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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Anubis-class Cruiser (12/20/24)

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Author Topic: [0.97a] Second-in-Command | A full-scale skill system rework  (Read 138546 times)

krisslanza

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Re: [0.97a] Second-in-Command | A full-scale skill system rework
« Reply #420 on: January 18, 2025, 04:22:51 AM »

Come to think of it, with this mod, doesn't this mean the player is now an extremely terrible planetary administrator? Since we only learn Combat skills now, and far as I see, we don't gain the admin skills from leveling up or anything either.

The only player skill from vanilla that affected colonies in .97 is Industrial Planning, which you can very easily find administrators to cover. Yes it means you make less passive income, no you're not "extremely terrible" because you can still manage 2 colonies without a stability penalty problem, most colony value also comes from what you build and install anyway too

Yeah but why would you entrust your capital to someone whose loyalty is entirely on you giving them a paycheck every month?
I forgot we had more skills, but I guess they did rework it to only one. Though its elite version is also +50% maximum value for custom orders or something, so its certainly a loss.
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Agaric

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Re: [0.97a] Second-in-Command | A full-scale skill system rework
« Reply #421 on: January 23, 2025, 05:33:06 AM »

Want to say this is the only mod that I think is a direct upgrade to the vanilla and should be in the base game. I know it won't happen but still.
I think the framework of swappable skill lists is great though I would like to comment on balance a little bit:

Tactical:
I think it would be in a great spot without Full Throttle. Full Throttle imo breaks the game balance making builds with no surplus flux from weapons extremely overpowered. The way I see it range, speed and flux vent of ships are the main differentiators within weight class. No ship can excel in all three categories or it would make other ships obsolete. Full Throttle allows slow and well armed (read lots of weapons and flux vent to fire them from afar) to also be fast, especially combined with Technical's Unlocked Engines.
I suggest reducing zero-flux-boost speed on it instead or reduce it only when 0%>flux>10% keeping the maneuverability as is.

Technical:
10% to flux stats and Unlocked Engines speed boost makes it a mandatory in my runs as I tend to min-max all of my ships. 10% boost pushes most ships to even flux usage/vent which I find optimal for non-flagship (AI-controlled) ships. Reduced shield upkeep and -10% energy flux compounds in that.
Perhaps toning down the base flux bonuses and speed would allow for more specialized buffs for phase ships/energy weapons?

These two officers are really hard to live without imo as they give indiscriminate bonuses to all ships that are on par or even better than more niche skills from other officers

Management:
For me this whole officer hangs on Best of the Best skill which alone makes is worth picking it over the others. One more S-mod means custom-tailored upgrades for every ship, often with powerful S-mod bonus to boot. Honestly no idea how to make the officer more interesting. Perhaps changing it to giving 5/10/15/20 more ordinance points to ships instead while buffing some other skills?

Other officers imo way too specialized for the values of buffs they give.
Logistic officers are great

Sorry if you are not looking for feedback, I just really like this mod and wanted to share my thoughts
« Last Edit: January 23, 2025, 11:31:21 AM by Agaric »
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Shinr

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Re: [0.97a] Second-in-Command | A full-scale skill system rework
« Reply #422 on: January 23, 2025, 08:48:17 AM »

Soft Incompatibility with Content Unlocking Missions.

Completing the Nothing Personal mission unlocks a reward that the player can get in the normally uninteractible Abandoned Research Station in the Tia-Tax'et system, but to get the most out of it the player needs to invest in the Technology skills and/or have AI cores on hand.

Which is not possible with SiC AFAIK, having tried most obvious combinations of skills that were lifted from the old tech tree, getting stuck near the end.
« Last Edit: January 23, 2025, 09:00:20 AM by Shinr »
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Pushover

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Re: [0.97a] Second-in-Command | A full-scale skill system rework
« Reply #423 on: January 23, 2025, 09:13:00 PM »

Want to say this is the only mod that I think is a direct upgrade to the vanilla and should be in the base game. I know it won't happen but still.
I think the framework of swappable skill lists is great though I would like to comment on balance a little bit:

Tactical:
I think it would be in a great spot without Full Throttle. Full Throttle imo breaks the game balance making builds with no surplus flux from weapons extremely overpowered. The way I see it range, speed and flux vent of ships are the main differentiators within weight class. No ship can excel in all three categories or it would make other ships obsolete. Full Throttle allows slow and well armed (read lots of weapons and flux vent to fire them from afar) to also be fast, especially combined with Technical's Unlocked Engines.
I suggest reducing zero-flux-boost speed on it instead or reduce it only when 0%>flux>10% keeping the maneuverability as is.

Technical:
10% to flux stats and Unlocked Engines speed boost makes it a mandatory in my runs as I tend to min-max all of my ships. 10% boost pushes most ships to even flux usage/vent which I find optimal for non-flagship (AI-controlled) ships. Reduced shield upkeep and -10% energy flux compounds in that.
Perhaps toning down the base flux bonuses and speed would allow for more specialized buffs for phase ships/energy weapons?

These two officers are really hard to live without imo as they give indiscriminate bonuses to all ships that are on par or even better than more niche skills from other officers

Management:
For me this whole officer hangs on Best of the Best skill which alone makes is worth picking it over the others. One more S-mod means custom-tailored upgrades for every ship, often with powerful S-mod bonus to boot. Honestly no idea how to make the officer more interesting. Perhaps changing it to giving 5/10/15/20 more ordinance points to ships instead while buffing some other skills?

Other officers imo way too specialized for the values of buffs they give.
Logistic officers are great

Sorry if you are not looking for feedback, I just really like this mod and wanted to share my thoughts
I would agree that this is a fantastic upgrade to the vanilla skill system, and I think it's a lot cooler to be able to specialize in one style of play rather than the 'jack of all trades' feel that you mostly get in vanilla.

I think the strongest skill in Tactical is actually Accelerated Barrels - instead of needing to kite the enemy with Full Throttle, you can just meet them with a massive wall of firepower. Mass Bombardment is even situationally stronger than Full Throttle in missile builds, especially if you can use the ammo regen. All of the higher tier skills are pretty competitive with each other, which is great IMO (Defensive Protocols would be strong in a full low-tech fleet, but is otherwise the worst of the 4).

I find your take on Technical interesting since I think Technical is fairly specific to High Tech. The initial skill is super powerful, but unless you are running high tech ships with high cost shields and lots of energy weapons, or some phase ships, most of the skills are pretty mediocre. Makeshift Drones is nice to allow collection of some automated ships before switching to full Automation, though. Warfare to me is roughly equal to Technical - Stabilized Targeting and Surefire Impact are great for low and midline builds, and Overwhelming Force does a good job replacing the flux from Flux Regulation.

As for Management, both of the capstone skills are amazing - the S-mod is nice, but so is the extra ~40 DP gained if you have officers on all of your combat ships (assuming a 240 DP battle). The initial +15% CR is also incredibly strong, but I feel like the rest of the tree has too much stuff relating to PPT, although I guess it's just leaning towards building an officer corp that all skips Combat Endurance?

I've found the playstyle-specific ones to be incredibly powerful if you lean into the playstyle, although I haven't tried Improvisation or Strikecraft (currently starting a new run where I'm aiming to be carrier focused).
That said, Automation, while powerful, has mostly unexciting skills as you'll invest 2 points for +120 automated points. Magnetic Shielding feels like a waste unless I'm building Solar Shielding into all of my non-automated ships, and Overclock, while good on Remnant ships, feels awkward with many other mods (e.g Dustkeepers or Abyssal enemies from RAT). Wide Range Transmission feels a bit strange as I don't often use AI cores on automated carriers when it's somewhat wasting the combat skills on the carrier.


I have mixed feelings about the Logistical officers. My main issue is that while they are clearly not mandatory to play, it's just annoying to swap around officers - if I'm flying any long distance, I'll want Starfaring, and probably 50% of the reason for that is Navigation to not have to slow down as much for Hyperspace Storms or Nebulas. Similarly, when fighting [ULTRA-REDACTED] or other ships with rare equipment, I always want to have Piracy to increase the drops. However, if I'm in for some major combat, I'll swap over to a 3rd combat officer. Paying the CR penalty to swap in the field often just means waiting for CR to recover, which is not exactly exciting gameplay, and not swapping means you just burn more fuel/spend the time you would be waiting chugging through/skating over hyperspace storms (and then waiting for your CR to recover anyways).

Furthermore, because the logistical officers are quite good at what they do, I almost never want to take a non-combat focused skill on a non-logistical officer, so those skills get ignored. I think I'd prefer if logistical officers had pure buffs for out-of combat, and non-logistical officers had buffs for in-combat.
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Reshy

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Re: [0.97a] Second-in-Command | A full-scale skill system rework
« Reply #424 on: January 25, 2025, 04:54:11 AM »

Bug:  Starfarer's starmapping ability doesn't seem to correctly remove the penalty of using active sensor burst, your fleet still slows down and cannot do any other actions during it (interrupts sustained burn, emergency burn, transverse jump, going dark).

Bug:  Recovered ships don't benefit from any of the "Repair X% damage for free.
« Last Edit: January 26, 2025, 08:54:32 PM by Reshy »
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Zweihänder

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Re: [0.97a] Second-in-Command | A full-scale skill system rework
« Reply #425 on: January 25, 2025, 06:45:08 AM »

Good day, unfortunately your mod doesnt work with lost sector thrones gift which gives you automation points. It would be really nice if they could have worked together.
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Veritas427

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Re: [0.97a] Second-in-Command | A full-scale skill system rework
« Reply #426 on: January 25, 2025, 07:23:56 PM »

Soft Incompatibility with Content Unlocking Missions.

Completing the Nothing Personal mission unlocks a reward that the player can get in the normally uninteractible Abandoned Research Station in the Tia-Tax'et system, but to get the most out of it the player needs to invest in the Technology skills and/or have AI cores on hand.

Which is not possible with SiC AFAIK, having tried most obvious combinations of skills that were lifted from the old tech tree, getting stuck near the end.

Anything mod added that checks for vanilla skills is going to have soft incompatibilities really. Custom starts that add automated points, # of points in a certain skill tree, etc. It'd be nice to have a workaround but most likely it'd need a compatibility patch for specific mods
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ragarak

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Re: [0.97a] Second-in-Command | A full-scale skill system rework
« Reply #427 on: January 27, 2025, 01:45:02 PM »

any way to edit the values for automated ship points?
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cghhj

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Re: [0.97a] Second-in-Command | A full-scale skill system rework
« Reply #428 on: January 30, 2025, 04:32:13 AM »

XO skills not affect ship modules, this might be a problem.
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Lukas04

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Re: [0.97a] Second-in-Command | A full-scale skill system rework
« Reply #429 on: January 30, 2025, 05:22:48 AM »

XO skills not affect ship modules, this might be a problem.

Vanilla (non combat) skills dont either, its the same as there
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Mengyu_Ryougi

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Re: [0.97a] Second-in-Command | A full-scale skill system rework
« Reply #430 on: February 02, 2025, 10:12:54 AM »

Quick Question: Is there still a way to have 2 remaining officer slot within the mod? or it's no longer a thing once you enable this mod?
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Phenir

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Re: [0.97a] Second-in-Command | A full-scale skill system rework
« Reply #431 on: February 02, 2025, 02:38:22 PM »

Quick Question: Is there still a way to have 2 remaining officer slot within the mod? or it's no longer a thing once you enable this mod?
You get extra officer slots as part of leveling up. You don't need to spend skill points or anything, just reach the required level (level 10). BTW, you get the extra officer skill and elite by leveling up as well.
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Mengyu_Ryougi

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Re: [0.97a] Second-in-Command | A full-scale skill system rework
« Reply #432 on: February 03, 2025, 03:55:06 AM »

You get extra officer slots as part of leveling up. You don't need to spend skill points or anything, just reach the required level (level 10). BTW, you get the extra officer skill and elite by leveling up as well.
That good to know, about to start a round with it so thank you. :D
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Davidththird

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Re: [0.97a] Second-in-Command | A full-scale skill system rework
« Reply #433 on: February 03, 2025, 10:04:40 AM »

Deploying a carrier while using the "Redundant Bays" skill from a warfare officer causes starsector to crash to desktop with the error message "Null".

from starsector.log:
Code
java.lang.NullPointerException
at com.fs.starfarer.combat.entities.ship.A.C.getTimeUntilNextReplacement(Unknown Source)
at second_in_command.skills.warfare.ReduntantBaysListener.advance(RedundantBays.kt:135)
at com.fs.starfarer.combat.entities.Ship.advance(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatEngine.advanceInner(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatEngine.advance(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatState.traverse(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.state.AppDriver.begin(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain.main(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher.super(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher$1.run(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745)
Running with
AI Tweaks 1.10.2
Bultach Coalition 1.1.6
Delta Cores 1.0.0
Fleet Size By DP 1.0.2b
LazyLib 2.8b
Leading Pip 1.9.2
LunaLib 1.8.6
MagicLib 1.4.6
Missile and Sundry
Nexerelin 0.11.3b
RAT 2.5.6
Second-in-command 1.2.14
SpeedUp 1.0.1
WhichMod 1.2.0
GraphicsLib 1.9.0
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Shergoth

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Re: [0.97a] Second-in-Command | A full-scale skill system rework
« Reply #434 on: February 04, 2025, 03:08:26 AM »

any way to edit the values for automated ship points?

Would love to know this aswell, I want to do a themed playthrough with only (or mostly) automated ships but the base amount you can get isn't enough really. I tried changing the values but it doesn't actually change anything ingame, so clearly i'm doing something wrong.
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