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[XazoTak]

I reckon in terms of being comfortable for a player to use, Tempest is the best ship in the game.
It's very responsive, has great automated defences, and due to the low weapon count doesn't require lots of micromanagement to use; just decisions on where to go, who to attack, etc.
Most other strong ships are slow and seem to often put the player in a situation where they're running at near-max flux using lots of automatic weapons, and having to quickly decide which damage to tank and which to absorb, a single mistake causing them to overload and explode. This kind of gameplay benefits little from the skill of a human (strategic thinking) and is harmed greatly by the flaws of humans (reaction time, making mistakes) causing humans to be on-par with AIs.

The things that makes Tempest so much more fun than other string ships are:

• Combining extreme speed and damage
• Being able to quickly decide your place on the battlefield
• Having manual control of weapons be easy
• Having combat be partly automated in a cool way

That means to make a ship Tempest-like, it needs to:

• Be fast and have lots of damage
• Pack almost all of its damage into one weapon group[/i]
  
  • Have a fighter bay
  
  Massive emphasis on that second one. It's just no fun using a ship that spreads the bulk of its damage across many weapon groups.
  
  In order for there to be a good range of ships that play similarly to Tempest, there needs to be one in each size class.
  
  Aurora could be made Tempest-like by having less but larger weapon mounts (the current number of small mounts is just silly), and a fighter bay (no built-in fighters, to make Aurora more flexible). Pretty much a mini-Odyssey.
  Aurora seriously needs a rework anyway, because in its current state it's useless. It's massively outclassed by Falcon(P), which is a much cheaper fast cruiser that is equal or better in every way except durability.
  
  Odyssey is already Tempest-like. Fast, lots of damage in one weapon group, has fighter bays.
  
  That means the Tempest-like list of ships is:
  Frigate: Tempest
  Destroyer: None
  Cruiser: Aurora
  Capital: Odyssey
  
  To fill the Destroyer gap, a new ship would have to be created. No existing destroyer is even close to being a Tempest equivalent, because for some reason the game has no expensive-high grade destroyers.
  I reckon a good design would be:
  Mounts: (1x Large Energy, 1x Medium Energy, 1x Medium Missile) or (1x Large Missile, 2x Medium Energy) or (1x Large Energy, 2x Medium Missile) or (2x Medium Missile, 2x Medium Energy)
  Ability: Damage amplification
  Speed: At least as fast as Medusa
  Fighters: A single large drone, with a frontal phase lance, two IR pulse laser turrets, and point defence AI so those pulse lasers target missiles
  DP cost: ~18
  
  Although it provides very little strength to the front line relative to its high DP cost, it poses an extreme threat to slow exposed ships.

[pedro1_1]

I could easily see a Shrike vairant as that tempest like ship in the destroyer class, like a TT version which trades it's arrays of smal weapon to give it a figter bay and a medium energy mount, while the original medium energy recives an upgrade to large energy

ok, just though of some more stuff: beter flux stats and an free ITU, the lore would be someting like an high ranking TT oficer wanted a ship for he to travel that's not as small as a frigate and not as big as a cruiser but could also defend itself from light cruiser attacks so TT shipwards division made a Shrike variant that is far stronger than a average destroyer.

[Wyvern]

The Aurora already fits your goals pretty well - for certain builds.  The way I set it up, all the turrets (and the ion cannons I put in the front small hardpoints) are flux-neutral, and manual control is only required for the single hardpoint-mounted heavy blaster.  No fighters, but it doesn't need fighters - it's got turrets running on autofire instead.  The Falcon (P) does not compete - unless it's set up for an all-missile burst build, in which case it competes for about three targets and then is useless.

For destroyers, the Medusa is lore-wise supposed to be that, but it doesn't really match up in actual play.

[Megas]

For destroyers, the Medusa is lore-wise supposed to be that, but it doesn't really match up in actual play.

Agreed.  Medusa was supposed to be the elite high-tech destroyer.  In practice, it is merely an upsized Wolf on par with Hammerhead (and weaker than Drover).  Overpriced (in terms of DP), and should be on the basic high-tech blueprint pack for what it does.

Back during 0.6.x, Medusa really was a godship.  Since 0.8 and today, not so much.

[TaLaR]

You do understand that you request balance-breakers? Fast ships pay for it by being less powerful in a straight fight. Though there is 1 example of such ship - Radiant. It has Paragon-grade flux, shield and weapons combined with best mobility for a Capital (Odyssey can only move forward, Radiant can skim anywhere)... And it's not player-pilotable (or even obtainable), exactly because it's so overpowered.

Tempest is not nearly the best frigate. It does get the titles of best standard frigate and best AI frigate (or at least tie with Omen for the 2nd). Specialist frigates (Hyperion, Afflictor and to lesser degree Shade, as a sub-par Afflictor replacement) can do much more with player-piloting.

Medusa still has a decent place among DEs.
- Enforcer isn't even part of competition. It's ok for AI due to durability, but don't expect much from it. Outside of SO or SO-like Sabot builds it can't hit above it's weight at all.
- Sunder is only good in TL sniper role, which Medusa naturally counters with effective shields and mobility.Well, almost any DE or larger ship can counter just a single TL by correctly timed venting, AI is just not smart enough for it. While hard flux weapons Sunder is just a weaker Hammerhead wannabe.
- Hammerhead has highest DE firepower and better durability, which makes it much stronger than Medusa against carriers. But at soloing direct combat Cruisers or fighting large amount of ships player-piloted Medusa is better. As well as at catching phase ships.

Now the real problem for Medusa is that it also competes with Falcon and Falcon(P), which have same burn speed, have better campaign availability, are easier to equip and are plain stronger.

[xenoargh]

The Medusa's largely fixed over here.

1.  It has better acceleration values than anything else in DE other than the Shrike.  This means it can actually jink.  This made a surprising amount of difference.  Man, I still want a way to adjust lateral acceleration, not just lateral / rearward.

2.  AI tweaks to reserve the System's last charge for escaping.

3.  It has enough Dissipation / Capacity to do what it's meant to do (enter range, do alpha and leave) without running out of Flux. 

This also means it's also better in the "bigger, badder Wolf" kiting role, too.

4.  I'm considering re-writing the System so that it's truly useful again.

Basically, it should follow movement naturally so that it's not weird to figure out where it's going to mini-teleport, and it really should raise shields immediately; having the player do it isn't fun after a million years.  IDK what Alex changed, or whether the System's dependent on the velocity of the ship or whatever (it and Burn Drive and Phase Teleportation are, strangely, still locked up in the engine, rather than out in the API, even though it's now obvious how they work, now that Alex has exposed all their stuff in the API), but that System's just plain harder to use effectively now and it's one of the little things that took Medusa over the cusp into mediocrity. 

Problem there is largely the other ships affected.  Probably would make the Wolf slightly OP during early-game and ... huh, that's it.  Might be OK to do that.

5.  Light Needlers are no longer hugely OP, lol.  So the meta's different; Railguns still work, but aren't quite the same- range band, TTK, etc.  Honestly, the Medusa's the totally-obvious demonstration of what happens when the weapons aren't broken, balance-wise; some ships will need a rethink.

[TaLaR]

Basically, it should follow movement naturally so that it's not weird to figure out where it's going to mini-teleport, and it really should raise shields immediately; having the player do it isn't fun after a million years.  IDK what Alex changed, or whether the System's dependent on the velocity of the ship or whatever

Phase skim moves you along current velocity vector, yes. And as far as I remember, phase skimmer always worked like this. To make it easy to use I have a small utility mod that draws velocity vector (among few other things).
When you expect needing skim to dodge or catch a phase frigate it's best to drop current velocity to zero. Then you can nudge velocity in needed direction with just a short acceleration before using skim.

5.  Light Needlers are no longer hugely OP, lol.  So the meta's different; Railguns still work, but aren't quite the same- range band, TTK, etc.  Honestly, the Medusa's the totally-obvious demonstration of what happens when the weapons aren't broken, balance-wise; some ships will need a rethink.

Even before Needler range nerf, Railguns were pretty much the better option. With just 2 slots, raw kinetic dps > slight range or efficiency advantage. As a DE you need to operate under assumption that any dangerous enemy will out-range you anyway.

[xenoargh]

Yeah, I thought it worked that way (in re: velocity vector).  Slowing the Medusa vs. Hammerhead did indeed create a problem (and, sigh, that's my fault; I suggested the Hammerhead needed a speed buff and buffing in general, and I still think something in DE should be able to catch a Medusa).  So, maybe it needs an absolute range for that mechanic, with smarts dealing with final angle and not running into stuff.  I'll look at this.

The range advantage was pretty significant (in Vanilla; not so much with mods that altered the Cruiser / Capital ranges further).  Medusas used to be able to kite pretty much at will.

[Megas]

The loss of 800 range light needler has hurt Medusa too.  Similarly, 700 range needlers means I do not bother with tachyon lance on Sunder and just blast things with plasma cannon, if I do not use graviton and HIL instead.

One Medusa loadout I liked when needlers had 800 range, two light needlers, one heavy blaster, and one ion beam, is not as useful as it used to be, and I replace the needlers with railguns because railguns are generally better than 700 range light needlers for less OP cost.

[Plantissue]

There is no real equivalent to Tempest. Tempest are good becasue of a number of reasons, but the primary one is that they have a speed of 180. That speed (and general manoeuvrability) is all the defence they need till a pair of tachyon lance appears. Their "equivalents" don't have that mind numbing speed. Aurora does fine, due to the excellent plasma jet system which allows a tempest-like darting into and out of range, but they simply don't have the ability to concentrate weaponry like Tempests do. 3.75 tempests costs the same amount of Deployment Points as 1 Aurora.

[Thaago]

The Medusa is a fine destroyer, even in AI hands, because of its unmatched mobility among combat destroyers and its powerful shield. I don't think its fair to call it an 'upsized Wolf': it can mount kinetics, has an omni shield, and actually has the flux to fire its weapons. It is rather vulnerable to interceptors though. It could stand being 1 or 2 DP cheaper.

[TaLaR]

AI is very bad at using Medusa's system (which is understandable, since it is harder to use than Eagle/Falcon/Hammerhead's systems). So mobility aspect is kind of wasted.
And yes, it is weaker against carriers than every other DE. Even Enforcer can at least bum-rush carriers decently.

[Megas]

I call Medusa upsized Wolf because it has the same system and they play similarly, especially if Medusa is stuck with Open Market or common weapons (early in the game).  Mounting small ballistics instead of missiles does not change that.  If anything, it saves Medusa from being any worse and a joke for its cost.  It is already overpriced somewhat compared to other destroyers.