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[Embolism]

I also think the conquest changes are good. It will open up more options for refitting due to stuff like 10 OP Hephaestuses. Also it actually is a bit of a buff considering that it would cost 80 op to fit 4 Hephaestuses, where now it is technically 60 op (40 op for guns and 20 op lost).

The question is why you would want to do this when 1. only one broadside will be used offensively and 2. even if you do get to use both you (by what Alex said) won't have the flux to support it, resulting in minimal increase in firepower.

Seems like it's still smarter to focus on one side. The main difference I see is you can now fill the gimp side with the upcoming large PD ballistic (assuming it doesn't cost a ton more than flak).

Don't get me wrong, I think this is an excellent change; but unless the Conquest had the flux and defenses to actually support a symmetrical broadside style it will remain a gimmick, nothing more; and Conquests will continued to be used as asymmetrical kiting snipers.

[Megas]

Whenever I (rarely) use Conquest, I favor the symmetrical brawler, mainly because it can kill the simulator the easiest.  Mjolnirs and dual flak for the ballistics, heavy blasters and IR pulse laser for energy, and Pilums for missiles.  Wade into enemy ships and blast a bunch of them.  Needs max skills to pull off.

Its biggest weakness is it is as slow and expensive as a battleship, but does not have the durability of one.  At least the speed part is getting fixed, and without a need for a tug to keep up with cruisers, it may be a bit cheaper to use.  (Tugs are fuel hogs and eat a fleet slot!)

Because of current Conquest's weakness, better to stick with either Onslaught or Paragon.  You get what you pay for.

[Embolism]

Needs max skills to pull off.

The Conquest should not need skills to do what appears to be its basic purpose (form begets function and all that). That's why I'm asking for its base flux stats to be boosted.

[Megas]

What is its purpose?  Brawling with two broadsides?  Sniping?  Both?

Conquest needs max skills to support two broadsides at once and take a beating comfortably.  No more hull regeneration will probably kill that playstyle.  No way Conquest can avoid taking damage when it goes all in with guns blazing.  It is not an Onslaught that can have 360 degree flak and blow things away and shrug off some hits with thick armor.

Without skills, it works best as a sniper.  Even with max skills, sniper is competitive with brawling, even if not quite as fast at killing.

[Embolism]

I've mused about this in my previous posts in this thread (TL;DR: Conquest is trying to do two opposing things at once and ends up useless at one and half-assed in the other).

But form needs to beget function, so if its current form is to stay then its function should be a brawler. The new hullmod Alex is adding seems to support this. On the other hand, if sniping is meant to be its function then its form should be altered to reflect that, hence my suggestion of an asymmetrical design to better support asymmetrical loadouts.

I agree that the Conquest's current form is cool and would like it to stay, but sadly don't see any way to make it work without giving it battleship-level defenses (and therefore turning it into a battleship). However, it should at the very least have battleship-level firepower, so a flux buff is in order.

[Megas]

It can snipe with both broadsides too, but it gets tricky.  The obvious combo - Gauss and beams, are flux hogs.  Gauss is a flux hog.  Tactical lasers, while not that flux-hungry for Conquest, is not always ignorable.

It is kind of fun sniping at capitals at both sides, but it is a bit tedious and not always practical.  Conquest still needs to deal with missiles and small craft at times, and may need to give up ideal positioning to do so.

[Sy]

The interesting thing I find with this statement is that the Conquest actually has a pretty good shield.  Yeah, yeah, the efficiency is worse than most, but the Conquest has an enormous flux pool and strong dissipation.

right, but:

1) the shield is so inefficient that it still ends up being quite bad. the Conquest has 33% higher capacity and 20% higher dissipation than the Odyssey, yet Odyssey has almost 'double' shield efficiency (0.8 vs 1.4) and double the arc -- even though both ships have the same amount of armor, about the same mobility (Odyssey has 5 higher base speed, but no Maneuvering Jets), and Conquest has only 20% more hull. and it's not like Odyssey is generally known to be a very durable ship either. ^^
now these kinda comparisons are always a bit dodgy because there are so many things in this game that influence how well a ship does, and with what loadouts, and it what role; like weapon flux (although i think that despite using energy weapons, Odyssey might actually be less reliant on flux stats for doing damage because it's got fewer mounts, damage boost from High Energy Focus, and a good part of its power comes from fighter bays). but i think it still shows just how awful Conquest's shield is.

2) even if the overall durability of the Conquest may be fine (for what it's supposed to be) despite the terrible shield, it doesn't change the fact that just using the shield at all feels bad. the shield might not be overwhelmed super easily (though still quite easily) because of the high flux capacity, but using the shield is always gonna be an awful use of that flux potential. i wouldn't mind seeing capacity reduced a bit in turn for a better shield.

as i said, i don't think Conquest needs a good shield. just one that puts it in line with Enforcer, Condor and Sunder rather than being the single worst shield of any vanilla ship, by far.

[TJJ]

Having both weak armour and a weak shield is certainly the Conquest's Achilles heel, but that's why I like it!

If it must have something, give it a little more manoeuvrability to strengthen its archetype, not dilute its uniqueness with more armour or shield.

Doubling the duration of the thrusters would achieve that, and would incidentally reduce the rather choresome frequency that the Conquest tends to activate its ship system.

[Cik]

maneuvering jets isn't a very good system IMO. the omnishield already reduces the need to turn, and your weapon arcs are so wide that the only facing you really need to turn to is the initial turn to broadside. only ships that have a very narrow (usually forward facing) firebase and a relatively slow turn speed + a relatively short TTK window benefit from maneuvering jets. i'm not sure what i'd replace it with i guess. even ammo feeder would probably help the ship more than jets does. the extra speed is marginal (still won't outrun many things it needs to worry about) and the extra maneuverability- eh.

conquest and other things like it (heavy broadsides, i guess not that there are many things like it) deserve their own system, IMO. maybe some sort of defensive/offensive bonus based on percent of weapons firing or proximity to # of enemies, to really give it a close-in punch, while retaining it's skirmishy nature.

on maneuvering jets: i'm honestly not sure about the system itself. many ships that maybe at one point benefited from it no longer do because maneuverability is so jacked up see: eagle. after the skill change goes through it might be good to take a look at jets in general, and either improve it or swap it out for something else on many of the ships it's applied to. as it is, every jets-ship feels superfluous to me. eagle: outdone by the dominator (by miles) conquest: doesn't benefit from it much. falcon (this has jets right? well, falcon's not very good for a lot of reasons i guess)

are there any destroyers with it, i forget. but maybe that's a symptom of the maneuvering jets destroyer not being any good either.

[Toxcity]

I don't know what the skill changes will bring, but maneuvering jets is fine. Being able to evade a torpedo strike or prevent a flank is super useful.

[Megas]

I would not mind a better shield on Conquest.  It is so bad that even Onslaught can shield-tank better than Conquest despite having worse flux stats.  Onslaught barely needs the shield because it can stack so much PD to munch missiles and small targets.  Conquest will need the shield to cover the front and back.  Maybe sides too if flak was not mounted.

Conquest needs all of its flux for weapons.  If forced to block things with shields, it will get flux locked and neutralized quickly.  It cannot afford to take hits on the shield (or anywhere for that matter), and it has poor to mediocre PD.  If Conquest could have tough PD like Onslaught or Paragon, it would not need to rely on its shield.  As is, the only way to avoid taking hits is to outrange the enemy, which is very good at doing if built for it.  (But then you will not have your berserker hero ship that slaughters ships left-and-right.)

I like the jets on Conquest, if only because the ship is sluggish without them.  Conquest is even a bit sluggish with them!  (Definitely without skills.)  Jets are really good on the Eagle.  Wish Conquest was as maneuverable as the Eagle.

The only destroyer I can think of that has jets is the Mule.  Definitely not a top-tier combatant (though not entirely helpless).

[Cik]

skill change at least is going to nix the insane scaling maneuverability at least. theoretically it would be good then. so, i guess it's fine. i'm still not sure it fits on many ships though; the eagle for instance; the shield is so wide that there's no real value in yawing defensively, so the only value is doing a 180 to attack some phase ship or teleporter attacking your engines (which you can't do realistically since they will just phase or teleport) or to keep your weapons on target (which you can do without it) a speed increase wouldn't go amiss, so you can actually outrun a dominator's turning ability while at close range. i feel like that's what the eagle was originally designed to do (able to do?) get close and then exploit a heavier enemy's poor maneuverability. as far as i remember it used to be able to do that back in the day. i remember eagles managing to kill onslaughts simply by surrounding them and then shooting them in the engines.

[Megas]

No such thing as too much speed on Eagle.  Since Eagles are usually limited to low-damage beams behind the ballistics, they need to turn quickly to face enemies before blasting them with ballistics.  Yes, they are one of the few ships that can overload smaller ships with beam spam, but turning faster to point at targets is nice.  Also, the shield is not as wide as we think - it never is if not 360, especially when dealing with Salamanders, and Eagle has limited PD to defend the rear.  (Rear mounts are tempting to leave empty if OP is scarce too.)

[Cik]

well, such is it's weakness. anything that can't mount DFLAK is obsolete.

granted there are skills that help a great deal with salamanders. but personally i would never use an eagle unless i were forced to, just because it's mobility is such that it cannot realistically disengage from a heavier ship blasting it out of space, and it's wide enough that it is easy to hit from great range.

cruisers in general i feel suffer from this, that they can easily be swept by battleships from outside the range where they can effectively return fire. but at least the dominator has a nigh-impenetrable one-man flak cloud and a fairly withering forward firepower array. it also probably travels the field faster than most (ironically considering how slow it is; burn drive is probably too good for this sort of thing)

eagle and conquest will probably get better in .8, even without buffs to jets because jets will have a purpose again probably. might be cool.

[Toxcity]

Related to the maneuverability talk, I plugged in the Omen changes and played the mission where you're up against an Omen, Astral, and fighters in a Dominator with some other ships. Using a level 0 Assault dominator is rough with the Omen around. Ballistics weren't accurate or fast enough to deal with it. If I advanced too much it would just EMP me and I would get mauled by bombers. You could probably trivialize it with a better loadout, but it really highlighted how big an impact skills have.