Print

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

[LeetKroo]

Well, they can be considered an endgame investment... "shrug"
So I for one have nothing against mercs. Are they currently needed -> is the bonus oomph they provide needed? No, not at all.

Mercs and officers still stick out compared to weapon, smods, and ships. They're tedious. you don't need perfect build, full smods, and meta ships to beat an ordo/hypershunt either, but at least they're easily swapped. Comms Mercs feel like a bandaid solution. Most minmaxxers just respec the officer skills.

[Mishrak]

Are they an "end game investment"?  At least in their current form I've never interacted with them at all.

My plan for my current playthrough is to use the Officer Management exploit workaround to create officers that are desirable and turn them into mercs so I can exceed the officer limit.  That's how I found this bug.

There's no really practical use for Mercs you get in a station unless you get incredibly lucky.  If Mercs did stay, I'd love to see something like a specific station/hub that has like a Merc recruiting center where they're more centralized or something.  Instead of just roaming around station to station seeing random 4 skill timid Mercs with skills that aren't applicable to anything.

[SCC]

Alex did once express interest in some way of acquiring a large number of mercs at once...

[Dadada]

I meant mercs in response to the 2 posts above the post you responded to, I already gave my 2c on the topic of officers last page.
E: Nvm, I even said mercs in that post. Yeah, officers, especially with the hard limit are a pain, if only the limit applied to officers assigned to ships... "puppy eyes"

Are they an "end game investment"?  At least in their current form I've never interacted with them at all.

I also think I never used mercs and probably never will. ^^

And yeah, I would not mind if mercs get (also) reworked.

[FooF]

I’m torn on this because if there was more direct control over officers, they just become another “weapon” to slot in a ship. My head canon for the development goal for officers was to make a ship feel more powerful/unique and to give it some personality beyond just weapons and stats. However, min/maxing officers doesn’t lead to “unique”, just more powerful and usually a bunch of cookie-cutter clones.

It also strikes me as odd to have an endgame fleet already preconceived at game startup. I mean, I have “themed” runs but never exact fleet compositions from Level 1. So to direct officer paths toward endgame ship types feels like putting the cart before the horse. If I run across a great find early, I tailor officers to that ship and might adjust my strategy. Officers are fluid in that if you didn’t pick an obvious counter-skill (like Ballistic Mastery for a high tech ship), they can work on most ships, albeit not always optimally. But, to each their own when it comes to playstyle.

[Dadada]

There are like half a dozen of armour skills or similar which no mobile, shield tanking high tech ship wants. ^^ And anti synergies like +range with energy weapons mastery. o.O

[SCC]

I’m torn on this because if there was more direct control over officers, they just become another “weapon” to slot in a ship. My head canon for the development goal for officers was to make a ship feel more powerful/unique and to give it some personality beyond just weapons and stats.

I mean, they kind of are an accessory slot already. It indeed would be nice to see officers develop into something more complex. Or into something less cumbersome.

[Mishrak]

I’m torn on this because if there was more direct control over officers, they just become another “weapon” to slot in a ship. My head canon for the development goal for officers was to make a ship feel more powerful/unique and to give it some personality beyond just weapons and stats. However, min/maxing officers doesn’t lead to “unique”, just more powerful and usually a bunch of cookie-cutter clones.

The thing is they already are  just another weapon slot in the ship.  In their current iteration they're nothing more than this and if they don't fit the right stats, they get yeeted and replaced.

It also strikes me as odd to have an endgame fleet already preconceived at game startup. I mean, I have “themed” runs but never exact fleet compositions from Level 1. So to direct officer paths toward endgame ship types feels like putting the cart before the horse. If I run across a great find early, I tailor officers to that ship and might adjust my strategy. Officers are fluid in that if you didn’t pick an obvious counter-skill (like Ballistic Mastery for a high tech ship), they can work on most ships, albeit not always optimally. But, to each their own when it comes to playstyle.

This is mostly a timesaving issue in my case.  I generally have a fairly strong idea so I can build towards it in a reasonably efficient way and I'm not guessing on literally everything as I progress.  It's so time consuming to change officers and grind SP to redo ships I'd rather do it as little as possible.

[Dadada]

It indeed would be nice to see officers develop into something more complex. Or into something less cumbersome.

Both would be nice, but more complex... Idk how without making them a pain? More skills but without the skill lottery? o.O

E: Not exactly related to officers, but I'd like to have top tier (lvl5) skills be more build altering in vanilla to specialize ones fleet more, like big bonus but also a downside.
Like for example a version of wolf pack on steroids which adds 20% speed, acceleration, fire rate to small ships, but your fleet can't use cruisers and up without a huge penalty. Or something which buffs armour bricks but makes everything else slower and blocks access to frigates and Phase Ships... EE: I mean additional fleet wide level 5 skills* to spice up the game. EEE: For the player ofc.

E4: Yeah, I can't think of anything that would make officers more complex without expanding the game. thinking.jpeg

[Megas]

If I need new officers when I change the fleet, I do not want to waste hours training eight new ones to work with the new fleet.  (But I will spend the time to get the officers I need... or dump the fleet and officers for Ziggurat with Omega weapons and solo what I can.)

Officers could be changed to be offered as classes (like scout, sniper, brawler, defender, artillerist) with predetermined set of skills; no random skills.  When officer levels up, he gets his new predetermined skill.  I doubt people would like that, since it would be like shoving pod officers at the player.

[stormysector]

Not a fan of the current officers system either, but I have a little idea, which I think makes sense in real life and it is lore friendly too. So bear with me, please. 

All these skills are based on intelligence, wisdom and experience, right? They are not like in some RPGs dependent on some physical attribute that not everybody can have - needing high strength to wield a heavy sword, high dexterity to properly use a bow, or maybe charisma for trade, stuff like that. Now, in real life, a smart person, with a bit of effort and practice, can learn a lot of stuff, speak several languages, learn all kinds of skills, right? They won't be experts in all of them, but they can be proficient in many of them. And this ties perfectly with our in game officers system - they can learn several skills, but only a few can be elite. So the game's elite skills are the equivalent of my real life experts example - we can be experts in just a few things, but proficient in many more. And officers are supposed to be relative smart, in real life and in game.

With all that said, all we need now in game is just an officers academy type of building. When officers are at max level, we can send them to these academies, pay some credits for their studies, and leave them there for a period of time (6/12 months). We choose a new skill to learn, and replace an old one, but the old skill will remain learned, just not active. When the training period is done, the new skill will be at a basic level (no bonuses), but we'll need to level it up, just like we do now with any skill, in the current system. This way we should be able train them in all the skills we want, but of course, restricted to 5-6 skills active, and 1-3 elite. We should be able to switch between the learned skills somewhat freely (no need to go back to an academy), paying some credits maybe, and some sort of cool down - not as easy as with the AI cores. Of course, Alex should do some sort of balancing.

This officers academy building should probably be restricted to one planet per major faction (Hegemony, Persean League, Tri-Tachyon, Sindrian Diktat, and maybe Independents? I don't know). Not sure if the player should be able to build it. Definitely shouldn't be an industry - I'm thinking something like the Cryosanctum.

[Dadada]

If I need new officers when I change the fleet, I do not want to waste hours training eight new ones to work with the new fleet.

Me neither, but I don't think us pro players need hours... Oh, wait, I forgot about the RNG and you have to find them first, nevermind.

Officers could be changed to be offered as classes (like scout, sniper, brawler, defender, artillerist) with predetermined set of skills; no random skills.  When officer levels up, he gets his new predetermined skill.  I doubt people would like that, since it would be like shoving pod officers at the player.

academy

I am sorry... I really dislike these ideas.

But I hope everyone is in favour of lifting the cap for officers not commanding a vessel.

[Flet]

More officers already costs you more in monthly salaries
Remove the officer cap entirely, make officer management reduce officer and crew monthly salary and place in tier 1
Make it easier to hire new officers. Maybe the capital world of any faction you have commission with, or your own fleet headquarters on a colony, can just give you a list of potential recruits, like 10 a month.

Allow us to change officer portraits while you are at it.

[Dadada]

Officers are far too strong to outright uncap them, I want the cap to stay for max amount of vessels under officer command, but otherwise it should be uncapped so I can lug around as many as I want to make management easier, and if every vessel had an officer, that would alter the game. For example: Less choices of what vessel will get an officer or not if every vessel has one and stuff may (or may not) need rebalancing and so on. I don't think this would be a good change.

Make it easier to hire new officers. Maybe the capital world of any faction you have commission with, or your own fleet headquarters on a colony, can just give you a list of potential recruits, like 10 a month.

I like that. ^^

[Malcolm]

Hello, as someone that just quit the game after a fruitless session of officer hunting, i'd like to pitch in to the discourse.

The officer cap limiting "backbench" officers too makes it very tedious to swap out officers once you decide to switch up fleet composition, and if you get any of the cool actually now good lvl7 officers, if they don't fit your fleet then it's best for you to fire them, which feels quite bad given how long they might have taken to find (also building your optimal fleet is a form of fun, and rarely you build a late game fleet around an rng drop). The possible only issue i see with it is being drowned in officers, but imo that's more of an issue with the UI, and a secondary cap for the "backbench" could mitigate that issue too.

With all that said, all we need now in game is just an officers academy type of building.

I'd say that we already have an industry that could serve that function - military bases and high commands. I'd argue that making officers appear only on (military) worlds, but in greater numbers (especially in high commands) could solve a lot of tedium related to assembling your officer core, and they could also serve as officer training facilities, if you control them / are commissioned by the faction with said military infrastructure. Officer quality is even a part of fleet doctrine, so this would make the game more cohesive.

I'd like to propose that such a training facility wouldn't level your officers, but would let you hire a lvl1 officer with a preset of skills of your choosing that they would unlock while leveling up during combat in your fleet (theory and practice kind-of-deal), of course higher education can be quite expensive, and the amount of skills that they are set in to get can be limited by both price, and your relations with your commissioner (not unlike purchasing ships and marines at military markets).