About Crew Points, and fitting the ship.

[( Tchey )]

After 18h24m16s played and 120 missions done, i really think there is a big problem with Crew Points (CP).

- I feel like i have never enough CP to be competitive with my global level.

- Spending CP to upgrade the ship is a big issue. Cheating, i've found we need 460 CP to max the ship. It needs 68 CP to have a 5/5/5. So, around 14 levels without upgrading anything else. That is to say, none will have a ship with more than 5 or 6 heavy slots at level 100, and certainly only 4 or 5 until higher levels (60+).

- Everything is important (only Computer seems to be out the race, giving only some bonus like radar, attack an so on, which is cool but not as important as the others), it's almost impossible to leave one stat back. So, why having 5 PC to spend, if i have to put something like 1 PC in each stat every level ?

- Weapons are too much Tactic related. It could be very nice to have choice here. Like, missile is tactic, laser is computer, ballistic is both but less ?

- Weapons are too Heavy related. It could be nice to have choice here, with heavy, medium and light possibilities, and also with "light only weapons" viable.

- With a 3/3/3 slots ship, and can't use more than one weapon. Not enough Thruster. Not enough Power. Not enough Shield or Armor. Not enough Energy... So i only have one, and until level 15+ it's quite boring and sad.

[Bluddy]

Originally Posted by ( Tchey )

- I feel like i have never enough CP to be competitive with my global level.

- Spending CP to upgrade the ship is a big issue. Cheating, i've found we need 460 CP to max the ship. It needs 68 CP to have a 5/5/5. So, around 14 levels without upgrading anything else. That is to say, none will have a ship with more than 5 or 6 heavy slots at level 100, and certainly only 4 or 5 until higher levels (60+).

I agree that this is probably a problem, though I'm stuck with far fewer slots so 5/5/5 seems amazing to me right now.

- Everything is important (only Computer seems to be out the race, giving only some bonus like radar, attack an so on, which is cool but not as important as the others), it's almost impossible to leave one stat back. So, why having 5 PC to spend, if i have to put something like 1 PC in each stat every level ?

5 PC is probably too little.

- Weapons are too much Tactic related. It could be very nice to have choice here. Like, missile is tactic, laser is computer, ballistic is both but less ?

Just to explain the mechanics, Tactical corresponds to Strength, Helm to Dexterity, Structural to Vitality, Engineering to Intelligence, and Computers to Spirit. That explains why Computers are not useful -- Spirit is always the stat with least to do. But this is why all weapons are related to Tactical -- it's as if they're weapons that have strength requirements.

Torchlight really revolutionized this system by having each stat affect a different weapon type (more or less -- really it was melee, magic and ranged weapons), and I agree that this would be a really nice way to go here as well, especially as a way to make Computers useful.

Critically though, this game also has Command points which are essential to dump points into. Also, I think that you can't get crew members who enhance your command, while you do get crew members who enhance your other stats. So you always have to dump points into command. So it has another stat which requires (as you noted) many many points. I think it makes sense to increase the points per level.

- With a 3/3/3 slots ship, and can't use more than one weapon. Not enough Thruster. Not enough Power. Not enough Shield or Armor. Not enough Energy... So i only have one, and until level 15+ it's quite boring and sad.

Yeah. On the one hand, it makes for a cool challenge to build a spaceship, but on the other hand, you're not building a cool spaceship -- you're building half a decent spaceship and constantly compromising on near-essential stuff. You get very little room to tweak and experiment. It's not like you have a basic spaceship and now you say "ok which cool stuff am I going to add? lasers and torpedoes and nukes or lasers and black hole bombs and reduced shields?". It's more like you start with a hull and you say "do I really need life support? Do I really need to move around in space?"

What I'm currently thinking is that you really want to have weapon slots, heavy slots, regular slots and crew slots. This way weapons wouldn't compete with basic ship functions except for power draw, which would be quite high for weapons, and crew wouldn't compete with ship items either, because crew will always win.

[Lyranaar]

I agree, the points are scarce. You can keep structure and computer low if you go all out for shields. Else you need great crew or an atmospheric converter (?) that boosts stats but takes a medium slot.

The stats get more hard to distribute as you always want to have some in store to be able to take advantage of some really helpful equipment.

While the chance to redistribute Crew Points wouldn't solve the problem, it would alleviate it quite some in the lower levels I think.

[( Tchey )]

It's not like you have a basic spaceship and now you say "ok which cool stuff am I going to add? lasers and torpedoes and nukes or lasers and black hole bombs and reduced shields?". It's more like you start with a hull and you say "do I really need life support? Do I really need to move around in space?"

Yep ! You can't go with "fun", only go with "efficiency". And even, it's only "primary efficiency". Yeah, right, this message is almost useless.

[Sendrien]

A quick idea on how to make computers more useful. Since so many complain about Fog of War, why not simply make computers increase Radar as well as Attack? Most people find that Fog of War is annoying, and this would give people a reason to add points in Computer.

In fact, I think ALL stats should have two elements being improved, to make them more useful, although improvements on the second element should be smaller. Here are some suggestions with numerical examples:

Tactical - Damage + Crit Rate (cap at +100%, where +100% = twice as likely)
Helm - Defense + Max Speed (cap at +50)
Structural - Structure + Armor Regen (cap at +1) + Structure Regen (cap at +1)
Engineering - Energy + Energy Regen (cap at +10)
Computers - Attack + Radar (cap at +300)

And agreed with the original poster, definitely need more CPs!!

[Bluddy]

Originally Posted by Sendrien

A quick idea on how to make computers more useful. Since so many complain about Fog of War, why not simply make computers increase Radar as well as Attack? Most people find that Fog of War is annoying, and this would give people a reason to add points in Computer.

This idea was raised in the fog of war thread, and the reason I'm not enthusiastic about it is that it makes a usability problem into a user problem. Fog of war needs to be fixed -- either planets need to show right away, or the fog of war needs to be easily clearable. Asking the user to invest points to fix it is not a solution IMO.