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[Vayra]

I was typing a reply to this but then I drank a coffee and went all-in so I put it in its own thread rather than post a full page in this one, but I figured I'd link it here anyway.

[Ronald Klein]

  I've been playing this gem of a game since 2011, coming back for every major update and mostly lurking in the shadows of the forums.

  I have to say, it seems to me like OP has always been an issue. I can only remember a time way back when you had two OP boosting skills in Technology and that beautiful OP cost reduction in Combat when I felt like I had enough flexibility in my OP count to actually make "whole" ships.

  There's so much variety and freedom when it comes to customizing your ships that it just feels wrong and restrictive to have to leave weapon slots open or miss out on a crucial hullmod because there just so happens to be an even more crucial hullmod that HAS to be included or the ship is too starved of vents to be usable without a sizeable investment in them.

  This might just be me, but it seems like the engineers who design these ships would do it in such a way that they could include everything a ship needs to function properly. Instead of having to use light autocannons and mortars on an Onslaught because it is too OP starved. (as an extreme example).

  I know Alex mentioned that he would rather avoid doing something like this, but in my opinion a 25% boost to OP across the board is mandatory. I understand that the point is not to be able to have absolutely everything that would be optimal on a ship but every single ship feels like it has to make too many sacrifices to be functional.

[Megas]

The entire problem with the Cerberus and Hound is that makeshift shields makes them slow. That's the entire issue; they could be okay combat-freighter grade ships if makeshift shields didn't make them slow, and they were okay combat-freighter grade ships when makeshift shields didn't make ships slow.

On the other hand, it makes fighting against them less aggravating since the enemy will use them much more than the player (at least before 0.9.1), and the AI cannot play its favorite coward games when they are slower.  If anything, Makeshift Shield Generator is more good than bad because it hurts the enemy more than me.

  There's so much variety and freedom when it comes to customizing your ships that it just feels wrong and restrictive to have to leave weapon slots open or miss out on a crucial hullmod because there just so happens to be an even more crucial hullmod that HAS to be included or the ship is too starved of vents to be usable without a sizeable investment in them.

  This might just be me, but it seems like the engineers who design these ships would do it in such a way that they could include everything a ship needs to function properly. Instead of having to use light autocannons and mortars on an Onslaught because it is too OP starved. (as an extreme example).

  I know Alex mentioned that he would rather avoid doing something like this, but in my opinion a 25% boost to OP across the board is mandatory. I understand that the point is not to be able to have absolutely everything that would be optimal on a ship but every single ship feels like it has to make too many sacrifices to be functional.

I approve of this message!

As an alternative, better flux stats since a big chunk of OP tends to go into flux stats, usually vents.

[Zelnik]

I love the Onslaught, I really do

However, i just can't get it to work for me. They just don't have the capacity to stand and fight with any weapon, no matter what combo I give it.

[Wyvern]

As an alternative, better flux stats since a big chunk of OP tends to go into flux stats, usually vents.

I don't think it's likely to happen - it'd be a major rebalance - but I'd be on board with removing flux vents entirely (leave the Flux Distributor hull mod though) and just buffing ships' base dissipation to where it needs to be.

[Megas]

@ Wyvern:  I suggested better flux stats as an alternative to raising OP across the board since most ships want max vents.

On the other hand, I do not bother with flux stats on civilians.  I just put Efficient Overhaul and a burn mod, and call it a day.  More OP is good for everyone, not just warships.

[Alex]

(Moved this to Suggestions, feels like it belongs here more.)

[FooF]

My thoughts:

First, and foremost, I'm under the impression that not all ships need to be viable. The Condor is obviously an inferior, makeshift, carrier. Same with anything "Mk. II." Second, perfect parity among ships/classes isn't achievable so I'm not going to try. My biggest litmus test for all of these ships are "Do I use them, and if not, why?" Most support ships aren't listed because a transport or fuel hauler doesn't need to be balanced, IMO.

Frigates:

I consistently use Wolves, Lashers, Tempests, Centurions, Kite(A)s, and Omens. I generally don't use phase ships (or pilot them) but Afflictors are good. I have no experience with the Shade. The Monitor is fine, though I don't use it enough. Hounds are also where they need to be as expendable haulers.

Brawler - The Brawler is touted as a beefy patrol Frigate but while it has decent firepower, it's an anvil, not a hammer. The Centurion already occupies this role so I feel the the Brawler is redundant relative to the Centurion. I could live with its speed if were given Accelerated Ammo Feeders as a ship system. Whenever I have them in my fleet, they get flanked by faster frigates or die to fighters. My suggestion is bump speed by 10 and give it AAF. The TT version is in a weird spot because medium energy is just a different beast altogether. If Plasma Jets let you jump backwards, I think it'd be a decent hit-n-run platform but as it is, you jump in and get smashed.

Scarab - Suffers from "Small Energy Mount Syndrome." Outside of AM Blasters, it can't pressure shields well enough. With the changes to beams and hard flux, maybe it will find a new niche but as it stands, the Scarab is a fantastic concept with abysmal execution. If Small Energy mounts had more options, it'd be pretty cool. On the other hand, it has too many mounts (and the side mounts have terrible firing arcs) to fit with its OP/dissipation. I think the side mounts are a trap and could be removed altogether with no negative consequences. If that meant the center mount could be changed to a universal or another synergy (toying with a medium energy), I think the Scarab would have more versatility. It's a hit-n-run ship to be sure but even though it can avoid most fire in a 1v1 situation, even with Temporal Shell, it's not generating appreciable damage in the moments of opportunity it has. (This has been my complaint for the Shrike, as well). Finally, the ship is too dang rare. I never see them or get blueprints for them.

Vigilance - I don't think the Vigilance is bad, I just know that in battle its usefulness dwindles about 45 seconds in due to relying on missiles. It should have built-in Expanded Missile Racks, a la the Gryphon.

Wayfarer - Its initial premise was a decent combat hauler but like the Centurion prior to its arcs getting changed, it just couldn't bring enough firepower to bear to be worth it. It needs the Centurion treatment of having overlapping arcs. As a player ship, its frustrating. Any more than arc changes would be overkill though.

Destroyers

I frequently use Hammerheads, Sunders, Drovers, and Enforcers. They're not all equal but all are viable. I don't use Medusas but that comes down to playstyle not inadequacies of the ship. Condors are fine, as are Mules, for what they are and need to be.

Enforcer - They are currently the losers of the "Big 5" of combat Destroyers. Hammerheads are all-around better, Sunders and Medusas are more specialized, and Drovers are top-tier carriers. Enforcers are logistically more expensive and though they're bricks, they pretty much have to have two flak cannons because they don't have the dissipation for 5 medium ballistics. More often than not, Hammerheads can out DPS them due to AAF so that leaves the Enforcer in a spot where they should win the "more gun" duel but can't. My suggestion: Medium Ballistics Integration (similar to the Conquest). It doesn't fix dissipation per se but it allows the Enforcer to max its stats or hull mods as necessary. It should always be the biggest gun among the destroyers.

Shrike - "Small Energy Mount Syndrome". That's why I petitioned awhile back for the universal mount that, eventually, the (P) version got. It's not a bad ship and it doesn't die that often when I have it in my fleet but its role is limited to support. I usually throw an Ion Beam on it and let it go. I want it to be aggressive, though, and small mounts just aren't suited for it. A Heavy Blaster is also a pretty big strain on it. Perhaps I'm just trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. More OP wouldn't hurt.

Cruisers

Honestly, I have almost zero complaints with the Cruiser lineup. All have their niches, all have pros/cons, and some are better than others (*cough* Aurora) but all are good. The Gryphon is the one I use the least but I can't speak to it because I don't feel I have anything to add. I just don't like the idea of a ship that becomes mostly useless at some point in a battle. Only one thing frustrates me: the Apogee and the firing arcs of the back two medium mounts. When they were changed, the ship just just can't focus firepower at all so at a certain point in the game, I ditch it for a more reliable cruiser warship. This is intentional so I'm not going to expect anything.

Capitals

Like Cruisers, I don't have much to complain about here. I don't think there needs to be sweeping changes. I do feel the fuel consumption of Capitals is disproportionate to that of Cruisers. I don't know why an Onslaught chugs 3x the fuel of a Dominator (which is also a hog). The jump from Cruiser to Capital when it comes to travel is immense and while I get you don't want to go joyriding with battleships, its a logistical strain that feels too high.

The only capital I don't jump at a chance to use is the Odyssey. It's just a bit awkward to use and outside of the main battery, it has a ton of small mounts, which I'm not a fan of.

Strangely enough, I'd advocate for the Onslaught to have a single fighter bay, like the battleships of old. Most battleships had a recon plane or small fighter attached at the bow and the Onslaught carrying on that tradition would be interesting.

[Alex]

Thank you! Been reading through this and making a few notes.

[SCC]

I've been thinking... Atlas and Prometheus should be the most efficient freighter/tanker in every aspect. Currently, Prometheus burns has a worse fuel/fuel consumption efficiency than Phaeton and similar thing is going on with Atlas and Colossus. Capital logistic ships already have a very steep cost of decreasing your burn speed, so much that many people don't bother with them anyway, but since they aren't the best freighter/tanker in the game, there's even less incentive to use them. Decrease their fuel consumption or increase their cargo/tanks.

[Alex]

Yeah, that's already on my list, actually! Smaller freighters/tankers being a touch more efficient is basically the prime reason for running up against the 30 ship limit.

[Megas]

In my case, I have one, maybe two, Prometheus in my endgame fleet.  For hauling, I bring one Colossus (because I bring two or three Apogees as a jack, and having lots of big combat ships means not too shabby cargo space).

On the other hand, bringing three to five Afflictors for easy Reaper cheese helps push ships to the fleet limit.

However, with huge endgame fights, I can probably deploy about ten to twenty ships.  Not all at the same time, but retreating cruisers after they run out of peak performance before replacing them with (inferior) ships.

Even though Prometheus is a pig, I need its capacity when I bring three or four capital-sized combat ships.  I have scuttled Prometheus once or twice when the fleet ran low on fuel, and Prometheus was the cheapest to replace, as well as shaving off fuel consumption.  Prometheus and Atlas are just as piggy and hungry as the other capitals.

[xenoargh]

I agree with most of that.

On the Enforcer... honestly, I think it needs a more-efficient shield and better Flux stats, rather than more OPs.  This is why it's largely fallen by the wayside; there's no good reason to SO one, so you need it to be the Tanky Destoyer... but it can't tank.  Nor does it have enough Dissipation to support all those Medium Turrets.

On the Brawler, yeah, the Flux stats, the movement speed / turn speed, the shield are all weak spots.  It's not OPs per se; those problems could get addressed with better core stats.

On the Hound / Cerebus:  over here, they get very small-arc (60-degree) forward shields with very high efficiency (0.2, crazy-high by Vanilla standards).  With Extended Shields, that gives them merely 120 degrees of coverage.  This makes up for a lot of their problems, but players need to invest in the OPs.  With the Hound, this is especially problematic, since that single Small Turret doesn't even have a 360-degree arc.  Neither ship ends up feeling invulnerable with these changes, merely able to do the job they were supposed to do.  With the Cerebus, my biggest problem has been with Burn Drive; if they miss-judge that, they die.  Still experimenting with that.

On the Onslaught:  it has all of the strengths of a Dominator... and a whole bunch of new weaknesses.  Terrible, illogical turret arcs, weapon slots it can't possibly support with Dissipation stats, a shield that feels paper-thin and is only "good" for sometimes maybe absorbing incoming Reapers (but only if they're coming straight at the front, good luck on that).  One of the issues here is Armor scaling: a Dominator in Vanilla has 1500... an Onslaught has only 1750.  This doesn't feel right; it's even less mobile and its Flux problems are even more acute.  In Rebal, that issue's solved by a global fiat; Armor damage reduction goes to 99%; this takes the Onslaught's cusp for noticeable amounts of Armor damage to a new place.

[Schwartz]

I use the Enforcer all the time, even as an AI Officer ship. It's good. I wouldn't say it's much weaker than a Hammerhead, just different. I would rather field an Enforcer than a Medusa. Medusa is too expensive for being paper thin.

I also never use Brawlers, but that's more to do with them being the wrong ship class for their intended purpose. Not because they're necessarily too weak.

Vigilance is probably the most balanced out of the bunch the OP mentioned. A bit more flux wouldn't hurt.

Lashers are still powerful flux spikers if kitted right.

I would say Astral and Onslaught are fine. Astral is a bit short on ordnance points, but it gets a borderline imbalanced ship system (if using bombers).

[Morgan Rue]

Brawler TT:
Take a look at it's default lodout, it is actually quite nasty. It's standard kit is one Ion Beam, one Graviton Beam, Advanced Optics and two Sabot Racks. This combined with it's mobility from Plasma Jets makes it extremely obnoxious to fight and generally quite hard to kill.

Hound:
Hounds are cheap, effective and capable when outfitted properly. They fall off later, but that is to be expected. A properly kitted Hound is capable of taking down most early game targets, though it will always take damage when doing so. Usually I fit them with either long range ballistics, or a Railgun and a Light Mortar if I can find them. Short range ballistics outside of Railgun + Light Mortar are alright when manually piloted. Generally I like putting a very large number of hullmods on Hounds, so I go for cheaper weapons, leave the small mount empty or undersize the medium. The Hound doesn't have the flux stats to properly support more than low end weapons anyway.

I agree on Makeshift Shields being generally bad. The primary reason the Hound does not immediately die is that it is very fast. Makeshift shields takes this away, in addition to it not really being able to support a shield due to it's flux stats.

Scarab:
It's alright in a support role. IPDAI + ATG + Tactical Lasers makes it slaughter fighters, though it has to retreat faster than a more standard PD ship. Outside of that, it is quite bad.

I also notice the Mule and Cerberus haven't been mentioned yet.

I find the Cerberus to be a generally worse Hound, as it doesn't have the speed that the Hound has. I'll use them as freighters sometimes, I don't consider them combat capable.

The Mule probably has a bit too much OP right now, especially compared to the Gemini. It can mount whatever it wants to and a little bit more.