Incredibly easy to exploit skill levelling. Not really a bug

[Doom-Slayer]

So I bought this game not long ago and am absolutely loving it. But Ive found that its extremely easy to exploit your crews skill leveling to the point where it is possible to level your Captain, Shields, Weapons AND Engines crew member to max level(level 2) within the first sector.

Weapons skill goes up 1 point every time you fire, shields go up every recharge and pilot/engine goes up for every miss your opponents weapons make.

With the Engi ship, if you are lucky enough to find a shieldless automated ship, all you do is aim your Ion at their weapons and perma stun them. While you do this you manually turn your shields off then on again, wait for recharge and repeat. This method lets you fully level your crews weapons and shields skills within the very first battle.

Getting maxed out pilot and engines is also easy in the same ship. Just get a defense drone and upgrade your shields once, and if you are lucky to fight a ship that fires lasers once or twice and has a missile weapon, then they cannot breach your defenses. Simply turn your weapons off and power your engines..and sit back and relax, and with enough misses your captain and engines crew should max their skills out quickly.

I'm putting this here because TECHNICALLY its a perfectly legitimate strategy..very lame and boring but its very easy to do it consistently in the very first sector. Personally though I would say that a cap needs to be put on the number of times a skill can go up per jump, maybe somewhere around the 10-15 mark per location. What do you guys think?

[boa13]

Welcome to forum. As you pointed out, it's not a bug. Actually, it's a well-known technique.

My opinion is that optimal play should not be boring, so this situation should be fixed. A cap per fight is a possible solution, here are some other ideas:

- Have much lower level requirements, which means that most crew members can be one or two stars after a few fights; rebalance the game accordingly; this also diminishes the crippling blow that losing one crew member can be;

- Remove experience from combat, have the crew members learn their stars from training centers found at shops or similar beacon events;

- Give the players a chance to hire experienced crew members.

[Neoviper]

I don't mind it too much, I oftentimes find myself in situations that are ideal for skill farming, depending on how quickly the crew would level up and how bored I am, I'll just pass them by. I only really worry about piloting and engines, weapons and shields just happen naturally. I love having upgraded dodge though, can get up to 40% with just two engine upgrades, allowing you 100% dodge while cloaked. Nice for being absolutely certain that missile flying towards you won't take out your near fully charged weapons.

[Doom-Slayer]

Welcome to forum. As you pointed out, it's not a bug. Actually, it's a well-known technique.

My opinion is that optimal play should not be boring, so this situation should be fixed. A cap per fight is a possible solution, here are some other ideas:

- Have much lower level requirements, which means that most crew members can be one or two stars after a few fights; rebalance the game accordingly; this also diminishes the crippling blow that losing one crew member can be;

- Remove experience from combat, have the crew members learn their stars from training centers found at shops or similar beacon events;

- Give the players a chance to hire experienced crew members.

I had a bit of a look around and couldn't really find people mentioning it so I wasnt sure haha. My thoughts on your points though

- If the level requirements are lowered, as you say it will diminish the blow of loosing crew members which is one of the best things about his game in my opinion.

-This could work..but it brings it down to luck on whether you can level your crew members, turning the skill bonuses into some kind of quasi augmentation.

-Im REALLY surprised that this isn't already a thing in this game. When you hire crew members it clearly shows their skills when you hover your mouse over them, so I immediately presumed that in later sectors that trained crew members would show up. To be honest Id say that this needs to be a thing regardless of how this is solved.


A couple of solutions I can think of would be either the leveling cap per fight. Another cool thing to introduce would be to have ALL enemy ships attempt to jump if they are loosing. Maybe do a check to see if they arent landing any hits for any reason over a certain period, and if they arent hurting you have them try to escape. Because then unless your ship is really varied with multiple Ion weapons its goign to be very difficult to pin their weapons AND their pilot/engines to stop them jumping, forcing you to kill them.

[hybridfive]

I'd be more of a proponent of advancing the "jump away" script in the AI. It's effectively the same thing as an experience cap, but it's an in-game solution rather than an out-of-game solution. There's got to be something in the enemy captain's head that goes off after, say, five minutes of doing the same thing without success. So I'd prefer to see more ships run away when they can't possibly hurt you.

[graffen69]

Give the players a chance to hire experienced crew members.

Oh, i like this idea.
I still think exp can be used but in a different manner - you could get exp per Ship, difficulty (normal/easy) that the player could choose where and on whom to put it on. Later sectors could give an increase in exp.
Ultimately though, i´m hoping the current exp system is changed or nerfed - maybe put a max increase in skill/sector or /jump.

[MightyThor2000]

It's unfortunate this is almost required to win on normal difficulty. Find a ship with a shield, that has weapons that can't pierce your shields, put auto fire on with a weapon that won't kill them (ie doesn't pierce their shield), go make a sandwich. Come back 15 mins later and everyone's leveled up!

[5thHorseman]

It's unfortunate this is almost required to win on normal difficulty. Find a ship with a shield, that has weapons that can't pierce your shields, put auto fire on with a weapon that won't kill them (ie doesn't pierce their shield), go make a sandwich. Come back 15 mins later and everyone's leveled up!

I never ever do this and I win all the time on Normal.