Big wall of text
250k from a late-game human bounty is not what I call high rewards. That is only enough to replace a cruiser and maybe buy one of the cheaper colony buildings. Loot? Is all of the vendor trash enough to pay for all the supplies and fuel consumed traveling to bounties and back? (I have no idea, but I generally assume that any profit selling such junk, if I can haul it, pays for all of the supplies and fuel I burn up for the round trip.) I generally do not sell weapons aside from the two or three weapon types I almost never use (Thumper, DLMG, maybe one or two more, but even then, I keep a few) because I never know when I may need them as I get more and more ships. AI cores only count when player can farm them from Ordos, which is endgame. Before then, they are almost as rare as colony items. (Money printing from colonies may or may not be online yet. Not for me for at least another five years if I attack Ordos immediately after getting endgame fleet, though I usually start raiding core worlds for blueprints, which is tedious and takes years if I do not want to wipe their worlds off the map through excessive raiding.) XP/SP is good, and player needs to fight eventually to level up his officers. Does not mean I want to jump into a combat when I think I will lose more money replacing ships than I will get from the bounties, at least when the goal of fighting is more money, which is the primary reason for me to fight human bounties.
As for buying a new ship, depends on what the player wants, and if the market does not sell mostly clunkers too. Most smaller human ships are not too hard to buy pristine or one d-mod. (Hope it stays that way, would not return to old releases when buying good stuff was nearly impossible.) Most capitals that are not heavily damaged are not too easy to get without a way to build or order them. However, if I want automated ships, then the only way I get those is to recover them, and they usually have at least two d-mods, often three or more (assuming Remnants; Derelicts are full of d-mods). I would want to Restore them (even with Hull Restoration because it works too slowly after I recover a lot of them - both Derelicts and Remnants). Scrapping them for a new one does not help because replacements I recover from the enemy will be just as damaged. If I want Ziggurat, then scrapping it is not an option because I cannot replace it! (It is one time Hull Restoration is great, Restoring it will cost about two million, but that is a one-time deal akin to using respec to swap s-mods with BotB toggling once or twice.)
Industry is underpowered for combat because there are only two combat skills out of the eight non-capstones (and those skills are not overpowered). Hull Restoration is not good enough as a capstone (it is about as powerful as a mid-tier skill), let alone capstone plus another skill. HR does not block d-mods reliably and repairs are slow enough that I get d-mods faster than they are fixed (mainly by recovering enemy ships), and it still does not remove Special Modifications or similar (so I still need Restore to fix Executor if I really want it pristine). If player has money printing online at endgame, then its recovery features are trumped by Restore and more money, and the only thing left is the CR bonus, which is nice, but not enough to be worth a capstone. (I sometimes think Crew Training may be too strong for tier 1 and should be mid-tier, but definitely not capstone on its own.) I have no idea how strong Derelict Operations is (never used it), but at least it offers something unusual for combat (only other source of DP reduction is a capstone too and competes with meta-fuel BotB, unlike more low-tier CR elsewhere).
As for free going down Industry, I guess it depends on skills taken. Field Repairs is nice until I get more than 240 DP worth of ships, which includes all the civilians, so free repairs get weaker late (because 240 DP combat plus civilians is 300 or more DP). I do like the free CR when recovering enemy ships before throwing them back into battle, but that matters less late. Then I am forced to take another non-combat skill if I want a capstone, and among the choices, I take Industrial Planning, which just puts the player on par with +1 human admins (which the player will get when colonies get big) and cores. IP as a player skill is really lame. It should be a tier 1 skill or buffed somehow. I like Containment Procedures for easy e-burn and extra map range, but +1 to commodities when the best system needs that +1 to meet production demand is more useful to me. (IP would be much less useful if I used cores, but I really dislike the whack-a-mole Pathers game and avoid them at all costs, though I may bite the bullet and play the PK game to solve the Pathers; wished there was another way.) I would trade that tier 3 non-combat convenience skill for another combat skill in a heartbeat if the latter was offered though. Much as I like to use Industry (well, the two combat skills and HR), Industry does not seem worth it late aside from a Derelict Ops build.
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Topic: Is Starsector ready for default Iron Mode? (Read 1486 times)