Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[AdamLegend]

Can we get a difficulty option for LunaLib for the scaling of enemy fleet executive officers?

Not sure if ill add full scaling, but i could add a preconfigurations for easier/base/harder.
Are you asking because you want them less strong or stronger?

Less strong

[SpaceDrake]

No to the part of converting that bug to an optional toggle, someone else already asked on discord, and i also considered it, but id rather avoid such a sudden cut off of skills in general.

On the other suggestion, sounds fair enough, i can add those toggles. Personaly i just used this approach as i use nex skip story config, which i think gives the skill anyways (That or because i always picked navigation first anyways)

Fair and fair, tbh. The first suggestion was kind of half a joke - I do think it could make for a cool "hard mode" toggle, but I can also understand it being too harsh.

And yeah, I kind of figured that was why you had set it up the way you had (and yes, Nex's story skip gives you the abilities anyway) but there are both filthy story-players like myself :V and I wanted to bring it up just because being able to toggle not having the actives at the start would bring the mod a little closer to "vanilla parity" for starting strength. So it'd be a nice option to have!

[SpadeDraco]

This absolutely blows the vanilla system out of the water. I do however have a couple major criticisms. (Note: I'm only using the vanilla game balance as a reference for these. Content adding mods are not being considered)

1. The "Support" line is problematic. The fact that all of the carrier skills are condensed into a single officer type encourages carrier monofleets and said skills combo together on a carrier monofleet in an absolutely overwhelming way. The bonuses to fighters either need to be toned down or spread among multiple officer types.

2. Low Tech fleets have been pretty badly neglected. The only line that armor focused kinetic ships really benefit from is Tactical. The issue is that Tactical boosts a little bit of everything and the benefits synergize decently with the specialized lines. However there is no specialized fleetwide line that really boosts any of the qualities Low Tech ships rely on (range, armor, specialized kinetic/HE damage).

and finally

3. 'Management' is kinda mandatory. Not sure there's a whole lot you can actually do about this. It's more an issue of officers being really important and 'Leadership' in the base game being basically mandatory. As close to a 1/1 lift of the leadership skill line from vanilla 'Management' has just sort of inherited this status.

[Lukas04]

This absolutely blows the vanilla system out of the water. I do however have a couple major criticisms. (Note: I'm only using the vanilla game balance as a reference for these. Content adding mods are not being considered)

1. The "Support" line is problematic. The fact that all of the carrier skills are condensed into a single officer type encourages carrier monofleets and said skills combo together on a carrier monofleet in an absolutely overwhelming way. The bonuses to fighters either need to be toned down or spread among multiple officer types.

2. Low Tech fleets have been pretty badly neglected. The only line that armor focused kinetic ships really benefit from is Tactical. The issue is that Tactical boosts a little bit of everything and the benefits synergize decently with the specialized lines. However there is no specialized fleetwide line that really boosts any of the qualities Low Tech ships rely on (range, armor, specialized kinetic/HE damage).

and finally

3. 'Management' is kinda mandatory. Not sure there's a whole lot you can actually do about this. It's more an issue of officers being really important and 'Leadership' in the base game being basically mandatory. As close to a 1/1 lift of the leadership skill line from vanilla 'Management' has just sort of inherited this status.

1. I get your point, but there are multiple types of such aptitudes in the mod. Both Smallcraft & Automation fall under the same umbrella. Since those are always only one slot, id say despite it being a whole aptitude focused on it, it still gives you the room to decide how to fit out the rest of your fleet. You could go for a mono-build, which may be the most optimal, but i think most people will be fine with only using, like, "50%" of its affect by not just using carriers. However i agree that other trees need more mild sources of buffs, its a general theme that i still work on.

2. Cant say much more other than that i am still working on aptitudes, which just takes time, cant hit out 40 skills in a day. Next up i am working on the Improvision aptitude, which is dmods & general low-quality deployment

3. Management has been nerfed to no longer have +2 Officers on Crew Training in a recent patch, il probably also nerf the Authority skill. I think most other aptitudes are competitive enough after the change. Also, i am considering adding some buffs on level up, to fill the slots where you dont gain skillpoints, and adding officer slots & elite levels will be part of those, which should negate the need a bit.

[MarDolphin]

I think "Piracy" might not be useful. Why "provisional replacements" cant reduce dp?

[Lukas04]

I think "Piracy" might not be useful. Why "provisional replacements" cant reduce dp?

Because it is a logistical aptitude. The few combat skills it has are just a bonus.
Piracy is pretty decent as 70% more salvage from battles and a 40% higher chance for weapons to drop is really good.
It doesnt reduce the maintenance costs as much as Starfaring, but it makes it much easier to do fights back-to-back.

A skill with dmods reducing deployment costs will be in the tree i just mentioned a post back.

[MarDolphin]

I think "Piracy" might not be useful. Why "provisional replacements" cant reduce dp?

Because it is a logistical aptitude. The few combat skills it has are just a bonus.
Piracy is pretty decent as 70% more salvage from battles and a 40% higher chance for weapons to drop is really good.
It doesnt reduce the maintenance costs as much as Starfaring, but it makes it much easier to do fights back-to-back.

A skill with dmods reducing deployment costs will be in the tree i just mentioned a post back.

Thank you! That sounds great.

[Keybindet]

I think "Piracy" might not be useful. Why "provisional replacements" cant reduce dp?

Because it is a logistical aptitude. The few combat skills it has are just a bonus.
Piracy is pretty decent as 70% more salvage from battles and a 40% higher chance for weapons to drop is really good.
It doesnt reduce the maintenance costs as much as Starfaring, but it makes it much easier to do fights back-to-back.

A skill with dmods reducing deployment costs will be in the tree i just mentioned a post back.

Thank you! That sounds great.

I think piracy if alright as you can swap it anttime you need raid go stelthy or get some mor redacted weapons.
I love ths mode and want to see trees for cruisers or capitals fleets in the future.

[Psiyon]

Wanted to briefly say that I'm thrilled this mod exists. I've fantasized about a similar system in the past, but never bother to attempt it. This definitely fulfills the dream.

I've only played with it for a few hours now, but I'd like to provide a few bits of feedback.

1. Echoing what has already been said, I do agree with the sentiment that some aptitudes are too laser-focused on certain areas ("Support," "Small Craft," and "Automation," as you've stated). Sounds like from your earlier response that you're considering some ways to address this, and I think that's the right move. I'm unopposed to the concept of a specific playstyle each having an "optimal" aptitude for players who want to go all-in on something (carriers only, mass frigates, automated ships, etc), but I don't think said aptitudes should horde all of the relevant skills. Spreading things out a *bit* more would probably foster some more interesting builds and prevent situations where players lock themselves into a specific set of XOs for the whole run.

2. I'm concerned about the aptitudes with skills that that modify hard limits: s-mod count, officer limit, flux caps/vents, etc. These were fine(ish) when they were attached to the player: speaking for myself, I'd never even reassign/swap those skills as they were not only powerful, but also a hassle to change. SiC seems to be a lot more accommodating to the idea of swapping skills/XOs more regularly than a player would reassign their skills in vanilla (which is a great concept). So, if I pick a skill for an XO that allows +1 s-mod -- yes, that skill is fantastic, but now it's also a pain to remove that XO because, after enough time, I've probably built my whole fleet around that one skill.

Personally, I'd prefer any skills that adjust hard limits to exist on the player's skill tree rather than an XO's. Or, maybe a hot take: those limit-adjusting skills can just be removed entirely. 3 s-mods per ship is insanely good. With the power that 3 leveled-up XOs give to a fleet, more s-mods just isn't needed. Though, I'd still like some way to field up to ~10 officers... if it were me, I'd probably just set the limit at 10 and call it a day. Officers are just too good and interesting mechanics-wise for me to not immediately choose to go all-in on them.


Thanks for all your work in creating this; SiC is a huge breath of fresh air. While I appreciate and respect all the effort that Alex has put into the vanilla skill system, no iteration of the base game's approach has really "clicked" for me as well as SiC has. I may toss some more thoughts your way as I go through my current playthrough.

[Lukas04]

Wanted to briefly say that I'm thrilled this mod exists. I've fantasized about a similar system in the past, but never bother to attempt it. This definitely fulfills the dream.

I've only played with it for a few hours now, but I'd like to provide a few bits of feedback.

1.Echoing what has already been said, I do agree with the sentiment that some aptitudes are too laser-focused on certain areas ("Support," "Small Craft," and "Automation," as you've stated). Sounds like from your earlier response that you're considering some ways to address this, and I think that's the right move. I'm unopposed to the concept of a specific playstyle each having an "optimal" aptitude for players who want to go all-in on something (carriers only, mass frigates, automated ships, etc), but I don't think said aptitudes should horde all of the relevant skills. Spreading things out a *bit* more would probably foster some more interesting builds and prevent situations where players lock themselves into a specific set of XOs for the whole run.

2. I'm concerned about the aptitudes with skills that that modify hard limits: s-mod count, officer limit, flux caps/vents, etc. These were fine(ish) when they were attached to the player: speaking for myself, I'd never even reassign/swap those skills as they were not only powerful, but also a hassle to change. SiC seems to be a lot more accommodating to the idea of swapping skills/XOs more regularly than a player would reassign their skills in vanilla (which is a great concept). So, if I pick a skill for an XO that allows +1 s-mod -- yes, that skill is fantastic, but now it's also a pain to remove that XO because, after enough time, I've probably built my whole fleet around that one skill.

Personally, I'd prefer any skills that adjust hard limits to exist on the player's skill tree rather than an XO's. Or, maybe a hot take: those limit-adjusting skills can just be removed entirely. 3 s-mods per ship is insanely good. With the power that 3 leveled-up XOs give to a fleet, more s-mods just isn't needed. Though, I'd still like some way to field up to ~10 officers... if it were me, I'd probably just set the limit at 10 and call it a day. Officers are just too good and interesting mechanics-wise for me to not immediately choose to go all-in on them.


Thanks for all your work in creating this; SiC is a huge breath of fresh air. While I appreciate and respect all the effort that Alex has put into the vanilla skill system, no iteration of the base game's approach has really "clicked" for me as well as SiC has. I may toss some more thoughts your way as I go through my current playthrough.

1.
Yeah as mentioned, most of it is the result of just not being done with the mod yet. I do like having some rather focused aptitudes, since they are still just one piece of the puzzle, and those are also easier to come up with to be honest. Next aptitude im working on is "Improvision", which is also rather focused, on dmods in this case, but after that i wanna come up with atleast 2-3 more "broad" aptitudes.

Tactical & Technical pretty much go in to the direction that i want to go with the next ones aswell. The idea is that you essentialy have some aptitudes you can use as a defining feature, and then synergise with other more general aptitudes, or pick another very specific one if that fits what you wanna be going with. Combining the more generic aptitudes with other generic aptitudes would also allow you to have more balanced fleet builds. Worth noting that i dont plan to add multiple focused aptitudes that do the same job, and if i do, those would be blocked from being used with eachother.

2.
Understandable, and it is part of my design ethos to avoid such skills when possible. This is why those hard limits stats are pretty much almost only available in Management, aside from Limit Breaker in Automation and as you mentioned Flux Regulation. I did not want to remove those skills, as they are iconic vanilla effects, but since i already figured that they could get in the way of fun, im not really planning to do anymore of the same kind.

At some point im planning to add some "Level up" effects, mostly to fill out levels where you dont get a skillpoint. Those would include things like

• Extra XO XP Gain
• +1/2 Officers in Fleet
• +1/2 Officer levels
• +1 Officer Elites

Using those i could replace some of the current "permanent" effects and give Management some new ones, still officer related, just more fitting to the system. However i think il keep "Best of the Best" as it is, as i think i did a good job at not making that one inconvenient (The inactive s-mods just reactivate when you re-assign the officer).


Also glad your liking it! In general im quite happy with the reception so far. 

[TK3600]

Great mod idea!

[Psiyon]

2.
Understandable, and it is part of my design ethos to avoid such skills when possible. This is why those hard limits stats are pretty much almost only available in Management, aside from Limit Breaker in Automation and as you mentioned Flux Regulation. I did not want to remove those skills, as they are iconic vanilla effects, but since i already figured that they could get in the way of fun, im not really planning to do anymore of the same kind.

At some point im planning to add some "Level up" effects, mostly to fill out levels where you dont get a skillpoint. Those would include things like

• Extra XO XP Gain
• +1/2 Officers in Fleet
• +1/2 Officer levels
• +1 Officer Elites

Using those i could replace some of the current "permanent" effects and give Management some new ones, still officer related, just more fitting to the system. However i think il keep "Best of the Best" as it is, as i think i did a good job at not making that one inconvenient (The inactive s-mods just reactivate when you re-assign the officer).

Awarding permanent effects on player level-up is a good solution; I agree that it'd help with the "in-between" levels that don't give skill points.

I wasn't properly considering that the officer limit increases and Best of the Best were both in the management aptitude... that does make any hard-limit changes less severe. I'll have to give Best of the Best a shot when I've got enough XP to pick it and I'll see how swapping out the management XO goes.

[HandfulStroker]

Officer management isn't giving the 2+ officers 

[Phenir]

Officer management isn't giving the 2+ officers 

There was a version in which many skills did nothing, are you on the latest version?

[Tranquility]

Been playing with this mod for a few days already, and I do have to say it is, as of now, an excellent mod with even greater potential. While I don't have anything against the vanilla skill tree right now, I do like being able to play around with a different skill tree iteration and optimizing around that (not to mention fighting fleets using that same system too; I appreciate that aspect too), so I can't wait to see how SiC will develop. With that in mind, I do have a few thoughts I'd like to mention for now:

• Is there, or will there be, a configurable, faction-specific weighting for XOs, similar to how, in vanilla, each faction has access to a limited selection of fleetwide skills? It would make a lot of thematic sense having, for example, the Hegemony favor Management and Tactical XOs, or Tri-Tachyon specalizing in Technical XOs - and, in reverse, it would be weird seeing Hegemony and LC fleets run Piracy XOs. Not only that, I imagine this would also be of interest to modded factions that want to tailor which fleetwide skills their typical fleets get.
  
  On a related note, I think a few of the scripted vanilla fleets, like the Ziggurat, Hypershunt Omegas, and the Usurpers Diktat fleets, should probably have consistent, non-random XOs - especially since, right now, Caden has actually-competent XOs, which does not fit his characterization in the vanilla story completely makes sense for such an outstanding Lion's Guard loyalist!
  
  
• For the Continuous Repairs skill, would it be possible to make the repair threshold lower for smaller ship sizes, similar to how it's done for the vanilla Hull Restoration skill? It can feel bad having frigates and destroyers, which tend to die more often in big battles and are also cheaper to replace anyways, require the same 300 DP threshold to repair as cruisers or capitals, both of which are generally more expensive to restore and, thus, is the main incentive for running a non-combat XO. (Also, I noticed that, unlike Hull Restoration, Continuous Repairs works on mothballed ships too, which seems a little weird but, given the context, is probably fine since you have to expend extra fuel and/or burn speed carrying such ships around.)
  
  
• Wide-Ranged Transmission feels way too powerful to be a mid-tier Automation skill, especially since you can always give drone bombers Missile Specialization + Target Analysis, which alone makes for an incredibly insane synergy that actually makes Support's Barrage skill completely detrimental (since you already get extra missile ammo from MS, and the damage malus hurts bombers, especially the Flash, a lot). Even with Scintilla and Flash as the only automated carrier/bomber combo in vanilla, I doubt that anything else, even non-automated carrier spam, can hold up to Scintilla/Flash spam with WRT - and I'm not even considering mods that include other automated carriers and automated bombers/fighters. I don't think it'll hurt to move WRT to the final tier, so you'd have to choose between a general pick, a specialized carrier pick, or a player-focused pick. (Also, it's not like Limit Breaker synergizes that well with WRT, since fighters only get at most 4 skills; at best, it'd save some SPs from not needing to integrate Gamma Cores. At worst, it'd probably hurt players who want both WRT and Neural Junction, but IDK since Technical XO has Neural Link as another option for piloting auto-ships)
  

While I probably have more to say, I'm really just waiting for the Improvision XO to come out so I can do some Derelict Operations spam once again - or at least not care about having D-Mods on my ships. Can't wait to see what new skills are coming out for that!