So, i played a short SRA campaign. I haven't really tested to see if they're viable for very late game (against Templars and late game IBBs for exemple) but i'm not too worried given they have some particular ships to can carry them.
Anyway, here's what i think about the ships :
The Enlil frigate is the starter ship in Nexerelin, it's a fairly cheap Lasher/Vigilance hybrid. I personally outfitted my starter Enlil with a SO, a pair of MGs and the outrageous scatter CEPC. A point blank shot with the Scatter CEPC hurt like hell, and with on top of that SO and Unstable Injectors, there's not much that can avoid being hugged by an angry Enlil. Later on, the medium universal allow it to become a long range missile platform, letting the ship be useful throughout the game. The civilian version is unfortunately worthless, its flux stats have been gutted in exchange for an insignificant additional cargo capacity.
The Seski is a tricky ship to fly, it's an high-tech Hound, with a tiny shield and no armor to speak of. Unlike the Enlil, delivering a Scatter salvo at close range is very risky, limiting its role to long/mid range harassement. A Seski with unstable injector and a long range weapon can make for an acceptable wingman during early game, but later, they're only worth deploying to chase fleeing shuttles. Surprisingly, its white variant lack the civilian modification.
Just like the Seski, the Inanna is hard to fly, mainly due to its inflexible broadside layout. This is its only weakness though, it's otherwise cheap, tough, fast and with fantastic flux stats. The broadside is tricky to use, but when successfully combined with the HEF system, the Inanna hurt like a truck. The AI is also surprisingly competent with it.
The Belet-seri is an interesting idea that doesn't quite works in my opinion. The TAG is an inferior variant of the Harbinger's Entropy Amplifier, short duration, long cooldown and no visual indicator. On top of that, its fragility doesn't bode well with the TAG's short range. Fortunately, it's much cheaper than the hideously expensive Harbinger, but still clunky to use. A visual indicator that a target have been "tagged" would help in my opinion.
Also, the Pandora sensor hullmod is a bit misleading. It says it increase the strategic (campaign view, i suppose) sensor range by 360%. While it may not be technically wrong, given how Alex choose to make the sensor system works, it's still a bit confusing to see the actual underwhelming results. This might be one of the few cases where just saying "improve sensors" would be better than giving actual numbers. Not a huge deal though.
The Ashnan is a a superior shuttle to the Hermes in pretty much every points for the same cost. More cargo, faster (if you ignore Maneuvring jets), tougher, better shield... And a drone! The Tethis drone isn't exactly a huge threat, but it can forces pursuers to raise their shields and lose the 0-flux speed bonus. Of course, it's not as armed as the Hermes, but who really uses the guns of a shuttle anyway?
Wasn't super convinced by the new Shamash. It's not strictly bad per se, a dual AM Blaster Shamash can still threaten bigger ships, but i feel its very limited customization options restrict its possibilities. The built-in phase projector is basically a weaker, but more efficient, heavy blaster, which is surprisingly tame. For the two small mounts, there's not much asides from AM Blasters and Ion cannons variants. The new Siren flares (the description is incomplete btw), while efficient, tends to be unnecessary on a phase ship. I personally preferred the old mine system, even though the AI obviously couldn't use it well at all.
Also, while the Shamash suffer from High Maintenance, it most importantly lacks the Delicate Machinery hullmod that accelerate the CR degradation. If an enemy Shamash refuses to retreat, it can kit and "lock" the player in battle for a while, while vanilla phase ships will eventually fall apart quicker due to CR.
So yeah, the Shamash works but i feel it could be more interesting. Perhaps trying to replace the PEP with a medium hardpoint? Also, its description is outdated, and makes mention of the old mines and an unused ship (Enthalpy).
The Morningstar got hit by the nerf bat and it shows. Without the two ion drones (the description on the new one is outdated), the Morningstar lost a lot of its firepower. With only 4 small and 1 medium on the prow, it can't brawl with other destroyers any more. The new range bonus from its new drone makes it more of a hybrid Hammerhead/Sunder fire support, rather than the high-tech Enforcer it previously was. Fielding a Morningstar is far from being a mistake though, it still performs reasonably well, thanks to its mobility, good shield and flux stats. Still, i feel it's now trying to fulfil a new role, the same one that its sister ship, the Clade, perform fantastically well, at the cost of leaving the previous one vacant. Acquiring a Tartarus feels more urgent than before now.
The Clade was my flagship for quite a while and for good reasons, i feel it accidentally became the Shadowyard's equivalent of the Blackrock's Desdinova despite being designed as a fire-support. Its firepower is clearly inferior to its alter-ego, the Sunder, but its armor and shields are better. Its survivability is enhanced further by its fantastic mobility, the Retro-booster allows for weird, but useful players shenanigans, and even the AI uses it successfully to get out of tricky situations. As a flagship, i used the Clade's mobility to disengage, pursue, flank and otherwise move around the battlefield faster than any other ships.
Also, a little bug when activating the Retro-booster :
The Sargasso carrier is probably one of the best in the game, thanks to its Fighter Control Relay. +25% speed and +50% weapon range on every fighters on the field is no joke, every fleets relying heavily on fighters should at least have one of those. It is otherwise a fairly mediocre carrier by itself : small cargo, weak armor, one medium universal that can mount a lrm launcher, and two small hardpoints that will rarely, if ever, be used against the enemy. I guess it could be used as a beam platform during the early game, it's surprisingly fast and have a reasonably good shield after all. But beyond that, it have to stay far from the frontline. Even if fighters currently aren't worth much, i think it's too strong and could get a handicap similar to the Gemini with its burn 8 to avoid making it a no-brainer.
The Solidarity is a high-tech Mule, which means it trades the Mule's armor for better shields and flux stats. Its cargo space is also slightly higher than the Mule, but more importantly, it is much faster. Catching a Solidarity require an absurd amount of efforts, especially since its booster jets allow it to go even faster than a burn-driving Tarsus. Also very cheap, given its performances.
For the cruisers, i have to admit i barely used the Elysium. It's cheap, quite fast, burn speed 9, with good cargo space, the kind of ship you take when you're not quite ready to go for a proper cruiser. Still, being mainly a broadside with relatively weak firepower and an awkward weapon layout makes it tricky to use. I haven't tested it that much though, so i'm not really sure about it yet.
The battle carrier of the faction, the Charybdis is a straight upgrade to the Heron, even though its armor, speed and price are noticeably worse. The Charybdis is heavily armed, and can even makes an Eagle think twice before attacking it. Its PD coverage isn't as bad as would say the description, plus its wide shape, good shield coverage and maneuvrability makes flanking a Charybdis extremely difficult. Unfortunately a bit weak due to the current state the fighters, but otherwise a top tier carrier.
The Tartarus is the line ship of the faction, a high-tech mix between the Eagle and Dominator. A welcome, if not necessary, addition when fighting larger fleets. The Tartarus is tough, armed to the teeth, and surprisingly mobile, all at a very moderate cost. Its only weakness is the burn speed 7, the same as a capital ship.
The Scylla is probably the strongest Shadowyard ship. A phase cruiser similar to the Doom with very similar stats, the main difference come from the massive frontal firepower the Scylla wield. 2 large and 4 medium energy mounts that will usually be used against the rear of an unsuspecting enemy. It was my main flagship for the rest of the campaign, i liked to fly it with an overspecialised, but deadly, full CAS beam loadout, overwhelming through sheer firepower smaller ships, and backstabbing cruisers and battleships. Despite the high maintenance hull mod, it's still cheaper to field than the Doom. Also, like the Shamash, the Scylla lacks the delicate machinery hullmod, making some battles almost unwinnable if it doesn't want to get caught.
By the way, the phased graviton beam definitely need a new sound effect. It currently uses the AM blaster fire effect, which always catch me off guard when i fire the PGB, thinking something was shooting at me offscreen with a blaster.
And finally, the Mimir battlecruiser. More mobile than any other capital ships and most cruisers, with the firepower of a Battleship and even tougher than the other battlecruisers. Even after the lock drive change, the Mimir is still a beast. Probably not the best AI ship, due to the said ship system, but still a tier 1 when it comes to player controlled ships.
And that's all for the ships. I haven't tried the pirate variants, but from the few things i saw from their stats, they seems to be at the same level as D ships (AKA flying coffins).
For this campaign, i mostly went for a standoff fleet. A swarm of Enlils with lrms in the back, a line of Morningstar loaded with Tusks on the front, and my Trusty Clade to go wherever needed. It worked very well at first, the relatively vulnerable Morningstars were able to dissuade the enemies from engaging, thanks to the long range of their CEPCs and the constant stream of Barragos from the Enlils. A tactic quite similar to what II or Exigency would do, the only difference was the sudden and quick killing blow delivered by a swarm of Tusks if any enemies would let their shields falter. Later on however, when Dominators and Onslaughts would barrel through my fire line in all impunity, i had to invest in something tougher than the Morningstar. The Tartarus answered for my call and would hold the line against the bigger baddies, while my Scylla would assassinate the enemies one by one from behind their lines.
That was overall a fun campaign, probably the last one with SS+ (snif). There's not that much to say about the balance, the two phase ships will need some fixing with their CR, otherwise some supply cost adjustment, a few tweaks here and there, a cargo buff for the civilian conversion and a nerf for the freighters, but nothing really big.
tl;dr : Some very average ships offset by very strong ones, just like vanilla (but probably a bit more on the strong side). Still, i consider Shadowyard to be among the must-have mods.
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Topic: [0.95a] Shadowyards Reconstruction Authority 0.9.5-rc4(4/12/21) (Read 1121555 times)