Thanks for the feedback, it mostly matches my own feeling (except for the "too hard to find", but I'm certainly not objective on that point), and fortunately these troubes are related to what I consider placeholders and will be taken care of in the future.
Firstly, I think that as long as getting to Tartarus is a riddle, the only encounter I have with this mod is the chance of finding trading fleets around the rest of the Sector. And while the size does not matter to me, SCY is a comparatively large mod, and yet you see it the least out of any of the up to date mod-factions.
This is quite true, and while it is a consequence of their lore, it is a bit sad to hide them that much. However there is one time they are supposed to get out of their lair and swarm the sector, and it is during the Great Expeditions when they plunder every trade-routes. I have yet to implement this behavior, but it will makes them very visible every once in a while. So please bear with me, this will is planned for Scy 0.9, the update after the next.
I believe that the method to getting to Tartarus should not be a secret- but still a challenge. I have a feeling that it has to do with following a SCY fleet through a gate of some sort- if that is true, then leave it that way! But making it a secret hides -so- much content.
This is precisely the way to find them! Half of their fleets uses the star as a wormhole, but the other half uses... another way. Also they all comes out from this second passage, it shouldn't be too had to find it. In 0.9, the system will be probably harder to find, or at least much more dangerous if you are uninvited, BUT there will be a guide that can help you get there too. It will require some investment but you won't get shot while emerging from hyperspace.
I also noticed that some of the small SCY weapons that I collected from fighting were worth strange amounts of credits. Some small weapons were worth the usual ~200 credits and such. But then others (again, still small weapons) could be worth from 2000 to 3000 credits.
Mmh, that's probably because the weapons prices vary much more than with vanilla: when you can put you hands on a small weapon that can deal as much damage as a medium mount, it's costly: both in credits, ordinance points and flux usage. The large high quality weapons are sometimes worth more than a medium ship. They do are powerful though. Still, I will keep an eye out to see if there is some crazy price tag on some items.
Although it seems to lack a Black Market.
For now there is only one: the ex-slaves miners in the orbital ore refinery kept some bad habits and set up a tidy shop out of sight. I might add one in the other small stations though.
None of my friends who play SS can figure it out either. We recognize that Tartarus exists in the other system, but we can't figure out what significance it has. In fact, most of my friends just resort to dumping fuel to coast into Tartarus to get around that fact until they eventually get Nav 7.
I would advise against that in the coming Scy 0.8
Also, I thought of an interesting way to deal with the standing problem. If they have no natural enemies (except maybe the church? Though they are far away from Acheron), then simple trade with them would be good enough to keep their standings well enough. And perhaps then, if you cannot get enough standings to buy from their military supply, make it more open- just very very expensive.
Actually they are hostile to many factions, but it's not open war. As I said above, 0.9 will change that a lot, but in the meantime I should probably spread their standings a bit more. Also to remedy the reputation problem I intend to add custom bounties. Maybe not only against pirates
Here's the current changelog, there is quite a few new things coming:
V0.8 WIP
new ships:
- Talos class heavy frigate: an over-sized frigate with decent speed, armor, cargo and armament, but reduced maneuverability, higher crew requirement and recovery cost. Feature a Burst shield system that deploy an impenetrable bubble for a second (use flux and 5 sec cool-down)
- Nemean Lion: REDACTED (surprise, surprise)
- Armored Sthenos / Armored Erymantian Boar class cruisers: armored version of the main battle cruisers, much slower but more powerful and much, much more sturdy.
Improvements:
- Huge cleanup in the way decoratives are handled, both in script and in sprites. (won't make a noticeable difference in memory since I added a lot of new content too >__<).
- Decoratives now show damage when hit.
- Randomized the position of the Acheron system on each new game.
- You can no longer cheat your way in Tartarus by dumping your fuel (was useless anyway, once you know where the secret passage is)
- Added cosmetic self-destruction of the fading missiles.
- Drones now launch from their bays instead of the center of the ship.
- More portraits.
- Custom engine sounds.
- "Secondary thrusters" ship system now activate visible secondary thrusters, slightly modified sprites accordingly.
Weapons re-balancing:
- significantly nerfed the Light Minigun damage and range, especially against ships armor. It is still potent against missiles with the right hullmod, but no longer a silver bullet.
- buffed the Penetrator Railgun damage and flux usage to make it a costly improvement over the medium KACC.
- reduced the Slasher beam movement width when mounted on turrets to make it hit more reliably.
- reworked the Focused Pulse Beam behavior, it now fire in 1 second bursts, and increased it's OP cost.
- significantly nerfed the Orion Artillery, the dps is only slightly lower but the damage per projectile is halved: it get twice the rate of fire and ammo. It won't punch through armored targets from standoff range anymore, you will have to close in to finish the job.
- buffed the SCPB damage and reduced it's rate of fire. It should be more evenly useful against armored and non armored targets.
- all Rocket launchers have reduced OP costs, range health and damage but got better engines and should hit their target more consistently.
- all Coasting Missiles have reduced OP costs and damage but got higher health for the same result.
- Erymantian Boar spinal launcher rate of fire halved.
- significantly buffed the EMP Sweeper health, corrected some bug in the sweeping arcs script but it will be reworked further.
- the anti-missile has now a proximity fuse, making it much more reliable, but can't destroy torpedoes in one shot.
- improved the targeting algorithm of the Heavy Modular Swarmer: it target in priority any enemy around the ship's main target instead of any enemy in sight.
Ships re-balancing:
- removed all buit-in Augmented Engines and Maneuvering Thrusters. Though you still can't mount them or the Unstable Engines.
- reworked the speed and agility of all Scy ships. They have more or less the same speed as before, but will feel more sluggish. However their stats will scale much better with you character skills.