A new experimental balance build is out on Nexus Mods under optional files! It should be save compatible with the first experimental build. I've finally found a really good ship system for the Tyrant! I have kept the heavy mine system in the mod, but it is currently unused. I do have plans for it though. The new system is something I'm excited about and I'll explain why further down in this post.
However, before I detail the new system, there are some other changes I want to highlight that indirectly came as a result of looking at the Tyrant and the phase ship lineup. As I think Albreo suggested a bit back on the thread, I mixed up the systems for the larger phase ships. The Doom now has Entropy Amplifier instead of the Harbinger. The Harbinger has the Doom's mine system instead. I flipped the two because the Harbinger needed the mines more against fighters and its a neat concept that the phase destroyer can support larger phase ships against their natural weakness with its system. That, and the Entropy Amplifier is a bit of wasted potential when doubling or tripling its presence in a fight. The Doom seemed like the perfect ship for it because the relatively limited number of cruisers means its not being too saturated in any given battle. And it fits the name!
Because the Doom needs to be a unique ship, I removed Entropy Amplifier from the Wolverine so not only the Doom has access to it! The Wolverine now has... Active Flare Launcher. Before you all throw rotten fruit at me, there actually is a good reason for this change. One of the Wolverine's weaknesses is missiles since it doesn't have many forward facing small weapons that aren't missiles. So a missile interdiction system makes sense here especially considering the general missile buff.
Alongside that reason, it was long since time to take a second look at the flare systems themselves. They were in my mind without a doubt the weakest system available for a ship. There are simply too many missiles at any given time in a large battle for a couple of flares to make much of a difference. Even small scale the flares often ejected from the engine of the ship only. It was only moderately useful at preventing interdiction missiles from knocking out engines. So, flares are much higher in number and surround the ship on ships that have them:
- and in this case the flares are actively seeking out missiles or fighters and so can in turn be used for supporting nearby allied ships as well. Now there is some nuance when piloting a flare system ship and that's a lot better than before imo. Flares have 5 charges and regenerate fairly quickly. The 5 charges can mitigate the majority of incoming missiles for about 10 seconds or so. That can be a world of a difference in close fight. And since the charges regenerate fast enough to maintain some utility in prolonged engagements, this is one of the few defensive systems that are a little spammable. We'll see how it goes.
Ok let's get back to the Tyrant's new system. I designed this after spending a bit of time fleshing out what I think the role of a phase battleship is compared to a standard high tech battleship like the Paragon. The Paragon has good shields and a lot of large weapons. It deals damage and can take damage very well. It is fairly slow, however, and its system is there to give it extra bursts of damage to ensure the time before its shields fail is well spent if outmatched. This because once the shields fail the Paragon falls a lot faster than a low tech battleship like the Onslaught. So the Paragon must either vent and renew its primary defense resource or kill its target before its shields fail.
The Tyrant on the other hand doesn't have a very good defense resource. Phasing may protect from damage, but it also prevents damage from being dealt in return. Phasing hurts the Tyrants overall chance at preserving its armor if it cant use its flux to fire powerful weapons to either quickly destroy its target or flux its shields so it goes on the defensive (and ideally take some damage too) and the Tyrant can vent and strike again. The key to the Tyrant is damage and damage quickly. It is essentially an assassin ship. Its armor protects it for a time but once its gone the Tyrant cannot do much unless its using phase to strike an unprepared target that can't strike back.
With this in mind, I designed a system that works with these concepts to make the Tyrant fun to fly and scary to face while playing into the theme of phase and phase ships mechanics.
Anyway, here is the description and visual for the new system:
(It kind of gives off a necromancer-ish vibe which I think is cool and fits perfectly into the lore.)
And here is it in action: (well somewhat but it doesn't really capture what its capable of or the nuance of its use)
Why am I excited by the system? Because I think it is a real sweet spot of system design. First let's take a look at the details as to what it does. It combines elements of several existing systems. It accelerates the player's frame of reference which slows down enemies and projectiles (or speeds up AI ships visually to the player fighting one) just like Temporal Shell but not quite as much. However, this means that while phased the frame of reference is actually quite a bit greater - almost double! When combined with the movement speed increase and the higher threshold for phase slowdown, the Tyrant can move very quickly while phased as if the new phase limitations didn't exist (sort of like prior versions without the slowdown mechanic). On top of the mobility, the altered time flow is supplemented with a 50% increase in weapon rate of fire (including missiles) which means that while unphased the Tyrant can unleash an immense amount of damage must faster than the average battleship.
I want to emphasize why I think this is interesting. You have two states while the system is active - phased and unphased. In one state, the ship can move very fast and can't take or deal damage. The other state leaves the ship vulnerable but able to deal immense damage. On the surface, it seems OP. The hit and run capabilities seem too much. However, one can't deny that it sounds fun right? Active system, move fast, hit hard. Retreat behind a defensive screen. Recharge. Repeat.
The thing is, its balanced because its actually pretty hard to do both adequately. The system only lasts 12-ish seconds and with the accelerated time part of the effects that timer goes really fast. It won't seem like it, but every second spent while phased is a lot of wasted damage in return for movement. So this makes for difficult choices based upon the context of the battle. Do I use a charge to retreat or gain a positional advantage? Or do I use a charge to fire my strike weapons so fast that few ships can withstand the damage for long? You only get 4 charges and they take a LONG time to regenerate. This means that the system is a limited resource that does powerful things
and has tactical nuance and hard decision making. That's really what you want out of a single button press and it makes the ship feel very unique! And that's before you get into the deeper nuances like the fact that now there is more of a reason to use weapons that deal less damage per second than weapons with charges but more than the sustained damage once the charges run out. The charges will run out a lot faster with the system active. Similarly, since being phased accelerates time for the ship, it can recharge both the system and its weapons by remaining phased to max flux and then quickly venting (as long as the ship is positioned in a safe place of course).
What about the AI? Will it be annoying and run while the system lasts? No, it shouldn't. The AI is set to use the system offensively in most cases. It might still get nervous around large swarms of fighters or missiles, but it won't retreat and vent with the system as much. From tests it mostly uses it to get a flanking position. So it keeps the intended general mechanical design behind phase ships while under AI control. Its just more interesting for the player.
Maybe this is the design nerd in me, but I think the system really hits the nail on the head. I hope you all have fun with testing it out!
Finally, the update contains more small weapon fine-tuning mostly focused on PD weaponry. The big changes are that the Scythe Cannon mostly targets fighters and has been redesigned as an anti-fighter weapon specifically. This way, it doesn't compete with the PD Cannon as much and has a separate role. Less useful PD weapons like the Machine Gun now should have a niche in the PD of a ship due to range layering and other aspects of the fine-tuning (I already have a wall of test here and so will spare you all the details) that add to what the weapon can do for a build.
