I gave the new version a test. Got to level 16 so far. I basically only have points in leaderships for a big carrier fleet.
The narwhal is only 5 op. That makes it a total no brainer to put on medium mounts. If it was more like 10 op it'd be fine. I like that there is a bit of randomness for the tusk missiles curvature so sometimes they hit in a very tighter cluster. Sometimes it is like before and it uniformly take off the armor from about 3/4 of the ship.
Hmmm, yeah I'd based the launcher basically directly off of the Reaper launcher, guess I didn't think about it hard enough. I'll adjust the OP cost so it's a little more reasonable. As for the bomblets, good to hear, that's about as intended.
Sargassos are really cheap at 2 logistics. I guess the trade off is they're 11 deployment, but don't have a ton of punch. I see the ship system working for sure now though and it is pretty awesome. I want to keep it on as much as possible so i make lots of use of the Harmonic Shield Conduit (HSC) in a Sargasso.
I don't use the HSC much in other ships because i'm so active vent happy but the AI makes good used of them. I'm a little fuzzy on how much they increase vent speed, but it feels faster at any rate. Like if i have 1000 hard flux on a mimir does that increase my passive venting speed by 100 flux/s? Then as it ticks down 99 then 98 and so on?
The maths on the HSC are a little fuzzy, so it gives sort of a bell curve kind of effect where the boost to dissipation is highest somewhere in the middles; it's essentially soft capped. As for the actual degree of benefit I'd have to do some math to figure it out, and as I'm not terribly great with math (the formula the hull mod uses was offered up by Debido) I'm not so sure how accurate the result would be.
I'm glad you like how the Sargasso is going now, though it should have been working all this time, it just didn't indicate the effects because I never got around to including that code because I'm kinda dumb. I still want to add some kind of visual effect to show the edge of it's range, but haven't even decided what that effect would be yet.
I like the option like drones added to the skinwalkers. They add some needed punch.
The kobolds are amazing at overwhelming enemy PD. The fighters draw fire the missiles draw fire and their flares draw fire. Even low tech ships have trouble keeping up with them. Though because they strafe so much in a wobbly fashion the missiles are wildly inaccurate. Maybe 1 in 5 hit an enemy destroyer traveling in a straight line while fleeing while crashmothballed. Against enemies that return fire, tying up PD is totally worth it. Barbette is a good PD weapon too so they're decent defensively too. Their info has a wonky thing to it though for weapons it says "1X(in white), 1x(in yellow) splinter rocket (kobold variant), 1X(in yellow) barbette PD system".
The wonky info thing is a result of trying to use a spoofed "gun" which was intended to make the Kobolds back off a bit; I wanted them to keep their distance rather than attempt to facecheck their targets. Used a script to swap about weapon projectiles so that it would not actually do damage but there was no actual effect on the fighters behavior. I just forgot to remove it, aheh.
In any case, sounds like they've got a potentially excellent use as a distraction to PD systems as is, so maybe I'll keep them how they are now, though I may make some changes to their rocket launcher to make it a little less inaccurate.
The neriad afterburner makes them the best point cappers. I send them to get a point and they do. Only hyperions are faster, barely. They also afterburn through withering enemy fire too though and that gets tedious. They are also really love to restock their shrikes. So they sometimes starve the bombers for flight decks.
I need to set up a custom AI for their burn drive so that they don't do it while too close to whatever they're attacking, probably; it is obnoxious to be sure, especially since the AI seems unable to really account for that level of speed while trying to make shots. As for the missiles, I guess that's probably something arising from their guns being anti-fighter weapons and the shrikes being anti-ship weapons. Perhaps swapping the missile out for a black cap launcher or something?
Raksashas have their tusk rack over their sprite and it looks a little odd. It might be better if it was below. Though they look kinda adorable with their little horns after they've emptied the rack.
That's all i've looked at carefully for now.
Hmmm, guess I forgot to hide the missile rack (though I did also change the fighters sprite to account for the wider launch area); I'll have a look at it and see what I can do, though I guess I'll keep the horns, heh.
Anyway, thanks; your critique is always a great help.
I hope you don't take offense to this, but I got bored and added P9's reactor cores to the Sargasso, changed it's color scheme, and added parts from other Shadowyard ships to it.
It can no longer support fighters now however.
Huh. It does look like a face now kinda. Well, regardless I hardly mind people playing around with my stuff.
I should probably try and make a greeble sheet or something so people can actually kitbash if they want.