How dare this forum keep Underworld below the first page of mods? Unacceptable!First things first, I'm loving what this mod does to my pirate themed campaign and how actually competent pirates become thanks to it when I'm not being one myself. I just wanted to express my utmost gratitude to you for giving us such a great experience, among all your other mods!
Now, I've got two
little feedback pieces to give about a couple of ships this mod introduces, the
Big TPC Energy and the
Major In PlunderThomas The TPC Engine is a great, dual purpose centerpiece of any fleet fielding it. It slows down everything traveling to a crawl due to its eye-watering 6 maximum burn speed but it provides with a suprisingly competent frontline capital and a crazy good tanker holding the absolutely
ludicrous amount of 3000 metric tons of fuel. I am however bothered by a few pet peeves I have with it:
The ShieldIt's quite surprising for what basically amounts to a converted tanker and salvage barge to have such an impressive 180 front shield with a respectable damage ratio, but I truly do NOT think it should have a shield that wide, or having it as a front shield alone. Why do you ask? Well, to put things into perspective...
That's a picture showing a
Pain TPC Train and a
Fat PigeonNotice how the latter's shield gracefully follows its grossly obese frame and leaves no shield amount wasted?
Now, look at the
Ice Thermal Pulse Truck. You could unironically state that the front shield it has covers more empty space behind it than the barge itself. Don't believe me?
Spoiler
You won't believe how much effort it took for me to not go in the simulation, get two of those ball cruisers parking up beside it revert back to being a child for 5 minutes.
The two gaps this enormous frontal shield leaves behind it is actually big enough to completely protect a small
cruiser!
I reckon that just giving it a 90° Omni Shield would work a lot better for the Infernus than a 180° front one. I would even be willing to trade it for the shield system to generate more flux or even have a worse damage ratio (It would also be fun to mention the shield was actually pilfered from a Conquest and improved upon with augments thanks to the generous internal hull compared with the much slender Battlecruiser in the ship description).
The massive front shield also heavily messes with allied firing lines as a wall that wide can really become a bother for allies to get around or the Infernus itself to even advance forward with. A massive dome of a shield really looks wierd on such a gorgeous, tubular monstrosity of a hull.
Funky Flux stats and Ordinance Points balanceI am perfectly aware the
Magic TPC Schoolbus is worth 50 Deployment Points, and it does not feel either underpowered or just better than other capital ship options when that's taken into consideration. I am just really wierded out by the Flux Stats belonging to a Paragon and the lack of Ordinance points to fill such a huge ship with.
ObserveThis is the build I am using. I wanted to make this thing able to hold the line, armor tank and have impressive enough fron point defence to not worry about anything as long as there's an ally keeping its back safe.
The weapon variety and mounts are more than fine, really, but the relatively low amount of Ordinance Points on such an immense frame makes it unable to even
fill all the weapon mounts properly, if at all. Were both Flux capacity and Flux Dissipation worse (by some thousand for the former, a hundred or two by the latter) and the ship had significantly more OP (from the current 265 to 300-330, maybe even 350) the ship would still be able to pretty much specialize in any way it wanted, but it would at least have MORE options, without being Overpowered due to the reduced flux stats.
The
Impact Science may feel like in the same boat at first glance, with really good flux stats but not enough Ordinance Points to fill them, but it really isn't in my humble optinion. I personally am under the impression the
Doctorate In Dakka is still trading way too many weapon mounts from the Apogee and is in a really wierd spot because of it. In order:
Why the Hybrid Mounts?I understand this must've been an obvious attempt to show continuity from the Apogee, but why would anyone consider installing even simple energy based point defence when the ship itself now has an ability that massively boosts all ballistic weapons across the board? It may appear as a way to further customize the ship but there really is no choice there.
The Large Missile Mount is redundantHaving a large missile mount was quite the boon on the Apogee, which had long range capabilities and no good ways to deal hard flux damage if it used a HIL/tach lance on the large mount or high explosive damage to exploit the hard flux damage it dealt if it used Autopulse/Plasma Cannon. On The Stalker however, the constricted amount of Ordinance Points forces it to either install a cheap Locust as an afterthought, downgrade it to something generalist like a Salamander Pod or strip it and forget it entirely, which is what I did:
The Revolver wing is..eh?Don't get me wrong, I really like the Revolver Support Wing and it's great on my Cerus Asteroid Cruisers from the Asteroid Ship pack mod (and other combat carriers aswell), but it's neither fish or meat on the
Cheeki Science Breaky. It either has too low of a maximum range to basically never fire and only provide PD or barely does anything consistent if it's Overridden and gets very close to the enemy. Having that hangar bay open for customization would amount to something but even than, who in their right mind would invest 15OP for Expanded Deck Crew on a Cruiser that's already
starving with only 130 of them and that only buffs one bay?
What I propose is a general repurposing of the entire cruiser. I was perfectly torn between three designs so I'll include them all:
Stalker (M)-Deployment Points increased from 20 to 25
-Ordinance Points increased from 130 to 160-170
-Ship Special Ability changed from Accellerated Ammo Feed to Fast Missile Racks
-The two back medium turrets are no longer Hybrid (Ballistic/Energy) but Composite (Ballistic/Missile)
-Built-in Surveying Equippent Hullmod swapped for ECCM
Stalker (B)-Deployment Points increased from 20 to 25
-Ordinance Points increased from 130 to 160-170
-The side large missile hardpoint is removed and two-three side facing ballistic turrets are there in its stead
-The two back medium turrets are no longer Hybrid (Ballistic/Energy) but Ballistic
-Built-in Surveying Equippent Hullmod swapped for Integrated Targeting Unit
Stalker (C)-Deployment Points increased from 20 to 25
-Ordinance Points increased from 130 to 160-170
-Ship Special Ability changed from Accellerated Ammo Feed to Reserve Deployment
-The already present hangar bay is now customizable, and there is an additional hangar bay that took place of the now removed Large Missile Hardpoint
-The two back medium turrets are no longer Hybrid (Ballistic/Energy) but Composite (Ballistic/Missile)
-Built-in Surveying Equippent Hullmod swapped for Expanded Deck Crew
You could consider these in the future if they actually make any sense and I'm not going crazier by the post, two out of three would even require consistent sprite work. But between you and me, the only thing the Stalker really starves for is more OP, even at the cost of being bumped up in Deployment Points. The ship itself with 3 integrated hullmods and
using railguns as point defence is incredibly strong for 20 OP, but I'd rather have a proper 25DP cruiser that does not need to go into battle half naked to be effective at its job.
Anyway. Back to actually
playing Starsector. Cheers!
