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[ReshE]

Quick preface:

Generally speaking, I'm not a fan of skills that change loadout limits in games; in a lot of cases the physical limits of what you are allowed to have in your loadout forces the player to make tradeoffs and compromises. Skills that expand these loadout limits usually end up making it possible to equip everything you want, while limiting skill build diversity. It's one of the reasons I'm not a huge fan of Cyberpunk 2077 2.0 locking Cyberware capacity behind their Tech skill - it makes it feel like you need to invest in that skill tree in order to be able to install all the fun cyberware you want, but that means you essentially have to accept that you will invest 20 skill points into their Tech tree.


With regards to Starsector, I'm not a fan of Flux Regulation and Best of the Best because certain ship builds are basically locked behind those skills. Lots of ships feel like they can't equip every weapon and hull-mod they want because of flux or ordnance point limits, and that's okay! Tradeoffs and compromises are part of what makes builds so interesting, like an optimization problem or a puzzle. Those two skills often remove those tradeoffs by allowing ships to get pretty much all the things they need in some cases (not always, but they usually allow builds that don't have to make nearly as many tradeoffs), in exchange for limiting player build diversity. On my low-tech playthrough I'm noticing that there's a lot of skills I want in Industry (to make traversing the sector and supply logistics less of an interruption, especially) and Combat (to make piloting my flagship more enjoyable), but without 5 Leadership my fleet as a whole just feels... weaker than it should be. My ships are, individually, just not as strong because they have to make tradeoffs in the Ordnance Point department, which keeps their individual strength limited; since player fleet size is limited, you can't always offset this with a larger number of ships.

(As an aside, it would be nice if we could use Colony High Commands to order around our Heavy Detachments and Heavy Patrols to other places, maybe ask them to go to a different system to defend that system from an impending Colony Crisis? But that's another discussion entirely, and I know Nexerelin does add that functionality. It just feels weird that we can't do it by default since the High Command description explicitly mentions it)

This feels particularly jarring because, if anything, it feels like the physical installation of modifications to my ships should be governed by Industry and Tech, not Leadership. Combat is focused on my personal flagship, Industry is focused on fleet/colony logistics and management of ship hulls (repairs, restoration, d-mods, etc.), and Tech has a bunch of skills related to rare, advanced and esoteric techniques / tools, like Neural Interface and Automated Ships.

Leadership is nominally focused on:

• Fleet buffs with DP-based softcaps (e.g. Crew Training)
• Ship buffs that specifically target ships with officers and make them stronger (e.g. Coordinated Maneuvers, carrier skills)
• Officer buffs (e.g. Officer Training, Officer Management)
• Some buffs to your ability to command your fleet (e.g. more Command Points, more deployment points at the start of battle, etc.)

Best of the Best's first effect makes sense - you always start with at least 200 DP, ensuring that even if you don't have better officers than your opponent, your ability to deploy and manage your fleet is still reasonably high. But the second effect feels like an Industry or Tech skill that got lost - the ability to add an s-mod to every ship in your fleet is not only weirdly unrelated to the Leadership tree's other stuff thematically, but also doesn't feel like it fits in the game in general.

If it allowed you to get an extra s-mod on officered ships or something like that (which I know would be a pain to implement), I could maybe see it? Because then it's a skill that focuses on building your fleet tall rather than wide. But the fact that it affects every ship loadout means that even very wide fleet builds with lots of low-DP ships can get tons of value from it - which feels like it doesn't fit the theme of "Best of the Best".

I know its perfectly possible to make endgame fleets without BotB (BigBrainEnergy showed one such fleet in the 0.97a fleets thread, which I've been fascinated by), but it feels bad that there is a skill that invalidates certain build tradeoffs and limits locked behind a skill tree that doesn't even deal with ship builds thematically.

This post got very ramble-y, but tl;dr: Best of the Best feels like it is out of place, the ability to build more s-mods in to ships feels more like a Tech or Industry skill to me. And even then, I don't like that it's locked behind a high-tier skill at all (personally, at least).

[Wyvern]

While I don't entirely agree - certainly even with BotB and Flux Regulation I'm not getting anywhere near everything I want on any ship - I've got to say that overall the argument is sensible and well-reasoned.

I'll note, though, that for my preferred playstyle, BotB is basically mandatory just for the deployment bonus; I much prefer running a relatively lean fleet, and stuffing officers into nine ships is just too many ships. (Whether this adds to or detracts from your argument, I'm not sure, but it's a possibly-relevant data point none the less.)

[BigBrainEnergy]

Not going to comment on the gameplay balance here, but thematically the extra s-mod from BOTB does feel like more of a tech or industry perk. Imagine for instance that instead of 15% extra CR on hull restoration, it gave you a third s-mod. This also creates a nice contrast with derelict ops, with one top tier industry skill being for s-mods and the other for d-mods. The nature of this bonus also subtly disincentivizes people from taking industry early game and then speccing out later on, which is currently the best strategy most of the time.

At the same time, BOTB could be changed into something else, preferably with a name structure of "[blank] doctrine" because I really like the flavor of both top tier leadership skills being different "doctrines." Of course the effect of extra dp at the start should stay part of the game, whether that be on the new doctrine or moved to another leadership skill like support doctrine or tactical drills.

going on a tangent

Just spit-balling here, but you could roll both the officer perks into one skill and call it something like "command doctrine" as a direct contrast to support doctrine, which also make it feel less awkward when you no longer pick one of those skills on your way to grabbing support doctrine. Of course you would need to replace those skills with something, so if I was to go even further off the rails I would remove crew training and replace both the officer skills with one skill that gives +15% CR and the increased dp at the start of a battle, and the other would give +15% CR and double the effects of holding capture points in battle (not the dp part, just the basic effects). Just like with the current officer skills, stacking both is very worthwhile but requires you to miss out on a capstone. This also makes crew training less of a no-brainer now that the juicy 15% fleetwide cr actually requires some investment.

You would then need a new tier 1 skill to replace crew training, so I would recommend "emergency protocols" which would take the grab bag of effects from the old elite systems expertise and make them fleetwide. In other words, -33% overload duration and -50% malfunctions. Putting these on a single ship at the cost of an elite skill is a high opportunity cost for something that is not likely to happen, but getting it fleetwide is bound to be relevant because of course some of your ships are going to run out of ppt and overload at some point. Thematically the skill is the spacer equivalent of having fire safety drills at your school or workplace, which fits nicely in the leadership tree. The flavor text for this almost writes itself.

The only concern here would be if stacking s-modded repair unit, elite field modulation and emergency protocols would make overloads too short, but for that I would just remove the reduced overload portion of the repair unit; its s-mod bonus is already good even without that component.

hull restoration

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command doctrine

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crew training

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"crew training"

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emergency protocols

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[ReshE]

While I don't entirely agree - certainly even with BotB and Flux Regulation I'm not getting anywhere near everything I want on any ship - I've got to say that overall the argument is sensible and well-reasoned.

I'll note, though, that for my preferred playstyle, BotB is basically mandatory just for the deployment bonus; I much prefer running a relatively lean fleet, and stuffing officers into nine ships is just too many ships. (Whether this adds to or detracts from your argument, I'm not sure, but it's a possibly-relevant data point none the less.)

Certainly relevant, and I appreciate basically all input on the matter - I myself am not a particularly seasoned player or well-versed in fleet optimization. This particular item just felt so weirdly out of place to me, and specifically because my current playthrough runs Hegemony-style Low/Mid-Tech warships I definitely feel like I'm torn between BotB and Leadership skills to make my fleet just... objectively stronger in combat encounters, or taking Industry skills so I'm not hitting up the fuel depot after every bounty, raid, and survey mission (which isn't a combat buff, sure, but it makes the campaign layer less annoying with larger, low-mid fleets).

I presume that won't be as big of an issue for very lean fleets - and for someone with lots of experience optimizing fleets in this game, I imagine those fleets can get very lean indeed.

[ReshE]

Not going to comment on the gameplay balance here, but thematically the extra s-mod from BOTB does feel like more of a tech or industry perk. Imagine for instance that instead of 15% extra CR on hull restoration, it gave you a third s-mod. This also creates a nice contrast with derelict ops, with one top tier industry skill being for s-mods and the other for d-mods. The nature of this bonus also disincentivizes people from taking industry early game and then speccing out later on.

At the same time, BOTB could be changed into something else, preferably with a name structure of "[blank] doctrine" because I really like the flavor of both top tier leadership skills being different "doctrines." Of course the effect of extra dp at the start should stay part of the game, whether that be on the new doctrine or moved to another leadership skill like support doctrine or tactical drills.

This is pretty much exactly what I was thinking as well. The DP effect feels very Leadership, but moving the s-mod effect to Industry makes that tree more appealing for combat purposes and solidifies its identity as the tree that focuses on the physicality of your fleet - the logistics, supply lines, repairs, and the ship hulls themselves.

Meanwhile, Leadership retains an identity as focusing on the people in those ships - the officers (or in the case of support doctrine / the other fleetwide buffs, the random captain in there) as well as further pushing the identity of managing your fleet in combat situations, and making it more cohesive and well-trained.

Industry and Leadership start to look more like thematic reflections of each other - one is about being better equipped, the other is about being better trained. Kind of a neat dichotomy.

[FooF]

Now that you mention it, the new perk from Cybernetic Augmentation (buffing officers via Flagship Elite Skills) feels more like Best of the Best/Leadership skill, than a Tech skill. It buffs officers, buffs the player (truly making them "best of the best"), and depending on if you chose some of the Officer skills, you either get 8 uber officers or 10 really strong ones.

So, we could do a switch-a-roo with some of the capstone skills. The +1 S-mod bonus from BotB goes to Hull Restoration. The 15% CR bonus from Hull Restoration gets moved to Cybernetic Augmentation but tweaked to only include officered ships (+flagship) along with some other fairly significant in-battle perk. The first thought that comes to mind is it mproves the base (not Elite!) effect of all skills on the player and officers by 10%. That doesn't seem like a lot but +10% on 5-6 skills times 9-11 ships (officers+flagship) add up!

All that said, I have nothing against Flux Regulation or BotB perks as they are now. I don't feel "locked" into them or that any builds are truly locked behind them. To be frank, I rarely get BotB because the prospect of spending all those SPs on S-mods turns me off. I do acknowledge how powerful it can be but I prefer wide to tall fleets.

[Cryovolcanic]

I am playing a junk SD/DO fleet with no officers and it works fine against all endgame content. Maybe not strong enough to pull CapnHector/Draba/SCC type feats but it meets the threshold.

With that said, thematically, the idea of Hull Restoration giving s-mods and the Cyber Aug passives going to BotB make sense thematically to me. If the player character has a ton of combat skills, it makes sense that BotB is essentially teaching them to your officers. You can either be the greatest warrior the sector has ever seen (13 combat skills), or you can be a great warrior (5-7 combat skills) while also being a great teacher.

I think the two tech capstones should provide different uses for AI cores. One to pilot AI ships directly (automated ships), and the other to use some aspect of the AI core to enhance a human officer (cyber aug).

[ReshE]

Now that you mention it, the new perk from Cybernetic Augmentation (buffing officers via Flagship Elite Skills) feels more like Best of the Best/Leadership skill, than a Tech skill. It buffs officers, buffs the player (truly making them "best of the best"), and depending on if you chose some of the Officer skills, you either get 8 uber officers or 10 really strong ones.

So, we could do a switch-a-roo with some of the capstone skills. The +1 S-mod bonus from BotB goes to Hull Restoration. The 15% CR bonus from Hull Restoration gets moved to Cybernetic Augmentation but tweaked to only include officered ships (+flagship) along with some other fairly significant in-battle perk. The first thought that comes to mind is it mproves the base (not Elite!) effect of all skills on the player and officers by 10%. That doesn't seem like a lot but +10% on 5-6 skills times 9-11 ships (officers+flagship) add up!

The idea for a BotB rework in your second paragraph is certainly intriguing. BigBrainEnergy's idea is also pretty neat, though it requires a bit of shuffling in the Leadership tree:

Not going to comment on the gameplay balance here, but thematically the extra s-mod from BOTB does feel like more of a tech or industry perk. Imagine for instance that instead of 15% extra CR on hull restoration, it gave you a third s-mod. This also creates a nice contrast with derelict ops, with one top tier industry skill being for s-mods and the other for d-mods. The nature of this bonus also subtly disincentivizes people from taking industry early game and then speccing out later on, which is currently the best strategy most of the time.

At the same time, BOTB could be changed into something else, preferably with a name structure of "[blank] doctrine" because I really like the flavor of both top tier leadership skills being different "doctrines." Of course the effect of extra dp at the start should stay part of the game, whether that be on the new doctrine or moved to another leadership skill like support doctrine or tactical drills.

going on a tangent

Just spit-balling here, but you could roll both the officer perks into one skill and call it something like "command doctrine" as a direct contrast to support doctrine, which also make it feel less awkward when you no longer pick one of those skills on your way to grabbing support doctrine. Of course you would need to replace those skills with something, so if I was to go even further off the rails I would remove crew training and replace both the officer skills with one skill that gives +15% CR and the increased dp at the start of a battle, and the other would give +15% CR and double the effects of holding capture points in battle (not the dp part, just the basic effects). Just like with the current officer skills, stacking both is very worthwhile but requires you to miss out on a capstone. This also makes crew training less of a no-brainer now that the juicy 15% fleetwide cr actually requires some investment.

You would then need a new tier 1 skill to replace crew training, so I would recommend "emergency protocols" which would take the grab bag of effects from the old elite systems expertise and make them fleetwide. In other words, -33% overload duration and -50% malfunctions. Putting these on a single ship at the cost of an elite skill is a high opportunity cost for something that is not likely to happen, but getting it fleetwide is bound to be relevant because of course some of your ships are going to run out of ppt and overload at some point. Thematically the skill is the spacer equivalent of having fire safety drills at your school or workplace, which fits nicely in the leadership tree. The flavor text for this almost writes itself.

The only concern here would be if stacking s-modded repair unit, elite field modulation and emergency protocols would make overloads too short, but for that I would just remove the reduced overload portion of the repair unit; its s-mod bonus is already good even without that component.

hull restoration

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command doctrine

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crew training

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"crew training"

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emergency protocols

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All that said, I have nothing against Flux Regulation or BotB perks as they are now. I don't feel "locked" into them or that any builds are truly locked behind them. To be frank, I rarely get BotB because the prospect of spending all those SPs on S-mods turns me off. I do acknowledge how powerful it can be but I prefer wide to tall fleets.

That last point (the amount of SP required to fully utilize BotB through an entire fleet) is something I guess I didn't consider. Kind of ties into Cryovolcanic's response:

I am playing a junk SD/DO fleet with no officers and it works fine against all endgame content. Maybe not strong enough to pull CapnHector/Draba/SCC type feats but it meets the threshold.

I've been really digging into this game recently and when I watch enough of those videos of CapnHector/Draba/SCC dunking on multi-ordo fights with triple s-modded ships, I guess it skewed my perception without me noticing. Booting up my game again I'm reminded that the vast majority of end-game content is doable with wider fleets; BotB doesn't really lock you out of most builds or anything - just the ones that are hyper-optimized. Missed the forest for the trees a little bit there. Oops.

on another note

It does feel a little bit bad that all the skills that reduce supply consumption, logistical overhead, etc. are in Industry, which just so happens to be the weakest tree for direct combat power though. Sometimes feels like I've got to choose between winning fights faster or getting to the fights faster with less fuel stops on the way, lol

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[Cryovolcanic]

Industry is weak in the endgame, I agree, but I think it's fine to have an early game tree that you respec out of. Industrial Planning in particular is truly bad.

Re: CapnHector/Draba/SCC -- I believe in his latest series, SCC isn't even using BotB. He has red warrior skills and double capstones in blue. He might be dipping some green but it's a mostly blue build. In his first video his fleet isn't even filled up on 2x s-mods per ship.

Cybernetic Augmentation might be on par or better than BotB now. Bonus elite skill for officers plus +6/-6% damage is great, and +12% for a player flagship (if you're a good pilot) is incredible.

[Thaago]

I'd put Cybernetic firmly above BoTB for any build that is taking advantage of it with a decent number of combat skills and sticks to officered ships.
That is a narrower set of builds and BoTB works with basically anything, but within those builds no 3rd priority S mod is worth both an elite skill AND a hefty offensive/defensive buff.

[BigBrainEnergy]

When it comes to the balance of the capstones:

• Cybernetic augmentation is the strongest but does require you to invest in many combat skills to reach that point, which leaves you with fewer points left to invest in fleetwide bonuses. Overall I think the design is pretty good and the balance is good, and while I do understand the idea of moving the bonus over to botb I think it fits better in tech just because you get some combat skills in the same tree. In leadership it would be a bit weird.
• Automated ships is also really good, radiants and glimmers are always solid choices, and now that it's easier to pair this skill with neural link it's much easier to abuse a player radiant. For the other ships this skill unlocks, your mileage may vary.
• Derelict operations seems to be in a fine spot, but I don't use it very much because I'm not into the junker fleet concept.
• Hull restoration is fantastic on the logistical side, but is otherwise a weird side-grade to crew training. It gets nerfed by d-mods but can apply to any number of ships regardless of total dp.
• Support doctrine viable but not super exciting, and I think a lot of people pass up on it because it feels weird grabbing this when the tier just below only offers skills that boost officers.
• Best of the best is of course still solid, if a bit out of place in the leadership tree.

[Cryovolcanic]

I don't think Support Doctrine is that good. It's viable, yes. But all officer skills are not created equal and I am learning the hard way that losing the most critical officer skills for a particular ship build has a big impact on performance. Often times, it's Ballistic Mastery (my ballistic ships perform significantly worse than Draba's), otherwise it's Field Mod/SysEx/Target Analysis.

I realized that it's the multiplier effect that really makes a ship strong. With SD/DO I can get 2 weak ships with bad level 4 officers. But 1 good ship with 1 good officer is better. The skills are perfectly chosen, there is no dead skill in Damage Control, and I get 3x elite bonuses plus Cyber Aug. Plus a 3rd s-mod, plus possible omega weapons, plus the occasional level 7 officer with 5 elites, or even a Sentinel level 8 alpha core.

Said another way--Target Analysis is better when more shots land due to Gunnery/BM. Then TA is multiplied by flat damage bonuses like Cyber Aug. The enhanced, higher hit rate TA shots get fired more when you get a 3rd s-mod which could be for example extra flux. So you get more shots, at longer range, that are more accurate and do more damage. Which also means you kill enemies from farther away which means you spend less flux on defense. And maybe on top of that, you get to use a limited-quantity omega weapon, which you can't duplicate to put on two SD/DO ships.

2x ships mostly can't compete with that. SD/DO is absolutely viable but the best way to utilize it remains fighter/missile spam. Beams also work reasonably well (see Cornershop's Scintilla Flash+Tac laser build).

[BigBrainEnergy]

There's definitely an argument to be made that maybe support doctrine should give target analysis, but I think the skill is already pretty solid if used correctly. Obviously people love to talk about sd carrier spam, but really the best way to use the skill is to take full advantage of wolfpack tactics. Shove all your officers into frigates and then spam long range cruisers. It's probably not 5 ordos tier, but 2-3 without losses is no problem.

*EDIT*
Now that I think about it, those fleets that performed well all used pre-nerf squall, and were probably carried by how strong that was. Now they're probably a lot more meh, so I'm leaning more towards support doctrine needing a buff. We did get ordnance expertise since then, but is that enough? I think tacking on gunnery implants could give it a little more of an edge without giving in and just slapping on the raw damage buff from target analysis.

[ReshE]

When it comes to the balance of the capstones:

• Cybernetic augmentation is the strongest but does require you to invest in many combat skills to reach that point, which leaves you with fewer points left to invest in fleetwide bonuses. Overall I think the design is pretty good and the balance is good, and while I do understand the idea of moving the bonus over to botb I think it fits better in tech just because you get some combat skills in the same tree. In leadership it would be a bit weird.
• Automated ships is also really good, radiants and glimmers are always solid choices, and now that it's easier to pair this skill with neural link it's much easier to abuse a player radiant. For the other ships this skill unlocks, your mileage may vary.
• Derelict operations seems to be in a fine spot, but I don't use it very much because I'm not into the junker fleet concept.
• Hull restoration is fantastic on the logistical side, but is otherwise a weird side-grade to crew training. It gets nerfed by d-mods but can apply to any number of ships regardless of total dp.
• Support doctrine is actually really good, but I think a lot of people pass up on it because it feels weird grabbing this when the tier just below only offers skills that boost officers.
• Best of the best is of course still solid, if a bit out of place in the leadership tree.

Re: Automated Ships - Don't AI Cores count as officers for the purposes of Coordinated Maneuvers, Wolfpack Tactics, Carrier Group, etc? Seems like a pretty strong blue-green synergy there, which is another point in Automated Ships' favor.

Although, maybe not as strong as I think. Wolfpack + Glimmers is probably the strongest usage of that, I guess?

[Cryovolcanic]

Wolfpack Glimmers was arguably the best use of a blue capstone when Cyber Aug was tier 3, and Neural Link was the other capstone in 0.96a.

Now that Cyber Aug is so strong, the opportunity cost to get Automated Ships is now very high. Unless you are SCC using Neural Link with +12% Cyber Aug Radiants, you are better off just using mercenary officers if you want extra capture frigates.

Automated Ships' other use case is SD/DO without officers, because there is literally nothing else to pick. I've had fairly good success with 35 DP Support Doctrine Radiants using s-mod Expanded Mags+Gyros and all charge-based weapons (4x Autopulse, Paladin, IRAL, Burst PDs). And SD/DO Scintillas are very good as already mentioned.