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[Serenitis]

Escort Package giving frigates more PPT would be nice.
Whether that be giving them a bigger clock, or allowing the clock to slow/stop when escorting.

[BigBrainEnergy]

Escort Package giving frigates more PPT would be nice.
Whether that be giving them a bigger clock, or allowing the clock to slow/stop when escorting.

Really good idea. Frigates getting more endurance instead of range would work well, but the leash radius may need to be longer for them so they can get close enough to the enemy to actively contribute to the battle.

[Mortrag]

I don't understand Mortrag's dilemma, either.

With Alex help I may have found the reason for this dilemma:

I like themed-runs, like choosing 1 or 2 factions which you focus on, because those runs are fun to me and give you a clear goal (build a fleet similar to those ones).
This time I choose the Luddic Church + Luddic Path combo.
What I didn't know: Custom production missions only spawn on military planets/stations. And because those two together have only 1 military planet (Hesperus), for producing my own specific weapons I unknowingly picked the worst or hardest combo. For comparison: The hegemony alone provides you with 6 different military stations/planets.

So what I've learned:
If you want to be picky with your weapon choice, make sure you have access to enough military station.
But if you want to do a Church-/Path-run, be less picky in your weapon choice.

Luddic Path bases in the fringe have Military Base and can give you those bar encounters.

Thanks for the info. I wasn't sure if that was a possibility and asked about that here: Question: Custom production contract from pather- or pirate-bases?
Also, after a look in the game files, I think that the relations have to be at least inhospital (better than -50).

[Thaago]

I've been playing around with a "no officers" run with support doctrine, just now approaching the midgame. I don't have a solid feel for how its balance is in the endgame yet (for example, I'm only running 100 DP so the DP reduction part of it doesn't even matter yet) but at this stage it is good.

One way to buff it, should that be desired, would be to make unofficered ships 'count' as officered for the purposes of other skills.

Another possible way to take this skill would be to make it stronger in some way but have it come with the downside of reducing max officer count.

[Alex]

One way to buff it, should that be desired, would be to make unofficered ships 'count' as officered for the purposes of other skills.

I shudder to think what this would do with wolfpack

Another possible way to take this skill would be to make it stronger in some way but have it come with the downside of reducing max officer count.

That's a *really* interesting idea!

[Draba]

One way to buff it, should that be desired, would be to make unofficered ships 'count' as officered for the purposes of other skills.

Another possible way to take this skill would be to make it stronger in some way but have it come with the downside of reducing max officer count.

Just not being a capstone would be nice for variety IMO, can go lighter on leadership and get more from the other trees.
With support doctrine being available earlier you could get 2 other capstones with extra points to spend in their trees or dip into the 4th.
Cyber aug could also possibly give SD ships 1 fixed elite, a very strong (and fun!) hybrid capstone not working with it is a big downside.
You are already paying for SD by not using an officer, that's a big enough drawback.

I think for the current capstone version damage control could be replaced with something generally useful (gunnery implants, field modulation), and it'd still be weak.
Most small or high tech ships will just die the moment they lose shields with or without damage control, it's barely better than no skill for them and isn't that hot even for the rest.

[Dadada]

So -2 officers but ships can choose a(n elite) skill + the stuff they already get? o.O Random suggestions since the stuff just popped into my skull. Or: Bonus to reduced DP is bigger but each officer commanding a combat ship in the fleet reduces the bonus. Or: Bonus OP for certain ships, certain ship types are unaffected by increased DP from converted hanger and others get bonus Flux cap/dissipation?

E: Or bonus CR for all unofficered ships based on the amount of used officers below cap. And maybe the ships get additional 250 Flux and 25 dissipation for every 10 vents AND caps...
I am just throwing random ideas.

E2: More random ideas: Most OP spent on weapons with the damage type of X get a bonus of +20% or +30% damage multiplier -> HE would become 220% with +20% instead of 200% against armour and 70% against shields, what happens when 50 OP is spent on HE and 50 on kinetic/s... -> Nevermind, I think the idea is meh. SuPeR modulated ordnance/ammo...
So far, bigger DP reduction (partly) based on officers used below cap sounds interesting to me.

E3: Fix'd
Or maybe total fleet size and/or DP limits from other skills could be increased... Sounds kinda Wolfpack to me to go from 30 ships max to 33... :-(

E4: Idea mill goes brrrt: HT ships get additional shield efficiency, LT ships more a bit more min and max armour, midline gets more dissipation, Phase vessels generate less Flux while phased, non combat carriers cannot drop below 50% wing recovery...

[Bungee_man]

Wouldn't the simple solution be for unofficered ships to count as 1/K officered ships for skills?

The bigger issue, though, is that there aren't really many endgame builds that involve a lot of unofficered ships that would benefit from buffs. Frigates aren't usually survivable enough that you'd use them for direct combat, and even a relatively balanced 240 DP fleet with a pair of capitals, a pair of cruisers, and an assortment of additional escorts would benefit more from an extra S-mod on the heavier officered ships than some assorted buffs to the lesser ships. It'd pair well with a DO industry build that anticipates heavy casualties, but the core issue there is that you're pretty much always better off buffing ships rather than mitigating the cost of losing and replacing them mid-battle, since stronger ships will also die less often.

A more dramatic idea is allowing a pair of unofficered non-capital ships to be deployed for zero DP. I'm not sure what this would mean for game balance, but it would make it suitably impactful-feeling for a capstone skill.

[Thaago]

I should say that in my current game stage (midgame) the skill is not weak, and that I have no first hand data on endgame yet. In the earlygame it is FAR stronger than BoTB and costs 0 story points to use, and in the midgame it lets me have a wide effective build with again 0 story points and saves me a good amount of money (I currently have 13 ships, so the skill is saving me ~25k per month in officer cost).

One way to buff it, should that be desired, would be to make unofficered ships 'count' as officered for the purposes of other skills.

Another possible way to take this skill would be to make it stronger in some way but have it come with the downside of reducing max officer count.

Just not being a capstone would be nice for variety IMO, can go lighter on leadership and get more from the other trees.

I think having it not be capstone is interesting: maybe the same tier as the 2 officer boosting skills? It is the "other" path compared to officers after all.

...
You are already paying for SD by not using an officer, that's a big enough drawback.

While this is something I'm doing as a fun/challenge run, this isn't a thing with the skill normally. In the early game it lets all ships have better officers than they'd normally have; in the midgame it gives 'decent' officers on as many ships as you want while saving lots of money; in the endgame it lets you use unofficered ships at all, and at a discount so if the officers are in smaller ships then their effect is less "wasted". But none of those require not using officers at all and for things like wolfpack builds the player might even take extra officers while still using SD!

I think for the current capstone version damage control could be replaced with something generally useful (gunnery implants, field modulation), and it'd still be weak.
Most small or high tech ships will just die the moment they lose shields with or without damage control, it's barely better than no skill for them and isn't that hot even for the rest.

I think you are undervaluing damage control - for high tech not the damage resistance part (an extra 33% hull on something with 2k just isn't very much) but the weapon/engine repair speed. Nothing kills a small ship faster than losing engines! For low tech they can receive a good amount of hullpoints (2800 extra hull on a reinforced hull enforcer brick for example), and the repair speed means they don't stop firing for as long, so the enemy can't disable and ignore as much.

---

Now I haven't reached endgame yet so this is theorycrafting, but one thing that is really standing out to me is that, because I don't have an officer on a ship that might be mismatched with another, and because I'm not using S mods on them, losing ships (especially frigates) in the endgame basically won't matter. Example: Say if I go punch an ordo and lose 4 SD wolves in the fight (out of say 16, which would cost 64 DP). Recovering them with a story point is 100% bonus XP if I feel like it, but its only like 20k each just to replace them. And a non-S mod recovery that gives a few D mods is 'fine' and amortizes that cost. Compare to an S mod cruiser or something where if it gets a D mod the repair build is in the 100k+ realm and replacing it costs net story points.

As I play more I'll see how that pans out!

[Megas]

For some ships, they may need fast repairs.  Ship that gets blindsided by EMP or simply big damage backed by Elite Target Analysis will get stuff knocked out.  If the ship cannot shoot back or move for the full 12 seconds, either it is dead or has a lot of PPT wasted if it lives.

Last time I played solo Ziggurat, I s-modded Automated Repair Unit for quarter knockout duration.  It was a lifesaver against Ordos, and I could generally shrug off knockouts to weapons or engines.


Re: Support Doctrine / no officers
I dislike officers as implemented because they are so inflexible and cannot adapt to fleet changes.  If I took Leadership, I would be drawn to Support Doctrine simply to avoid the mess of inflexible officers.  The only other way to avoid officers is solo Ziggurat or perhaps Neural Linked Radiant with Reality Disruptor (to emulate Ziggurat), which was why my endgame fleet was solo Ziggurat a release or two ago.

[Gothars]

Another way to develop Support Doctrine: make officers boost (i.e. transfer their skills partially to) allied ships that a near to them. That would turn officers into a kind of squadron leaders. And give more flexibility to the skill selection of Support Doctrine.

It could also be the foundation of an overall reduction of the amount of officers in the game, which in my opinion is inflationary high.

And it would be tactically interesting. Can you assassinate a squadron leader to significantly weaken the whole formation, or do you have to chip away at his support support craft?


I realize I didn't leave general feedback yet: This is a great release. The colony crisis is fantastic dynamic storytelling, it was really hectic and fun in my playtrough. Looking forward to encountering that whole part of the game again in my next playthrough.
The abyss  was tense and exciting, but a little too easy in my opinion. I kinda wish it would force me into a  smaller fleet. 

[Candypowers]

After playing with the new colony crises extensively, my criticism for it would be that I wish there was an optional way for those 1 time events to be repeatable. Or perhaps a variety of optional new repeatable challenging crises (aside from the crises you get from colonizing a remnant system).

Because I’m at a point where my colony crises meter is no longer active since I resolved them all by destroying all the hostile fleets. As my star fortresses sit there unused, it makes me slightly nostalgic of the old .96 version where you can get infinitely attacked. Even more dissapointing, I barely even saw my star fortress in action since by the time they were built, all my colony crises were about finished.

However I really like the new narrative component of the crises and the initial challenges.

[Bungee_man]

After playing with the new colony crises extensively, my criticism for it would be that I wish there was an optional way for those 1 time events to be repeatable. Or perhaps a variety of optional new repeatable challenging crises (aside from the crises you get from colonizing a remnant system).

Because I’m at a point where my colony crises meter is no longer active since I resolved them all by destroying all the hostile fleets. As my star fortresses sit there unused, it makes me slightly nostalgic of the old .96 version where you can get infinitely attacked. Even more dissapointing, I barely even saw my star fortress in action since by the time they were built, all my colony crises were about finished.

However I really like the new narrative component of the crises and the initial challenges.

It is a tricky thing to balance. Mandatory identical fights can feel grating (since you've already proven you can beat them) and break immersion (since, why would a faction send another 1,000 DP of ships to their death when it didn't work the first time?), but more fights against the major factions adds some diversity to the enemy lineup (which is almost all Remnant towards the end of the game, just because there's not much to be gained by fighting faction fleets).

Long term, it might be worthwhile for factions to get angry about other things, and attempt raids or bombardments in response to provocation, even after it's become clear that it isn't cost-effective to impose themselves on player colonies for economic reasons. As an example, if you're commissioned and in a state of war, one of your faction's enemies could occasionally send a task force against your colonies. Likewise, if you go in and steal a colony item, or cause sufficient damage, this might inspire an attempt at retaliation. Defeating a crisis should mean that a faction is no longer actively looking for a fight, but they might still want to fight back if attacked.

On that note, given that major factions have shown substantially toughened capabilities in this update, it might be time to buff up their defenses around their capitals. It's a bit strange that the League can scramble twelve fleets, including an S-modded super-fleet, to try to pressure the player, but that Kazeron, the host of the nanoforge keeping the League militarily relevant, has its station and maybe two falcons from a nearby trade fleet covering it. It could be cool to give each faction (well, the Diktat already has enough fleets over Sindria) one persistent grand armada, which usually guards their nanoforge market unless needed elsewhere. It could leave to support the blockade (for League) and the final AI inspection (for Hegemony), creating a natural window of opportunity, but otherwise making the effective crippling of a sector-spanning military power suitably challenging.

[Megas]

At least star fortress is useful for the +3 stability, a must for a Commerce and Free Port Ludd world.  At least each station upgrade adds to stability, unlike going from Military Base to High Command, or from Ground Defenses to Heavy Batteries.

While the crises are not repeatable, I saw more fights with my stations because most invaders look too big or too strong to be auto-resolved away by colony defenses.  However, by later crises, my fleet was powerful enough to kill the invaders on their home turf, and I did not want to wait months for them to arrive in my system to fight them.  Though to be fair, I am not sure your colonies will even try to defend themselves from "not nominally hostile" invaders like the Knights' takeover or the League's blockade if I do not shoot first with my fleet.

While an option to have more attackers would be okay for those who want it, I do like that they stop for good.  No need to worry about babysitting, and it is okay to spread out colonies one per system instead of stuffing them all in one system just so they can take care of themselves instead of requiring babysitting from the player anytime an alert appears.

On that note, given that major factions have shown substantially toughened capabilities in this update, it might be time to buff up their defenses around their capitals. It's a bit strange that the League can scramble twelve fleets, including an S-modded super-fleet, to try to pressure the player, but that Kazeron, the host of the nanoforge keeping the League militarily relevant, has its station and maybe two falcons from a nearby trade fleet covering it. It could be cool to give each faction (well, the Diktat already has enough fleets over Sindria) one persistent grand armada, which usually guards their nanoforge market unless needed elsewhere. It could leave to support the blockade (for League) and the final AI inspection (for Hegemony), creating a natural window of opportunity, but otherwise making the effective crippling of a sector-spanning military power suitably challenging.

When player goes to a homeworld the moment a crisis bar maxes out, all the crisis fleets spawn a ring around their homeworld.  It should be like that all of the time (unless thinned out by pirate raid or similar), not just only when they want to punish the player in a crisis event.  Star Control does it with the Ur-Quans and their Sa-Matra.  Of course, that would make smuggling or raiding with a low profile fleet impossible while there is a dense ring around the world.  (Some bigger homeworlds are also industry worlds.  I could not raid for the nanoforge while the blockade fleet was orbiting Kazeron.  Had to wait for them to leave for my homeworld before I could steal the nanoforge from theirs!)

Currently, a typical endgame fleet with big haulers can casually drive to sat bomb and wipe out a world with ease, provided it has no plot armor.

[Mishrak]

One way to buff it, should that be desired, would be to make unofficered ships 'count' as officered for the purposes of other skills.

I shudder to think what this would do with wolfpack

Another possible way to take this skill would be to make it stronger in some way but have it come with the downside of reducing max officer count.

That's a *really* interesting idea!

I would be nervous that this would infringe on officers too much, depending on the direction it went in.  Especially in the case of the former idea.  The latter idea would have to benefit ships in a way that the officers currently don't. 

Officers have such a substantial investment in SP and player skills that SD can't overlap with officers too much or the low investment option becomes too attractive.