Played some more, was able to test most of the stuffs.
At first i was a bit worried that the introduction of the light Ballista would make some monstrous lrm boats, fortunately only the Basileus can properly fit a lot of them. It finally found a proper place in the II fleet where it can lob missiles around the map, still a bit bothered by its surprisingly suicidal behavior but micro-ed by guarding other ships, they work fine.
Otherwise, i mostly played a carrier fleet, and it was glorious. I wasn't that much impressed by the Flamen but it filled its job, cannon-fodder and objectives caper. The Draconarius was pretty interesting, some kind of gladius-like gunship that can pack quite a punch.
The one that really blew my mind however was the Vicarius bomber. That thing is a monster, it's a bit more expensive than a Piranha but its armor and shield make it extremely hard to intercept. The scary part is the dual cluster bomb bay which is so powerful it can crush everything in its path. The only disadvantage? It tends to always destroy the targeted ship, reducing the available loot at the end of the fight.
But yeah, it's incredibly brutal, i'm definitely calling the nerf-hammer on this one.
The Vicarius assault variant is very good too. Its armor and dual AG make it one of the best gunship in the game, perfect to crack open an armored target when you don't want to utterly grind it to atom powder with your bombers.
I didn't really found a job for the support variant though. The dual sledge gun with their insane range make the support variant interesting but i would rather pick the assault variant to go close and personal. Making the support variant mount kinetic weapons however would have been very interesting to pop shields that II always have trouble dealing with.
Maybe trying a mass support Vicarius would be pretty nasty though. A swarm of those snipers would be very frustrating to deal with i think.
The Princeps carrier is pretty good as well. unfortunately the low OPs and horrendous flux capacities (for the amount of guns it mount) make it pretty bad in close encounter. Still, definitely better than a Condor and can be build into a legit artillery/pd platform.
And finally, the Olympus T. Probably work the best with carrier based fleets as you don't have to worry too much about blowing up your own fleet. You can even order a wing or two of Flamen to escort the giant missile to intercept threats. I would have loved trying this one against the Valkyrian royal armada unfortunately i didn't loaded the mod... But the main idea of the Olympus is to blow up things that you can't approach (very unlikely with the current Vicarius).
Having your TITAN being intercepted is something truly disheartening but when you successfully atomize the whole Hegemony SDF, that feeling, oh boy...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XF7b_MNEIAgJust noticed a little bug, if the TITAN don't explode before the end of the battle, the game crash.
I have a request too, for Starsector+. I'd like to see bigger fleets. Endgame scenarios are currently too easy, i was able to easily stomp everything the game threw at me, including the Ludii Cathedral fleet.
I would like to see some really scary Hegemony SDF a bit like in Uomoz mod, now that would be a good challenge!