from Support Doctrine
• +20 DP from a mercenary (with diminishing returns, so maybe +15 for the second, +10 for the third, and +5 for the fourth, with additional mercenaries beyond that no longer adding DP)
• up to +80 from a commission or support from player-owned colonies (requires multiple colonies to reach max bonus; requires 100 reputation with commissioned faction to reach max bonus)

So that'd work out to a soft-cap of 170 as the minimum, going up to a (relatively) easy 310-ish with, say, a single skill point invested in salvaging, a single mercenary, and a well-developed set of colonies or a commission with a major faction. And an absolute maximum if you go all-in on fleet size of 450.

Is that enough to allow scaling down enemy fleets as well? I'm not sure. As noted at the start, play-testing is required to find numbers that actually work properly.

[Dadada]

That sounds kinda cool imo, but maybe not for Remnants?
Some admirals with skills like: Reduces the DP cost twice as much as the player one does and bang, you get swarmed if it's the right fleet with lots of smaller ships, or a precision strike skill which buffs bomber and long range bonks by a lot, maybe with conditions as affected ship weapons must have an ITU on board and at least 800 base range, or ambush which spawns, poofs, teleports a small group of smaller phase ships into the battlefield, or maybe a skill "attached auxiliary/capital hangers" which adds 2 entirely cost free hangers to the 2 first capitals which bonk the player (wings are predefined from a selection and cost no OP). I kinda like this. Spicy.
And they (high ranking faction officers, admirals) could lore wise make sense.

The low cap for low levels sounds kinda oooof to me, but sure, that can easily be fixed with a skill (salvaging from your example) and initial lvling isn't slow I guess. And while it makes sense I guess and increases merc value which I like, I feel like mercs upping the cap would be not my cup of tea, in fact I never used them because I could not be bothered to pay the SP fee... Which may be a different topic and just my own personal problem. The rest sounds good to me, maybe we could even skill officers into dedicated logistics offers at the cost of 1-2 combat skills which could also lower the players power level, unless AI fleets also need such skills and generate officers with them...


E: Maybe we will regret all of this when endgame content drops and bonks us.
I am only half joking.

[Megas]

For those wondering what lower cap and Logistics-style limits were, search the blogs for any release between 0.65a and 0.72a, download and try it.  The strongest enemy fleets were the about the size of a 200k-250k bounty.  Only fleet commanders had skills, although player could buff he fleet with fleetwide and +OP skills.  With 500 (instead of 400) map size, it was possible for both sides to deploy all.

Crew counted for Logistics just like ships, and crew had experience (which I thought was a bad thing).

...as opposed to the 30 ship limit where going over it by even one means your supplies drain like crazy.

(Oh yeah, that's only a soft cap in the UI sense; gameplay wise it's functionally a hard cap. Much more straightforward to do it this way than having to have checks everywhere that might possibly add a ship to the player's fleet.)

I have gone above the limit briefly few times to haul extra ships I recovered, usually from Derelicts (since getting a Derelict bounty is tedious).

[Dadada]

I am a 0.95 baby.
Ooof, Megas post made me think again, this talk about DP cap changes and shenanigans which we have to spec into makes me queasy, I am also afraid of potential nerfs for players, I should not, could be healthy for the game, but maybe I am just afraid of change and nerfs. I think the already mentioned points to buff enemies and maybe with the imo really good sounding idea of "admirals" are easier for the player since I don't have to manage stuff, also explains fleet skills affecting enemy fleets and allows for unique ones, and at least for me, to me that sounds convenient.
E: Despite all that I am still for #KillThePlayer 

[Wyvern]

The primary issue with the older version's logistic cap is that it started very small (30, I think?) and then scaled only with effectively-mandatory leadership skills, because a cap of 30 DP was just not enough for anything even remotely end-game.

30 DP of cap wouldn't even get you through the tutorial without using one of the fast start options. (Assuming that you do spend a story point on recovering the carrier when told to, and recover every other freely-recoverable ship.)

There's a reason my suggestion includes a scaling factor based solely on character level. (Though if you started at level one with something like 150+ DP limit, I guess that would work too; it'd just mean that DP limits would be a complete non-issue for a while.)

[Megas]

The unskilled cap was too small.  Could not use capital without Fleet Logistics and/or Leadership AP.  On the other hand, without a level cap, it was possible to get 10-10-10 and almost every skill at endgame, at least starting with 0.65a (thanks food runs).

But the older pre-0.7a releases should demonstrate the general idea (with smaller limits), despite extremes.
https://fractalsoftworks.com/tag/release/page/3/

I think 0.7a is when player fleet was capped by number of ships (which enemy fleets freely ignored and did not honor) instead of Fleet Points or Logistics.  0.6 definitely had Logistics, and 0.5 releases had Fleet Points.

[SCC]

Honestly, the thread is making me concerned about power creep. Maybe the real problem is that the player can get too many bonuses that trivialize the standard content.

Indeed that's a thing I forgot to discuss in the OP, but would probably require an entire thread or two on its own anyway: reduce player peak strength somehow so the hardest fights can be less bloated. How? Who knows...

My solution would be probably some sort of a time limit. Does it matter how powerful you can get "eventually", if you will have to deal with a challenge sooner than that? Post game balance is not as important.

Interesting thread, I'll keep an eye on it! I do think that scaling things down somewhat might be the better way to go, though the "how" of that can get pretty murky. One could see using the 240-dp skill effect threshold being adjusted down to nudge things in that direction (as well as toning down some of the fleetwide skills a bit), but it being at 240 - the max you can deploy - is nice. Hmm. I feel like the game overall probably works better with comparatively smaller player fleet sizes, though some of this is definitely personal preference.

Making fleets smaller, both yours and enemies', is also a way forward. I don't know what the way to do it is the best, though. Ships were cheaper once and yet there wasn't such a need for big fleets anyway. Maybe income is imbalanced? Maybe some sources of it are?

My first rash, haphazard thoughts about your post were something like: Double base maintenance costs, below level adequate logistics skill of 100+lvlx10 = sleek and -50%/x0.5 supply use and +15% cr, adequate between 1 and 100 supply above that limit, no penalty or bonus, high, overstretched between 100 and 200 above the limit, +50%/x1.5 supply use and -15%cr. Well, took my like 10s to come up with that, meh. I think I'd rather have buffs to muh enemies and maybe, maybe an additional DP cap to our ship cap.

I once had an idea for making certain (better) ships run on rare supplies, in addition to/instead of regular supplies, with rare supplies being generally quite limited, unless you got a commission, your own colony or high reputation with a high importance contact.

It'd be cool to have a few admirals with simple special abilities like reducing the deployment points of all their ships by 1/3 or their ships' speed increases with flux. If it's unique then it doesn't feel so bad not to have access to it. Could give remnant fleet admirals a increase officer ability to explain why they get so many officers.

Or admirals that have more than 1 (one) fleetwide skill...

[Alex]

Making fleets smaller, both yours and enemies', is also a way forward. I don't know what the way to do it is the best, though. Ships were cheaper once and yet there wasn't such a need for big fleets anyway. Maybe income is imbalanced? Maybe some sources of it are?

Yeah, I feel like that's an implied part of it - if player fleets are smaller, enemy fleets have more room to breathe in terms of what constitutes a challenge, without having to go quite as all-out.

Income is part of it, but with it being a sandbox, part of what that entails is that players *will* be able to build up enough power to overcome just about anything, that's just how this works and isn't necessarily a concern. The difficulty is self-regulating in that sense; if you're "better" at the game you can take on a given challenge earlier, etc.

And yeah, time limits for things is something I've considered/is on my mind. I'd probably want to make that sort of thing optional (e.g. set at the start of a campaign or some such) since it's a matter of preference, and some people would either find them anxiety-inducing or just prefer a more relaxed playthrough; there's really no right or wrong there. Just the game presenting a specific challenge to the player, or not.

[Dadada]

Welp, DP capping the fleet might be the way, but I still think mods make it worse and it's okay in vanilla. So, if bonuses were to be split per level/skill/colonies/commission etc., I think 10 or 15 per level would look easier instead of a "messier" number, and while maybe less interesting due to making things potentially easier, but also less constraining, a higher starting limit of say 100 or more could be nice to just enable more options in the earlier part of the game, also less streamlining and forcing us to play a certain way. I suspect there are players who decide not to make colonies or don't like that aspect of the game, I for one love colonies, so the commission bonus should be equal to the colony bonus I think.

So, after doing some simple DP cap "maths" I am now imagining all the ways admirals with unique skills could shake up the game and deliver spice, hopefully not just simple stat changes. Starting from synergistic skills which buff officers/their skills, a *** ton of peak performance time for Phase ships in the fleet which makes my junk fleet not able to outlast them till they run out of PPT and CR, beam weapons shipping their own ships flux to the enemies, flares hitting wings and causing overloads, deactivated derelicts springing to life again to suicide charge into enemy ships, bombers guiding their mother ships rockets into the enemy...

E: An admiral sharing (his) implants with all officers or even all ships, a skill which negates the speed up effects on PPT/CR decline, a skill which increases wing range for carriers, a skill which allows beams to be overcharged to destroy/penetrate armour, or an admiral skill which increases mass/dmg of ramming or burn drive collisions and maybe similar skills...

[SCC]

Yeah, I feel like that's an implied part of it - if player fleets are smaller, enemy fleets have more room to breathe in terms of what constitutes a challenge, without having to go quite as all-out.

Conversely - if enemy fleets are smaller, players don't need to obtain as much power (even through boring means) to get what they want.

Income is part of it, but with it being a sandbox, part of what that entails is that players *will* be able to build up enough power to overcome just about anything, that's just how this works and isn't necessarily a concern. The difficulty is self-regulating in that sense; if you're "better" at the game you can take on a given challenge earlier, etc.

So you can play and win the game at a harder difficulty level that would demand that earlier challenge completion. There is no strictly better equipment gated behind progression like in SPAZ, so limited time or something equivalent to it (like a constantly growing threat) is the next best thing.