...Yes, ok, so that's slightly tongue-in-cheek. Still, I find the notion of the High Energy Focus on the Aurora to be an odd choice; it can't mount the long-range energy weaponry (HILs or lances) needed to avoid the drawbacks, nor does it have the armor or hull to survive for long with its shields down - even without the extra 50% damage taken. It's not useless, of course; you can get some good value out of it against overloaded targets or things that you're flanking... but I'd still find the phase skimmer or fortress shield to be a more fitting choice.
The idea there is to emphasize its role as an offense-oriented ship. A phase skimmer could work to that end as well, but in general, large ships teleporting around seems too powerful. One could go many different ways when assigning ship systems (do you shore up a weakness? emphasize a strength? specialize a ship in a role, or give it more flexibility?), and in many cases, I don't think there's one right answer.
...Speaking of which, you may want to consider some more complicated algorithm for "is this ship fire support" than just "does it have any weapon with extreme range" - because Auroras really shouldn't be held on the back lines until they run out of MIRV ammo.
Yeah, good point.
My suggestion would be a mix of reduced range (4000 was what I tested) with either further increased flux generation, or less damage; part of the issue, I think, is that the last balance pass, while it did increase flux generation some, also (due to a bug fix on burst beam weapons) increased the lance's damage output by about 50%. (I think? Don't have the game in front of me, but if it's still listed as 200 sustained DPS, that's 50% more than it had before.)
Hmm. Increasing flux generation on the Tachyon Lance is more like to improve its fire support performance. All that does is make it less viable as a close-range weapon. Reducing the damage might be a good idea... well, I'm definitely keeping an eye on this - it seems too powerful as-is, even before the HEF system.
Sooooo i guess this means the Omen is finally in the campaign?
Yep.
I think you should add small, red lightning arcs to the Burn Drive active engines. Would look hella awesome and you've already got the lightning fx working for the Omen, yeah?
Ah, it's not so simple. There's lightning and there's lightning, and we're probably visualizing different things besides - I'm having trouble picturing lightning along with the engine effects, and it looking coherent and good. Also: that lightning is designed to only be used in a few places, i.e. with appearance rather than performance in mind.
It's less than mediocre, every other combat ship in the game outperforms it in every way. Speed buff, great, flare system, even better, but if you yourself say that it's still not a good ship then why have it in the game? Variety is always good, no doubt about that, and every ship has its place but for the Buffalo that place happens to be on the scrapyard. Have you considered turning it into a pure missile platform instead? That small energy mount at its front is rather misplaced so it could be switched for something else.
I just want it to have a role that doesn't involve rushing to a station and getting rid of the damn thing as fast as possible.
How shall I put it... it's not a good ship, and it's not supposed to be. When character skills and such come in, you might be able to make something presentable out of it, and it could make a reasonable short-term stop on your way to something better. With how the campaign works *now*, with the lack of character skills and the ease of acquiring better ships, it's simply never going to be all that useful. Some ships are just flat out worse than others, and this is ok.
The speed buff is to make it a bit more of a threat in AI hands - not to make it a particularly appealing choice for the player.