First and most importantly, this thing is worth WAY more than 30 supplies for deployment. 30 is an Aurora! This is worth 40 at least, and arguably 45 or more. Even under AI control, this ship will immediately dumpster an Odyssey or Conquest, and most variants of the Onslaught too.
OP are quite a bit too low. Per
the modding guidelines thread, it should be 20 per large, 10 per medium, 5 per small, and 10 per fighter bay, plus filling 50% of vents/capacitors. On this ship, that adds up to 335 OP, while it currently has 300. It's pretty awkward to fit even a standard loadout on it right now, much less one with any useful hull-mods. Note that the Conquest has fewer mounts and a hull-mod that reduces the cost of Large Ballistics by 10, but still has 315 OP.
Skeleton crew numbers (300) are probably too low, compared to other ships of its size and their relative number of weapons mounts and fighter bays. It should probably be closer to that of an Onslaught (500) or at least a Conquest (400). CR loss per deployment is possibly a bit too low, and CR recovery a bit too high. Compare with other low/mid-tech capitals and cruisers. I'm not sure exactly where you intend this to fit on the technology scale, which would affect final numbers.
Some of the turret firing arcs are too generous, while others are too small. Specifically, the front 3 medium turrets and 2 of the front smalls are fixed and cannot traverse at all. Assuming that was intentional and not an oversight, it is typical to provide fixed hardpoints with at least some traverse -- this applies to the side large missile mounts as well. See the Dominator for an example of what hardpoint mounts, both ballistic and missile, should have for firing arcs.
Many of the other mounts have very large firing arcs which overlap the hull too much. Take a look at the arcs of the turrets on the Conquest and Onslaught -- even when on the corners of the hull, very few turrets have even an 180 degree arc, and many are far less. Here's a pretty quick example i cooked up in paint of more reasonable arcs, which maintains the spirit of your layout without being near so generous:
As for overall balance, that's a bit more problematic. In general I think the flux, armor, speed and shield stats are all pretty good. Burn Drive is an appropriate, albeit somewhat boringly conventional, ship system for a battlecruiser. Even with the small number of OP it has, it's still quite effective, although I ended up leaving the less useful no-traverse forward turrets empty to free up OP for other things. The fundamental problem with balancing this ship is that anything with 4 Large Ballistic with overlapping arcs of fire *and* 4 Large Missile has overwhelming firepower even with mediocre flux stats and very limited ability to armor/hull tank.
The obvious armament that presents itself when provided 4 Large Missile in fixed off-axis mounts is 2 Squalls and 2 MIRVs, and this setup
by itself is just about enough to win capital engagements while the ammo holds out -- and extended missile racks can make that a pretty long time. Add in 4 overlapping Large Ballistics, and 2 fighter bays as well, and it's extremely hard to stop this thing from just wading in and crushing
anything with relentless barrages of missiles and shells. This is why I think a deployment cost of 45 or more wouldn't be unwarranted, depending on what (if any) changes you end up making.
An obvious suggestion that can be done is to make the rearmost Large Ballistic face backwards, while leaving the other 3 with only a 90-degree arc -- centered forward for the other aft turret, and to diagonal angles outward of maybe 30 degrees on the front two (this would have the added benefit of stopping the two forward Large Ballistic mounts from overlapping their sprites when traversed to the side). Removing 1/4 of the heavy ballistic firepower and restricting that of the others to a lower area of overlap would help its balance somewhat and requires no sprite changes. Another suggestion for an easy "soft" nerf would be to equip the fighter bays with a fixed loadout of less-effective wings. More drastically, the missile mounts could be changed to mediums, or turned into built-in weapons with something not particularly effective, like Locust launchers.
On a more more trivial note, I'm not particularly fond of the Core autofit provided -- Storm needlers are a substantial OP investment and flux-hogs to boot, so on a ship of these stats they're a poor match. And no DTC or ITU on a capital is unthinkable. Here's the loadout I used to test it a bit:
In case it isn't clear, that's 2x Mark IX, 2x Hellbores, 2x Squall, 2x MIRV, 2x Flaks, Vulcans in all the small mounts, a Warthog wing and a Broadsword. No exceptionally good weapons or fighter wings, and a DTC instead of ITU to try and represent a cheap and simple "standard" build. I left the forward mediums and smalls empty to save OP -- if it had 335 or more, and they had larger firing arcs, I'd fit them with a pair of Vulcans, a Flak and Maulers or Heavy Autocannon. If the aft turret faced rearwards, I'd fit it with a Devastator or Hephaestus.
One final question is where you see this ship fitting in, lore-wise. Is it supposed to be a low-tech battlecruiser, as the engine color suggests? A mid-tech alternative to the Conquest? A cobbled-together pirate ship, or a carefully crafted cutting edge design? One thing that could be done to vary it up and give it a bit more character and variety would be to make some of the small or medium mounts energy weapons, as on the Conquest. But a lot of decisions like that depend on your vision for what this ship is, and where it came from.
I had a lot of fun playing around with this thing tonight, and I'm excited to see where you take the design and what else you have to add!
