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[King Alfonzo]

I love this mod/faction but the only thing bugging me is that it's weapons and ships are /very/ common. No matter where i go shopping the traders are full of HMI stuff- so much that at least half of everything purchasable is from your mod.
Anyway to restrict HMI specific stuff to HMI planets/traders/stations or make them a lot less common?

That's a problem that's been difficult to handle for not only this mod, but also Dissassemble Reassemble as well. It's fairly difficult to control weapon spawning so it's both common, and yet uncommon. It's currently an ongoing project to try and cut this down.

Also the screenshots said HMI Unique but I've seen pirates use them, as well as in traders not even close to any HMI systems. One pirate fleet had 2 Junk's for some reason.

This is also deliberate, as HMI is essentially a pirate organisation pretending to be a legitimate enterprise. It's unsurprising that these ships would end up in circulation in pirate, scavanger and independant fleets. Again, trying to restrict these hulls is somewhat difficult, and is an ongoing process.

[Gen Waffle]

Hello Alfonzo, I realize you were part of the mining guide for Nexerellin. Well I've started to use your mod for the actual purpose of mining and so far I've been doing quite well with the ore and mining. Packing myself a Hammerhead (CF), a Berserker, 1 Donkey Mule (it's actually pretty damn good as a miner), 4 Light Shepherds (amazing miners - next no no cargo tho), 5 Zebus, 2 Junks and 2 Cerberus Miners. 824.4 combined mining strength seems pretty good. Though I have been mining in the core worlds for nearly an entire cycle now. Not sure how to actually do mining in the further reaches of space (plus need surveying equipment: probably gonna use your Dromedary class).

However that aforementioned post guide is around 2-3 years old now and I can't seem to find good places to sell the ore (the guide had something about antimatter refineries and smelteries which I can't find anywhere. Have these been replaced with other industries (I'm guessing they're industries) or am I supposed to sell at a black market to prevent reduction in demand instead?)

Thanks

This is the guide btw: http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=11148.0

EDIT: The Junk actual does quite well with dedicated targeting core and a focus on it's flux dissipation with hardened shields. It's sustained fire from long range from the pummerer cannon is actually quite effective (given enough time). The deployment cost could probably be reduced to 30 however. Roach Kings and Cockroaches make excellent flak barges (as well as SO close range builds).

[King Alfonzo]

Hey Gen Waffle.

Glad you've been having fun with my faction and the mining mechanic!

It has been a bit of a while since I have touched that mining guide, and things are a bit worse now; smelteries are now refineries, and only appear (from memory) on Chicomoztec, Askonia, Culahan Starforge and I want to say Kazeron, but I think there's another Persean league planet that does it as well. Further, antimatter refineries are now fuel production, and those are even rarer, with Nachika, Askonia and (again, can't really remember) one of the Persean League worlds having that industry. Organics however are a bit better, as there's demand for that just about everywhere, but finding a minable organics planet is a bit difficult.

I'll have to redo that guide, and maybe talk to Hist about how mining should work in the new meta of the game with such restriction on where a good place to sell is.

[Gen Waffle]

Yup

Your cockroach and king roach vessels seemed straight awful at first, but after around 3 days of constant meddling and fixing different layouts (and writing them down on a google doc - seriously you weren't kidding when you said a lot of work) I've made them into stupidly efficient combat vessels (that I can only put more weapons on as they die).

I reverted the change I did to flux dissipation to the Junk after seeing this, while I still believe the flux dissipation could be raised by a 100 for less storage space: I plan to try harder to make it combat effective. It's all around nature is quite fitting for my current mining/bounty fleet, acting as (ironically) a much better fleet anchor than the Bastillon and Scarecrow (lol) due to it's armament options alone. The cockroach being 8 deployment to the king roach 26 seems like such a huge margin though, I feel the king roach could be lowered to 20-23 range instead because it is still a slow flying hunk of metal (that said I'm almost certainly biased because nothing beats tanking an Onslaught in the face while pumping lead at the same time).

The smaller ships (particularly the 1 deployment cost vessels up to the glimmer) are relatively average with clear drawbacks. I've had quite a lot of fun turning your pickets into effective frigate swarmers, their stupidly high fuel cost is a bit painful though (and honestly kinda fair given their strength en masse). Don't even get me started on the sentry, I was just being really unlucky with getting the seth drone fabricators which are incredibly cheap and also incredibly weak. However they do have unlimited ammo and oh look the sentry has 'fast reload' as an ability ... I wonder....

Nothing beats having 20 deployment cost worth of rapid firing seth drones slowly inching their way towards the enemy. Effectively turning into a sorta of mega forcefield wall with the drones able to soak up damage. Granted I had to pay enough to fuel a fleet to the next sector and still suffer losses which I'am not comfortable at losing (30 OP can't fit reinforced bulkheads unfortunately). It just so happens that this seth drone wall is also perfect for picket, cockroachs and king roaches to get withing range. Though this tactic is nowehere near your intended gameplay of the mod due to the exorbitant cost in fuel and supplies to even use such a fleet.

On that note I've been trying to spec an army of only junker ships against Soren's Dassault Midorayan Engineering fleet and boy has it been a tough fight, immensely fun though (my ships are effectively zombies 6th gen now, they blow up in seconds and blow things up in seconds - provided they reach the target).

Currently trying to effectively outfit the non-carrier salvaged remnant/domain era ships to be support craft but so far been quite troublesome, they aren't as upfront and bashy as the cockroach and king roach hulls (and I've sorta grown accustomed to having no shields). The Clyde Rapidfire cannon seems a bit on the weak side personally but as all things, I'm gonna give it a few days before I make any real remarks, the same goes with a lot of the other non mining weapons you included. The Desolator cannon is straight out of hell in power and coolness factor though, props to you. That thing is the most fun I've had in ages (nothing beats burning a frigate in 2 seconds while it's shields are down which Mikoyan kinda makes a fuss about lol).

Overall this 3 days have just been a really fun (sometimes infuriating) time.

EDIT: I noticed your MARK IV cannon states that investment into magazine expansion helps it, does this mean the hull mod? and if so, mind putting in a small tooltip to say that?

[Zalpha]

Is the mod working properly for me?

I am not sure if it is my laptops screen size making the UI for the hull mod do that or if it is normal. Also, I am not sure how the mod works but I thought that with d-mods I would get bonus points to use.

[Hrothgar]

You got -20 points from d-mods.

[Gen Waffle]

This is probably on your list of todos, but the trapdoor bomber doesn't have a description. Also to further elaborate on the missing infos for some ships.

Going into the codex either through the main menu doesn't show entries in the scrolling menu on the left. However pressing info directly on the ships from the fleet menu (when in a port) shows the description. Minor issue only really.

The Mark IX cannon is currently really confusing, it however states that 'magazine extension and adequate maintenance' improves it. In reality the weapon doesn't seem to have any effect when put on a clean ship hull or with the extended magazines hullmod. Either that or the effect is minuscule.

After around 40+ hours of multiple campaign and simulation battles I have quite a bit to say on the ships:

Those issues aside I do feel that the cockroach and king roach are the sort of balance your ships should aim for, their Junker module makes it always interesting to play with. That said I feel the King Roach could probably have a minuscule more armor due to it's 26 deployment cost over the cockroaches 8. These ships clearly show the effort you put into them and they have been my favorite ships not only in the mod but from every mod I've played with so far. The Junker hmod is what excites me and I desperately crave more ships with it.

The carrier scav hulls are really good, particularly the rampart and the berserker. The rampart has the clear weakness of being stupidly slow. Both ships have a great number of ordinance points and are great battlecarriers on a budget. Their deployment costs are perfect for the power they bring to the field.

The Picket and Scav hulls are extremely expensive to bring around, but this is quite fair given that their only 1 deployment cost and are extremely efficient at what they do, swarming enemy ships based off deployment points alone. They are extremely situational but powerful.

The Defender models are straight up weak. But I can understand this as they are mostly escort frigates. The thing that doesn't really make sense is the heavy version of the shepherd, it's a missile layout hurts it's escort potential severely, and while armoured it lack the DPS to consistently win fights unless it outnumber the enemy and even then it takes losses. The advanced borer drone it deploys take way too long to turn around and lack the firepower to keep the shepherd as an effective antifrigate. In my opinion I would consider making the drones have longer range to promote that escort role better, that or their DPS/Health need to be higher.

I haven't played much with the Brasher so I won't give any opinions on that. The Junk when specced with an officer and damaged a bit for more dmods is an decent shield based artillery piece that also works as a fleet anchor. It's speed and paper thin armor hurts it terribly. It is still a freighter though so I can't expect that much.

The Scarecrow and Brilliant .... uhm way too expensive in the deployment cost, particularly the Brilliant which already comes with the high maintenance hmod. Atm I'd get a cockroach or king roach over the Brilliant any time, it's way too expensive and doesn't do much. The Scarecrow is in the same boat. This could probably be turned around if they had the Junker hmod or more ordnance points. Either this or I'm just really bad at making midline ships.

The Scintilla is like a much more nimble albeit fragile battlecarrier. It's quite deployment point efficient however. Certainly better in a battle support role than the Dromedary.

Havent tested the Bastillon and the other hulls yet but so far they're fitting to the whole 'this is cobbled together mess of parts that resemble the actual ship' jig.

[Hrothgar]

Scarecrow is not really midline ship. It's like "Make Eagle a more like Dominator, but without everything which make Dominator good". It's not bad ship, but it's very poor flux to weapon ratio mean you need a very good loadout to work on him. Use very flux efficent weapons, like gravitons, slegdes and other cost effective weapons.

[Gen Waffle]

Ah you see I get that idea. I did pit it against dominators and it wins when kitted out well... buy realize that the dominator is 26 DP and the scarecrow is at a whopping 40. It’s honestly so capped by that because of how good the king roach and the cockroach are. That said I’ll take your advice to heart and continue testing (I’ve spent more time in simulator than the actual campaign by now).

Also I forgot to mention how much of a blast some of the world-building for the colonies are. That said with Nexerellin the hmi have been going on a stupidly over the top war against the luddic folks and the hegemony. I guess all those salvage fleet really do pay their ends (seriously living in the corner of the galaxy and I still see salvage fleet that look like they’re going to scavenge the [REDACTED] than derelicts. They’d probably conquer the whole galaxy if they used these). Pirate faction seems so far from what they send out here.

[Hrothgar]

HMI always fight with Luddic Church. They also often are jumped by other faction, as many of their ship is not that good on typical loadout.

[Gen Waffle]

Weird that you say that, they always seem to field twice as many ships as their enemy (seriously 5 Junks covering each other is trouble).

Still testing the scarecrow and Brilliant hulls. Found cool niche in the Brilliant when there's more than one around, because that integrated fighter bay is quite powerful, and the weird selection of modules do provide a high flexibility. That said the high maintainance dmod makes this ship still very ehhh... A fun thing to do would probably be an addition of different integrated hmod, just like how the cockroach and king roach benefit from extended use, the Brilliant could probably have a hmod that increases it's flux capacity the more dmods it has, not as powerful as the junker hmod but this would make the Brilliant another one of those cool niche ships. I feel this would be quite good (probably too good) on the Scintilla as well. Just my thoughts.

That said the Brilliant has defensive attributes, I may be overestimating it's capabilities as a heavy gunship and more of an actual all around battle ship. 14,000 health and a whooping 1250 armor along with a strong shield is quite the eye candy. This might just be a ship that I need to retest many times like the cockroach and king roach.

EDIT: The Brilliant issue is the fact that it loves to turn around and restrict it's weapon fire arcs... somewhat solved with advanced turret gyros but this behavior is what causes an otherwise strong ship to act against itself.

EDIT2: Expanded Magazines definitely helps the Clyde rapidfire cannon, I notice a longer salvo of kinetic projectiles, which seems above average. Need to check for MARK IX. Still testing the Scarecrow, 40 DP is hard to equalize with opponents especially when it dies to enemy 26 DPs. It's slow speed limit it's useful further.

EDIT3: The Scarecrow still isn't doing too well, it has the DP of a capital ship yet the power of a really subpar cruiser... The Brilliant is steadily improving.

EDIT4: 36 Caps and Vents, 4 Gravitons ,2 tactical laser (front), 2 burst pd (front), 4 heavy maulers. Dedicated Targeting Core, Hardened Shields and Stablized Shields. The result is a weirdly effective cruiser vs fighters due to the sheer amount of extended range gravitons. Effective 1v1 heavy cruiser. Effective artillery-esque vessel. Still doesn't feel worth 40 DP, probably more 32 (same as Junk). Loses against missile heavy frigates and it's DPS often can't kill targets before it's flux banks get to high.

EDIT5: Scarecrow really likes to use up it's rapid repair despite being protected with an above average shield.

[123nick]

is it possible for a version of HMI without the extra illegal commodities? i just think they would be a hassle since other mods wouldnt have them properly listed as illegal, and i just dont see em specifcally adding anything too the gameplay of starsector, imo.