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One idea to reform the skill system

SystemSystem Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
Just throwing out ideas here. One of the things I've noticed is that there really aren't a lot of points to go around in the new system. It feels like I'm struggling to fill up the places I want, and have nothing left over for "luxuries" like the passive defensive skills, and certainly not ground skills. Why is that? Well I did some math.


In the new system, for space skills only...
Tier 5 skills total cost 47250
Tier 4 skills total cost 37800
Tier 3 skills total cost 23850
Tier 2 skills total cost 18900
Tier 1 skills total cost 6750

Total 134550

To calculate skills on Holodeck, and make it somehow relevant I did some paring down of the skills. I did not count the three team skills, I count 1 tier ship skill at each tier, 2 tier 2 weapon skills, and 2 tier 4 weapon skills.

Why? Because typically people specialize into 1 ship type, and typically torpedoes, beams/cannons, and usually two tier 3 weapon types quantums/phasers. I threw in a T4 weapon types just to represent something of an average and fudge factor. No one uses more than 1 ship type, energy and projectile damage type, so the others effectively do not exist for any given spec.

On Holodeck, space skills only...
Tier 5 skills total cost 31500
Tier 4 skills total cost 32400
Tier 3 skills total cost 24300
Tier 2 skills total cost 21600
Tier 1 skills total cost 6300

Total 116100


The differences, showing the net change on Tribble:

Tier 5 +15750
Tier 4 +5400
Tier 3 -450
Tier 2 -2700
Tier 1 +450

Total net change +18450

Now for sure, there are many reasons not to take every skill in the game, and no one does, of course. But it is clear that on Tribble, despite the lower number of skills, the opportunity cost is higher especially for tier 4 and 5 which are much more expensive.

To me this starts to give a pretty clear idea of why it feels so hard to skill up things on Tribble. Everything really IS more expensive, relative to the available skills in the tree. And this especially explains why tier 5 is such a pain on Tribble. On Holodeck, I find that the Admiral levels are often what lets me fine tune my build in that I can skill up what I want at T5 and put the rest of the points to fill out earlier tiers. This is definitely not possible on Tribble.

Personally I find myself wanting most of the same skills that I have on Holodeck. Many of them were split, some were combined. So to get the same build I ultimately need to spend more, and in fact I can't get the same build because I run out of skill points, even after sacrificing ground skills.

So just looking at the numbers, it seems that T4 and especially T5 just cost too much, which again correlates to how it "feels" on Tribble. So how to fix this? Well I suggest lowering a number of skills down a tier or two. Each skill that drops a tier would free up 1350 skill points. Remove T5 entirely and put it at T4(or make it cost the same as T4) and you free up 9450 skill points, which is about half the difference. If you then take 1 skill from each tier and move it down to the previous tier you get another 5400. That would probably solve most of the issues, and let people actually have some skill points for some other stuff.

That's hardly the only issue i have with the system, but if the costs are less punishing, other issues are easier to tackle.


So a more specific plan:

Move all T5 skills to T4 OR make them cost the same as T4 skills. Move Starship Sensors and Cloaking to T3. Move Warp Core Efficiency to Tier 1, and move Warp core Potential to T2. The big important move is still fixing the T5 costs, but these others are easy to simply move down a tier.

Sensors used to be much easier to skill up than cloaking, but cloaking needs no skill investment to work very well. Sensors are also much worse than they are on Holodeck right now, even if you skill them which is a separate issue, but the cost should be reduced anyway.
Post edited by Unknown User on

Comments

  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited November 2011
    On holodeck Tier 3, 4 and 5 skills all give the same bonuses for 300, 400 and 500 skill points respectively. This in itself is pretty silly.

    On tribble ALL tiers give the same bonuses for 150, 300, 450, 600 and 750 skill points.

    In what world does a skill tree that gives the same bonus for spending 150 points and 750 points make sense?

    Either make all skills cost the same and do away with the whole tier system or make the higher tier skills worth more.

    Failing that read my post

    http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?p=3849845#post3849845
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited November 2011
    My suggestion would be to lower the required cap for Tiers One through Three by a small margin.
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