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Total Members Voted: 1430

[Kanil]

The Stenos is perfect as-is, so I'm not looking forward to it being changed... and giving the system to a ship with a built in weapon sounds like it'll limit your options. I suppose it'd be easier to balance, though.

Any planned modifications to the Stenos beyond the system? If not, then I don't really need to complain about something I can easily adjust on my own copy.

[Cycerin]

The problem with the existing system is that in order to get any use out of it, you are restricted to a tiny selection of weapons, with the added annoyance of how if anyone designs a mod weapon chiefly limited by cooldown, it becomes broken on the Stenos. The Stenos is fun with the right loadout, but the system would be better on a ship that's guaranteed to get intuitive use out of it

The current idea for the new system is to give projectile speed, damage, and range modified by current flux level for a duration. It would give a minuscule boost even at 0% flux in case you needed it, but at 90% flux the boost would be quite large. Overall the system would be useful if you just pop it, so that there wouldn't be any point gimping the Stenos by giving it flux hungry weapons to "game" the design.

[ProdigyToby]

  I never really saw any issue with the current Stenos to be honest, the new system concept sounds interesting to mess around with in the simulator though.  I wouldn't use it in a normal playthrough of course, I find any kind of system that requires risk to be good (in this case having to have flux to make it worthwhile) simply not worth it when you're trying to manage the economics of a fleet, on top of that Blackrock ships are very fragile and under gunned with strange hardpoints compared to how you can optimize their vanilla counterparts.  In response to the "problem" you're talking about, if its too "unintuitive" to make use of, I would argue its too "unintuitive" to get any truly worthwhile use out of the majority of the BRDY fleet aside from the obvious strong hulls such as the morpheus, scarab, mantis and to some extent the Karkinos (kind of expensive).  These ships have always been sort of VERY situational for me, and have never felt like it was a real easy choice to make to pick one of them up.

  I'm not necessarily saying its a bad thing, they all have their purposes and roles (except the Knight) and in this case of the Stenos I always found it a pretty versatile cruiser, with the capability to lay down some heavy capital ship destruction with some sort of torpedo launcher in its large slot which could be reloaded.  The new system you are describing, unless it is very powerful, sounds too risky to atempt to make use of on an already very risky fragile BRDY hull and flux capacity.  I would put a cautious officer in the new Stenos (I find myself often having to put all my cautious officers in BRDY ships) and maybe turn it into some kind of long range fire support ship?  I would have to run some simulator with it.  Or I could just get a dominator or eagle instead since im probably trying to make money in the playthrough.

[Taverius]

Cycerin, something minor I noticed looking into something else - vanilla single-mount torps have a refire rate of 6/minute, while the single fury has a refire of 60/minute like the doubles.

Only matters with missiles 5 but it does make a difference then.

[Cycerin]

The new system you are describing, unless it is very powerful, sounds too risky to atempt to make use of on an already very risky fragile BRDY hull and flux capacity.

I completely understand what you're saying, but

Overall the system would be useful if you just pop it, so that there wouldn't be any point gimping the Stenos by giving it flux hungry weapons to "game" the design.

The flux based bonus would be a bonus, and you don't have to be near death to be around 50% flux.

The rest of what you're saying seems like an interesting counterpoint to my own experience with BRDY ships. There are a lot of ships you can use that are as least as resilient as vanilla options and easy to manage in the AI's hands - the Scorpion was designed specifically with this in mind. For my playstyle, the faction's design has bigger payoff than most vanilla ships

E: (but that's not really a coincidence)

[ProdigyToby]

The new system you are describing, unless it is very powerful, sounds too risky to atempt to make use of on an already very risky fragile BRDY hull and flux capacity.

I completely understand what you're saying, but

Overall the system would be useful if you just pop it, so that there wouldn't be any point gimping the Stenos by giving it flux hungry weapons to "game" the design.

The flux based bonus would be a bonus, and you don't have to be near death to be around 50% flux.

The rest of what you're saying seems like an interesting counterpoint to my own experience with BRDY ships. There are a lot of ships you can use that are as least as resilient as vanilla options and easy to manage in the AI's hands - the Scorpion was designed specifically with this in mind. For my playstyle, the faction's design has bigger payoff than most vanilla ships

E: (but that's not really a coincidence)

  Yes I forgot to mention the scorpion.  That is definitely one of the better ships, but iirc the reason I rarely used it was because the burn speed is 8 iirc?  I think 9 is where I prefer my destroyers.  I tried to use the Desdinova but that thing is a logistical nightmare.  It has way more weapon slots than it can possibly support with its flux capacity and even with the max allowed 40 ordinance points into vents it struggles to support a 2x ferrogun (a flux effecient weapon) and 4x volley gun (the MOST flux efficient and overpowered weapon in the BRDY arsenal.) setup.  Whats worse is it will use its arc jet thrusters in the hands of AI to get in front of your fleet and engage the enemy by itself, and promptly overflux itself and die before your other ships have a chance to get there, for the cost of 20 supplies per deployment.  Right now im experimenting with removing two of those volley guns for a whopping 2x ferrogun and 2x volleygun setup (with nothing in the back two smalls of course) and it holds up decently vs other vanilla destroyers (sunder etc, an 11 supply cost ship) but still comes close to overfluxing itself if the sunder happens to attack it back, so you can forget about the dream of having those two dual shard cannons on it .  The other destroyer with the missile is good as well, if you once again, skip adding a weapon or two in its small slots to make it survivable.  That was of course on my maxed simulator character so if you don't have decent skills you cant do half of what I'm talking about.  The "Fast Attacker" loadout the desdinva comes with has a base 684 flux dissipation and a 1740 flux operating cost (you could probably lower that to 1500 or so if you assume the back two smalls aren't firing as those are pd slots imo.).  Something is definitely going to get killed fast alright.

[JohnDoe]

There are a lot of ships you can use that are as least as resilient as vanilla options and easy to manage in the AI's hands - the Scorpion was designed specifically with this in mind.

AI handles Scarab and Scorpion very well due to them being drone ships (and thus messes with opponent AI's targeting and positioning), but BRDY really lacks a cruiser that the player can reliably delegate to AI officers and rely upon (Knight is kinda undergunned).

Based on my observation mobility ship systems and flux-intensive systems (including reloaders) aren't really AI's strong point.

[HELMUT]

ProdigyToby, Blackrock ships (especially the Desdinova) aren't flux neutral by design, you can't just fly them like a Sunder and keeping the pressure on the target. Hit & run tactics with big alpha strikes are what they are the best at thanks to their numerous weapon mounts and mobility.

Kill/overload, back off, and vent (they got a bonus with active venting) and get back for the finishing blow. Even the AI is "reasonably" good at it, at least in SS+. A Desdinova is rarely a good idea as an AI ship anyway, extremely expensive and quite fragile. A long range Desdi with a cautious officer can kinda works though, it won't let itself be caught easily.

Oh, and i managed to make the Knight works. Yes, pretty much everyone had that "Eww..." reaction when they opened the refit screen on the Knight and saw its weird loadout. But in the end, it's an all around better (but more expensive) Venture and should be expected to perform as such. Fitting it as a Scalaron pulse boat with Ferroguns does the job, an Achilles boat isn't a bad either as it can keep the enemy ships constantly on their toes, and leave them vulnerable for the rest of the fleet.

Of course, it's a carrier, and given the current state of fighters, it's going to fall off during very late game. But until then, it's a fairly efficient way to field fighters in battle and provide a reasonable amount of long-range firepower, which is why i tends to prefer it over the (even more expensive) Convergence.

Also, i like the Stenos new system. It's not as fancy as the previous one but given the AI tendency to screw it, i think it's better. It feel like a very passive system that will "add" to the ship, rather than the AI trying to play around it and take risks.

[Delta7]

to cycerin: sorry if this off topic, but i found some of your music on newgrounds, loved it
i first heard some of it in carpe universium from the BSF forums, your stuff is awesome man.

also, BRDY is very definetly one of my favorite mods, and i even recently tracked down a few of your old BSF ships :3

[cjuicy]

Ha!!! I CAME FOR THE SHRIMP SCRAPPY!!! XD....


Sorry about that... I love the mod btw.... Shard Guns/Cannons and Shredder MG's FOR DAYZ.
Also, have you considered making a giant Robberfly. Not literally GIANT, but like a bigger bro. I'd laugh my posterior rump cavity off if I saw an Onslaught burn by a ludicrous amount of reapers. I love the speed your mod's ships usually have. Lightspeed was sooo last cycle. It's ludicrous speed now.

[Adraius]

BTW, has the Scarab been officially renamed?  The name Golem popped into my head today and seemed apt.  Not bug-themed, but not all their ships follow that pattern.

[Gezzaman]

Ye since in the near future 0.7.2 will have an official ship called scarab, pretty sure this one will need to be modified

[Cycerin]

Haha thanks re: the music, that's cool. Yeah BRDY actually came from the BSF forum metagame, I think I coined the faction name and designed the first ships in like 2008/9. Since it was supposed to be an arms and ship supplier, the name was quickly decided on as a generic "corporate" sounding thing.

Oh, and i managed to make the Knight works. Yes, pretty much everyone had that "Eww..." reaction when they opened the refit screen on the Knight and saw its weird loadout. But in the end, it's an all around better (but more expensive) Venture and should be expected to perform as such. Fitting it as a Scalaron pulse boat with Ferroguns does the job, an Achilles boat isn't a bad either as it can keep the enemy ships constantly on their toes, and leave them vulnerable for the rest of the fleet.

While I am redesigning the knight entirely, it really isn't bad in its current iteration. It can broadside to the right using its 3 medium ballistic turrets, it has the capability to mount large amounts of missiles or beams for support duty, and otherwise is a much faster alternative to the Venture that gives your fleet storage and fighters.

The Scarab is being renamed. Currently leaning on Weevil, all brdy frigs except the Imaginos are currently insects, so I don't wanna mess with that

[Doogie]

Potential names to replace the Scarab

Reduvius (the name of the assassin-bug family)
Horntail
Cicada
Tarantula-Hawk (AKA mini fallout Cazadores)
Wasp (eh, too generic)
Sphingidae (colloquially known as the hawk moth)
Leafwing

I personally like Tarantula-Hawk or Horntail. The name "Weevil" doesn't really capture the power that the frigate has.

[sirboomalot]

If you wanted to change it while keeping it the same you could go for something like Chrysina; though that loses out on any meaning the name itself might provide...