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[polkjm]

I think there's a fundamental problem of balance with the game in the sense that the combat skills that officers can get and general skills share the same tree. When you look at a skill like say, Damage Control, and compare it to a skill like, say, Bulk Transport, you can quickly see what the issue is. One of them is balanced on the scale of a single ship, while the other gives you a bonus for the entire fleet.

Some combat skills are quite good, but when the time comes to select a skill yourself, you are faced with a tough decision. Do you get a combat skill at the cost of making your fleet worse overall? Or do you instead get global skills that make you better overall, but make combat effectively... Less fun?

Therein lies the problem. Even if the two may compete on paper in some cases, combat skills make combat more fun. Meanwhile, management skills in some cases feel required for the campaign to be... Bearable? The biggest issue being that if you don't put 5 points into industry, you're going to feel it.

I would suggest that every level you get to put 1 point into a combat skill and 1 point into a non-combat skill (anything the officers can't get). This would make you feel like you get stronger personally along with your fleet and probably feel a lot better.

Of course, this would mean certain skills would probably need to be re-balanced a bit in power level, and maybe a few new skills added. But I just think the current formula feels bad and needs to change...

[Hiruma Kai]

When this proposal comes up, I do like asking a few questions of the proposer.

1) Do consider the current game balance too hard, too easy, or about right?
2) With an eye to question 1, are you proposing that level cap, where you get 1 combat skill and 1 non-combat skill and max out at level 7 or 8? So we have total roughly the same number of skill points as now of like 14 - 16?
3) The industry tree contains 2 Combat skills, so it is pretty easy to do picks at level up of non-combat, personal combat, non-combat, personal combat, capstone already.  How does this proposal change your own skill picks in the Industry tree?

4) If I say I feel like the game is about right, and we don't want to raise the overall power level, given I often play very personal combat focused (10+ skills in combat skills), and other often play fleet focused only and never pilot (so 15 non-combat skills), does this proposal eliminate those builds and playstyles?  Or phrased another way, is there some new combination of skill enabled by this proposal, or is it only reducing what other players could pick, and your ideal skill picks end up the same as a currently possible combination?

[Grievous69]

I would suggest that every level you get to put 1 point into a combat skill and 1 point into a non-combat skill (anything the officers can't get). This would make you feel like you get stronger personally along with your fleet and probably feel a lot better.

And this is why it's never going to work like that, since that makes for a boring rpg and general decision making process. You ALWAYS have to spend a point in combat, and a point in fleet, no matter how much you dislike flying your own ship, and on the other hand, not focusing on your own ship enough. This system makes those who split points near evenly feel a bit better (the whole point of skills in games is to have a tough choice), but screw over everyone else. And that's a lot of playstyles you shot in the foot.

At this point I need to bookmark threads like these so I can just link them the next time someone gets the same exact flawed idea.

[Wyvern]

And the same people come by and try to shoot this down with the same flawed arguments every time, as if rebalancing skill values and potential character power levels is somehow magically completely impossible and unacceptable.

Yes, something like this is absolutely a good idea. Is it likely to happen? No, the dev has repeatedly said that he likes the system as it is. But separating out combat skills from fleet skills would be very nice.

My personal favorite version of this is the 'flag captain' notion, where your combat skills are just whatever officer is assigned to your flagship. Interestingly, there is a mod that actually implements something like this; there's a pair of special ships you can acquire in the Secrets of the Frontier mod that have an integrated AI core, but don't count as automated ships; you can set one of them as your flagship, and in battle it uses the AI core's skills rather than yours.

[Thaago]

Unless I'm mistaken, wouldn't the 'flag captain' idea be impossible under the proposed leveling mechanic? Or, rather, it would be 'wasting' half of the character's skill points. Builds with all points invested in either personal combat or fleet boosting would both become not a thing, because no matter what the player wants to do, there would be points going into the opposite playstyle.

It is true that balancing fleet vs personal skills would be much easier with a more restricted skill system as is being proposed. Ship vs fleet boosting skills would be decoupled: one branch or the other could be buffed/nerfed to whatever degree makes for fun gameplay because they aren't competing for the same points anymore.

But that's only possible because it is a restricted system that doesn't allow specialization - every captain would by the design of the system be both a captain and an admiral. That's not necessarily a bad thing: restrictions are what define games and make gameplay after all.

Would there need to be 3 branches then? Personal piloting, fleet boosting, and quality of life? Because if the goal of the restrictions is to allow seperate balancing, that gives maximum flexibility. Every player would be a captain, admiral, and logistician instead of some combination therein.

[Wyvern]

Unless I'm mistaken, wouldn't the 'flag captain' idea be impossible under the proposed leveling mechanic? Or, rather, it would be 'wasting' half of the character's skill points. Builds with all points invested in either personal combat or fleet boosting would both become not a thing, because no matter what the player wants to do, there would be points going into the opposite playstyle.

Well, yes, that's obviously a separate design to achieve the same goal of de-coupling captain-type skills (combat skills) from admiral-type skills (non-combat skills).

Would there need to be 3 branches then? Personal piloting, fleet boosting, and quality of life? Because if the goal of the restrictions is to allow seperate balancing, that gives maximum flexibility. Every player would be a captain, admiral, and logistician instead of some combination therein.

I don't think that's needed. In particular, that's not a division that falls into the 'fun trap' where a player who isn't great at piloting their flagship is going to want to lean towards non-combat skills, at which point their flagship performs poorly, which then feeds back into them not gaining skill at piloting and not wanting combat skills.
(Plus, the difference between 'fleet-boosting' and 'quality of life' can get a bit fuzzy, anyway.)

...Honestly, I'd be happy with nearly any mechanism for setting a floor for player combat skills. A max-level player - even one who's decided to go all-in on non-combat skills - should not be worse in battle than a basic level 5 officer.

[Beep Boop]

Honestly, I'm not a massive fan of the entire "skills" concept to begin with. What it functionally means is "X does not work correctly, often to the point of near complete uselessness, unless you take the relevant skill(s)", which means "don't even try to do X". This, in turn, discourages experimentation and variety, pigeonholing the player into a single role that he may not actually like because unless you've played through everything, how would you even know what it is you like? And yet the player ISN'T going to play through everything, because the system fundamentally discourages experimentation and branching out. If I take the Phase Ship skill, I am now essentially pigeonholed into flying phase ships and nothing else because my ability to fly anything else is now crippled. If I don't take the phase ship skill, I'm essentially unable to operate phase ships worth *** because of the penalties not doing so entails. These features may as well just be baked into the base statline of the ships. Others may as well just be ship mods. Heavy Armor + Heavy Armor Skill => Heavier Armor.

[Megas]

...Honestly, I'd be happy with nearly any mechanism for setting a floor for player combat skills. A max-level player - even one who's decided to go all-in on non-combat skills - should not be worse in battle than a basic level 5 officer.

Yes.  Right now, player has to put points in Combat just to have as many skills as a basic officer.  Player can still get - and probably should - get a good fleet, if not going all-in for a specific high-powered hull.  The choice is whether to buff the flagship through Combat or get Industry for QoL/capstone (or maybe more Leadership).

If player has worse skill power than an officer, there is every incentive to put him in a freighter and play the units game with officered ships.  It may be the most optimal way to play in recent releases (can kill five or more Ordos instead of three or four), but I dislike it.  I rather see the return of in-combat autoresolve from the 0.5x Starfarer releases.  At least that gets combat over with in seconds.

Honestly, I'm not a massive fan of the entire "skills" concept to begin with. What it functionally means is "X does not work correctly, often to the point of near complete uselessness, unless you take the relevant skill(s)", which means "don't even try to do X". This, in turn, discourages experimentation and variety, pigeonholing the player into a single role that he may not actually like because unless you've played through everything, how would you even know what it is you like? And yet the player ISN'T going to play through everything, because the system fundamentally discourages experimentation and branching out. If I take the Phase Ship skill, I am now essentially pigeonholed into flying phase ships and nothing else because my ability to fly anything else is now crippled. If I don't take the phase ship skill, I'm essentially unable to operate phase ships worth *** because of the penalties not doing so entails. These features may as well just be baked into the base statline of the ships. Others may as well just be ship mods. Heavy Armor + Heavy Armor Skill => Heavier Armor.

And no story point refund for respec'ing hurts when I am not at late to endgame and able to farm Ordos for story points quickly.

Still, it is not as bad as inflexible officers, where if you change the ship, you probably need to replace the officer, when means firing him, losing all the story points spent on his elite skills, then wasting time grinding until he is max level.  Late in the game, changing ships is easier than changing officers.

[Hiruma Kai]

And the same people come by and try to shoot this down with the same flawed arguments every time, as if rebalancing skill values and potential character power levels is somehow magically completely impossible and unacceptable.

Well, that is why I phrased my response in the form of questions.  If there's an elegant solution to keeping current flexibility versus guiding new players down a particular way to play the game, I'd love to see it.  If its magically impossible, then present the counter example.  And also present the negatives that come along with it, not just the positives.  Explore what the suggestion fully requires for implementation.

A suggestion I've sometimes thought of is just requiring players to have successfully finished all the vanilla missions as a pre-requisite to playing the campaign, as that would force players to learn a number of key concepts which will make them better at combat, and also pilot a ship to progress.  No officers or extra skill bonuses are going to save you there.  The campaign skill system maintains its flexibility, while new players are taught the joys of piloting (whether they want to or not), and a given a reason to take personal combat skills given they see what a lone Paragon can do against entire fleet in player hands, let alone some of the wolf pack scenarios.

Although, if I don't care about flexibility, and only want the best play experience for new players, another option I haven't seen thrown around is eliminating the free skill picking and just let you pick a pre-picked path at the start of the game.  You could have 4 pre-designed characters, getting a specific skill at each level that synergizes on a particular theme.  Ensure players get capstones early for example rather than do something like 3 picks in each tree by level 12.  Make sure they take Target Analysis before Damage Control (if they ever take Damage Control).  Navigation can be the 1st pick for two characters, and Bulk Transport for the other two.  Ensures they get an even mixture of personal and fleet skills as they level up in an "optimal" way. 

Finally to make this all good for veterans, you make free skill picks an advanced option that you unlock at some point for new game (or new game+ if you prefer that parlance), perhaps after finishing the main quest line or reaching max level.  And just to let players try different things, make it a single story point to swap between the 4 pre-made characters once started (with all elite skills pre-paid).

Both these suggestions maintain flexibility for veterans, while introducing new players to the concept of personal piloting as well as good skill builds.  It also prevents a randomly leveled up officer being the flagship officer.

The downsides to both of these suggestions of course, is railroading players into doing something they may not want to do first.  Or at all.  I doubt either suggestion would get much traction.

Yes, something like this is absolutely a good idea.

For some playstyles and some players.  It is not a universally good idea for all players and all playstyles.  The entire skills system and overall difficulty of the game is by definition a compromise.  It can't be all things to all players.  So if you tell me that the way I've played some campaigns and had fun is absolutely the wrong way to play or the wrong difficulty, I'm going to have to disagree.  Admittedly, my having fun likely has different requirements than a brand new player playing the game.  By the same token, the requirements for having fun for that same player after a month of play time might also be different. 

I am more than capable of doing self-imposed challenges to increase my difficulty.  If the assumption is many players are unwilling to explore the parameter space of skills, are the majority going to do self-imposed challenges, or simply consider the game too easy at the end?  What level of difficulty is the right one to pick for the default version of the game?  It is really hard to say as single veteran player.  Which is why I'm interested in players opinions on the difficulty of the game, especially new players.

My personal favorite version of this is the 'flag captain' notion, where your combat skills are just whatever officer is assigned to your flagship. Interestingly, there is a mod that actually implements something like this; there's a pair of special ships you can acquire in the Secrets of the Frontier mod that have an integrated AI core, but don't count as automated ships; you can set one of them as your flagship, and in battle it uses the AI core's skills rather than yours.

I've seen the suggestion, but you I disagree that such a change is absolutely better, and doesn't have downsides.  There are compromises that need to be made to make it work given the current game balance.  So what are the compromises and changes you'd make along with this?  Or as I asked, do consider the game too hard right now and need the increase in power that just a straight addition of this would add?  There are completely self-consistent and valid arguments to be made for this change.  However, self-consistent and valid arguments can be made against it just as well, simply because different people value different things.

I assume your suggestion would not simply slap this ability on top of the current skill system and call it a day, given that leads to things like nine level 6 officers with 3 elite skills with a player piloted triple s-mod Radiant (with elite Missile Specialization and Elite Systems Expertise?) backed up by Combat Drills, Coordinated Maneuvers, Crew Training, Electronic Warfare, Flux Regulation, Phase Coil Tuning.  Essentially a 6 combat, 7 Leadership, 8 Technology build.  That strikes me as significantly more powerful than what I can do right now, with an entire 2 extra capstone talents.  I could also replace the Radiant with the Ziggurat if I preferred to skip Automated ships and grab Industry 5 instead of Tech 8.  Or maybe an Onslaught if I'm being old school.

Or perhaps you would, and simply increase the difficulty of the base game to account for the effective level 21 possible?  Or do you allow only 2 non-combat capstones to reign in the possible synergies?  Reduce the power of skills overall?  Or something I haven't thought of that elegantly reigns in power?

Don't just consider the impacts on the new player learning to play, but how does it impact the new player who can't (perhaps due to physical limitations) or doesn't want to pilot.  How does it impact the grizzled veteran interested in exploring a different way to play?  Perhaps those should take a back seat to the typical new player experience, but I'd suggest they should at least be acknowledged, even if in the end you argue they are lesser impacts worth accepting.

[Cryovolcanic]

A max-level player - even one who's decided to go all-in on non-combat skills - should not be worse in battle than a basic level 5 officer.

Why not? Why shouldn't the player be able to rise to the level of fleet commander without being a strong warrior? History and the modern world are full of examples of people who rose to the top job without being exceptionally skilled as warriors.

In modern day armies, it's possible to rise pretty high without ever participating in front-line combat at any point in your career. In the corporate world, there are plenty of CEOs who are good at operational management and leadership but are mediocre in whatever the company's front-line jobs are (sales, coding, treating patients, whatever).

In Starsector, the player character does not even necessarily belong to a military force. The player can be a corporate person, scion of a rich family, smuggler, or whatever. Smart soldiers don't follow you because you're strong, but because you're smart.

[Wyvern]

A max-level player - even one who's decided to go all-in on non-combat skills - should not be worse in battle than a basic level 5 officer.

Why not? Why shouldn't the player be able to rise to the level of fleet commander without being a strong warrior? History and the modern world are full of examples of people who rose to the top job without being exceptionally skilled as warriors.

Because it's not fun. And because those skills don't need to be yours, necessarily - see the the 'flag officer' notion.

[Aeson]

Why not? Why shouldn't the player be able to rise to the level of fleet commander without being a strong warrior? History and the modern world are full of examples of people who rose to the top job without being exceptionally skilled as warriors.

Because it's not fun.

For you, maybe. I, personally, almost never take so much as a single skill from the Combat tree.

[Alex]

Without rehashing the points that have already been made, I think it's worth mentioning that the new Cybernetic Augmentation skill is sort of what's being asked for here, but working within the system as it is - making Combat points pull double-duty in also improving your fleet.

Honestly, I'm not a massive fan of the entire "skills" concept to begin with. What it functionally means is "X does not work correctly, often to the point of near complete uselessness, unless you take the relevant skill(s)", which means "don't even try to do X". This, in turn, discourages experimentation and variety, pigeonholing the player into a single role that he may not actually like because unless you've played through everything, how would you even know what it is you like? And yet the player ISN'T going to play through everything, because the system fundamentally discourages experimentation and branching out. If I take the Phase Ship skill, I am now essentially pigeonholed into flying phase ships and nothing else because my ability to fly anything else is now crippled. If I don't take the phase ship skill, I'm essentially unable to operate phase ships worth *** because of the penalties not doing so entails. These features may as well just be baked into the base statline of the ships. Others may as well just be ship mods. Heavy Armor + Heavy Armor Skill => Heavier Armor.

(The logic makes sense but at the same time... this is not actually the case at all in the game? You don't need to take any skills to do well, and stuff is designed with the baseline, no-skills level being perfectly functional.

For example, even looking at Phase Coil Tuning - which I think is probably the most extreme swing in power - phase ships are already great without it and more than pull their weight, the skill just takes them to extreme levels, in limited numbers. Nor does taking it "cripple" everything else; other ships would miss out on the effect of just one skill, and flying pure phase ships would generally be a bad idea anyway due to how the skill works (the 40 DP limit), so that's not a good option, let alone something you're pigeonholed into.

And, at the same time, doing different playthroughs to experiment with being more focused on different things also seems like a good thing. I think what you're saying is more talking about doing tons of branching out within a single playthrough, which absolutely isn't the only way to experiment with things.)

[Beep Boop]

(The logic makes sense but at the same time... this is not actually the case at all in the game? You don't need to take any skills to do well, and stuff is designed with the baseline, no-skills level being perfectly functional.

The problem is that since good and bad are relative, the existence of a better thing makes everything else bad. Similarly, perfection is an absolute. It's not perfect if it can be better. And when comparing things, using anything other than a thing's peak performance is intentionally constructing a strawman, which thus destroys the entire argument. You always compare best against best.

And, at the same time, doing different playthroughs to experiment with being more focused on different things also seems like a good thing.

I don't really find this to be the case: Starting an entirely new playthrough would, firstly, result in a different environment rather than testing things against the same cases you're currently in, such that the option to even try the other thing may not even emerge, and secondly, result in repeating a lot of irrelevant things as you now have to regrind your way back to where you were you before just to see anything really new.

If I want to try a thing that I have obtained in the game, throwing out the playthrough and starting over in a playthrough that may not even see me obtain that thing again would defeat the point.

[Serenitis]

... the existence of a better thing makes everything else bad.

That's certainly a unique way of making sure you're never happy with anything.