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[MShadowy]

Oh, ehehe, th-thanks HELMUT.

Uh, anyway, glad you like the faction; the more I've worked on them the more thought I put into the role of each ship and how they fit together (at least in theory) and I'm glad to hear that they're each as different from each other as I'd hoped.

Anyway, on to the specific points:  The Seski indeed was actually started as kind of a Hound analogue, though not nearly so good a freighter, and due to her general frailty she's a pretty different ship in terms of usage; I've never actually been terribly good with the Seski, though.

The Sargasso is indeed supposed to provide a benefit to fighters while its system is up, making them somewhat more maneuverable (+100 acceleration, 50 deceleration, 150 turn acceleration and 100 turn speed) and give them a slight boost to range and accuracy.  It also boosted speed during the earliest phases of the testing and if memory serves that was being applied correctly, so I believe that it's applying the maneuvering bonuses as well, though it's kinda hard to tell. 

Also, with the way the script is set up, if the bonuses are getting applied multiple times, well, that'd be a bug.  I still need to come up with an animation for this though, to give a visual cue that it's working.

The Tartarus and Scylla are both pretty monstrous.  Actually given the Tartarus' siege mode and it's general effectiveness I suspect that her Deployments costs may need to rise a bit.  As for the Phased Graviton Beam, it is indeed a slightly better Graviton Beam, in that it has a bit of emp damage; there been some suggestion to reduce it's range so that the AI doesn't linger outside of other weapons ranges.

The Pandora Array is the trickiest thing to balance, and I've definitely had to tweak something or another about the crazy thing way more commonly than any other aspect of the mod.  Still, I kinda like it being a bit risky to use.  Regardless I'll take a look into tweaking it some more and see if I can't make the thing slightly more reasonable.  And I still need to set up a custom AI for the Elysiums combat routines so the AI can at least keep the weapon pointed downrange while it's charging it to fire.

And yeah, having a heft CR cost, well, like Alex noted it's another way to balance ships that could be overpowered so that they become more reasonable.  On the Morningstars CR cost, I was generally comparing it to the Medusa.  Well, maybe not the best thing to compare a player controlled Morningstars effectiveness versus an AI ruled Meddie.  I guess I'll do some adjusting.

The Lambent 0% deployment cost thing is a bug in Starsector with automated craft; having no crew means they can never recover CR.

And for the last two notes, yes, and yes.

[Wyvern]

Some random notes:

I rate the Tartarus as being roughly equal to the Apogee - so that's what I'd use as a balance point for its deployment costs.  Both ships can carry large energy weapons with range boosts; the Tartarus can carry more supporting firepower (as well as having the flexibility to switch to ballistic or missile weapons), but the Tartarus is also noticeably more fragile.  (The reason for that comparative fragility is a combination of several individually-minor factors; the Apogee has slightly more efficient shields, more flux capacity, and superior mobility - the Tartarus can match the mobility if it turns siege mode off, but that leaves it without its range boost & vulnerable to flanking attacks.)

The Scylla, by contrast, is incredibly powerful, almost regardless of what you choose to arm it with.  Its drones are frequently all the point defense it needs - though I've fitted mine with burst PD turrets so I don't have to cloak-dodge the few missiles that get through.  Then I use 2x Wavebeam cannons; their 900 base range is better than any (non-beam) energy weapon from the base game, and, with skills and a dedicated targeting core, works out to over 1400 - meaning I can outrange anything that doesn't mount a range-boost hull mod (or tachyon lances).  Of course, the SHI wavebeams are also kinda low dps... but they do hard flux, so that's not a big deal.  And I back them up with a pair of heavy blasters; that makes short work of anything fast enough to get in range.  (Aside: Would it be possible to change the Wave Beam's name to something like "Wave Cannon" or "Wave Blaster" or the like?  It keeps confusing me that a weapon named "Wave Beam" is not, in fact, a beam weapon.)

I've used several other variants to equally great effect; a "balanced" variant with autopulse lasers and heavy blasters; a "strike" variant with dual plasma cannons (and some empty weapon slots - adding heavy blasters to that is just silly, imo; use the ordnance points for more vents); the only variant that didn't work too well for my default solo-cruiser gameplay was one with dual HILs, although that version would be a great thing to put under AI control as a support ship.

Of course, it's also a ship with a phasing cloak - make one mistake, and it's very easy to suddenly find yourself missing a huge chunk of armor from, say, a hellbore hit when you weren't quite cautious enough about taking down that Dominator you were fighting.  So that's some kind of balance there.

[Taverius]

Interesting. I put waves and mediums on the scylla, and pd everywhere else. the emp-resistant flux thingy, unstable injector, blast doors, and a metric gigaton of flux capacity.

The waves and mediums are on autofire, I manually control the inbuilt.

I've tried the range game but I find this more fun

[Doogie]

I personally think you should make the entire mod default that dark-brownish color scheme.
But it's up to you. Regardless, this is probably my favorite faction mod, tied with Blackrock of course.

[MShadowy]

Thanks Wyvern, that's pretty helpful.  I'll definitely keep that in mind when thinking about how to balance the Tartarus.

In any case, while my next major release is probably going to be a bit, I'll try to release a minor balance patch over the weekend, plus some minor aesthetic tweaks.  Mostly this involves giving Euripides a custom landing image and tweaking the planetary rings in the system.  There may some other tweaks as well.  I probably won't be changing the default color scheme, though I may change the pattern at some point.  I'm thinking about it.

Also, regarding the Scylla, she used to be much more crazy.  When I first implemented her, she had 12,000 flux base, as opposed to 10,000,  and her built in weapon did twice as much damage both in terms of actual damage and emp.  200 dps vs 100 doesn't seem like it should be that severe a difference but it really was.  She was at that point probably the most broken ship I'd made; to put it bluntly she was capable of obliterating any vanilla cruiser without any difficulty, excepting the Eagle which soft countered her due the amount of firepower it was able to generate.

Of course, eventually the Eagle would run out of bullets.  In any case, yes, she is still pretty much a wrecking machine, just a somewhat more sane one.  Of all the ships in the mod, she and the Mimir are probably the ones that are, in my estimation, definitely the closest to being OP, and some adjustments may end up being made.

[Wyvern]

Yeah - when I was fussing about with the Tartarus' ship system (note to self: still need to work on better AI for that.  May get to it this weekend?), my first reaction was "Wow, this is insanely powerful" - after discovering that it could just rip apart any cruiser - or a Conquest - in the simulator.  My second reaction was "Huh, I guess that's about normal" - after discovering that I could do exactly the same thing with an Apogee or Aurora.  (Aurora was slightly harder due to its lack of large slots & range boost, but, err, heavy blasters with high energy focus are pretty nasty regardless).  For the record, these were all off of missions, so no character skills involved, but all hull mods available.

Taking an Onslaught or Paragon one-on-one is much harder, though; even with character skills I can't guarantee a flawless victory.  To some extent, I blame the default Conquest loadout for this discrepancy; it uses Mjolnir cannons, but doesn't have the extra vents necessary to make them viable primary weapons.  (Even with extra vents, I'd never mount four Mjolnirs on a Conquest.  Two at most.)  A properly-outfitted Conquest ought to present a much tougher fight.

[MShadowy]

Yeah, a lot to consider when it comes to balance.  In other news, stupid blinky lights.



Also, gifcam seems to work pretty well in wine.

[Uomoz]

So BRDY and SHI are the new standards for top notch quality huh? Daaaamn those lights are cool.

[ssthehunter]

How did you get the lights to blink?
I've been trying to get that to work forever on the model I'm trying to make :c
Anyways, amazing work, hope to see more amazing stuff.

[MShadowy]

Well, following Cycerins lead, I added a ton of decorative weapon slots to the thing and filled them with a decorative blinker "weapon" with an always playing animation of a light that turns on for a bit, then off.

[phyrex]

So BRDY and SHI are the new standards for top notch quality huh? Daaaamn those lights are cool.

Damn, ninja'ed me.
I wanted to mention myself how BRDY and SHI strikes me as basicly the highest quality mods out there
I'd almost brand them as the "vanilla factions" of modding  

edit : not saying other mods suck, only that BRDY and SHI truly go above and beyond

[FasterThanSleepyfish]

Is there a tutorial on these running lights? I can't seem to find any by searching the forums. Also, if it invovles coding, I might need help... :/

[Gotcha!]

Oooh, pretty lights. *enthralled*

[MShadowy]

Well, enough screwing around with gifcam.  Back to the modding!

Spoiler

[close]

[Uomoz]

You and cyc are OBSESSED with teleporting cap ships huh?