Since you are here, i want to request some nerfs.
Cathedral is Conquest on Steroids?
It can do things what not every other ship can do, it can win unwinnable fights, it's probably one of the strongest ships in entire modded Starsector excluding boss/unique vessels and super-capitals from "Missing Ships". But why?
Here is my loadout
https://imgur.com/a/Y8zQXKY Idea is what main shield protects modules, but when it vents, they able to cover themselves long enough to not overload untill main shield is back online again. So whole concept is minimalising that downtime and maximising survivability of auxilary shields, thats why there is resistant flux conduits, just to speedup venting, it takes 5 sec from full flux capacitors to completely vent, leaving no chance to overload secondary shields.
So i thought maybe it's because of makeshift generators? But no, there is literally a copy of Cathedral made by Snrasha - Minister, from his "Pulse Industry" mod. It also has shieded modules, it have some punch, but will break apart if get focused hard. Whats the difference then?
I watched my own footage for additional analysis and realise what i just abuse 0-flux boost all the time. Secret is what your secondary shields are strong enough to protect you against even some capitals or bunch of smaller ships and if they not doing well, you always can turn a bit. It's sideways thrusters not very powerful, but you can use your main thrusters to accelerate yourself to max speed and then turn towards the enemies while sideways thrusters will keep the momentum even if you correct your cource, so you just surf around the crowd, showering them from all of your weapons while having 0-flux boost advantage. It looks ridiculous how such massive ship moving so fast. Reminds me of good old Conquest gameplay (i heard what helmsmanship skill was nerfed because Conquest had similar abuse with 0-flux)
Speed gives you options:
First of all you can chase clunky enemies who just not able to activate their 0-flux boost, cause your weapons keep them busy.
But most importantly it give you ability to disengage if your systems overloaded at the moment.
Or even just split oppossing ships because all of them have different speed levels so you can kill them one by one.
Such tactics also known as Divide and Conquer and it is what vanilla Conqueror doing all the time. He surf around, split enemy forces, quick pick vulnerable and exposed targets and then runs away, just to strike back after very rapid venting.
If we can take another look at Minister we will see - ALL Minister's weapons are positioned on the core, making impossible to shot and move simultaneously. While Cathedral have majority of his mounts positioned on auxilary parts, even more: half of them are composite, this is especially important for "core" part because they can be fitted by rocket launchers completely freeing it from wasting any flux on shooting. Thats why minister feels so fragile - if it commit for a fight he must prevail or perish, no other options, you can't disengage while cathedral can.
I won hundreds of battles, mostly at 2x speed, that was booring, endless, non challenging fights, i lost my cathedral only two times, both because pesky olympus blowup my ass. So Cathedral is kinda in the past for me, i put it in hangar and never gonna use again, because it is to easy.
Recently i played with my new toy - Wurgandal from ED's shipyard. It have similar built-in hullmod called "Massive hull" and it already contains fix for Cathedral's 0-flux abuse, it just decreaces efficiency of 0-flux boost down to 30% or +15su instead of +50su. That's a smart and elegant solution, because we all know what such ships technically not capitals, they are 5th class - "Super Capitals". And also because making auxilary parts incompatible with shields would make this ship absolute trash, i don't want it to be trash, it needs only 0-boost fix aaaaaaaand.....
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Here is another part, i know what this weapon belong to other mod, but it's been made by you, so i don't want to split my post in two.
You can see, in my loadout i use Tiandong's Ultra Autocannons, they pretty much copy of Gauss, but exchange range and alpha strike for a bit more dps and better flux/dmg ratio so it cannot effectively damage armor like Gauss(i used Gauss before and it works just fine), so don't pay attention to these 2 heavy ballistic mounts. Main dps dealer for both hull and suddenly shields(!) in this loadout is Ballistas
Man, this rocket launcher is OP. I can't say different. It's just to good. A lot of ships have few rocket mounts and before Interstellar Imperium i didn't know what to put there apart from maybe salamanders. Problem is what these rocket mounts usually just smaller fraction of oveall ship dps, not to much vessels focused of rocket saturation or even completely rely on them, so i just left this mounts empty prefering maximising other stats, there is also room for improvement. Rockets not last very long, even with Expanded missleracks you will deplete most of them far sooner than you deplete peak performance time.
And here comes ballistas, they just ideal for such situation either for full rocket builds. Primarely because - they not bound to Expanded Missleracks which makes them cheap, but, unlike pillums, effective mountplugs. Medium and heavy ones usually never even reach their "Sustained" 175 dps. And their stats not that bad, they actually pretty good, strong and sturdy rockets, with decent guidance and speed on final approach. Even the range man, in my modpack they are have longest reach of 6000 units, 2nd place is trebuchete and nullspace torpedoes with their 5000. Ballistas also stack very well with each other because of that low initial speed what again make them so perfect as mountplags, just every single ship in your fleet "doing his part" of adding few extra torpedoes to this nonsence. Equipping entire fleet will always cause a random rocket tornadoes what washing away those who unlucky enough to be targeted by these swarms. Literally the CHAD Pillums lol.
And they are another part of "Why Cathedral is so good". As i said, half of it's mounts are composite, this means less flux will be wasted on shooting = modules will have more spare flux to support their makeshift generators which make them even sturdier. And you literally never run out of rockets. Never. Ever.
Here is my solution, but, it's a bit... more fundamental than fix for Cathedral. It can be even considered as "rework"... kinda.
Again, i inspired by other mod, this time it is HMI. There is a weapon (i forget it's name), which stats may look very weird. It have more (sustained) dps than the "actuall" dps. It's like flipped upside down. Cool feature of this gun is what it require Expanded Magazines to reach it's sustained DPS, you get the idea? Stats been put together in the way what your base magazine size prevents you reaching maximum possible dps, you inevitably will run out of ammo before resupply tick will occur.
To make Ballistas balanced i suggest bound them to expanded missle racks, otherwise they will fire at half of their maximum DPS. (Make ammo reserves size = 1/2 of burst ammount, for example: if medium ballistas shot 4 rockets each burst reserve ammo must be just 2, so it cannot shot more than 2. However, if you install expanded missle racks then it would send 4 rockets with each burst). Concept is the same - better pillums, but they require additional investment in to missleracks to reach their full potential, right now they just to good for their ordnance price. Honestly i hate ballistas, because it is almost always the best option.
You always can build your cathedral similar to mine and try it by yourself. Makeshift gens+Ballistas is all what he needs. + pilot with combat related perks ofc.