Hey Okim, thanks for your continued work and well done with 8.3!!!
I've playtested it fairly extensively and think I can offer some meaningful feedback and a couple of small bug reports now
Bugs:
Spoiler
Nothing game-breaking here but some things that slipped through:
Condor class destroyer still has a flight deck despite description fluff stating it shouldn't
Some ships still have faction markings on their sprites. I know this is trivial to fix so unless you're in the process of updating the hull graphics on these chassis (in which case I apologise) the copy&paste/layer replace process takes no time at all so I'll assume these few just slipped through the net? The hulls are the Finland, Hungary, Illinois, Italy, Germany, Greece and UK.
Rostov-H description suggests it can be used as anything from fleet escort to a torpedo carrier but this is not possible. Should the 2 small and/or the medium mount be universal instead of ballistic in order to fit the lore or does the description need changing?
Executioner frigate description has a typo: "Armour layer is upgraded bith energy absorbers"
Kazan drone carrier has a flight deck as well as drones as a system, I assume this is an error as it's much like the hungary apart from this?
Gameplay feedback:
Spoiler
Really impressed with the progress in such a short time! One thing I've noticed occurring after several hours in every separate playthrough however is that the ISA/RSF raiding/invasion fleets seem to stop actually raiding? I'm not 100% on the logic process behind their workings and they might just be an early implementation at the moment to add flavour but on the other hand it might be an issue in the fleet task/workgiver scripting? If it's an economy/stability issue then obviously it's a lot more complex to implement, I understand if you're leaving that kind of thing until you've got the bulk of your planned features in-game beforehand! It's probably just the system coming to rest when it finds equilibrium as it only happens after some hours of play but it happens regardless of player actions so far as I can tell.
There's a number of balance issues that I've noticed too. The biggest one so far is the Germany battlecarrier- With 12 small missile mounts... If a player trains missile specialisation to 5 and adds the expanded racks mod the result is MMM (
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MacrossMissileMassacre)
It's awesome to see but in reality when you can jizz 36 LRMs for little actual cost and still have a cruiser's main armament and 4 flight decks it's a little too much! Changing the 12 small missile mounts to either 2 or 3 large ones in addition to the current large would solve this (If it's not a feature
tm)
Additional improvement thoughts (Just my own personal suggestions):
Spoiler
Not much to add here but to finish up this great wall of text:-
It'd be nice if you could add a small version of the mass driver for UIN as everyone else has S/M/H versions of their signature weapons
Could torpedoes have an advanced version with minimal guidance at additional cost? Nothing overpowering, I'm thinking more like wing commander than starwars lol
You mentioned adding a possible 'commision a construction project' for a specific ship dialogue feature further down the line- If you do that, could you also add a 'Procurement contract' for weapons where we could order a specific type of weapon be delivered? If that's not practical, would ordering the ship variant with the variant weapons already installed be an option? I ask this because getting hold of the ordnance I'm looking for is getting to be the biggest grind in the mod rather than money/exp!
TLDR: Ironclads 8.3: Proof that Okim's modding level... IT'S OVER 9000!