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[actually-a-cat]

I understand how this works, but when I actually try to heavily "recycle" s-mods this way, I tend to end up chronically short on s-points and floating a lot of bonus XP unless I go out of my way to farm experience, which is not ideal in its own way.

[Thaago]

Yeah that's fair. I suppose in my normal gameplay I'm not doing ships replacements that often, so I'm not running into the backlog too much.

[Megas]

The backlog happens when many new ships for the fleet come from the enemy (and a lot of nearly pristine ships that drop with only one or two d-mods are so tempting to take for HR to fix).  It may also happen if player gets unlucky after battle and gets more d-mods than usual when recovering ships.

[Cryovolcanic]

I disagree - for me hull restoration is a "never" pick unless I'm going for serious Automated Ship deployments. I consider it the weakest capstone by a significant margin.

@Thaago - I know that you and I are both fans of Support Doctrine. But despite how much I like the idea of it, Support Doctrine is the worst capstone in the game.

Hull Restoration might be #2 from the bottom though.

[Thaago]

How do you figure? Support doctrine enables certain officer/ship endgame configurations that wouldn't be possible otherwise, even without being a massive combat and XP multiplier in the early game. I'd rank support doctrine as solidly twice as good as hull restoration in the early game where money matters (but xp growth matters more), and if taking advantage of its features for a particular build I'd say it is 3 or 4 times more powerful.

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

Hull Restoration feels like cheating. Pick this skill, and your ships will magically fix their severe, overhaul-requiring problems mid-flight.

Wait until you learn that you can magically fix their severe, overhaul-requiring problems as soon as you buy them, with a press of a single button. All you need is to be docked!

Hull Restoration saves money. Money is not a limiting factor in the game. As a result Hull Restoration is completely meaningless in its D-mod removing role - which takes forever anyway - and functionally only serves as a +15% CR bonus. Now +15% CR bonus is obviously very good, but when you put it on a capstone skill at the end of the most useless skill tree in the game it's just not worth it. It's not 4 skillpoints level good, especially since you can just get it elsewhere. Even if you do actually want to get Ordnance Expertise AND Polarized Armor(which is a very niche scenario) you still pay 2 skillpoints for it.

You can't even defend Hull Restoration "in early game" because it's a capstone skill, so you need to be at least level 5 to get it, and ideally you want to also grab some other QoL skills early like Sensors or Navigation, or how about Crew Training that benefits your entire fleet whether they have D-mods or not? By the time you actually get to Hull Restoration in most cases it's not early game anymore.

Also: I am getting a very strong sense of deja vu from this thread. I swear I've read something very similar(and just as aggressively wrong) before.

[Grievous69]

Also: I am getting a very strong sense of deja vu from this thread. I swear I've read something very similar(and just as aggressively wrong) before.

Every new player goes through the phase of thinking Hull restoration is broken good. These threads pop us every so often.

[Alski]

If the player snags a high/very high importance contact on a good planet, even capital ships are cheap (contact ships are something like 25% of the regular price I think).

The only thing I've seen close to that is when they are selling off a specific ship, but the vast majority of the time its only going to be a destroyer or a cruiser and you don't get a choice of ships. When it comes to Nano forge production you normally only get a 200k-300k at 80% cost or so which is never enough for he more expensive capitals.

Maybe ive missed something some where, or maybe its the high/very high contacts i chose which are almost always TT or pirate. 

[Cryovolcanic]

How do you figure? Support doctrine enables certain officer/ship endgame configurations that wouldn't be possible otherwise, even without being a massive combat and XP multiplier in the early game. I'd rank support doctrine as solidly twice as good as hull restoration in the early game where money matters (but xp growth matters more), and if taking advantage of its features for a particular build I'd say it is 3 or 4 times more powerful.

The XP gain effect is unique among skills--I agree with you about that. Fair, maybe the powerleveling aspect of it is enough to make it one of the better capstones.

Regarding compositions, I haven't found a composition that really is better with SD versus BotB+officers. DO builds are better with officers. Frigate spam is also better with officers. I haven't tried low-end capitals + EP destroyers, but that could be one. And the officer limit is not really a limit, between mercenaries and AI cores.

[Hiruma Kai]

Personally, I don't mind skills which have different values to players with different skill levels.

I will point out d-mod ships are perfectly usable, and if you're struggling with supply/fuel costs as a new player, cheaper to run combats with.  Until you hit 240 DP, d-mod ships are in a sense, not a disadvantage.  You just need to remember to bring more fuel tankers than supplies since the fuel/supplies ratio usage changes.

The only thing I've seen close to that is when they are selling off a specific ship, but the vast majority of the time its only going to be a destroyer or a cruiser and you don't get a choice of ships. When it comes to Nano forge production you normally only get a 200k-300k at 80% cost or so which is never enough for he more expensive capitals.

It's the specific ship sold by a high ranking military officer contact.  I've gotten Onslaught XIVs offers (multiple, one after another) from the one very high contact I once lucked out on Jangala and I made priority.  Admittedly, very high  contacts are pretty rare.  A high ranking priority contact should do something similar I think (not sure if its Jangala's size 6 or military base that made it seem like he was offering a lot of ships, or just human perception).

Of course, if you're acquired a multi d-mod capital at point in the game where bounties won't pay for the capital's restoration in 2 or 3 fights, you probably don't need a pristine capital.  And saving ~2000 credits per deployment on a 3 d-mod capital isn't a bad thing.  Another d-modded synergy is with safety overrides, since running down the CR is much cheaper to pay off.

And occassionally, I lose a ship, it gets a single d-mod and I realize, its an improvement as the supply savings is greater than the impact to the combat capability of the ship (typically high tech frigates losing armor).

[Tranquility]

I think it's also worth mentioning that, for whatever reason, Hull Restoration seemingly also has the unstated effect of converting all difficult recovery of disabled enemy ships - which would otherwise cost Story Points - into normal recovery, meaning it's much easier to build up an entire fleet by just recovering enemy ships. This doesn't make enemy ships guaranteed to be recoverable, but it does mean that, with virtually no Story Point barrier, there's far less hesitation to just grab whatever wrecks are available after a battle and immediately make use of them in your fleet, especially with Hull Restoration slowly removing D-Mods over time.

As for the overall power level of the Industry tree, I personally think it's in a fine spot, balancewise. By it's very nature, the massive campaign-level benefits it provides, especially in the early-game, is balanced by the relative lack of combat-level skills - and, thus, total combat power - compared to the other trees. In that vein, Hull Restoration fits the theme. Although HR does provide some combat power via +15% CR for pristine ships, it naturally struggles to compete with other fleet-level capstones like Derelict Operations (despite requiring D-Modded ships, the -30% DP at max benefit is arguably far stronger thanks to the critical-mass dynamic that comes with having more ships on the field), Cybernetic Augmentation (which provides both an extra elite skill for officers and further buffs when also taking personal Combat skills), and Best of the Best (granting 1 additional S-Mod and the ability to start off engagements with 200 DP minimum rather than 160 DP). Plus, investing in Hull Restoration also has the opportunity cost of not being able to invest as much skill points in the other trees that provide more total combat power, which typically means a less powerful flagship (which, when used well, can decide entire battles) and a less powerful fleet.

Despite those drawbacks, Hull Restoration still has some unique value in combat, especially with no-flagship fleets (who have the option of dropping Combat Endurance for their officers and take another officer skill, while still keeping 100% CR if Crew Training is also taken) and Automated Ship fleets (allowing either stronger automated ships or just more automated ships). So, I don't really see a need to either buff or nerf Hull Restoration in anyway (other than maybe doing something with its hidden effect of removing difficult recovery for enemy ships, because that feels like a bug to me).

[Siffrin]

converting all difficult recovery of disabled enemy ships - which would otherwise cost Story Points - into normal recovery

HUH!?

[Cryovolcanic]

I think it's also worth mentioning that, for whatever reason, Hull Restoration seemingly also has the unstated effect of converting all difficult recovery of disabled enemy ships - which would otherwise cost Story Points - into normal recovery

What seriously? I had no idea it did this.

Edit - are you sure about this? I just found a derelict (modded game) and the recovery option still cost 1 SP.

[Tranquility]

I think it's also worth mentioning that, for whatever reason, Hull Restoration seemingly also has the unstated effect of converting all difficult recovery of disabled enemy ships - which would otherwise cost Story Points - into normal recovery

What seriously? I had no idea it did this.

Edit - are you sure about this? I just found a derelict (modded game) and the recovery option still cost 1 SP.

I should clarify that this is just for enemy ships you can recover immediately after a battle, not for other, out-of-battle wrecks you can find. So, those random wrecks that sometimes spawn after battle, for example, aren't affected by this.

If you want to test this for yourself, one way would be grabbing Automated Ships in conjunction with Hull Restoration and then take out two Remnant Ordos - one Ordo without HR, one Ordo with HR - to see what the ratio of normal recovery to difficult recovery would be. If I'm right, the HR Ordo attempt should result in all recoverable Remnant ships belonging to the "normal recovery" section, with no "difficult recoveries", while the recoverable ships for the no-HR Ordo attempt would favor the "difficult recovery" section instead.

[Beep Boop]

I think it's also worth mentioning that, for whatever reason, Hull Restoration seemingly also has the unstated effect of converting all difficult recovery of disabled enemy ships - which would otherwise cost Story Points - into normal recovery, meaning it's much easier to build up an entire fleet by just recovering enemy ships.

Maybe, but it's a very high level skill. By the time you have very high level skills, you're very likely past the point at which you're concerned about this. Stealing disabled enemy ships tends to be an early game thing, if that. And only a few enemy ships are truly worth stealing and the number of them which you would need to steal is rather limited.