Big changes to ship balance and Variants, among other things.
Few changes to weapons this time, other than finally getting rid of ammunition entirely for missiles; it works.
Should provide a more difficult experience for players in general (the Tutorial is quite tough on Normal, if you end up fighting the Pirate fleets around the Jump Point) and provide a much-higher long-term challenge.
I feel like this is much more like what I want SS to feel like, when the difficulty's on the default settings (i.e., quite hard into late-game). This took forever to get done, largely because editing all the Variants is incredibly tedious.
If using the quick-experience mod, you can fully-stock your fleet with Officers and they can reach Level 29, but no further; this allows players to max out their Officers, but be warned, the experience bonus cuts both ways, and Bounties get quite hard at the high end.
Just some samples of where things went, in the end:
1. Dominator: improved Flux output enough to sustain fire. No longer just an alpha wonder that the AI can't use well, the Dominator can be expected to enter a fight and stay alive, so long as it doesn't get surrounded.
2. Venture: actually worth using again as an ancillary warship. You can put whatever you want in that Fighter bay, and it's tough enough to serve as a support craft. It's much like a Mora, but with more guns and fewer fighters.
3. Hammerhead: can finally bring enough firepower to bear reliably that it's competitive with the Medusa and Enforcer. No longer a forgettable junk Destroyer.
4. Enforcer: back to being a proper meat-shield design. Still slow, still not ubiquitous.
5. Lasher: has enough Flux Dissipation and Capacity to slug it out. Useful despite slow speed.
6. Apogee: decent as a combat warship again, good shield-tank.
7. Eagle: finally a notch above "mediocre"; the Mediums are Universal, so you can stack Kinetics, HE, or use Beam PD. It makes the Eagle considerably more of the "every-ship" it was meant to be.
8. The Pirate Colossus isn't just a lousy junk ship that nobody sane would employ. It's a poor-mans-Astral, it has a narrow-arc shield that allows it to get into frontal fights and maybe not die, and it's fun to use as a crappy Cruiser that can only tank forward. However, it's incredibly easy to defeat if you know what you're doing and you'll find it's still best-used in a supporting-cast role, not thrown into firefights. But you can hold points with it against light opposition, which feels right.
Basically, I think I've fixed the remaining, "just use this and you're good" problems that remained from Vanilla. Pirates aren't a total joke, Tritach is terrifying, etc.
None of this is remotely balanced with mod content; don't bother telling me how OP X is now vs. <insert favorite mod faction> because that's not my objective here.
