Short and sweet version?



Hybrid Heroes are a negative RNG roll on the system right now. Getting no Admin/Corp, Commander/Pilot, Adventurer/Pilot, or Admin/anything heroes in the first role is an often fatal roll on the RNG that is completely unfixable by most races, and warrants a restart over suffering through the first 50 turns to see if you'll get lucky on that roll.



The reason why Hybrids just cannot compare currently to purists is they can only perform their duties half as well as a pure hero, a Corporate/Pilot can't do both things at once, and so they will only ever be useful for a short period in the early game, after which they'll quickly get outpaced on Governing by Corp/Admins, and will get crushed in fights by Commanders/Pilots.



Unlike Negative Anomalies, this can't be fixed lategame, so if you don't get a "better" hero by turn 50's roll, you are just screwed, and might as well restart.



I have several ideas on how to fix this.



First off would be specializations, give nonpurist heroes the ability to "specialize" at level 5 or 7, allowing them to unlock extremely powerful crosstrait skills. For example, a Pilot/Corporate would be able to specialize in his Pilot side, and get the ability to call on his Corporate connections to repair ships 50% faster, or a 10% chance per ship to instantly replace ships lost in combat. On the other hand, they could specialize in Corporate, but would have a great knowledge of how ships work, so he'd be able to build ships 50% faster, or would be able to build them cheaper.



It would be powerful, but it would also give a reason to grab and stick with a Hybrid hero throughout the game, rather then to rue getting them.



Secondly would just be more skills overall for specific combos, so specific skills for a Admin/Pilot that do offer similar style traits, but at a much weaker level, similar to some of the late game traits now, just more focused for Hybrids.



My last idea would be to offer a Respec option at the cost of Dust in one of the trees that lets you modify your heroes chosen paths, for example you could make a Commander/Admin a Commander/Pilot for an amount of Dust depending on the level they are. This is an option, but I don't think it would really solve the problem, just a side solution.



My second issue is about Heroes and Horatio. Horatio as a race in game is HEAVILY dependent on good Hero allotment. If they don't start with a good hero in the first three, they will have a very rough game, especially as things pick up, as they will have poor clones to build off of, if they don't get a purist by turn 50, it's nearly impossible for them to turn the game around, and it becomes worst case scenario for them.



I have three suggestions for this.



You could increase the Academy pool to 5 for Horatio, this wouldn't really solve the issue, but would make it happen less.



You could add in a talent that let's people respec heroes in the middle of one of the trees, and give Horatio this at the start, so they can grab any hero and then just respec them midgame to what they actually need before starting the cloning, this would help greatly, and add more depth to the race I feel.



Or you could start Horatio off with a blank slate hero built off the Prime or something, and allow us to customize him as we'd like in the first turn, but don't let him become usable until turn 5 because he's "being made". That would give Horatio players the chance to start with a specific Hero type they prefer to build their clones from, but they can't use him until everyone else would be able to, and have to pay the same 22 Dust cost to be allowed to use him.



This may sound extreme, but as it is, only Horatio and Hissho have to rely on the RNG to build up momentum for their races, and if they get a poor roll/some bad luck, they can never really recover from it. These measures would allow Horatio players at least to avoid the RNG as much as possible, and increase their mid/late game strength. They might need an additional negative however to cover how powerful this could be, which would be fine, as long as it doesn't hamper how the race plays.