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[SCC]

Shinr is spot on, that's definitely part of my thinking. It also makes balancing battlecarriers more tricky, but that's more of an issue with dedicated fighter skills. Putting their bonuses on elite skills is an interesting idea, though, hmm.

If you mean this...

But, unfortunately, Alex believes that the players will suffer FOMO from not using ALL of the skill bonuses and that they will be force funneled into a battlecarrier playstyle at the expense of other ways of playing, which is why many, many, many suggestions like this one were rejected/ignored.

Then players get FOMO either way. Fighter bonuses on combat skills? I better use a carrier. No fighter bonuses on combat skills? I better NOT use a carrier.

And as far as the general gameplay, I think a state where fighters are a little too weak is much, much preferable compared to the state where they can snowball like this. That *is* subjective to some degree, but I feel strongly that the gameplay with fighter-spam fleets is not particularly interesting, beyond the novelty factor.

I suppose it works. Complaints about fighters being weak are uncommon, and there are no complaints about fighters being overpowered. Fighters don't see much discussion in the first place.

Even taking this into account, Fighter Uplink could stand to get some better effects.

[Alex]

Then players get FOMO either way. Fighter bonuses on combat skills? I better use a carrier. No fighter bonuses on combat skills? I better NOT use a carrier.

Not using a carrier for a flagship is totally fine/the sort of expected default state, though! The bigger problem imo is if you get FOMO when picking between "regular combat ship" vs "battlecarrier", tilting towards the latter, and drastically reducing the pool of ships to choose from.

[BigBrainEnergy]

I could definitely see buffing fighters a bit, though - just, in similar ways to how it is now, with fleet-capped bonuses that are more resistant to snowballing effects. And, IMO, this largely rules out skill bonuses - although, for example, the "use a hullmod to give bonuses based on skills" idea could be used to get around that, if the calculation also involved the number of fighter bays in the fleet, somehow. Or heck, if the skill effect did. But that is also getting quite complicated; I wouldn't want to hang that onto every skill.

Yeah, I hear you. Fighter spam is pretty uninteresting and I do like how the carrier skills give their maximum bonus when under a threshold of fighter bays. Unfortunately it does make it pretty unsatisfying how officer skills play little part in fighter effectiveness outside of systems expertise interacting with specific fighter-boosting systems.

Maybe with the hullmod option, the skills of the officers of those ships only work if the total fighter bays of the chosen ships is 8 or lower, with all the bonuses just shutting off if you go over? A softcap makes sense for say, carrier group, because it applies to *every* fighter bay in the fleet, and you could recover ships and accidentally go over. For a hullmod, that requires the player to make a deliberate choice on which ships get it, so it won't happen by accident. In that case it might reasonable to just have them completely shut off once you go over 8, which is a lot simpler than trying to have skill-specific bonuses scale down as you increase the number of bays.

[Wyvern]

The problem with fighters being tuned a little weak is that it makes it un-fun to pilot a carrier (and to some extent, a battlecarrier) yourself.

As such, I'd want to see some fighter-specific skills that are in some fashion limited - maybe you get a (choice of?) unique combat skill from some quest somewhere, and it's just not available to your officers. Or perhaps there's a unique variant AI core with special fighter-specific skills, and which can't just be farmed in unlimited supply. That sort of thing.

I would also suggest that fleet-wide fighter skills should scale based on fighter bays (that have fighters in them!) that are deployed, rather than total bays that exist across the fleet.

[Killer of Fate]

Even taking this into account, Fighter Uplink could stand to get some better effects.

I like fighter uplink. Speed is good. In fact I'd prefer if other skills were nerfed to its level of affecting the gameplay. Character skills shouldn't be too powerful so that they do not taint the original gameplay too much.

This is why I hate Support Doctrine, s-mods (though now that I think about it, this is an integral part of the game, as most ships can't afford fun hullmods), Containment Procedures and Makeshift Equipment (trivialises exploration, though it's already trivial, so who cares), Bulk Transport (trivialises cargo management, this one I especially hate), etc.

I also don't like Cyber Augmentations on paper, though I haven't tried it yet. So, maybe it's not as bad as I think it is.

Though I hate everything pretty much, so never mind.

I would also suggest that fleet-wide fighter skills should scale based on fighter bays (that have fighters in them!) that are deployed, rather than total bays that exist across the fleet.

I can imagine this being a nightmare to program.

[mr. domain]

The ideas in this thread should tie into a high-tier leadership skill rework/buff.

What I mean is to make support doctrine into a skill that provides -4 officers, but in exchange applies a DP reduction to all ships, including ones with officers, as well as a larger DP reduction for smaller ships. Same as now for cruisers and capitals, higher reduction for frigates and destroyers. Impact mitigation's elite bonus does something similar.

Meanwhile, Officer Management, a skill that drastically enhances your ability to get officers, is nearly a must have if you're going through the green path - the extra officers are just too useful in most fleet compositions barring the most extreme capital spam. To make it more difficult to get, it should be a capstone.

To tie into this thread, Officer Management new capstone status causes it to unlock a fighter enhancing hullmod in addition to its existing bonuses. This hullmod would apply at 100% efficiency at up to 8 fighter bays affected in the fleet, but with a steeper decline than fighter uplink and carrier group if you go over the limit. The bonuses would be indicated in a dynamic tooltip associated with the hullmod, tied to the elite skills of the ship's officer. I believe BigBrainEnergy's original elite bonus suggestion gives a strong guide for which bonuses to provide this hullmod.

This means that we need to bump down an existing capstone. This capstone should be best of the best, as its effect, strong as it is, is relatively simple by the standards of capstones and requires a lot of story point investment to make use of. Perhaps its 20 DP "boost", which interacts strangely with the first objectives captured in a battle, could be removed to bring it more in line with officer training.

[Blase]

I suppose it works. Complaints about fighters being weak are uncommon, and there are no complaints about fighters being overpowered. Fighters don't see much discussion in the first place.

Even taking this into account, Fighter Uplink could stand to get some better effects.

Fighter Uplink is one of the worst bang (+20% fighter top speed with 8 bays) for your buck (1 skill point) in the current skill tree.
Crew losses and targeting lead accuracy do not matter in combat, because crew is an after battle problem and guided missiles already hit, while torpedo bombers do not lead their targets and will miss quite often against the fastest ships.
+20% top speed of fighters is nice, but I would be hesitant to take it over another skill, such as combat endurance, or systems expertise if I am on a carrier with a good system.
Fighter Uplink feels as if we are being sold a bridge that will collapse on itself within the day of purchase.
Alex, if those were swapped out or another bonus was added, Fighter Uplink would feel more worth a skill point. Just my two cents.

[Killer of Fate]

it's a level 1 leadership skill, it competes against stuff like Tactical Drills or Coordinated Manoeuvres. It's not meant to be that strong. Plus leading accuracy does help with ships that use guns such as Warthog, Broadsword, Claw, Thunder, etc. And the crew losses reduction is very significant, or at least would be if crew cost money. But it definitely serves its job in the role-playing aspects. Because people are often intrinsically programmed to negatively respond to seeing living beings die. It's not Fractal's fault that 50% of Starsector players are secretly psychotic.

[Goumindong]

The problem with fighters being tuned a little weak is that it makes it un-fun to pilot a carrier (and to some extent, a battlecarrier) yourself.

Another problem is that the primary skill you want as a primary carrier pilot is…

Systems expertise and/or missile expertise.

It’s not that you don’t get benefit from other skills… but… you kind of don’t. Only 1 other combat skill has an effect and only 1 other is kind of valuable to a pure carrier player in any way.

systems expertise and missile expertise require 4 and 6 skills in combat tree to acquire.

Like… pilot an astral without systems expertise? Yuck… put 1/3rd of your skills into it just to get system’s expertise… yuuuck

Maybe if you spend SP into the fighter skills this could give you combat ship bonuses to pure carriers this would fix things.

Elite fighter uplink could grant systems expertise for fighter effecting ship systems only.  This doesn’t have to be for officers because officers can get systems expertise without spending requisite skills.

Elite carrier group could grant a bonus fighter bay for ships that have bays for non built in fighters. Or it could reduce the OP required to fight fighters by a set amount.  Or it could increase the range of fighters by a fixed amount. Or bonus damage to missiles fired from bombers or something

Maybe elite carrier group could increase CP generation based on the number of fighter bags the command ship has.

Fake edit: also hullmods that increase fighter damage, now that there are no longer any skills that have a significant effect might go a long ways.

Edit: does this mean you may be incentivized to pilot a carrier when you go heavy into leadership?

Yea it might. But I think I am OK with this. Since it gives you a minor management to do in combat while still maintaining the “I am commanding rather than being a super pilot”

Edit: elite carrier group could apply your leadership skill bonuses to your individual player carrier wings as if they were frigates.

[Killer of Fate]

complaining that carriers need Systems Expertise feels like complaining that an Onslaught needs Polarised Armour. Every ship in the game needs something to have its core be reinforced. Besides that, Astral does benefit from other skills. Same with Mora, Legion (obviously, Legion isn't even a real carrier). Astral gets a lot of value from Field Modulation and... Oh, I guess that's it. Maybe Helmsmanship?

However, Condor, Drover and Heron benefit negligibly from most skills. With slight durability upgrades and maybe PD boosts. But besides that you go with missile specialisation for Drover and Condor. PD mastery for all three of them. Systems Expertise for two of those three, not for Drover which is currently stupid.

Eh... If it comes to fighter damage, the thing is that yes, this could be one of the things skills could do for them without breaking the balance of the game too much. Alex stated that the reason why fighters must stay bad for the moment is cause, if they get good, they will suddenly become unstoppable and snowball an encounter, because of how damage absorption works. Therefore they must remain squishy and depletable.

So, if we are to boost their potency, it would have to be tied to damage. And possibly some minor quality of life aspects. I had some ideas.

Ordnance Expertise increases flux dissipation, useful for fighters that use flux for their weapons, namely Warthog, Broadsword, Thunder. These have their firing rate restricted by this aspect.

Missile Specialisation increases health for missiles. Allows bombers to compete with ships that have Point Defence Mastery. Cobra will finally be able to land a hit on those stupid Onslaughts... Maybe. It shouldn't do anything else, maybe increased firing rate, but that would interact weirdly with Talons who use firerate to designate the amount of Swarmers they fire. But whatever, I guess we could have them gain that little aspect. After all they wouldn't benefit from any other skills I mentioned.

Field Modulation increases firing rate for energy weapons. I think all fighters that use shields also use energy weapons that take no flux to fire. Would get complicated if there were midline ships that did not use flux to fire either and had shields, those could possibly exist in the future. Could be solved by just giving them a variant of the weapon that is treated like an energy one.

I guess there could also be a skill to limit overload duration and increase manoeuvring, but eh... Those would exist solely to help bombers not ram their face into enemy ships. Instead we should just change their AI to not do that. Make them start retreating if they become overloaded. Cause currently it's stupid to see them turn into... Well, that stupid... Whatever... You get the idea.

[Goumindong]

complaining that carriers need Systems Expertise feels like complaining that an Onslaught needs Polarised Armour

No. Polarized armor is a tier 1 skill that requires a logistics skill that is strictly beneficial to all fleets

Systems expertise is a capstone that requires 4 skills, almost of which are functionally useless.

Astral gets a lot of value from Field Modulation and

If an astral is taking damage it’s basically dead. It has 20,000 effective shield and worse flux dissipation stats than an Onslaught (it has 5k less cap and using its system costs half its cap, 6000 or 10k shield effectiveness).  Does an Onslaught get a lot out of field modulation? Because an Onslaughts shields are only 15% worse but an onslaught actually has space for caps and hardened shields and this makes the onslaughts shields better than an astral.

Field modulation isnt actively bad. But it’s not exactly good

Edit: the combat skill that the astral benefits from is the one that gives 15% CR because CR bonuses apply to fighters too. So you get 5% more dmg and 5% less dmg taken

[Killer of Fate]

you use a carrier like Heron as your flagship? Cause otherwise, if you're doing like an Astral run, though that is probably very frustrating, where you pilot an Astral yourself, you could just get Helms, Maestro, PD, Imp Mythology. And then...

Oh, I see the problem. If you want both Sys Expert and Missile Spec, then you need to get a lot of skills from the combat thingy. Eh, just get an officer to do it. Don't bother piloting Gryphons yourself, neither Astrals.

I guess the solution is to go to files and change Sys Expert and Missile Spec to same tier as every other skill, I mean that makes kinda more sense than have them lurk there at the end for no reason. Just to bully Harbinger mains, if they exist.

[Goumindong]

I do indeed think “make an officer do it” is the wrong answer to “maybe the game should provide better avenues for player agency”.

All of those skills you listed… are bad for an astral. In the sense that you’re taking a full 33% of your available skill points in order to do almost nothing.

I guess the solution is to go to files and change Sys Expert and Missile Spec to same tier as every other skill, I mean that makes kinda more sense than have them lurk there at the end for no reason. Just to bully Harbinger mains, if they exist.

They’re there because they’re build defining for a lot of various ships. From afflictors to rooms to harbingers to the Odyssey to the Aurora. But all those ships get lots of benefits from other skills in significant and large fashions. So while they capstone a combat build all of the intervening skills are valuable and good for them.

Not so with pure carriers. Functionally none of the intervening skills have a lot of value.

Now currently these don’t provide fighter benefit so you don’t get fomo for combat carriers Vs combat ships. And this is fine.

But it also means that there are no ways to personally pilot a pure carrier. Even though piloting a pure carrier at the center of a leadership fleet seems like the most naturally smooth implementation of theme in the game

[Megas]

Legion (obviously, Legion isn't even a real carrier).

Legion is carrier enough to qualify as one for Fleet Doctrine.  It may not have as many bays as Astral, but it has more than the three that a capital needs to be considered a carrier.

Funny thing:  Gemini is a carrier and a freighter.  (Destroyers only need one bay to be considered a carrier.)  Prioritize Gemini for a carrier, it will drown out most of the other freighters unless they get prioritized too.  Likewise, prioritize Gemini as a freighter, and your carriers will be mostly Gemini if other carriers are not prioritized.

As for skills, CR affects refit time, and Combat Endurances boosts max CR.

[Thaago]

On an Astral as a player I would like to have as elite: Helmsmanship, Combat Endurance, Field Modulation, Point defense, Target Analysis, and Missile Specialization. Maybe I could drop point defense? It depends, there are a lot of mounts that can put on decent beam point defense to help allies, and fighters like it a lot too. Combat Endurance is 100% requires as the CR also boosts the fighter stats. 10 speed from elite helm is huge on something as slow as an astral as well.

2 Large missiles is enough firepower that I'd be happy boosting it with both target analysis and missile spec and would not consider that a waste. Systems Expertise is "fine" but tbh I'm not sure the cooldown reduction is that critical compared to more missile ammo/damage/hp. Plus the astral can provide long ranged beam support with its built in AO - between ion, grav, and autolance there's no reason for it not to be near the action, if not on the front line.

I don't think "if it takes damage it is dead" is true. It has 900 armor, 10k hull, and a .6 shield at 12k base capacity: not exactly a tank, but cruiser grade defenses. If a fast cruiser/destroyers/frigate pack gets to it then it can push them back long enough for help to arrive (there's no reason it should ever be completely alone, even if enemies get in shooting range). Especially given that it is a slow ship and all carriers benefit from being closer to the action.

Side note on Field Modulation on Onslaughts: yes, it is a good skill. Not critical for the player, but given how much the AI likes to take the first half of their flux bar as shield damage it helps.