So I've essentially gotten to the end game with a low tech style play through, and wanted to share some thoughts based on that experience. Now, a lot of these comments have likely been said in different ways by others, but I wanted them all together in one place to explain the entire impact on a style.
First off, I probably should explain what I mean by low tech style.
I consider the low tech combat ships to be the Lasher, Condor, Enforcer, Dominator, Mora, Onslaught, Legion. These tend to be high armor for their tier, 1.0 shield efficiency, many ballistic mounts (often oversized), plentiful missile mounts, excellent peak operating time, poor flux dissipation, low to average flux capacity, relatively slow and less manueverable than others in their class, and ship systems on the weaker end of the scale (i.e. burn drive). The basic idea is low tech uses efficient long range ballistics, backed up by flux free missile pressure to compensate for it's poor flux stats, and uses armor to mitigate the fact they can't really retreat well when over fluxed. If they're unable to kill a faster/shorter range ship as it keeps diving in and out, they eventually out last it's PPT. Archetypal and simple to use line ships.
Alternatively, they can go safety overrides and use short range high DPS ballistics on cruisers and smaller, taking advantage of their PPT and using it to mitigate their low base flux dissipation. SO can help, but it is not a complete panacea. The biggest issue with SO, is even with the 50 0-flux boost and the base speed boost, the cruisers and destroyers still often can't control their distance sufficiently against smaller ships, potentially making the reduced range a problem. High tech ships also tend to get more out of SO in absolute terms, in terms of more absolute flux dissipation, and an even higher top speed.
I will note the Gremlin is technically low tech combat ship, but is also a phase ship, and so doesn't fit the standard low tech "style". In addition an Afflictor, at 8 DP, is just straight up better version of the Gremlin at 6 DP. My guess is it was mainly intended as a "pirate" phase ship - overall weaker than standard combat ships of the same class.
Ok, so those are the basic low tech style pros and cons. What were the changes between 0.9.1a and 0.9.5a?
In 0.9.5a, the Onslaught and Enforcer received significant buffs, along with heavy armor. A new tanking skill plus hull mod was also introduced.
1) The Enforcer went from 750 to 900 armor (20% more), it's shield efficiency went from 1.2 to 1.0 (another 20% swing), and finally hull went from 5000 to 6000 (another 20% boost). Essentially, the Enforcer became straight up 20% tougher.
2) The Onslaught gained some more subtle changes. 0.6 Flux efficiency on TPCs, heavy ballistics integration at the cost of no more overlapping field of fire for 5 large weapons mounts (2 to the sides or 3 to the front now). Essentially, more OP to play with and better flux management.
3) The heavy armor hull mod was buffed in the amount it provides, an extra 50 armor for frigates, and an extra 100 for all other tiers. (Enforcer with heavy armor went from 950 to 1200, 26% buff).
4) Derelict contingent and shield shunt. As far as I can tell, this is the only way to realistically make the low tech style competitive with the strongest end game challenges and the strongest ships from other doctrines, like the Doom. Get 5 d-mod ships and rely on 350-700 residual armor, and not quite quadruple hull points. Of course, this skill has issues noted elsewhere and is going to get reworked, so knowing that, I purposely avoided it this play through (and had used it on a previous double Radiant run). Because of the expected nerfing, I'm going to ignore it's existence for the rest of this post.
Those were the changes which helped the low tech style. What changes hurt it?
1) Many officer/player armor skills were removed or weakened, the only one being strengthened (Impact mitigation armor damage taken -20% to -25%) is only about a 10% buff, which doesn't make up for much larger other factors (85%->90%, +50% armor for calculations, +150 armor for calculations) being removed. Shield tanking at a minimum was essentially left alone, or made better depending on how you view flux changes. I will note, low tech style ships benefits from the shield improvements - but at a relatively lower rate.
Imagine your "tanking" budget is 80% shield, 20% armor for high tech, and 50% shield, 50% armor for low tech. Now if armor is weakened by a factor of 2, then high tech is 80% shield, 10% armor (effectiveness) for 90% of what is was, and low tech is 50% shield, 25% armor (effectiveness) for 75% of what is was.
In any case, a well tanked low-tech ship in 0.9.1a took many more officer skills, but in turn received a correspondingly significant improvement in longevity, especially against non-officered enemy ships.
2) Many more enemy officers indirectly means more damage per shot or better PD (and in the case of Remnants, both), which are bad for armor tanking (armor is weaker against larger individual shots) or heavy missile use respectively. The expectation is now (for end game fleets) that more ships have officers than not, where as 2/3 of an end game fleet in 0.9.1a might not have officers. While shields also see an uptick in damage, they have a linear scaling with DPS. Armor has a faster than linear scaling and weakens faster as DPS goes up with shot size.
3) Buffs to energy based PD makes mid and high tech slightly harder to force back with missiles, as they've become more flux efficient, reducing the effectiveness of the medium missile pods many low tech ships rely on to buy themselves breathing space. In many cases, you also have to launch from closer now if Paladin's are on the field, which directly negates the ranged advantage of ballistics that low tech is relying on. This is mostly a subtle and small effect (except for Paladins), but it is there.
4) Low tech relies on a ballistic PD screen to help protect against HE missiles when the shields need to be down for flux reasons. By design, that lowering of shields happens more for low tech than other doctrines. Putting the PD skill across from the universal damage skill has a larger impact on low tech ships than high tech. An optimized omni-shield tanking ship doesn't really need to think about shooting down high explosive or fragmentation damage missiles, as it is intended to take those on it's shield (and elite shield modulation makes that even easier). The really only threatening missile to officers focusing on shields is the sabot, which for many smaller ships fires off it's second stage from beyond PD range anyways.
5) Low tech is relying on armor and hull to survive, and you used to be able to get 50% free repairs fleet wide, and up to 25% with damage control. Now, the fleet wide repair skill is 50% at 60 DP, and 12.5% at 240 DP (a full 400 battle size deployment, which a low tech style needs to do against end game fleets), and Damage Control requires it to be elite to get that benefit. High and mid-tech care less, because they simply tend to need less repairs. Even fully destroyed, low tech seems to require more supplies and time to go from 0 to fully healed than their high tech equivalents.
Speaking of Damage Control, it is the only elite skill which doesn't directly help you in combat, only after combat. Which means if you make it elite on an officer, you're sacrificing immediate combat strength for out of combat quality of life (i.e. not waiting 23 days for your Onslaught XIV to fully repair). Making the ship weaker means it is more likely to take more damage in combat - directly working against the intended effect. In my other runs, I can not recall stopping a trip out to several bounties unless I got my flagship or other signficant ship killed. However, with low tech, I'll sometimes find my flagship or other capital with 20-25 day repair times in routine play, forcing me to return early or alternatively, get up from the game and walk around while I wait for the two minutes for the 25 days to pass and then proceed to engage the bounty.
Since repairs are a campaign layer issue, intended to be fixed by the campaign layer tree (i.e. Industry), it means if you are focusing on a low tech style (which has many poor campaign layer stats - higher fuel usage, higher crew requirements, more repairs needed), you are more incentivized to give up direct combat power to fix those campaign layer issues when compared to a shield focus and efficient doctrine like high tech. Which in turn makes them weaker in direct combat. The alternative solution is to simply bring more ships so you can swap to undamaged ones, but that directly reduces the power of DP scaling fleet skills.
Which is an interesting side effect of scaling skills based off total fleet DP, is that the worse off your ships are per DP, the more ships you need to bring, as they are more likely to need to retreat or be destroyed, and thus need more reinforcements. Making scaling skills weaker, and thus making your ships even worth less effective DP because the bonuses are smaller. It's a rather viscious circle for over costed (in DP) ships. Similarly, under costed by DP ships means you need fewer ships, allowing you to benefit more from skills, making them stronger.
This is not necessarily a problem in a single player game, and normal players have access to the full suite of ships in the game, but I feel it should be something that is taken into consideration and at the least acknowledged.
For example, my duo Radiant + pile of 11 high tech frigates was so low maintenance, it had two shepherds and a dram for logistics, and was beating 3 Radiant Ordos without much issue. My two Onslaught, Legion, two Mora, four Enforcer, two Condor, four Lasher fleet required a Prometheus, two Phaetons, four shepherds and a Colossus as a logistics train, and was having more difficulty, despite also having 3 "capstone" skills. Officer Training, Special Modifications, and Missile Specialization versus Officer Management, Automated Ships, and Derelict Contingent - although maybe that was Derelict Contingent's fault. Still, I probably could have replaced a Radiant with a Paragon or Odyssey and had similar success without derelict contingent - I was just under 180 DP with that Radiant fleet anyways, as opposed to 232 DP with the low tech fleet.
7) Lastly, the low tech style had been dependent on fighters as well, to help catch faster ships or finish off fleeing ones. It has destroyer tier, cruiser tier, and capital tier carriers, all of which are signficantly weaker now (and with good reason, fighter spam in 0.9.1a was rather strong) due to the loss of damage reduction fighter skills. Although, low tech doctrine carriers might be more affected, as they have no fighter boosting skills, and thus is the most heavily affected by fighter bay based skill limitations. Low tech simply brought more fighters, rather than making them deal more damage (Herons), put more on the field (Drovers), or made them more efficient in travel (Astral).
So the skill changes to officers have reduced the specialization low tech officers could do, either in protection or fighters. In 0.9.1a, because low tech relies on more heavily on more mechanics than other doctrines, low tech officers could boost their defensive aspects more, generally at the cost of offense, but see greater returns. Now, with the new choose 1 out of 2 style officer mechanics, that reliance on multiple mechanics comes at a cost that other officers don't have in the same way. An Onslaught's defense is it's damage at range preventing diving ships, it's flak and vulcans (i.e. point defense), it's shield, and lastly it's armor - roughly in order of encounter. A typical high tech doctrine ship's defense is it's speed and it's shield, in that order.
My thoughts on the individual ships:
Luddic Path Lashers with built in SO are decent for 4 DP (after restoration). They're also dirt cheap to restore after receiving d-mods, something like 13-15,000 credits. Their biggest problem is, while they are efficient for a 4 DP ship, they are still a 4 DP ship. Unlike 8 DP Tempests or 15 DP Hyperions, you can't really build a fleet around them. You also really can't afford to put many officers in them, making wolf pack tactics a poor match. 10 officers would only be 40 DP worth of frigates, leaving 120 to 200 DP without officers. The other point is, if free SO Lashers are okay at 4 DP, what does that say about the standard Lasher? Although the standard lasher does have decent PPT without an officer, and is still useful for grabbing capture points and dueling with other frigates to prevent flanking. Overall, it's a frigate, and does frigate things for a cost that feels appropriate. Late game it's also dirt cheap to restore, which means slapping on reinforced bulwark and not caring about them blowing up is quite reasonable.
The Enforcer feels like it's in a fairly good spot these days, with it's straight up 20% toughness boost, and the addition of s-mods to it's already large pool of 110 OP. Expanded missile racks + missile specialization means it can be fielding 36 sabots or harpoons, which feels pretty good in the initial exchanges at least. With an officer, it survives surprisingly long for a 9 DP destroyer, but damage output falls off severely once the missiles run out. Until then though, it's a scary little bowling ball that has a place even in end game fleets.
Condors are cheap fighter deployment, and maybe a missile thrower depending on fighter choice. In 0.9.1a, massing them and drowning your opponent in fighters was a reasonable strategy. That's much less of an option in 0.9.5a, but bombers still can help overwhelm a ship. Early and mid-game, a few fighters can help hunt down frigates faster than the Enforcers in a destroyer pack. Officers that fly these early game can then promote to Moras or Legions later, but late game these will tend to be officerless, if used at all. Overall, they're not as good as they once were, but still can be used toss some Longbows or Daggers an enemy's way.
The Dominator didn't receive any buffs like the Onslaught and Enforcer, and just feels like it is in a worse place in 0.9.5a than in 0.9.1a for all the above reasoning. It still can be setup with a bunch of missiles, and it's long range large mounts make it effective at shooting in a firing line against enemy capital ships, but it just feels overall less efficient compared to the other cruiser options. It's designed to punch up, not down, and with the improvements to frigates and other bonuses scaling with DP, that can be a problem. For player piloting, it pales in comparison to an Aurora or Doom. The new Champion feels like a better AI line holder these days (more speed, more flux, a little less missile burst, but HEF + Tachyon or Plasma is strong gun burst). Eagles feel like they survive better on a line, with the ability to back off, better shields, and the ability to swing around to face a frigate quickly.
S-mods probably help a Mora be able to fully embrace missiles and fighters at the same time. Expanded missiles + ECCM combined with a bomber selection is quite doable now. Longbows backed up by harpoons for example, or sabots backed by Daggers. Damper field + Heavy Armor + armor tanking skills do not feel quite brick like they once did with officers. It still takes a beating, but not quite as much, and it's fighters are more likely to die, leaving it with less offense while using Damping field. Still, it's usable support, lasts a lot longer than a Condor if flanked, and can stand on the front line for a little bit.
Legion also did not receive any specific buffs, so weakened fighters tend to make it perform worse. On the other hand, it benefits from s-mods and missile specialization the same as a Mora. Given a Legion can mount 5 medium missle pods, that's a potential 180 sabots boosted by ECCM and 50% faster firing speed, combined with 4 bomber wings, and two ballistic mounts. Still other ships also benefit from s-mods and missile buffs (like the Odyssey and Aurora), so relatively speaking, it's a little bit worse for wear.
Onslaught did receive some buffs. I think it feels better offensively, but is noticably weaker defensively. In 0.9.1a a fully skilled Onslaught could survive some surprising situations. However in 0.9.5a I can't be as reckless piloting it, and I tend to have significantly more damage than I would have in 0.9.1a at the end of similar fights. TPCs feel much better to fire though, and the extra OP from s-mods can be used on a whole host of useful hull mods (Expanded missile racks and ECCM come to mind). Player piloting feels a lot like drive flux up, vent, drive flux up, vent, making resistant flux conduits mandatory for me, and makes me miss the old +25% vent speed skill. For me, since I used to use them as line holders backed up by support ships, the reduced durability factors more into my weighting, and I think they're a touch worse than they were overall.
I find the doctrine seem to hold up fine against late game intel bounties of all stripes, Tri-tach, Persean, Hegemony, etc. It is when you start pushing the more end game fleets like full sized Ordos or s-mod officered Dooms that fleet becomes stressed close to the breaking point, often ending with 30-60 DP worth of ships destroyed on my side. I could win, but needed a colony or commission income backing it. My Tri-tach theme run and my normal use whatever run didn't have nearly as much trouble with such full Ordos or high end contact bounties. Also, I will note fat fingering F on an Onslaught at the wrong time in an iron man save can be... painful. Most ships don't punish you so much when you hit the wrong button.
Now ships don't necessarily need to be perfectly balanced. Pirate ships are intended as a stepping stone for player fleets to crush, for example. And there's not a true symmetry between primarily shield tankers (like an Apogee or Aurora), and shield plus armor tankers like the Onslaught. Also, old armor tanking could make ships take a long, long time to die if you didn't have the right tools. However, the in campaign differential between some low tech doctrine ships and other doctrines (taking full advantage of officer and player skill selection as players normally do) may be a bit larger than intended at the moment, with the possible exception when using Derelict Contingent.
