Alternative to Tech Points = Skill Points

[alterintel]

Out with Tech Points
In with Skill Points

Instead of basing Tech Points per Entity, or per Ship. I propose they be based per Player and should be called Skill Points instead. When a Player sits in the Captains Chair he has a certain amount of Skill Points that he can choose to apply to a limited number of Chambers. A side effect to this could be Players working together on a single ship to enable more Chambers than would otherwise be allowed by a single Player.

This could also give more purpose to a crew. Players would get "Universal" Skill points that can be applied to any Chamber. NPC Officers would have a very small amount of Skill Points that can only be applied to their field of study such as Mobility, Shields, Jump Drive, Reactors, Cannons, Beams, etc...

Progression of Skill Points for NPC Officers: A Cadet would have O skill points. After being assigned to a Chamber for a short amount of time he would gain a skill point in that Field. The more time he spends assigned to a Chamber in that Field the more skill points he would get. I guess you could call them levels if you wanted to: A Level 15 Reactor Officer. Progression could work off of experience points of a sort, like any number of other RPGs out there. Also Officers wouldn't be limited to just one Field. They could learn as many Fields as you expose them to. While a Experienced Officer may be able to operate multiple Chambers in multiple Fields at once, their progress towards the next level should be limited to one Field at a time.

An option that may prove more interesting: A need for Officers to maintain their skills otherwise they may start to lose experience in a Field they haven't used in a while.


I believe this would result in more advanced ships requiring larger crews to keep them fully functional.
If experience were based on the using of skills as apposed to just being assigned to a Chamber, then this could result in more skirmishes to learn new skills. This mechanic could also make losing crew that much more costly.

 

[therimmer96]

Disagree

It would result in needing to grind to get skills aswell as ships every time you get started.
Would also mean if you join the server to play with a faction, you'll need to grind to get caught up and operate ships properly, rather than it being based on pilot and builder skill.

Also, if for any reason you lose an NPC crew member, or have a new ship with a new crew, you'd need to get them back up to the points required to operate your ship properly again. This means that they'd need to serve on an actual ship in live operations (I'm assuming that a crew member will earn levels and points quicker if the system they're assigned to is actually being used). You wouldn't promote combat between factions because they need to rank up crew members, you'd just make people need to spend time doing fake fights with their friends because not only do they need to grind their own points, they also need to grind their crews points.

The fact that chambers need to physically connect to the reactor to earn use points is also nice, as it adds a new element of ship design, somewhere else that builder skill will help with battles, and provides the option for them being disconnecting in battle (want to stop a ship getting away so easily but don't have inhibs? Attempt to destroy the lines connecting the reactor to the jump system conduits).

This suggestion also removes the hierarchical approach the conduits offer, with low priority systems being last to receive points if you design it that way, and the possibility for less useful systems to not receive any points when using a redundant reactor. This could be re added wtith a node based UI window, but ew ew ew.

You could solve the last 2 with a crew station needing to be be physically connected to the chamber and for the crew to need to be at that station to buff the system.

 

[Dvaren]

Disagree

It would result in needing to grind to get skills aswell as ships every time you get started.
Would also mean if you join the server to play with a faction, you'll need to grind to get caught up and operate ships properly, rather than it being based on pilot and builder skill.

Also, if for any reason you lose an NPC crew member, or have a new ship with a new crew, you'd need to get them back up to the points required to operate your ship properly again. This means that they'd need to serve on an actual ship in live operations (I'm assuming that a crew member will earn levels and points quicker if the system they're assigned to is actually being used). You wouldn't promote combat between factions because they need to rank up crew members, you'd just make people need to spend time doing fake fights with their friends because not only do they need to grind their own points, they also need to grind their crews points.

The fact that chambers need to physically connect to the reactor to earn use points is also nice, as it adds a new element of ship design, somewhere else that builder skill will help with battles, and provides the option for them being disconnecting in battle (want to stop a ship getting away so easily but don't have inhibs? Attempt to destroy the lines connecting the reactor to the jump system conduits).

This suggestion also removes the hierarchical approach the conduits offer, with low priority systems being last to receive points if you design it that way, and the possibility for less useful systems to not receive any points when using a redundant reactor. This could be re added wtith a node based UI window, but ew ew ew.

You could solve the last 2 with a crew station needing to be be physically connected to the chamber and for the crew to need to be at that station to buff the system.

Perhaps being able to purchase different levels of NPC officers, for increasing amounts of coin, would alleviate this. No leveling at all. The pilot would not require grinding as the proposal implied a static amount of skill points applied to the ship when the pilot entered the "chair".

 

[jayman38]

This suggestion seems to improve the position of established factions over new factions or lone-wolf factions.

On the other hand, if the underdog properly farms excess NPCs, they could unexpectedly challenge a much bigger opponent.

Back to the original hand, larger, established factions will probably focus their efforts on maintaining a sizable NPC population to keep all their ships in ship-shape. However, that could be a big maintenance cost, and could be a good sink for faction points or other relatively-precious resources that could otherwise be used to maintain the empire.

Secondary suggestion to add to this one:
In regards to crew shortages, allow the builder to control which chambers fail first or last with a priority list, similar to the priority list for energy-based systems as proposed in the energy update 2.0 proposal.

 

[Seijuro]

The intent of Tech Points is to impose an upper limit of how much/how far you can take your ship, so I disagree with your suggestion on the grounds that it enables the use of more chambers.

 

[alterintel]

If the intent of Tech Points is to impose an upper limit of how much/how far you can take your ship, then I believe we're trying to solve the wrong problem. All this really does is shift the focus from a player controlling one big do it all ship to a player controlling a fleet of multiple specialized ships that can do it all. That might sound like a good thing, but is it really solving a problem?

What's the point of fighting Gigatism anyways? Is it to reduce server strain and make it easier for new players to get started?
How does moving from 1 big player controlled ship to a single player controlling a fleet of medium sized ships solve this problem?

If anything moving from Tech Points to Skill Points can serve to reduce the strain on servers even more by having players invest more time into their individual ships by customizing them with crew instead of just building more of them. With Skill Points and crew, it becomes possible to further condense the power of a small ship and it serves to make a Player's ship more personal with a greater sense of ownership. Now your not just making a ship you're making a team.

The more salient point is what therimmer96 brought up: To paraphrase "Getting a ship to properly operate would require a high level crew." This shouldn't be the case. This proposal is no more limiting than the current Tech Point proposal of limited TP to spend on few chambers. It's been stated that all normal systems such as thrust shields and power will work without TP's. Also a single player should have more than enough Skill Points to spend on a few chambers. If anything Skill Points gives you more options of collaborating with other players on the same ship or recruiting NPC's to make your ship even better.

Secondary suggestion to add to this one:
In regards to crew shortages, allow the builder to control which chambers fail first or last with a priority list, similar to the priority list for energy-based systems as proposed in the energy update 2.0 proposal.

^Exactly This!


Also:

The fact that chambers need to physically connect to the reactor to earn use points is also nice, as it adds a new element of ship design, somewhere else that builder skill will help with battles, and provides the option for them being disconnecting in battle (want to stop a ship getting away so easily but don't have inhibs? Attempt to destroy the lines connecting the reactor to the jump system conduits).

Conduits being disconnected in combat

There seems to be a misconception here. Conduits only matter when you’re building the reactor and its chambers. As soon as you take damage, it will remember that and even if conduits get damaged/disconnected, the disconnected chambers will still work just fine.

It’s why RHP% is there and disables certain chambers if it reaches a RHP % threshold.

Whether it's building the biggest ship you can or building a fleet of as many ships as you can, the only truly limiting factor isn't going to be Tech Points or Skill points, it's going to be resources and time to gather them. All Tech Points or Skill Points really do is add another fun dynamic to the game.