Have finally finished my Nomad campaign. That was pretty fun game.
I wasn't really convinced by the Nomad carrier fleet. The Gila Monster is the only thing that can hope to take down capital ships and even cruisers. The problem with the Gila is that it had incredibly bad maneuverability and have trouble getting a proper gun-sight against other ships, even huge ones! I don't even want to know the nightmare Nomads have when they are fighting against Shadowyard.
So yeah, aiming is hard but other than this, the Gila Monster is the ultimate Brawler in the entire game. There is nothing (save perhaps Neutrinos) than can hope to tank the doom cannon. But even with its raw firepower, my Nomad carrier fleet had a lot of trouble taking down big stuffs.
I also tried something else. A fleet based around a Sandstorm, the idea is to get your entire fleet protecting the capital ship and flying as a big blob, crushing everything that come too close. And it worked pretty well, Komodoes make great PD escorts and shield walls. Some Yellowjackets as fire support to take down frigates and big fighters. Wurms struggled to find a use until the big final brawl when both core fleets collided, then they would make reasonable basic gunners/cannon fodder. The Sandstorm of course fit the role of big ship killer, while it lack the dreaded Doom cannon, its array of Maser is still reasonably efficient against everything from Talons to Onslaughts. It also doesn't have to worry about ammo.
The Death Bloom is perhaps the only ship fit for being the flagship. The IA can handle very well other ships as they don't do anything fancy other than "get close and shoot". While the DB is powerful, i think its turning speed was a tad too high, i had a lot of troubles aiming against moving targets.
The only one that have some trouble to fit in is perhaps the Scorpion. While it give reasonable medium range support fire , it doesn't do it as well as other ships. It isn't bad by any means but i think it's kinda lacking some long range missiles to really support the fleet. In the previous version, Pilums and MIRV were great to take down stuff at long range. With the new fusion torpedo pod, it is only good to scare away fighters and frigates.
I played with the 0.9.5 version, so i couldn't try the Rattlesnake yet. But overall, you really improved this mod for 0.61 Trylobot, one of the greatest faction on the modding forum.