After role-playing as a pure Brighton loyalist for a couple of weeks, here are some of my thoughts:
1. As stated, the Brighton is a desperate polity: "a weakling polity". It has been a frustrating experience moving from mid-game to late-game stage, and it has been a mixture of a love-hate relationship. I love it because they grow so slow; I'm constantly buying more crews and supplies because my ship gets blown up a lot (maybe I'm just a terrible captain). Yet, there is satisfaction in seeing progression while constantly resisting the temptation to pick up stronger and faster ships from other factions. I hate it because the AI is terrible with using missile. So during the late game - fighting the Remnants in large groups, it has been a rough experience. Not to mention they outspeed and outmaneuver most of my ships. Making progression against the Remnant base has come to a halt.
Perhaps include a larger cargo + civilian ship into the list? At one point, I was running 3 Colossus (BRV) to keep up the supplies cargo space, and it takes up the 30 ships limit. The Nubula (BRV) is fine for the early game, but I feel like we need a bigger crew ship for the mid to late game. After one or two big fights, I'm constantly under-crew. Going back to base re-crew has been a very tedious experience. Is Junk meant to fill in that role? This would lead to my next thought.
2. I don't understand the lore well enough. HMI constantly declares war on the Brighton. Is it just bad lucks? Or are we meant to compete against each other? Cause I noticed they are on the far west region and I'm on the east side, and they are willing to travel that far to fight over my territories. I tried politicking with them, and there are all these random events that make them flip 180 on us.
3. I'm running the skill: Derelict Operations. It's pretty cool to field a Radiant (BRV) for 35 deployment points. But both of HMI's Junker and Rapid Repair System hull-mods... oh the temptation. If I could get some clarification between the relationship of HMI and Brighton, I feel like it would brighten our role-play future.
4. I saw you included 4 new Remnant ships, but any chance will we see the BRV version of them?
5. Since the Brighton is packed with missile slots, will we see a BRV faction missile? Perhaps include built-in extra missile hullmod for some of the BRV ships?
By the way, you have done an outstanding job with the ship models and details. These factions really feel like they are part of the original game.
1. The Junk is a super-logistics ship. Terrible burn speed and fuel use for good stats otherwise for fuel, cargo, and crew holding.
2. HMI isn't really related at all to Brighton, though Brighton IS related to a special system added by HMI in the outer areas of the sector.