Items remain equipped and usable even after stat requirements are no longer met.

[Tuidjy]

I am a bit lost here. When a monster hits me with a energy/speed/power/defense/etc... debuff, my ship already slows down, its weapons already stop firing, and it's already really easy to hit.

I do not understand the idea that I need to have an engineer on watch so that my shields can stay up, or a mechanic so that my armor does not evaporate.

I am one hundred percents behind having more active components (like the cloaks which force stealth ships to invest in Helm) and having any damaged component breaking more easily (or even outright) if the watch does not have the right skill.

I would also like to have more significant bonuses from base skill investment (like the Expert, Legendary, whatever gunner) because right now, with the exception of Tactical, there's nothing that stat bonuses give you that components don't do twice as well at half the cost.

But I most certainly don't understand the drive for crippling passive components with unmet stat requirement. You will make crew meaningless, you will have to increase the skill points per level, decrease the hull costs... and for what?

Seriously, what is the effect we are looking for here? If we want to differentiate ship builds, we should be looking into HULLS. Slower hulls, hulls that cannot turn well, hulls that cannot mount armor, hulls that repair automatically, etc...

You cannot stay realistic, and make ships without Engineering, or Tactical, or Helm. If you try to change the rules about passive components, you will create a lot of work, wreck balance for a while, and at the end, you will end up, balance wise, exactly where you started.

[Cryosis]

I do not understand the idea that I need to have an engineer on watch so that my shields can stay up, or a mechanic so that my armor does not evaporate.

While that is true the the mechanic does make "sense" in real life terms, anyone who has played an rpg with items with stat pre-reqs will be used to this. New players won't know it exists as it's not part of a tutorial and there is no visual mechanic that says "hey, you can do this".

I would also like to have more significant bonuses from base skill investment (like the Expert, Legendary, whatever gunner) because right now, with the exception of Tactical, there's nothing that stat bonuses give you that components don't do twice as well at half the cost.

I agree to an extent, they could all use some % scaling instead of flat scaling like gunner/programmer.

Seriously, what is the effect we are looking for here? If we want to differentiate ship builds, we should be looking into HULLS. Slower hulls, hulls that cannot turn well, hulls that cannot mount armor, hulls that repair automatically, etc...

While this is a staple mechanic in other space rpg games, I feel that the stat division in this game differentiates your builds pretty easily. I find that I don't put points in every stat.

If my build doesn't use targeted weapons, I put no points in computers
If my build doesn't use armor, I put no points in structural
Obviously I will need points in tactical and engineering and at least some in helm.

This means the stats/pre-reqs are just unbalanced a little. (There could be more weapons that do not require a high tactical stat to use, (fighters could use engineering, debuffs would use computers,)). This would allow play without 100% needing to put points in tactical.

You cannot stay realistic, and make ships without Engineering, or Tactical, or Helm. If you try to change the rules about passive components, you will create a lot of work, wreck balance for a while, and at the end, you will end up, balance wise, exactly where you started.

I'm not sure what you are trying to say here. It sounds like "and correct me if I'm wrong Shadow" That the current mechanic for being able to use components you do not have the pre-reqs for is a side effect to alleviate other broken gameplay issues with debuffs.

In all fairness I don't have a ship past level 40, so there might be something I'm missing.

[laq]

@Tuidjy & Cryosis

I believe you guys are missing what the original question was

Originally Posted by Cryosis

So I had my green/light slots filled with crew that gave stat bonuses. I died, which killed several of them and I noticed that even though my equipment no longer met the requirements, it would remain equipped and usable.

Is this by design? It seems like this could be easily exploited if you have crew/yellow gear that has huge stat buffs.

Originally Posted by Shadow

It is by design, mostly so when you get debuffed all of your components don't stop working.

Eg Equip X requires 10 helm
my base helm is 7 and i have a crew that gives me +3 helm
base7 + crew3 = 10 total so i can equip item X and do
...
something happens that while i have item X equipped something kills/changes my crew
now base7 + crew0 = 7 i no longer SHOULD be able to equip X
BUT the game currently does not unequip item X
Shadow pointed out this is on purpose to make sure that if something happens to debuff you all your items don't unequip

problem is you can temporary artificially raise stats to equip items and negate requirements

I suggested simply take your (base stat + crew) call it your hard stat
make equip checks use only your hard stat.
make your hard stat + temporary changes from buffs/debuffs call it your soft or liquid stat make all combat mechanics chance to hit dmg etc use your soft stat the end
you now do both things while removing the danger/exploit of the current equip checks

[Cryosis]

laq, yes that would be the fix for it. It has kind of derailed into a discussion of "why change how this works?".

[laq]

Originally Posted by Cryosis

laq, yes that would be the fix for it. It has kind of derailed into a discussion of "why change how this works?".

in it's current state it's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation
between monotonous danger / easy exploit
plus it is currently counter intuitive to almost every other rpg variant people have ever played

edit - added full quote as i really didn't mean anything negative least of all taking you out of context

[Cryosis]

Iaq, you quoted me a little out of context.

Tuidjy is supporting the current mechanics, I was providing counterpoints to his argument.

I would agree it's a damned if you do damned if you don't right now. I was going to list a few things regarding balance but I don't want to derail this again.

[laq]

there is not much nitty gritty to argue about balance on this point (imo) they either fix it or they don't especially with such easy solutions
i guess the "balance" ramifications in single player are just never enough to justify getting things exactly right

however

remember that this game is set to have multi player and I'm assuming pvp which if it were done right now would look terrifyingly bland
I believe the meta would instantly digress into the following
-level to 100 spend 460 of 500 points just to max ship
-spend my remaining whopping 40 points on an extremely thin variety of viable options
-finally finish with this exploit ie ARTIFICIALLY STUFF the best components
you can that will work after breaking it's requirement
-allowing me to spend as much of my overabundant 40 points into
basically the one stat the game has left relevant at this point being tactical...

[Tuidjy]

You have described the way to arrive at about half of the most powerful builds... but this is where the customization begins, not end! You could have 10 ships that are designed the way you describe 460Command/45+ Tactical, and they could have nothing in common beyond that. You could have a one-shotter armed with a Big Bang and half a dozen capacitors, a beam battery, a long range missile platform, a unaimed area-effect ship, etc...

By the way, even if you completely removed any passive components, up to making them break the second you stop meeting the requirements, most of the best ships would STILL be 460 Command/45+ Tactical. This is a problem of the hull design, not the passive/active mechanism, which by the way I think is awesome. (I bet that did not surprise anyone)

As for PvP, I really wonder how that would turn out. In any case, without changes to the existing rules, the best PvP ship would NOT be a 460 Command.

[laq]

hi again
most of what i have said in this forum are not super general statements about the game but about the topic of the forum "certain items remaining equipped and functional when base stats no longer meet minimum requirements" just for ultimate clarity

first your describing "variations"
good multiplayer, specifically PVP needs good "diversity"
variation - same core's with differing specifics
diversity - different core's all similarly viable
right now at best you would get the first; everyone basically the same with different specifics

as you know Tuidjy i agree with you on your overall statements about the game as your one of the few people to actually read my suggestion thread

right now the game has no action component to the combat gameplay
everything is absract rpg. Right now grid turn base would be a better presentation. The top down 2d space flying is MARGINAL and non-impacting

I often don't move in fights (especially while grinding) as with most rpg i only really wanna pick fights i can win quick and easy so i sit there and just click auto kill click auto kill

in my suggestion thread ( though long ) i gave many examples of how another current 2d top down space sim has excellent examples of ways to add the much needed dynamic action components to the movement and the combat.

and in reguards to the specific talks about command and the need for hull variation i quote (vainly) my section on exactly this

Command and Ship equip slots:

I will make no right - wrong statement but I will say this the vanilla system is a huge bottleneck on the possible breadth of strategy your excellent stats and item variation's
should allow

Reasons - the depth to stats and items combinations is asymmetrical witch is awesome. I can be much stronger in x by sacrificing most of y I can stack stats and equips to super specialize
however my ship growth is exactly linear this is very boring in contrast to the wild variation in the strategy that plug into your ship

Simple solution - different ship layouts instead of 3/3/3 -3/3/4-3/4/4/...etc Offer non linear ship diversity in 1 of two forms either make a huge library of different ships
(possibly even by race should your choose) with ship acquisitions requiring X command ,maybe with y other stats,and purchased
OR
Make the layout of your ship a point based system
allowing you to choose how many of what size compartments you want ( this might require adding some extra smaller weapons packages to your excellent item depths )

[svartberg]

Originally Posted by Shadow

It definitely makes sense, but some of the monsters would be really, really dangerous when they debuffed you and everything stopped working.

I think he meant storing multiple variables per skill
• Base Skill level
• + Crew/Component Skill Bonus
• + buffs/debuffs

So a component requirement only checks first two, ignoring and debuffs.
Then if you unequip the needed crew member, the component becomes "deactivated".