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[Pushover]

Also, if you look at the number of PMCs (Private Military Companies) in operation today, the ratio is apparently 10 military personel to 1 PMC personel these days. While a bunch of PMCs probably doesn't have the hardware than real miltaries have, if all the companies that produced military hardware banded together, they could get a decent force together, given enough money. Probably not large enough to beat the US military, but probably an army larger than many countries.

[Unfolder]

I disagree with you completely here. History is absolutely full of examples of commercial empires kicking the ever loving crap out of their impoverished military brethren. And if there was piracy and lawlessness in the US on the same scale as in Starsector, you bet the paper companies would buy standing mercenary forces to defend their fluffy, fluffy toilet paper!

To answer your question about boeing et al: absolutely they could, because they have enough money to hire a thousand battalions of mercenaries (Not kidding here - those companies combined have more money than most countries)! And those mercenaries have the skills to defeat the marines, even if the companies don't. Which, when you think about it, is exactly what you do in Starsector. You hire elite crew to man your ships - the crew you've had since forever won't have leveled up from trading. With regards to East India Company Ships: you're entire argument is backwards. The British Navy was as powerful as it was only because the East India Company made the country stinking rich in the first place.

Okay...

What I do think is odd is that by trading you can suddenly become a master of technology and combat tactics. But then again, thats the price we pay for RPG elements that are not just 'level what you use', which have their own set of problems. Officers would be a fix: money can hire people who have skills, even if the boss doesn't have them.

Yes!

To go to the galleon thing: yes a trade nation can produce and field hundreds of man of wars funded by thousands of trade galleons: that is related to but sort of misses my point as well. Just because I can BUY a ship and crew doesn't mean I can FIELD a ship and TRAIN a crew because ultimately I am galloeon master and not a master and commander which are two completely different things...kind of like the difference between a internal combustion engineer and a formula one racer. You mention how great britain's fleet was made possible, yes it was made possible but the correlation was not one-to-one or cause and effect by any means. The british were able to afford galleons because their navy was so ruthlessly effective and blockading, establishing ports and blowing up the other navies. Same thing with Rome, the economy funded and trained the troops but ultimately the troops won because they were barbarously cruel and extremely experienced AT COMBAT, not trading.

Right now in Starsector, you can become a master fencer by selling swords, there needs to be a dichtomy between "industry" skill and "combat" skill learning. I mean really, you dump toilet paper on jangala, and auddenly-master missile engineer---what???

[Lucian Greymark]

I think that if starsector did not have a 'pilot your flagship' thing then we could just write this off as you commanding your fleet and leveling up skills is just you buying/training officers/engineers or have them learn new things, which would be fine and dandy.

But you CAN pilot a ship in starsector, meaning it is YOUR skills being used to pilot these ships, especially the ones which only affect the ship you command. In this case we have to make a distinction between the player hiring competent people off the money of trade, and becoming, inexplicably, a competent person through the auspices of trade. The first is fine, the second is not.

[Pushover]

Even so, if you want to complain about how unrealistic it is to gain combat skills, look at what the combat skills do in the first place. How does years of experience fighting allow your guns to fire harder, such that the projectile fires faster? How are your missiles faster and more maneuverable, and not the rest of your fleet's? How can you, as a single person, learn to repair a battleship in the middle of combat? The skills themselves provide unrealistic bonuses. If these are YOUR skills, then how can they have such an effect?

[Lucian Greymark]

It's a fair point, the issue is that it's not transferable to the situation. We're talking about a universe we don't fully understand, perhaps there are neural links that allow the captain of a ship to directly interface with it and modify it at an operating level? Who knows what the answer could be to WHY the skills do what they do, what we do know is that some of them are applied directly to a single ship, that your character captains, and some are fleet wide. There's a difference there that implies that the skills are of a personal nature and couldn't simply have been acquired through the hiring of mercenaries or specialists.

[Pushover]

If there were neural links, couldn't you just purchase them? Now you can justify your combat-through-toilet-paper skills.

[Lucian Greymark]

I imagine you would have to purchase the links, i couldn't see them being given out for free, but how exactly would you know how to optimize your ship's systems without ever having been in combat? You could argue that someone sufficiently rich could potentially buy the upgrades to GIVE them-self the experience, but if that were the case we'd have modular purchasable upgrades instead of an EXPERIENCE bar.

[Pushover]

My point is, any time you can justify why combat skills don't make sense, it's possible to justify why they do make sense. Plus, I still can't see a single person generating hull repairs of around 100+ hull/second as part of a 500 man crew on an Onslaught.

The alternative is to have a skilling system like The Elder Scrolls, where doing things grants you XP and skills in the area of doing those things, so shooting missiles and hitting things would improve your missile skills, for example. However, that takes away some of the flexibility in allowing you to choose how to play the game ('you mean I have to repair my ships a billion times to improve my repair skills?')

On the other hand, you are already playing a 2D space game where ships have a top speed. Are character skills really the tipping point?

[Lucian Greymark]

I thing somewhere in the middle would be good. We already have categories for the skills, combat, tech, leadership, industry, doing things that fall under those headings should give xp towards leveling up the category, then your total level gives you points to actually increase the skills themselves as you choose.

[Megas]

I do not mind the current system of XP equals XP regardless of source.  It is gamey, but this is a game.  It helps player to diversify on demand, rather than grind feebly at a new skill the player is hopeless with, if he tries to break out of his caste.

I wish combat was more rewarding with XP than it is now.

[Megas]

If we're not supposed to try to get higher than level 50

This is one reason why I prefer a hard cap.

If it is theoretically possible to get much higher than soft cap, I will try to grind as many levels as I think I can (on my first playthrough), especially if I think my character is not finished after reaching soft cap.  I prefer to stick with one superpowered character than play with several different but weak characters.  I strive for perfection, not diversity.

Before 0.65, my soft cap was in the upper-30's.  Now, it is probably in the low-40's if I stick to combat only.  If I exploit trade, then I can probably reach 70 in a month.

Even at level 74, with 39 AP, I do not have enough SP for everything.  I need to choose between heavy armor, faster repairs, half crew requirements, extra damage to armor and shields, or Gunnery Implants 10.  This is for the current set of skills, with one missing Industry aptitude and three incomplete skill aptitudes.

Bounty fleets have all max Combat skills, a big fleet, and hullmods cherry-picked from Technology.  They are equivalent to level 50-60 characters.

[Taizo Puckett]

Two ideas on how to limit excessive stockpiles use.

1. Goods expiration. It can be applied to most traded goods - food, supplies and fuel, and possibly to some others. Food expires quickest of all. Expired fuel can pose a risk of accidents (leakage, explosion etc.), destroying other cargo and crew in warehouse.
2. Additional expenses. Add regular warehousing fees, maybe proportional to cargo space used. Or make every 1000 cargo space leased cost 5000 credits.
   
Any of the two however, can make the gameplay overcomplicated and drift from space combat toward economic sim. Expiration could be hard to implement also.

[SafariJohn]

Storing goods is an economy unto itself IRL.

[Megas]

The description of food says it lasts no less than five "cycles" (i.e., years).  I would be more worried about my fresh bonus XP expiring than the commodity itself.  (I trade mostly for XP.)

P.S. If trade did not yield XP, I would trade very little.

[Unfolder]

Ugh, I've said it enough, but I just want to make the point one last time cause I'm not quite getting through: my problem with trading/combat  XP has NOTHING to do with starsector "realism" nothing in starsector is remotely realistic it's all psuedoscience garbage. Nor does it have to do with being "gamey" it's a game after all. The problem is the game is broken. Right now, to "win" starsector like a "pro" you

1. Immediately begin trading, avoiding every fight,

2. Dump into food/resource crises everywhere with increasingly faster and larger fleets gaining increasingly larger chunks of money/XP/good will

3. Buy everything you want along the way: crew, ships, weapons, max out all skills besides the useless ones

4. Max out and either quit the game or just wail on any enemy you want without difficultly because congrats you are the toilet paper lord of destruction

Basically, based on XP and credit incentives, there is zero reason to ever fight in starsector, zero, no reason whatsoever to ever shoot anyone, when viewed in a time/effort versus reward ratio. In fact, from an "economic" standpoint, every battle fought is a battle lost because it's time that could have been spent trading with X10 the profit and XP for 1/10th the effort and time, and more reliable goodwill bonsuses probably. Fighting is entirely voluntary, which is dumb and ridiculous, Alex did not invent a trading simulator (because, quite frankly, the "trading" in starsector is just a very tedious mini game, at best) he invented a pew pew spaceship killer game. SO WHY NO INCENTIVE TO FIGHT???

I don't think it should be possible to gain XP from trading. Good will and credits, sure, definitely. But XP farming from trading breaks the incentives of the game horribly. The fact that trading is the only way to power level to the top is a separate (also broken) issue and irrelevant to my point.