leaders

[Wulf]

is it me or is the warfare skill for colony leaders and the initive skill for ship commanders are virtually useless? and two 'rares' from ruins have warfare 10.... i mean i wouldn't take them if i was paid. I guess if warfare was a perk for something else (like moral for warrior style empires or perk to ship construction and/or experience) same goes for initive, this might have value at very long games where research allows ships to make contact in first round, but for the most part it's bad, u don't get option of delay to force the otherside to commit. anyhow good game. finial thought, there doesn't seem to have any randomness to leaders or extra races so unsure on the replay value yet but enjoyed the first couple of game. ps i do agree greedy trait is a hard stop on a leader.

[Jean-Luc]

Warfare's technically not useless but yeah, it's prolly the worst and it's a shame to see it be the focus of the most commonly encountered (in my experience) "legendary" leaders.

If you're playing on a higher difficulty where your colonies might actually be in danger warfare could be nice to have but it's very situational.

Initiative is in the same boat since you rarely encounter enemy ship leaders and even then it doesn't contribute much. This makes the Quick trait dissapointing as well.

If the enemy fleet has a leader *and* they have long range ships that can fire on you on turn 1 then having initiative can be kinda useful but that's, again, very marginal.

Greedy's not so bad later in the game when you have loads of money, especially on smuggler leaders who pay for themselves basically but it's a show stopper early on.

[Adam Solo]

Hi Wulf,

the Warfare leader skill should indeed be more useful than now, especially with respect to the other skills. This is something we had already identified and is on the big list of things to address, with a higher priority than other items in this case.

Initiative can be helpful. It is a bit situational, I agree, but it can be important in key battles, especially if you play more the combat side of the game and particularly important if you play in the higher difficulty levels, where the AI will be more aggressive and bring more numbers to battle. The AI will also tend to have and bring more leaders to combat in the higher difficulty levels too.

As for randomness of leaders, you tend to get different leaders in different games and the skills they acquire are not always the same in different sessions. They may also develop different traits and generate different desires depending on what happens in the game.

[Jean-Luc]

I wish Initiative gave +5% attack and defense for the first 2 turns depending on the difference between you and enemy in addition to going first.

So for example, your Initiative is 7 and enemy's is 0. You get a 7x5 = 35% attack/defense bonus for the first 2 turns.

If your Ini is 7 and enemy's is 4 you get a (7 - 4) x 5% = 3 x 5% = 15% bonus.

That would allow Initiative to scale and not be binary where it either works 100% or not at all and would make it useful even if your Ini happens to be lower than the enemy's while also not being wasted if it's much higher.

Alternatively, instead of giving you a bonus, it could give enemies a penalty using the same calculation simulating how you've caught them "with their pants down".

[Adam Solo]

Nice suggestion Jean-Luc. I've added it to the big list and will consider it. Thanks.

[Wulf]

Thank you.