The Wolf is also technically an "attack" Frigate with a mobility system and a forward profile, and yes it's meant to be the Shrike to the Tempest's Medusa but now the Tempest can achieve almost 4x its firepower while having superior defences and base speed.
Wolf: 1x medium, 3x small, 2x small missile
Tempest: 2x medium (*1.5 from HEF if we're generous and assume 100% uptime), 1x small missile
So, 3 medium vs 1x medium, 3x small, and 1x small missile. Weighing 2 small slots as 1 medium, that's... actually even. Of course, the Tempest's "third" slot is flux free (but it's really not going to be 100% uptime, either), it's got drones (which are not at all reliable at actually shooting ships), and it doesn't have a mobility system - though it does have speed. The Wolf has a bit more OP, while the Tempest is a lot more expensive to field and maintain. As far as defenses, the Wolf is probably harder to pin down overall, while the Tempest - if it gets into a bad spot - is most likely just a goner.
It's definitely a better fighting ship than a Wolf, but I don't think it's half as clear-cut if you factor in cost, and its not by an insane amount in any case. The Tempest probably wins out as a later-game support ship (which is the point of the drones), but then it's probably not utilizing its HEF nearly as much.
All that said, I'll keep an eye on it; it did undergo substantial changes and it's likely *something* is out of whack.
IPDAI Tac laser with the buffed Advanced Turret Gyros Is going to be reaaaaally strong now. Also, with the IPDAI Damage buff against missiles, i can already see myself doing big side swipes with a tachyon lance to delete an entire wave of missiles.
Hmm, yeah, that'll be interesting to see - always fun to see "skill" maneuvers like that. (Also, another thing the Wolf can do, and the Tempest can't - so it's interesting that a Wolf specialized in PD could possibly outdo it at that...)
- Prometheus: Reduced fuel capacity to 2500
- High Resolution Sensors: Can now be learned and installed on other ships.
I don't really get the reason behind these changes. Prometheus was good as it was, with same fuel cap/maintenance ratio as all other tankers. HRS was a pretty great reason to find and get Apogee or Omen.
Unless I'm missing something, the Prometheus had a much better ratio - as it should - and it still has a better ratio after the change.
HRS is a "Logistics" hullmod, meaning it's limited to 2 per hull, not counting built-in. That last part means the Omen and Apogee are still special in that - in addition to getting HRS for free - they can also mount a full two Logistics mods.
Plasma Cannon: Damage reduced to 500 and and flux/shot reduced to 550
When we said that heavy blaster is practically a medium-sized heavy weapon, we didn't mean that plasma cannon should be just a better heavy blaster... It is better, but also boring now, you can't one-salvo frigates anymore.
I experimented with it a lot and this is pretty much the only place where it felt good but didn't either 1) completely outdo the other energy options or 2) turn out to be generally unusable by AI ships.
As it stands, we've got: Autopulse for general efficiency, HIL for anti-armor and pressure, Tachyon Lance for shield piercing/sniping, and the Plasma Cannon as a high-dps all-rounder that's not too good at any one thing. If you've got multiple large energy slots, there are reasons to go for just about any combination, since each one brings something different to the table.
Solar Shielding: reduced cost, beam damage effect changed to reduce energy damage by 20% instead
I'm going to fight REDACTED (or Sindrian Diktat): the hullmod. Cool. I think I might mount it from time to time now.
You all are missing the main reason to put Solar Shielding on, just saying.
Militarized Subsystems:
...
I'm not sure about this one. It feels like it makes the civilian ship penalty too insignificant, though maybe it requires a lot of OP. I'll have to see, but I don't think I'll like it, though it doesn't mean I won't use it.
It's a "Logistics" mod, so there's an opportunity cost beyond OP. It also increases crew requirements - which in 0.9a means a higher monthly salary - and that's a significant balancing factor. It's basically a way to double its effective maintenance cost without making it cost more supplies, which would make it bad from a logstics point of view.
Defective Manufactory seems to be a bit too harsh, doesn't low speed also affect survivability for fighters, since more ordnance can hit them?
I mean, yes. Need a two-pronged approach here to make sure that both slow and fast fighters are affected. If it's one or the other than either fast fighters are too good, or slow fighters basically don't care once they get into range of the enemy.
I think I talked about this on Twitter, but in general, as far as Converted Hangar goes, the point is to make it a lot more of a committment and also something that changes the ship more. It's still pretty good with interceptors - I mean, it's not very expensive, and the higher damage taken etc is offset by not having a replacement rate penalty. With bombers is where it gets more interesting, since the OP cost is *huge*, but so is the gameplay effect of having basically unlimited missile support on just about any ship.
Is there any advantageous for big fleets terrain remaining? It seems like it's all better for small fleets.
Per the patch notes: "In general: terrain that slows down fleets is where smaller fleets can run to get away from larger fleets"
Spoiler
Adding new assignments is free while the command frequency is open
Wait, then what did it even do before?
You could manually reassign ships between existing assignments for free, but not create new assignments.
I can't tell how excited I am to play this. If I knew the day it'd come out I'd have literally changed my work schedule. Keep up the good work Alex!
Added Hegemony inspection
Huh, is that similar to the old inspections?
Not at all, but keeping this intentionally vague.
Wait, how does the rare items factor into Salvage Rigs? If I'm reading correctly, aren't the rare items drop rate only modified by the skill?
They don't, you're reading it right. Possibly awkward phrasing on my part; the point is just that you shouldn't feel forced to bring rigs (as you would if they got you more rare items) and that you can also still get good returns with rigs and without the skill (which is less rare items than with skill, but also no skill point investment).
So if the game rolls for a known hullmod to drop, it won't roll to drop another item in its place? Sounds odd to me. It'd make, for example, looting research stations yield less as the game goes on. When I read the first change I expected the drop to re-roll into a weapon or anything else of similar rarity.
Yep - but then research stations get blueprints, so it's just a drop in the bucket.
So excited! Released in time for xmas?