A question of balance - Capital Ship abilities.
Sins Forums
Howdy folks!
I'm asking in here because truth be told, my impression of the community is that the vast majority of Sins players either don't pay attention to the online options, or are multiplayer oriented and have little interest in mods (other than graphical ones)... so if I'm going to ask for the opinions of what people would like to see in a mod, I may as well ask in the modding forum!
However, I'm working on the framework of a mod based on the impression I get about current ship balance (and a decent helping of game theory, which is itself one of my hobbies). I don't aim to radically alter the 'lore' of the game, or even drastically improve the prominence of capital ships - rather, I'm hoping to get things a little more evened out than core currently is, and 'upgrade' some of the lore and thematics of the various ships and techs.
My current focus is on the capital ships*, and their abilities. As it stands though, I notice an awful lot of inconsistency - not in overall power, but in the way in which they 'level'. There seem to be three general systems in play for level of utility**:
1. Sublinear. An ability starts off with a strong first level, then later levels give a smaller incremental bonus. This tends people to, for the initial selections at least, take one rank and then spread later ranks around. Often seen in passive abilities like Incindary Ammunition, or status effect abilities like Magnetize, where the duration starts at 10s, and increases more slowly.
2. Linear. An ability whose points go up something along the lines of 100/200/300. This tends to favor going for max ranks as quickly as possible, as low ranks tend to be rather lacking, and a second rank would outright double the effect - far better use of antimatter than two 1st level abilities used seperately. Commonly seen in damage effects - Radiation Bomb, EMP, and the like tend to do this.
3. Exponential. The ability starts off small, and each rank adds even more than the previous one on top. Much like Linear in effect, but even moreso - you'd be a downright fool to not take this sort of thing to third level if you were taking it at all.
The effects these have on leveling choices are straightforward - if all ability benefits are exponential, then your average level 7 capship would have two trained abilities, one flat out ignored, and their ultimate. If the utility of abilities are all sublinear, then it may increase the chance people view taking a single level in another ability may be worthwhile. However, this comes at the cost that the capitalship won't so dramatically increase in power over the course of its levels, as the abilities 'cap out' faster. This can be migitated by synergies and the like - if the ships abilties work particuarly well together, or let it excel in several different areas, it may well boost the ships effectiveness anyway, but the point remains.
So my question is - would people favor the general rule of thumb of abilities being sublinear, or linear/exponential in their utility? I have a personal bias towards sublinear - in terms of 'straight ol' bonuses', I'd favor a setup where grabbing a spread of abilities does not automatically*** penalise you against a player who specialised their ship to being a one/two trick pony at the same level, but that's personal preference, and I'd like other peoples opinions on the matter.
Thoughts?
* At the immediate current moment, focusing on the TEC, although that means little: I plan to look at each side in turn, but I find it helps to keep balance in check if you limit yourself to only 'global changes' ["All capital ships now consume twinkies"] or 'tweaking one thing at a time'. It just means I tend to use their ships as examples a lot because I've got the spelling of the names better memorised, and have been staring at their .entity files the most recently. 
** This doesn't mean that all exponential bonuses are automatically bad - in some cases, the utility of having the ability at all stands to outstrip the need to improve it afterwards, so it needs to be linear or better in terms of stats in order to stay useful. This is usually the case where the ability grants you the ability to do something new rather than being Ye Olde Bonuses. Example: Being able to use Colonize from a capital ship at all is awesome. Were the bonuses not linear or better, however, you'd probably not bother with later ranks, 'cuz you have combat stuff to worry about first.
*** Of course, I've no problem with a well chosen specialist defeating a jack of all trades - my bias is against a specialist of any kind being 'required' to remain effective.
