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Starsector 0.98a is out! (03/27/25)

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Author Topic: Skills should be reworked.  (Read 922 times)

StriderGunship

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Skills should be reworked.
« on: May 17, 2025, 01:18:56 PM »

I think that we shouldn't need to choose between piloting skills and fleet skills, they should have independent skill point pools. Same goes for carrier skills. It forces you to commit to carriers, or not use them in your fleet at all. Phase coil tuning is fine, because you can get a lot of value out of it, so it's okay if you're forced to choose between it and something else (though when you're using a single phase ship like doom or ziggurat, it's becoming less impactful on the battlefield).

Also, DP caps for skills should only count deployed ships instead of the whole fleet.
« Last Edit: May 17, 2025, 01:25:34 PM by StriderGunship »
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SCC

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Re: Skills should be reworked.
« Reply #1 on: May 17, 2025, 02:12:47 PM »

Phase coil tuning is fine, because you can get a lot of value out of it
You can get a lot of value out of combat skills, too. By that measure, they are fine. With fighters I would say it isn't the skills that are underwhelming, but fighters themselves. To make them really good you need to spam a lot of Flashes.

kaoseth

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Re: Skills should be reworked.
« Reply #2 on: May 17, 2025, 02:55:03 PM »

Here's a consolation idea.  Let officers get fleet skills. 
 
Lower the overall caps on all the fleet skills, then have officer skills increase those caps.  So I can have a logistic officer giving multiple industrial track skills.   
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StriderGunship

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Re: Skills should be reworked.
« Reply #3 on: May 17, 2025, 03:37:33 PM »

Phase coil tuning is fine, because you can get a lot of value out of it
You can get a lot of value out of combat skills, too. By that measure, they are fine. With fighters I would say it isn't the skills that are underwhelming, but fighters themselves. To make them really good you need to spam a lot of Flashes.

Ugh, you're here just to flex your videos...

Your flash spam only supports my point - carriers aren't as good unless you commit to them. Yeah, Ziggi and Pegasus are great in terms of value (as well as mind link stuff), but still, you get tired eventually, and it's still more practical to invest into fleet skills.
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prav

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Re: Skills should be reworked.
« Reply #4 on: May 17, 2025, 04:31:49 PM »

With fighters I would say it isn't the skills that are underwhelming

I'd flip it around and say skills are overwhelming. Or one is, anyway - Point Defense's damage boost against fighters is massive. Could stand to be cut to +25% vs fighters tbh.
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Phenir

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Re: Skills should be reworked.
« Reply #5 on: May 17, 2025, 05:11:55 PM »

Phase coil tuning is fine, because you can get a lot of value out of it
You can get a lot of value out of combat skills, too. By that measure, they are fine. With fighters I would say it isn't the skills that are underwhelming, but fighters themselves. To make them really good you need to spam a lot of Flashes.

Ugh, you're here just to flex your videos...

Your flash spam only supports my point - carriers aren't as good unless you commit to them. Yeah, Ziggi and Pegasus are great in terms of value (as well as mind link stuff), but still, you get tired eventually, and it's still more practical to invest into fleet skills.
That's the same guy soloing ordos with retribution (which is/was widely regarded as the weakest capital) or doritos with invictus. It's not just ziggy and pegasus lol.
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Thaago

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Re: Skills should be reworked.
« Reply #6 on: May 17, 2025, 06:14:41 PM »

I am 100% against splitting fleet and personal skills into different tracks/pools. It chops off the builds at both ends of the scale of pilot to admiral while adding nothing.

The fallacy that many new players fall into is that because personal skills only boost 1 ship while fleet skills boost all of them, the fleet skills are way better. This depends completely on the player's pilot skill and the ship they are using, so for them it may even be true! But as players get more experienced, they become better pilots and start using more powerful "playerships" for themselves. Those combat skills go up in value massively, to the point where only the very best fleet skills compete.

As things stand, players can win with pure combat builds, pure admiral builds, and everything in between, which is way way better than a system which forces an even split.
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SCC

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Re: Skills should be reworked.
« Reply #7 on: May 17, 2025, 11:39:26 PM »

Your flash spam only supports my point - carriers aren't as good unless you commit to them.
As I said, they are underwhelming as a whole, not just because they need extreme commitment. There being only 1 good fighter wing is a bad thing.
and it's still more practical to invest into fleet skills.
What do you mean by "more practical"? If I need fewer ships because my flagship is powerful to take on entire fleets on its own, isn't that practical?

I'd flip it around and say skills are overwhelming. Or one is, anyway - Point Defense's damage boost against fighters is massive. Could stand to be cut to +25% vs fighters tbh.
Okay, what about the shroud dwellers and threat? They don't use any combat skills at all.

Phenir

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Re: Skills should be reworked.
« Reply #8 on: May 18, 2025, 06:51:32 AM »

I'd flip it around and say skills are overwhelming. Or one is, anyway - Point Defense's damage boost against fighters is massive. Could stand to be cut to +25% vs fighters tbh.
Okay, what about the shroud dwellers and threat? They don't use any combat skills at all.
Shroud and threat have hidden buffs that are their replacement for officer skills.
Threat have 100% CR, emp resistance, weapon and engine damage resistance and the elite effect of damage control and ignore half of ecm. So you could say every ship has a level 1 or 2 officer.
Shroud is especially ridiculous with this. They have some generic buffs all their stuff gets but then they also have specialized buffs each hull gets. All shroud ships get 100% CR, +200 range, +50 armor for calculations, and ignore half of ecm. Tendrils get -67% flux cost. Eyes get +1200 range, instant shield unfolding, 100% hardflux dissipation while shielded and their weapons cost no flux (the system which controls firing the beam generates flux instead). Maelstroms get +200% range. Maws get +100% energy weapon range and +400% missile range.
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TaLaR

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Re: Skills should be reworked.
« Reply #9 on: May 18, 2025, 01:59:53 PM »

Do Shroud even have damage-able weapons/engines? As far as I could see, they are always either fully operational or stunned (=overloaded). They don't seem to need any time to rotate their turrets either (especially noticeable on Maelstorms).
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Phenir

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Re: Skills should be reworked.
« Reply #10 on: May 18, 2025, 03:16:50 PM »

Do Shroud even have damage-able weapons/engines? As far as I could see, they are always either fully operational or stunned (=overloaded). They don't seem to need any time to rotate their turrets either (especially noticeable on Maelstorms).
Pretty certain you can't disable shroud weapons.
All their turreted weapons have really fast turn rate. Rift lightning is 50, emanation is 120. IR autolance also has 50 turn rate. While nothing turns as fast as emanation, small pd lasers have 100 turn rate. Those two are also always on a 360 turret. However, the maelstrom can only fire one weapon at a time from each weapon group because of some scripting that enables and disables weapons. Eye lasers are on hardpoint and also the eye loses 85% ship turn rate while firing. Tentacle jets are on a 150 forward facing arc.
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TK3600

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Re: Skills should be reworked.
« Reply #11 on: May 18, 2025, 03:47:29 PM »

I notice eye laser stops firing once you crack its 'shield'. Maybe it is just me?
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eert5rty7u8i9i7u6yrewqdef

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Re: Skills should be reworked.
« Reply #12 on: May 18, 2025, 04:03:58 PM »

Do Shroud even have damage-able weapons/engines? As far as I could see, they are always either fully operational or stunned (=overloaded). They don't seem to need any time to rotate their turrets either (especially noticeable on Maelstorms).
Pretty certain you can't disable shroud weapons.
All their turreted weapons have really fast turn rate. Rift lightning is 50, emanation is 120. IR autolance also has 50 turn rate. While nothing turns as fast as emanation, small pd lasers have 100 turn rate. Those two are also always on a 360 turret. However, the maelstrom can only fire one weapon at a time from each weapon group because of some scripting that enables and disables weapons. Eye lasers are on hardpoint and also the eye loses 85% ship turn rate while firing. Tentacle jets are on a 150 forward facing arc.
They aren't effected by EMP or damage. I still have to test my final Nova + Executor fleet against Ordos, however I was able to defeat the Transcendent Dweller (the hardest one in case I'm misremembering its name). Despite being able to win without losses after multiple attempts, a significant portion of my fleet was just hard countered by this fight. The Locust missiles on my Executor and Apogees were worthless, the Sparks on my Herons were also worthless, the Fragments swarms were worthless, the Salamander on my TT Brawlers were worthless, and most importantly the Ion Beam on my Apogees and the EMP from the Abyssal Glares on my Executor were worthless. At no point did any Shrouded dweller lose access to its weapons or engines despite such a large amount of EMP and damage.
Thankfully despite getting three eyes every time I tried to fight them (bad luck), they get distracted by flanking TT Brawlers and Medusas despite the fact that I never allowed them to get into range, and the Apogees were built to shield tank so they could eat one full blast from an eye and be fine.
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Phenir

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Re: Skills should be reworked.
« Reply #13 on: May 18, 2025, 06:49:34 PM »

Shroud just have insanity PD. Maelstroms are all PD and they have tons of range, maw has tons of emanations, even tentacles have a lot of PD with a rift lightning and several emanations. And it all has emp so any fighter that gets tagged is flamed out and useless and probably will crash into a shrouded and blow up anyway.
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SCC

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Re: Skills should be reworked.
« Reply #14 on: May 18, 2025, 10:31:03 PM »

Shroud have only hidden weapons, and these don't take damage. They also have no engines, making it impossible to knock them out. In practice, they are immune to EMP.
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