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[DazeyDream]

There are many skills that add great benefits to your whole fleet outside and inside combat, things most would deem essential and by all means you'd pick them every time. There's some nice combat skills too but they only affect you and take an entire skill point for each one. To match up to the average officer in your own fleet or an enemies fleet for combat skills you'd need to put between 5 to 7 skill points into just you, that's almost half of the 15 you get which are much better spent elsewhere on buffs for fleet resource efficiency, removing D mods per month, transverse warp and more importantly officer ship and officerless ship buffs, which are really really powerful. It makes far more sense every time to choose the fleet over your own character, the power output is so much greater. So that always leaves the player with no combat skills.

The player being added to a ship at all is actually a tradeoff and possibly a straight debuff depending on players gamer skills being able to make up for higher DP in the chosen ship verses the competency of AI flying it instead because of the rightmost green skill that adds 3 combat skills to all officerless ships, and reduced officerless ships deployment cost by a significant percentage. Players who feel they're equal to or less skilled than the games AI will come to the conclusion it's far better they just play RTS style and forgo the fun of personally participating in combat gameplay. I do not like this, I personally want to fly but must play without the the fun combat skills that every other officer gets in order to have the much more powerful fleet perks.

You can argue that character skillsheets are all about tradeoffs and having varied playstyle, choices and power variables, and that's great when it's fun, but being weaker or cutting out flying entirely and missing that whole amazing gameplay experience is a bad outcome, very bad. Player combat skills need to be separated from the rest of the skills and have a separate pool of skill points. It would make sense to have the player character treated like an officer and show up where the other officers are, it would be more natural to manage combat skills there.

https://imgur.com/a/uc8P1c1

This is my currant character sheet, I have only one point in a personal combat skill, but I realise my fleet would benefit so much more if I move it elsewhere, but I vainly cling to it, it's all I have, I am stricken of a poverty of the spirit and the lack of this point will malnourish me too greatly. Is it too selfish of me to demand but one thing for myself? yes it is, it belongs to the people, and I cannot be one of them and share in my gifts to them. Woe is the gamer, woe is the gamer.

[Nettle]

Always had this issue in Warband, where your party size and logistics would significantly depend on player choice of skills, and although the latter could be partially handled by your companions, going hard on Charisma and Intelligence instead of your combat attributes would always result in objectively stronger party, but increasing personal advantage in combat was so much fun. I think they mostly changed it around in Bannerlord but I wouldn't know all the intricate details since I haven't properly played it myself yet.

Also a suggestion for your skill set - you can ditch the entirety of industry since you are not using Derelict Operations anyway, and the rest of yellow skills are mostly logistics QoL that you can make do without, especially if you are not hurting for money at this point.

[Luftwaffles]

True from a pure numbers perspective, but you vastly underestimate the impact of a good ship in the hands of a good player. One Doom/Hyperion/Aurora/your favorite mod's superfrigate can singlehandedly turn the tides of unwinnable battles and slaughter hundreds of DP of ships. But builds like that are often only possible with heavy combat skill investments.

[CapnHector]

It's just two people but we did have a fun contest with SCC (caution, spoilers) about who could destroy 824 DP of [REDACTED] with the lowest DP. I have a fleet playstyle with Derelict Operations and all ships under AI control, he flies a Doom manually. I could only manage to do it with 37 DP (Monitor-Afflictor-Nova-Kite under AI control + D-mods and Derelict Operations), he managed 35 DP (1 Doom under player control). Hiruma Kai also posted a 66 DP vs 814 DP player control run.

[Megas]

Nearly every build that gets posted has Leadership 5+, to get at least BotB just for the third s-mod, especially after the advent of s-mod bonuses.  (Officer skills are also top-tier, but not applicable to low-DP challenge fleets.)  Those without are few and far between.  Playing without high Leadership is hard or challenge mode.

Player needs to pick two among good flagship, good fleet (or at least the skills capable of it), and weird or campaign stuff.  If fleet is not chosen, it hurts too much, so flagship or weird/campaign/miscellaneous stuff tends to get dumped.  It will be good fleet plus whatever.

I do not like this, and combined with the difficulty of raising inflexible officers to work with a fleet that may change later, I do not play Starsector as much as I used to.  I agree with much of the OP.

I tried sub-100 DP fleets just to get away from the hassle of raising officers and while it can wreck two (or maybe three) Ordos, it will never be as effective as killing three or more Ordos with a bigger fleet for +500% XP faster.

[Siffrin]

I kind of hate how much the player has to sacrifice in order to get both capstones. Especially with High Tech ships since the player often wastes Skill Points in skills they don't need like Point Defense in order to reach the 6 point requirement. Compared to how easily an officer can get both capstones it's pretty annoying, It doesn't really matter though since I often mod out anything I find frustrating thank you Alex for allowing me to do that.

[Kohlenstoff]

The fact, that there are players who choose either of the options and are benefiting enough from these to be happy tells me that the skill system is pretty balanced. I choose the flagship skills mostly unless a fleet skill benefits my flagship more than a flagship skill. I like the system how it is. I would like to have more but i accept this as limitation of choice. I really like the possibility of changing with storypoints makes it possible to switch ingame.

And as you can see on my spoilering full longplay i rarely need more than 2 Battleships in my fleets. One as cover for my flagship and the flagship itself. Only one endgame challenge requires 3 ships if i want it to be done easily.

Spoiler

[close]

Attached is a typical skill set which i use often.

[Ronin]

I wish that the skills where somehow separated so that you don't have to sacrifice your flagship experience for a better overall fleet, whilst being balanced around having full access to both. That being said I still like to get combat but there are periods in my playthroughs where my flagship is lacking for the sake of leadership skills, and it's not all that exciting. If the skill system was more incremental instead of fewer, much more impactful skills, then it might be easier to manage such a feature. Having more incremental skills might also alleviate the problem of having to specialize skills to a specific ship in a game loop that promotes randomized opportunities and thus random ship access. Such a system could also exclude the frustrating random officer skills as well.

Edit: I should mention that I favor getting leadership first not just for overall performance, but so that my AI are stronger and less likely to wreck my expensive ships. But I very much like to take my flagship into the heat of battle.

[Vanshilar]

You can argue that character skillsheets are all about tradeoffs and having varied playstyle, choices and power variables, and that's great when it's fun, but being weaker or cutting out flying entirely and missing that whole amazing gameplay experience is a bad outcome, very bad.

This comes up every so often. I think your observations are pretty much spot-on, but not the conclusions. The fleet skill points and personal flagship skill points are mixed in together in the same skill point pool so that the player has maximum flexibility in deciding where to allocate those points. If the player likes playing the game more like an arcade, then more points go into flagship skills. If the player likes playing the game more like an admiral, then more points go into fleet skills. This also changes throughout a playthrough; initially, I tend to take more flagship skills, but as my fleet gets bigger, I'll respec into more fleet skills, even though I'll generally always have between 4 and 7 points into flagship skills.

The whole point is that you can choose to go along many different paths, but you can only choose one at a time (or, technically, you can get up to 3 capstones, so that'd be up to 3 at a time). You can choose to be a fighter, or a cleric, or a mage, or a rogue, and play the game through that way, but you can't be a fighter/cleric/mage/rogue/artificer/bard/ranger/etc. all at once, which would make the player too overpowered and the game too easy. Each path needs to have something good, but also make you give up something good as well, so you can't do it all at any given time. That's how a lot of game balance works. If this game allowed you to do everything, i.e. say give you 40 skill points instead of 15, then a lot of the skills would have to be severely nerfed so that the game doesn't become too easy.

For a sufficiently skilled player, the flagship can generally do around 2x to 3x as much as the AI in that same ship. So the player's flagship is the single most influential ship in your fleet. That's why it may make more sense to put points into flagship skills rather than fleet skills.

It looks like your fleet is specializing in Best of the Best, Support Doctrine, and Hull Restoration. SD and HR are solid picks for the early game, but as you acquire and level up more officers, SD becomes less useful, and as your fleet gets more powerful and have less deaths, HR also becomes less useful. At that point it'll be worth respec'ing away from those skills and put your points elsewhere, such as flagship skills or other fleet skills, which will give you more points to put into the stuff you want.

[Scorpixel]

You can argue that character skillsheets are all about tradeoffs and having varied playstyle, choices and power variables, and that's great when it's fun, but being weaker or cutting out flying entirely and missing that whole amazing gameplay experience is a bad outcome, very bad.

This comes up every so often. I think your observations are pretty much spot-on, but not the conclusions. The fleet skill points and personal flagship skill points are mixed in together in the same skill point pool so that the player has maximum flexibility in deciding where to allocate those points. If the player likes playing the game more like an arcade, then more points go into flagship skills. If the player likes playing the game more like an admiral, then more points go into fleet skills. This also changes throughout a playthrough; initially, I tend to take more flagship skills, but as my fleet gets bigger, I'll respec into more fleet skills, even though I'll generally always have between 4 and 7 points into flagship skills.

The whole point is that you can choose to go along many different paths, but you can only choose one at a time (or, technically, you can get up to 3 capstones, so that'd be up to 3 at a time). You can choose to be a fighter, or a cleric, or a mage, or a rogue, and play the game through that way, but you can't be a fighter/cleric/mage/rogue/artificer/bard/ranger/etc. all at once, which would make the player too overpowered and the game too easy. Each path needs to have something good, but also make you give up something good as well, so you can't do it all at any given time. That's how a lot of game balance works. If this game allowed you to do everything, i.e. say give you 40 skill points instead of 15, then a lot of the skills would have to be severely nerfed so that the game doesn't become too easy.

For a sufficiently skilled player, the flagship can generally do around 2x to 3x as much as the AI in that same ship. So the player's flagship is the single most influential ship in your fleet. That's why it may make more sense to put points into flagship skills rather than fleet skills.

It looks like your fleet is specializing in Best of the Best, Support Doctrine, and Hull Restoration. SD and HR are solid picks for the early game, but as you acquire and level up more officers, SD becomes less useful, and as your fleet gets more powerful and have less deaths, HR also becomes less useful. At that point it'll be worth respec'ing away from those skills and put your points elsewhere, such as flagship skills or other fleet skills, which will give you more points to put into the stuff you want.

This isn't a "pick your class" issue at all, this is a "do you want to play a fighting game or an RTS" situation.
I always choose the later, because i'm not good enough for the former which means i don't invest in it as it would be a waste, therefore not flying myself because i'll always be outmatched, and so on and so on.

Put simply, personal and fleetwide/campaign skills should be entirely separate, don't care if it's nerfed/fragmented too, but as with the previous skill system, the issue stays the same.
Even those who would like to play with only personal skills can't, as you'll be obligated to pick unrelated ones before the two in green/blue/yellow sections.

It's either Player&backgroundunits or Units-TheGame with the player on a harmless 2dp kite because a skill-less character is actively harmful with support doctrine.
Thanks to Consolecommands, i decided to give myself a second skill point every two levels, that way at max level i have 7 combat skill that only affect the ship i actually get to pilot, although the existence of CommandCenter means some tradeoff still exists.

[SCC]

If the player was always guaranteed to get flagship skills, then the player will be expected to always make use of those flagship skills. Currently, it's entirely voluntary. However, I agree combat skills aren't good enough, but because both officers and the player use the same skills, I think I would rather reduce the number of skills that all officers (yours, enemy ones, special ones) have as the default skill limit to 4 or even possibly 3.

Hiruma Kai also posted a 66 DP vs 814 DP player control run.

And with a NL-AI combo, that I previously deemed useless (because AI Radiant is not that different from a humanly piloted one). I was wrong.

Nearly every build that gets posted has Leadership 5+

That's also an issue, although it's a separate one. The player gets too many officers that are too strong, encouraging buffing them even more, at the expense of other skills.

[S_Eusebio]

This topic is brought up often, so I'd like to give my opinion about it.

I sincerely believe that the game is much more enjoyable with a level cap of 20 instead of the 15 we have right now, and that the level cap should be brought up to 20.

I personally like to take always 5 combat skill and 5 leadership skills for having access to "best of the best", and that means that if I wanted one of either gunnery implants or ordnance expertise I will be left with only 3 skill points of the 15 total. That is low considering I'd also like to take some quality of life skills. I did exactly this for most of my playthroughs, because those skills give me the possibility to enjoy the game the most (having a little bit of combat and a little bit of leadership); but that also meant that I always ended up ignoring most of the QoL in every playthrough I made where I didn't raise the player level cap to 20.

Recently I started raising the level cap to 20 and the experience felt much more forgiving, and also meant that I could still afford to take some of the industrial tree QoL skills that otherwhise I would've never ever made use of (like industrial planning, for example).

A level 20 cap could actually make more people consider using an underpowered capstone like hull restoration in late game/more industry skills late game instead of just always having to respec out of the tree for combat skills.

At the moment the game simply feels like it punishes players (especially new players, who don't know the game like the palm of their hand) for choosing quality of life over combat, because the skill points are just too low.

[Hiruma Kai]

Personally I tend to be persuaded more by arguments for decreasing the overall difficulty of the game more than I can for changing the current personal/fleet skill dichotomy.  Of the proposals for extra personal skills I've seen, their presentation tends to former with more total skills, but with a tacked-on limitation of forcing the player to pick certain subset combinations.

Alternatively, I can understand changing individual skills that are underperforming.  But that just makes the player stronger as well.  Which may be what is needed.  I've been playing the game too long quantify the new player experience myself days, and how all the changes since I first started playing affect that.  I do a couple runs from the tutorial each release, but it is not the same as a new player doing it.  I personally think the game could do with some further difficulty levels, but due to the ease of modding the game, mods have essentially moved into that space, and I don't consider it that big an issue.

What to make the initial "normal" difficulty setting is a really tough call.  Alex tends to aim to add options which allows the player to dial in difficulty, things like commissions.  A commission is likely to hand you more credits than the Industry tree saves you, except for Hull Restoration and capitals.

On a side note, I tend the view that the player gets handed 8 level 5 officers as baseline (with potential level 7 finds with 5 elites - which tends to be about as effective as a level 5 with 5 elite skills), makes taking the fleet wide skills less necessary, not more.  +1 skill level and +1 elite skill isn't that much of a bump, especially considering it is the 6th skill pick.  And you can make perfectly servicable fleets at 240 DP with 9 ships (and maybe a couple unofficered frigates).  It means a personal combat skill build still have 8 other ships with a bunch of stacking bonuses.  Just because I can solo an Ordo with combat skills, doesn't mean I have to solo it.  The rest of the fleet doesn't just disappear because I picked personal skills. Throwing in the rest of the fleet up to 240, with 8 officered ships means I can just focus on killing and venting not really need to worry about nearly as much, increasing damage per time output immensely.

[Nettle]

Having more incremental skills might also alleviate the problem of having to specialize skills to a specific ship in a game loop that promotes randomized opportunities and thus random ship access. Such a system could also exclude the frustrating random officer skills as well.

The officer roster building is annoying. You spend time looking through the markets to find one, preferably with the starting skills you actually need, then you mentor them, go through 5/6 subsequent levels and still might end up without all of the skills you wanted, and now you either have to cope or look for replacement and do it all over again.

Oh and there is also busted level 7 salvaged officers but with entirely random skillset. Considering officers are semi-permanent and you can't reliably store dozens of them to adjust on the fly I find it bizarre how many RNG layers are involved here.

[snicka]

A personal side note  - my main gripe is not that I'm not overall strong without player skills, but that I feel shifty having flagship numerically inferior even to Basic officered ships.