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[Beep Boop]

I always end playthroughs sitting on 20-40 SPs. I get they are supposed to be for fleets, but I've always considered them "cheaty" in a way since they squeeze essentially free OP out of a ship

This is basically just a replacement for the old Loadout Design skill, which simply let you have more OP to use. The main difference is that NPCs now use them also, so it's fair on both sides, whereas before, they had no access to it.

[landryraccoon]

FWIW, I like Story Points a lot.

The main use of story points for me is to avoid save scumming. If I run into some random fight (maybe even one that I could easily win) but I'm just not in the mood I have no hesitation to press the green option to skip it. Or if I'm doing quests and I want a bigger reward, I press the green button.  They make the game feel less grindy to me.

It fits really thematically. I see them kind of like "Karma points" in some RPGs. Ordinarily if I don't like the outcome I might just load an earlier save, but now I don't have to.

I do max out S-mods on my flagship and ships that I fly, but I generally don't feel the need to max out S-mods on the rest of my fleet. In fact, the very first S-mods I put on most ships is S-modding good logistics mods on my support fleet. That lets me max out on range / minimize supply cost so I can load up on missions without having to return to the core worlds.

[SCC]

Consider the idea earlier in this thread of using a "minefield" item to enable the disengage without fighting option. Now there needs to be a new item, the player needs to buy it and actually have it on hand when it's needed, you have to figure out how much it should cost, and so on. That specific idea, mainly it's 1) a hassle for the player, and 2) added clutter for the trade/inventory screens. Now, imagine this times 20 or 30 or whatever - for all of the various story point mechanics. Different mechanics, new items, new rules. It would just be a straight up bad idea to add to the game, dev-time entirely aside (and that's a pretty big aside), just for the sheer amount of complexity and hassle it would add.

This actually sounds pretty interesting! And let's be honest - managing resources and dealing with scarcity is a significant part of the game already.

[Phenir]

Consider the idea earlier in this thread of using a "minefield" item to enable the disengage without fighting option. Now there needs to be a new item, the player needs to buy it and actually have it on hand when it's needed, you have to figure out how much it should cost, and so on. That specific idea, mainly it's 1) a hassle for the player, and 2) added clutter for the trade/inventory screens. Now, imagine this times 20 or 30 or whatever - for all of the various story point mechanics. Different mechanics, new items, new rules. It would just be a straight up bad idea to add to the game, dev-time entirely aside (and that's a pretty big aside), just for the sheer amount of complexity and hassle it would add.

This actually sounds pretty interesting! And let's be honest - managing resources and dealing with scarcity is a significant part of the game already.

You have to manage 3 resources; credits, fuel, and supplies. This suggestion, consumable items replacing story points, would add at least 10 I can think of offhand; combat escape, quick repair before combat (which could possibly be reused for difficult recoveries but then why do you only need one for both when the former can repair several ships at once?), stable point generation, stealthy raids, elite skills, skill respecing, officer mentoring/retraining, smodding, colony improvements, AI core integration. This is ignoring all the various story story point uses like having sword training or talking your way out of a fight or the upcoming hostile activity escalation. And what about mods? Now they have to add their own items for their own story point uses.

[Cubano]

I wouldn't want another set of resources to manage in leu of S-Mods.

The only change I would prefer is to make them recoverable from ships without having to scuttle, but for a cost - just like the removal of D-Mods.

[Killer of Fate]

no, probably not. (imo)

Spoiler

Ships are designed to be bad, because u are supposed to use s-mods and officers to make them better. Officers I can accept, but s-mods are grindy as heck. A lot of things that would make the game interesting are significantly neglected by s-mods... Like searches, story encounters. And often they make the main character feel like a Jedi.

Spoiler

[close]

Though, I mean, that's the game you're playing. Personally I leave them on, but I tweak a few things. Like 0% bonus experience for telling a search party to *** off. And s-mods for ships... Well, that's just how ships work. That's the game. Some like the min-maxing aspect, I personally find it tedious.

If I were to get really really really theoretical. I feel like the reason they exist, is cause some mechanics are unenjoyable, and maybe their existence was entirely coincidental to neglect them. Hullmods are ridiculously difficult to implement often, cause of significant op restrictions. So, without s-mods you would usually be unable to use them at all. Like a Dominator can barely fit heavy armour, all PD and large guns and missiles, and 30 flux vents (which are kinda mandatory). If you think you could maybe give it auxiliary thrusters or insulated engine assembly, you can't. Cause that is not meta. That won't do enough to fit the game. But with s-mods, who cares... Unless you are going up against Remnants, but who cares about Remnants.

Officer grind is neglected by mentoring. Elite skills are meant to help out some weapons which clearly don't work for NPCs. And maybe ships that don't either. But sometimes it's still not enough. And mechanics such as being jumpscared by Pirate fleets, which were kinda nerfed to not be that annoying at some point in the past I would guess, I mean having the ability to just run away without any consequences is meant to help the player with the fact... That Starsector is really bad if it comes to rebuilding your fleet from nothing. The RNG of ships and weapons will force you into going around the whole galaxy looking for specific parts, unless you have a library. Which is something every player should do by default.

But eh, what do I know... I think the way they are is good now. Players have already mastered the s-points juggling mechanics. And sure, they feel somewhat gatekeepy for new players. But that's just Starsector... Though if you feel like modding them out and replacing them with something else... Like nothing at all, then feel free to actually do that. In fact... I would gladly play that.

ps. Patrols are kinda annoying though, and being able to tell them to get lost is actually really really really important. With +2 movement and like 600 bonus detection range, it's really hard to dodge them in SPACE... A place known for having 0 cover. So, dealing with patrols is often almost impossible. Without s-mods you would be forced to do a lot of legwork that isn't really that exciting. And RNG will screw you over anyway. I deal with this problem by reducing detection and emission range of all ships in the game to how space would feel like. In that you can't actually see ***, cuz everything is so far away.

[close]

[Beep Boop]

The main use of story points for me is to avoid save scumming. If I run into some random fight (maybe even one that I could easily win) but I'm just not in the mood I have no hesitation to press the green option to skip it. Or if I'm doing quests and I want a bigger reward, I press the green button.  They make the game feel less grindy to me.

They work better as an anti-savescumming option than a "resource" would. Because you know the default response to such an event would just be to reload rather than permanently sacrifice cargo space to it, but SP aren't actually a precious resource once you wrap your brain around the mechanic, since using one gives you an XP boost that covers for the usage, so there's not a particular benefit to savescumming to avoid using them and this can actually slow you down since you always want to be operating in an XP boosted state. If my XP bar isn't green, I look for an excuse to burn SP on something that will green the bar.

[Talkie Toaster]

You have to manage 3 resources; credits, fuel, and supplies. This suggestion, consumable items replacing story points, would add at least 10 I can think of offhand; combat escape, quick repair before combat (which could possibly be reused for difficult recoveries but then why do you only need one for both when the former can repair several ships at once?), stable point generation, stealthy raids, elite skills, skill respecing, officer mentoring/retraining, smodding, colony improvements, AI core integration. This is ignoring all the various story story point uses like having sword training or talking your way out of a fight or the upcoming hostile activity escalation. And what about mods? Now they have to add their own items for their own story point uses.

Plus if all these different things are their own resource, then fundamentally they all just collapse down to 'money' (whether to buy them or buy cargo space for them) and end up conflicting with all the other things you want to spend on. Sure, you could buy a stack of anti-pursuit mines, but you want the cargo space for loot and you want the money for a new cruiser, you don't want to spend on a thing you shouldn't need if you 'just' play well. Then when you do have enough money and cargo space, they suddenly all become non-issues and you can just buy your way out of everything, and it becomes a chore to manage all your different items.

There's a reason most tabletop RPGs these days have a Story Point-esque mechanic. It's just so much easier to have this kind of orthogonal resource you only use for Cool Things.

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

Putting the actual quality of modern tabletop RPGs aside, in how many of them can you use their Story Point-esque mechanic to permanently upgrade a piece of your gear? And is turning your Sword +5 into a Sword +6 even a Cool Thing?

On a side note, I feel like this thread was indirectly and unintentionally sabotaged by people who want to decouple SP from almost every mechanic in the game when the elephant in the room was always using SP for S-mods. In fact, I would say that the primary use of so-called "Story" Points is adding S-mods to ships; to the point that if the game offers me a chance to do a Cool Thing with 1 SP in a conversation, I will not do it because I can instead use it to make my fleet stronger. Using Story Points for story-related things is simply an unoptimal way to play the game.

That is the real problem here.

[SCC]

to the point that if the game offers me a chance to do a Cool Thing with 1 SP in a conversation, I will not do it because I can instead use it to make my fleet stronger. Using Story Points for story-related things is simply an unoptimal way to play the game.

Technically speaking, it's optimal if you're doing the story ASAP and you want bonus XP to get to level 15 faster.

In fact, I would say that the primary use of so-called "Story" Points is adding S-mods to ships

And elite skills for officers and mentoring them. It's anywhere between 16 and 32 SPs (okay, actually up to 40 SPs if you go for OM, but that's pretty rare.

[Mishrak]

Anything that rewards 100% is fine, especially when leveling up.

The bonus to officer levelling is super good.  If done right it's like 2-3 small cruiser (no caps) ordos to fully level a single officer.

It's when it's less than 100% return that it's beneficial to weigh whether that investment is really a good one.

[DeltaEpsilon]

I very much dislike current SP system in general for the exact reason a poster in this thread mentioned: they are essentially just an extension to XP system and, because you can obtain endless XP (by farming), they are, eventually, an unlimited resource that's used for both consumable options AND stuff that's supposed to be permanent. The payment for them is your time.

But let's go through different stages of the game.

Early game:
In early game, SP are extremely precious because you are both unable to get a lot of them quickly and there are limited opportunities to get them too. This makes using them for most "consumable" options feel like a complete waste, but s-mods are also weirdly off-putting to get because losses should be expected at this stage and it is not unlikely you might lose your first s-modded ships. So, in early game SP fails because there's this desire to conserve them and only use them on genuinely permanent stuff -- elite skills possibly, maybe even improving early colonies if you're that person.

Mid game:
In between early game and mid game, there is a period in which things feel balanced, but it is short-lived and it ends once you acquire a decent fleet because suddenly you are at a point at which you become able to obtain a ton of XP and, by extension, SP, getting so many points that you won't know what to do with. It is very likely that at this point you will start investing into elite skills fully and could even consider using SP for consumable options. Officer training also possible.
Suddenly, SP are very abundant and you have many venues to spend them on, until you run out.

Late game:
By now you are level 15 and any further SP you get will be obtained naturally and in considerable quantities. So now, there are two scenarios. Either you have no SP and just have to grind for them or you have too many once again. By this point, SP is mostly spent on either experimenting with s-mods in sim [though I'd rather just savescum, this is just bad design imo], respeccing skills and consumable options.

The Problem:
So, what do we have? There's almost no period in which consumable options besides special maneuvers would warrant some deep consideration on whether to use an SP or not because there are almost no circumstances in which using an SP is not binary. The way the game progresses somewhat follows a sigmoid curve and SP generation generally follows suit.

Most story or quest-related options are just clearly better to use an SP on and unless you run the (story) missions in exactly the right time-frame with the right progression, you will either always use an SP or pretty much never depending on which side of the sigmoid curve you're on.
For instance, negotiating a higher pay for a delivery mission, getting a smaller loan interest rate, convincing the beta core to surrender etc.

Then we have things like s-mods and officers. The way s-mods are right now, I strongly disagree with the poster that mentioned that s-mods are giving identity to ships. No, they don't, because SP are infinite so in principle you will always be able to scuttle a ship, get a new one and install new s-mods there. You are paying in your time and credits [which, with colonies, is also just your time]. S-mods are not truly permanent in this sense with the notable exception of Mr. Z with a weird workaround even there.

We also have officers that do in fact get truly permanent SP options in that you may not change the skillset of an officer afterwards no matter what, but you can dismiss the officer, get a new one and just mentor them from scratch, so even this is not really permanent on a global level, though you might get attached to particular officers for roleplay or immersion reasons.

So, given these two considerations, why are we pretending that s-mods, player skills, officer skills etc are (semi-)permanent? Everything here is very much mutable. And the reason? SP are infinite, you buy them with your time wasted farming (in worst case) or naturally by fighting stuff (in best case).

And thus...
The Solution:
I believe SP should no longer be tied to XP, but to player's own level. Player's max level (without using mods) is fixed to 15 and I believe the player should be given a certain budget of SP that are then used for intended-to-be permanent options, but the player should be free to do everything that currently needs SP as long as they are within the budget.

In other words, s-mods become like ship-specific skills [in the form of OP-free hullmods], dare I even say skill-mods. Player's level already limits how many skills they can have. Not only that, but they might even be a shared pool: more s-mods on the ships in the fleet -> fewer elite skills for the player. This ties in nicely with existing ship limits too.

Ditto for officers: perhaps officers should still be able to level up, but the player can immediately temporarily assign them with target skills and be able to freely change or change for a nominal fee their personality and make skills elite. As officers level up, the player gets refunded the fleet skill point that they can use elsewhere.

Ditto for certain special events such as colony crisis resolutions that provide you with a permanent benefit. Kanta's favor might be one of those cases where assigning an SP to keep pirates off your colonies might work out nicely, but you can still pull out and lose the protection, but with an option to resolve it via non-SP means.

Naturally, this implies that the player should be freely capable of respeccing their skills and even changing out s-mods [whether directly allowing to remove and add s-mods or by having to scuttle and getting a new ship, but this still refunds the fleet skill point back, so no extra time lost].
All of these apply to cases which provide a benefit that will last forever until the player cancels it. S-mods, officer skills, special events, maybe even certain story missions.

Now, the question of consumable options remains. In my opinion, the vast majority of options that are taking SP now should just be freely available or available through a resource that's not paid for in player's dedicated time. This includes pretty much all story-related choices along with a few bar mission ones. The delivery mission, the blueprint-for-SP mission, you name it.

Only common two remain: special maneuvers and limited repairs.

And in my opinion, these can be very easily paid for in fuel and supplies respectively. The "special" maneuvers might involve detonating fuel or something to orion outta there. Given that many unwanted encounters occur while exploring, this poses a considerable danger for the player that chooses to do so because the fuel cost of this maneuver should not be static and they should feasibly risk getting stranded by doing so, not to mention having to deal with repairing the ships afterwards, both from harassing fleets and from the fallout of the explosions.
And limited repairs using many supplies would just make sense and have much the same intent as disengaging.

tl;dr
Make SP part of player's LVL and make s-mods, skills and officers all use SP from that shared pool, so the player has to carefully assign SP out to specific things depending on their intent, but otherwise make it very fluid to shift from one doctrine to another once you get the levels. In other words, make SP act like a secondary flat skill system and call SP something like fleet skill points to distinguish from player's personal skill points. Use different resources or make free repeatable options that don't have an impact of indeterminate duration on player if they are not cancelable as well.
TT's colony crisis deal is a good example of a place that should take a bite out of fleet skill points from the player given the deal is otherwise permanent and beneficial yet can be cancelled.

Note of lvls:
One of the bigger issues in the game for me is that the progression is a sigmoid curve in lvls as well. Some different thresholds should definitely be set to make it more linear.

[Phenir]

Early game:
In early game, SP are extremely precious because you are both unable to get a lot of them quickly and there are limited opportunities to get them too. This makes using them for most "consumable" options feel like a complete waste, but s-mods are also weirdly off-putting to get because losses should be expected at this stage and it is not unlikely you might lose your first s-modded ships. So, in early game SP fails because there's this desire to conserve them and only use them on genuinely permanent stuff -- elite skills possibly, maybe even improving early colonies if you're that person.

I find it's the opposite. I want a good 1 sp 100% exp option so I can quickly level and grow in power and there is usually one in a bar somewhere. And smodding a logistic ship isn't usually a waste. Unless you lose a fight, there's not really a risk of losing the ship and it'll be with you for your entire playthrough.

[DeltaEpsilon]

I find it's the opposite. I want a good 1 sp 100% exp option so I can quickly level and grow in power and there is usually one in a bar somewhere. And smodding a logistic ship isn't usually a waste. Unless you lose a fight, there's not really a risk of losing the ship and it'll be with you for your entire playthrough.

Okay, well, s-modding logistics is indeed a good option and generally not a waste. They ARE a relatively permanent upgrade in early game, but make no mistake, you will probably derive more use out of Bulk Transport first than s-modding your possibly mediocre cargo freighter. Regardless, s-modding logistical ships is more or less equivalent to getting player skills and does work with my idea too anyway.

[Killer of Fate]

I sometimes found myself lacking s-points in the late game, cause I'd want to change my fleet composition, but because I already trained officers with by giving them elite skills, I would find it very difficult to train new ones after firing them. This would be especially painful if I was using something like Officer Training + Cybernetic Augmentations, then it would be really grindy to fully train new officers. Cause imagine doing high difficulty fleets with untrained officers