I have started another campaign aligned with Kadur (they actually got nuked by the Hegemony, I am now trying to align myself with Pirates, Luddic Path and Hazard Mining Enterprises) and actually found one of the few Relic ships I love so much (from Tahlan Whipworks I think) I was missing: The Nirvana Battlecruiser.
Oh. My God. It's disgusting.
While the Karma, Samsara (30FP) and that other 11FP one with the spacial warp jump are also very potent they also have definite drawbacks considering their very poor PD defence and a 20 degree shield.
They all have very good armor, repair rate, EMP resistance, mobility enchancing skills, very good (although low for their FP cost) weapon mounts, some EMP discharge while venting or high flux (Nirvana does not have this one) and a spontaneous phase cloak sporadically activating under AI control once you take damage. The Nirvana on the other hand has two special abilities so broken that it would still need a minor nerf even if it was bumped from the current 75 all the way up to 100 fleet points.
Do not think that 3 large and 4 medium mounts pointing at the front are not enough for 100FP. This thing will absolutely butcher 3 Onslaughts fighting it at the same time under AI control if you set it up in a way it correctly exploits all the ship's abilities.
The first, way too gratuitous special skill gives it +200% damage dealt with any weapon after it's done venting. It would be logical to only have it activate at, I don't know, a certain flux threshold (not activating if you vent below 60% flux just to name one) but that is not the case. You can literally vent once you have 10 flux built up and you'll do 300% damage for what feels like 3-4 seconds. Imagine having this ability and with 3 Expanded Magazine Autopulse Lasers. Yikes for everything that exists and lacks a fortress shield.
The second ability is, coming from someone that has around a dozen and a half content mods, the most ridiculous thing in the game. It's not broken, it's pulverized. It's not great, it's orgasmic.
Think of a temporal shell like on the Scarab. Picture it in your mind.
Now imagine this skill adding one, bonkers feature that is the following: everything that your ship does minus the damage it deals and the ammo/missile/charges it depletes from the activation until the end of the ability will be reset to the moment before you activated it, including the position of the ship.
Yes. You heard that right. Engage an Onslaught and:
1)activate the ability as soon as it starts firing upon you
2)not even bother raising your itty bitty 20 degree shield and proceed to eat every piece of ordinance it shoots at you
3)empty all your weapons on that mistake of a battleship be it energy, ballistic or missiles to the limit of your flux capacity
4)the ability ends and your ship immediately teleports back to the spot where you activated it with armor, hull and flux reset to fully healed and 0 respectively
5)repeat the process and delete another enemy from the plain of reality
The amount of engagements I can picture my AI controlled "Yaaah, It's Rewind Time" Nirvana Class Battlecruiser losing are very few, and even then I could just pilot it myself and have it become even more ridiculous. It's so strong I don't actually play it myself anymore. The one I have has 3 D-mods (very bad ones too, Degraded Engines and the one reducing weapon range plus another one) and I almost soloed the Red Planet Encounter wich even had two of the big chungus, 65FP+ mod ships in it.
That "Time Shell" special ability ( I think that's the name anyway) is "fine" as it very and I mean very much justifies that 75FP, but that disgusting damage boost has to go or be heavily nerfed and balanced. You can even discard all sense of shame and microvent just before activating Time Shell and just go full Thanos on anything but the Paragon.
My suggestion? Bump the cost up to 85FP, only have the damage boost activate if you vent above 50% flux capacity and reduce it's bonus to "just" 100%.
Some side notes that hopefully justify this thread being in General Discussion:
Junker ships are amazing. I have cargo ships consuming less than a supply unit A MONTH and giving me 350 cargo space. Their small ships get stronger and stronger the more they get wrecked with their reckless, mostly Overriden designs while the bigger ones with maximum dakka and integrated armor just won't die and do so much damage back! I love them to bits, literally.
I went so crazy with the automatically generated sector in my previous campaign that my laptop took an hour to save. Not kidding. I was planning on posting a review of Kadur Remnants once I got my hands on a Caliph (wich my autocorrect insists on calling "Family", stupid politically correct piece of technoidiotic garbage rahhh) but that will have to wait until I do that in this campaign. The general feeling tough is that it's a supremely well balanced faction that is ultimately shafted by how dumb the AI pilots them, soiling an otherwise great, alternative way of playing generally low tech ships. I will not get into too much detail but there are some ships that should get buffed (Falchion, Sphinx) or Rebalanced (the bloody hardpoints on the Ziz Battlecruiser, try hitting anything smaller than an Onslaught with Gauss) and some weapons they have seriously need to fire a tad slower (I'm looking at you Shockweb Canister, you beautiful bastard).
I found a Dominion Resurgent system and I'm having a blast. I actually regretted installing the Ruthless sector mod doubling Explorarium Drone ship weapon ranges and giving them ECM rating for the first time. They're legit scarier than [Redacted] and I love it. I've had some incredibly intense scraps against them (with the "Yaah, It's Rewind Time" benched of course).