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Mods / Re: [0.95a] ScalarTech Solutions 0.6b - Ready for the future
« on: April 12, 2021, 05:52:13 PM »
Hey there, really enjoying this faction. Been playing pretty much 100% ScalarTech ships on my current run. Love the way the ships look and feel, and the weapons look amazing. I haven't really messed with capitals yet but have flown most of the cruisers and below. My favorite ship so far is the Verge, i love the turret placements and it looks great spewing energy murder in every direction.
I do have some feedback though, based on sticking to just using ScalarTech weapons as much as possible to keep the faction feel and aesthetic.
1.) For some reason Spindle doesn't reliably stock many of the faction weapons, this is irritating when its basically the only market. I only got around this issue with a lucky custom production run at the bar that let me stockpile a bunch of the weapons.
2.) Fitting feels really tight. It's difficult to afford even one mod on some ships without using built-ins. After looking at my fits I concluded it's because the guns are for the most part extremely flux hungry and/or flux inefficient - just fitting out a ship 'normally' you are likely to be extremely over budget on flux. And the ships themselves are tight on flux to start with - for example, the Margin-class has about 75 total 'ordnance value' of Ordnance Points plus baseline flux capacity and dissipation, whereas the Lasher has about 80 total 'ordnance value'. And the Lashers guns are more efficient than ScalarTech guns, being both more baseline Flux efficient as well as using specialist damage rather than generic Energy. And the Lasher is less dependent on shielding. So that's why the Lasher is generally easy to fit mods into its padded OP budget while the ScalarTech equivalent is sweating bullets over fitting Reinforced Bulkheads even though it nominally is fairly close in flux power. For reference, most standard vanilla combat frigates fit roughly in the same range band of ordnance value: lasher 80, tempest 84, centurion 83, wolf 81.
3.) Faction could probably use one (or two?) more systems so that ships feel less like bigger and smaller versions of eachother. Maybe like a 'the black site sends missiles through the wormhole' ability on one of the carriers, or a more generic system that helps deal with heavy armor - I often felt I was struggling against heavily armored enemies. Starbases in particular are tough to deal with. Or perhaps a defensive system themed around a creative use of wormholes to use on the defensive ships.
Specific ship feedback:
Strand: This ship is basically a Heron but a little better, so it probably should be, at minimum, equivalent in deployment cost rather than cheaper. The Strand is also very effective strategically with its 9 burn and free logistics hullmods compared to the Heron, so it probably needs more commensurate strategic downsides - higher maintenance, specifically.
Also like the Heron, it's very tight on fitting, to the point where you pretty much gotta strip guns off. This is especially the case since ScalarTech doesn't really have a cheap option for the small energy mounts.
Culotte/Camise: These ships both have a problem under the new skill system - Since they count as combat ships and not civilian they reduce the effectiveness of combat skills, and neither is actually strong enough to use as a combat ship. So since being natively Military is a downside unfortunately they have just ended up as bad versions of the vanilla logistics ships, specifically the Culotte is badly outclassed by 2x Phaeton and the Camise is badly outclassed by 2x Colossus.
I do have some feedback though, based on sticking to just using ScalarTech weapons as much as possible to keep the faction feel and aesthetic.
1.) For some reason Spindle doesn't reliably stock many of the faction weapons, this is irritating when its basically the only market. I only got around this issue with a lucky custom production run at the bar that let me stockpile a bunch of the weapons.
2.) Fitting feels really tight. It's difficult to afford even one mod on some ships without using built-ins. After looking at my fits I concluded it's because the guns are for the most part extremely flux hungry and/or flux inefficient - just fitting out a ship 'normally' you are likely to be extremely over budget on flux. And the ships themselves are tight on flux to start with - for example, the Margin-class has about 75 total 'ordnance value' of Ordnance Points plus baseline flux capacity and dissipation, whereas the Lasher has about 80 total 'ordnance value'. And the Lashers guns are more efficient than ScalarTech guns, being both more baseline Flux efficient as well as using specialist damage rather than generic Energy. And the Lasher is less dependent on shielding. So that's why the Lasher is generally easy to fit mods into its padded OP budget while the ScalarTech equivalent is sweating bullets over fitting Reinforced Bulkheads even though it nominally is fairly close in flux power. For reference, most standard vanilla combat frigates fit roughly in the same range band of ordnance value: lasher 80, tempest 84, centurion 83, wolf 81.
3.) Faction could probably use one (or two?) more systems so that ships feel less like bigger and smaller versions of eachother. Maybe like a 'the black site sends missiles through the wormhole' ability on one of the carriers, or a more generic system that helps deal with heavy armor - I often felt I was struggling against heavily armored enemies. Starbases in particular are tough to deal with. Or perhaps a defensive system themed around a creative use of wormholes to use on the defensive ships.
Specific ship feedback:
Strand: This ship is basically a Heron but a little better, so it probably should be, at minimum, equivalent in deployment cost rather than cheaper. The Strand is also very effective strategically with its 9 burn and free logistics hullmods compared to the Heron, so it probably needs more commensurate strategic downsides - higher maintenance, specifically.
Also like the Heron, it's very tight on fitting, to the point where you pretty much gotta strip guns off. This is especially the case since ScalarTech doesn't really have a cheap option for the small energy mounts.
Culotte/Camise: These ships both have a problem under the new skill system - Since they count as combat ships and not civilian they reduce the effectiveness of combat skills, and neither is actually strong enough to use as a combat ship. So since being natively Military is a downside unfortunately they have just ended up as bad versions of the vanilla logistics ships, specifically the Culotte is badly outclassed by 2x Phaeton and the Camise is badly outclassed by 2x Colossus.
?? should we be making choices on burn level or not. Either it's compelling and its something that should stay into the later game or its not and it shouldn't be in the early game.