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[Hrothgar]

Try poke Dickerson into infinite Armada, where they have basically like 60 phase frigates, around 60 cruisers, 30 capitals and ton of other ships.

[Gen Waffle]

That sounds like both a treat and also an absolute pithole of time once I install that. I'll never do work lol. Thanks anyways, will check when I 'm on a break.

[Hrothgar]

My last skirmish with Infinite *** mada took me 3 hours of fight. I was clever girl cunning man and i got help from Optimus Prime  Omicron AI.

[Gen Waffle]

Lol Infinite Armada huh. Will look for it.

Meanwhile I'm testing the armored shepherd for now (taking a break from staring at the scarecrow and brilliant for basically the whole day).

So far my impressions are "For something meant to be a frigate destroyer it sure dies before it's target". I think those borer drones need a range upgrade by like 200 units, it's already a pretty slow vessel, kind of just tanks for a while and then dies getting little to no damage done, also a nearly full missile load-out is strong in some cases, here it feels very weak because the drones can't support the missiles, and because their range is so short they disable at the slightest of combat. The fact that the shepherd spams deploy/undeploy them all the time doesn't help their uptime.

I will continue testing the hull tmr but so far it ain't looking too great, becomes useless pretty rapidly. I get it's worth 4 DP but it regularly loses to anything with a shield because it lacks the range to pressure. This doesn't feel right imho because this is a shepherd that lost alot of it's cargo space, is incapable of mining well, is a lot slower. It gets three powerful but far too short ranged drones, that NEED TO POINT DIRECTLY FORWARDS to shoot anything. I think the current idea is that the drones provide the bulk of the firepower and the missile provide limited support but the drone can only get a few shots off before the enemy just leaves and then comes back. Plus the shepherd only has 30 OP and no shield so unless it ends a battle quickly it just gets chipped away. It's tanky and armored which is great for such a small hull but it feels like target practice for frigates. I think the drones need to have a wider firing arc and longer range because the drones just fall so quickly to enemy weapons (they don't actually die, just get ... disabled in the span of a second??? Their hull is still full when you hover over them, do they have like some sort of internal EMP belt or something because they literally become inactive to like 3 shots, it's very anonying. I'm guessing they become disabled when their armor is shredded but then that just hurts the drone more, and the drone's sprite looks sick af)

 (I love how I sound like an absolute ass talking about balance like this, but how can I not ramble endlessly about a mini 4DP drone carrier, we have the Dromedary, Rampart and Berserker, all really really good and well balanced carrier hulls).

I love the idea of having a fully 'carrier' esque fleet, armored shepherds, Junks, bersekers, scintilla, brilliants, ramparts. Oh yes please.

For now I can see how exploitable a long ranged 4DP frigate might be, so perhaps buffing the firing speed at putting the range at 500 would be good. Might be too strong. I'll try digging in the files and changing the values to see  later. (That is if I find where the data file for the heavy borer drones are).

[Hrothgar]

When i last had armored shepherd they did reasonably well, mayby they got nerfed?

[Gen Waffle]

Might I ask what load out you give those armored shepherds? Perhaps I was doing it wrong.

I guess I forgot to iterate that I'm planning to make this mod have ships that do great when time and effort is put into them (and maybe officers). I've been testing the hulls against vanilla and modded factions. Different layouts most appearing pretty wonky and nonstandard seem to work best. I know King Alfonz said that the ships were designed to meaningfully capable but not the best but it doesn't hurt to try and make them stand up to actual combat vessels. Rn the Junker fleet excels in one on one fighting with seriously cost efficient fighter support. I can see the scarecrow being used as a artillery esque ship and the Brilliant as a fleet anchor, however these are a lot harder to test because the cockroach and king roach hulls kill things in seconds.

Just imagine a space colony from the edges of space that everyone presuemd died off comes back with an armada of scav hulls for the sake of 'exploration'. The Hmi tends to prefer building the junker hulls and rarely add the scav hulls, so I feel like my own force in the galaxy

Impressions of over 5 straight days of campaign and simulator work with HMI.
1. A lot of the junker ships are well balanced for a direct assault role and conditional heavy firepower support. I particularly love it when my SO cockroach can just decimate frigates (or anything) that gets too close. Same for the king roach.

2. The scav hulls I've tested a lot less but the Berserker, Rampart are really good carrier hulls that cost nothing to maintain. The Brilliant and Scarecrow still going through a lot of testing. Armored Shepherd good in mass numbers as a sort of frigate based pd, lack the range and DPS to really kill frigates.

3. the illegal goods I haven't tested much but most modded factions correctly label them as illegal after a while.

4. It's possible to make a competent low maintenance armada that can practically fight anything from any mod with the cockroach, king roach, junk and berserker/rampart fleet. Playstyle is either fight or die trying (incredibly sustained damage output with my current comp though, win by attrition all the time). Distinct weakness against Dvarion, Blackrock and Dssault modded factions as they ships are just too fast and kite able to handle (which is why I'm testing the other hulls so much to cover that flaw)

5. The new weapons in the mod are excellent for mining, the more combat oriented ones seem to work better with magazine expansion which is a nice touch. Still testing that last bit tho. Also devastator cannon and seth drone fabricators are stupidly fun to play with.

6. Testing the scintilla battle carrier hull, nice 2 fighter capacity and 12 DP only. I'm guessing the fighter recall ability is what really strikes it out vs the Rampart/ Berserker hulls. Probably not intended for the AI to use well though.

7. Yeeting through the sector useing 200 fuel to move my army of picket and sentries isn't fun. Zerging the enemy at 10:1 is though.

8. Spent 5 hours on the scarecrow. Much like the eagle, it's very reliant on it's shield because the second it gets hit on the hull, it loves to turn right around and stop firing, unlike the eagle though it can't really kite and thus it's as good as dead once the shield is down. Speccing it more heavily on flux capacity now. Armored Shepherd still faring quite poorly, I'd say make it slower, and give more range and large cones of fire for the heavy borer drone instead. It like to run away and get hammered into oblivion, an escort drone carrier shouldn't be trying to fly like the wolf, added range on the drones  would allow it to cover it's escort much better and decreased speed would make it make in on par with the hmi fleets (escorting the junk and zeu for example)

[Gen Waffle]

I played around with the armored shepherd. Borer drone remains functional but loses engine power on the slightest of hits causing it to drag behind a lot. Despite three drones each having a vulcan, the pd isn't as effective as I thought. Currently testing it in much larger quantities against equivalent DP in frigate.

Currently running 2 annihilator racks, one harpoon pod and one vulcan with maneuvering engines. Only AI controlled, no Commands (because this is an escort ship and not an actual carrier)

Test 1: Pitting three heavy shepherds vs 2 Wolf class frigates as a first trial. Result: Shepherds lost all thier armor but did win, harpoon hits on the exposed wolf hull ended them very quickly. The annihilator may be a decent missile system for the shepherd.

Test 2: Pitting 2 heavy shepherds vs 1 Enforcer destroyer. 1 Shepherd will always die achieving nothing but raising the destroyer's flux cap severely, which usually leads to an overload for the second shepherd to kill quickly through harpoon finisher racks. 8 DP to 9 DP win for the shepherd.

Test 3: 1 armored shepherd vs similar DP from vanilla and modded factions. Armored Shepherd loses consistently to the Lasher 4DP frigate. Slow speed makes it very susceptible to hammer barrages. The drones however can raise a frigate size shield quite high however.

Conclusion: Shepherd is much better when they're more of them, but their slow speed, reliance on missiles and range keep them from 1v1 well. Their sustained DPS is quite nice however granted they stay within range and aren't being actively attacked.

[Gen Waffle]

An unusual but weirdly effective setup but a Armored Shepherd equipped with two swarmer missile pods, 1 harpoon mrm pod with a vulcan.  Auxiliary thrusters and expanded missile racks. Swarmer missile pods are pretty good vs other light frigates and to make sure the harpoon finisher missiles hit their target. The borer drones provide some cover too.

Now this... this is a frigate killer

The drone are quite powerful vs a stationary target but disable so easily.

It's not as powerful as the cockroach and king roach hulls but having a drone carrier is a flavor win.

[Gen Waffle]

FINALLY FINALLY found a good loadout for the Brilliant

(Takes that the player has maxed loadout design as it's so universally useful)

Weapons:
- 1 dual Flak (leftmost front)
- 2 High Velocity Drivers (right side front)
- 1 High intensity Laser
- 2 Vulcans (behind)
- Xyphos support fighter

Hmods:
- Dedicated Targeting Core
- Efficiency Loadout

20 Caps and 29 Vents

https://imgur.com/a/Ah00Hyv


For a whopping 30 (38 without efficiency) supplies a month, you can get a much faster Junk in the form of the Brilliant. Handily 1v1s most similar DP vessels thanks to it's powerful shield and generous flux stats. Careful to not let the AI control it though for reasons follows:
- Poor weapon distribution/layout means AI will swivel chaotically if it must receive hull damage, drastically reducing its combat effectiveness. The use of the dual flak sort of provides some defense as the AI sporadically breakdances.
- Ai uses burn drive way too liberally which can cost the entire ship (due to fact stated above).

All in all, the hull is quite efficient provided you can support the colossal maintenance cost (for each ship mind you) and be lucky enough that the AI doesn't do a suicide ramming manoeuvre, thereby exposing it's hull to fire and causing it to breakdance. Something other than Burn Drive would be nice.

Would suggest adding the Junker hmod (really i just want more ships with this hmod, they're so fun to play with) to the ship as an indirect sorta buff to it as well as replacing the ship's ability with Maneuvering Jets/Damper Field or something less poorly used by the AI. Given how hard it is to find I feel very uncertain that I couldn't put Reinforced Bulkheads in.

Honestly it's pretty weird because the Legion and the other hull seems to be okay with their burn drives. Maybe the duration scales with hull size?

EDIT: I love how the Brilliant has a maintenance of 50 per month but still has the same description of being 'notoriously cheap to run'

[Gen Waffle]

Played even more with the Brilliant. Well I’ll admit it is indeed a very strong ship for 25 DP, having a burn drive and weird turret layout matters less when you cover with PD SO king roaches and cockroaches. I’m in the process of replacing my legendary Junks for a fleet of them. Though I will dearly miss attrition long range peppering with the pummerer cannon. Also maintenance is a big oof.

Armored Shepherd can’t stand against a-lot of ships in it’s DP class but it makes up for this by having very strong frontal PD and solid armor. Not something I’ll use a lot but an amazing flavor win.

The Clyde, Anderson and Mark IV definitely benefit from expanded magazines hmod, firing a much larger burst per volley. They really should have that written in the description (unless it’s for the player to find out). Seth drone fabricators are a neat but poor concept unless spammed on sentry hulls.

The Berserker and Rampart are amazingly efficient carrier hulls (the latter being downright amazing overall with its weapon mounta) at only 12 and 25 DP respectively. If you want to use a lot of fighters: this is probably the best out of any mod. Just remember that you get what you pay for (the Berserker esp.)

The Scintilla loses a lot of armor, hull and a fighter bay for speed, strong shields and the fighter warp ability. It’s perfect for storing bombers. And it only costs 12 DP. Low amount of mounts and overall fragility keep it on par with the Berserker.

The scarecrow... is not a great ship. But with a bit of effort it can be okay, it’s frontal weapon mounts and slow speed paired with poor flux dissipation make it very weak for something that costs 40 DP. It can be a decent support artillery vessel though you’re much better off using a Junk over this.

The Fulgent, Glimmer and Lumen are okay, they can be quite decent when kitted properly (and that isn't easy). They are quite cheap to maintain however and are great for the early game. Unlike the Hmi Junker hulls however, they drop off severely mid to late game as they simply can't compete vs actually militarized hulls.

I've already talked about the sentry, picket and warden hulls. I haven't really tested the Defender hulls but they look like okay ish escort frigates (that'll probably die in seconds in an actual fight). So far the Defender MK1 is excellent if focused to a purely defensive role and set to escort your carriers. The Defender MK2 is very ... trial and error, get em en masse to bring some cheap heavy firepower. They work well with SO charged cockroaches and king roaches as back support but like I said I didn't test them that much. These cheap ships lose a lot of power when you reach fleet cap (30 ships) though if you have a fuel production set up they aren't half bad - strongly discourage bringing less than 5 of each as they are strongest when they outnumber and coordinate the enemy. The AI flies them extremely well (particularly the picket) and equipped them with mortars can make quick work of even destroyers and hammerheads, they will succumb to heavy point defense and attrition fighting (which goes against my current playstyle).

Like it's description the Bastillon is a 'novel design'. If you intend to role play as a strike group (ala sentry's, prickets, brashers, defenders and lumen), having a bunch of Bastillons can be quite effective strike cover.

Overall most ships have their niches. Would love more 'Junker' ships particularly a frigate perhaps (not the cockroach). The scarecrow is a bit on the weak side.

Haven't really tested the other faction ships though I did get a few remoras in my play through and their quite nice, I noticed straight off the bat that their drones are infinitely better than the blitz borer drones, probably due to the increased health and emp weapons.

[Hrothgar]

I think you can make Scarecrow as it is, just lower it DP cost to what, 20 something.

[Gen Waffle]

Scarecrow at 20 DP sounds really weird, because that would make it actually cost less to deploy than the actual eagle... Perhaps making the flux capacity around 20/30% bigger, I feel Alfonz purposely wanted to have the scarecrow have a low flux dissipation as a clear weakness to the design.

Playing around with the BRASHER hull rn. I know it's meant to be supported but  it could probably be safe at 8/9 DP and not 10. Mostly because it regularly loses to ships at 10DP. Remember this thing costs the same DP as the Hammerhead and that thing comes with a shield, a single large mount doesn't quite cut it. I'd reckon getting that OP cost to 90/100 (I'm currently at 71 with maxed Fleet Loadout).

While this is less a balance claim and more of a personal fun related thing, I'm thinking of making the seth drone fabricators a lot stronger but dramatically increase their price, in my playthrough they're stubbornly rare...
Went into the data file and bumped the OP to 75 from 65. Testing how much that changes things.

Currently testing the following changes (that I made in the data file):
- Brasher OP from 65 to 75.
- Cockroach Armor from 265 to 300. (this I'm very eff on - the cockroach is already a great ship)
- King Roach armor from 875 to 925 (This thing is 26 DP btw).
- Junk Flux Dissipation from 385 to 400. (I already use the Junk without this change because of good lucky officers but I just really like the Junk so I did this lmao)
-Heavy Shepherd Borer Drone hitpoint from 650 to 800. (The drone's engines get knocked out way too easily, and the frigate can't really duel frigate like it's namesake implies, I want to test this instead of raising the OP cost).

[Hrothgar]

I said 20-something, like 22, 28 etc.

Brasher i think is a ship which should try spec to veeeery long range. Like if you have 1000+ weapons like HVD and Mauler, make him really far away bombarding from distance . Despise a really bad frontal arc, it should do decently, although i always thought Brasher is not flexible enough to be really good.

[Gen Waffle]

I did that with the Brasher the first thing but it's really slow, and it's limiting OP cost just makes it's almost as bad as the Mudskipper MK2. It's a damage support destroyer but it a bit too heavy on the DP cost and doesn't provide enough.

And like you said it's not flexible enough.

edit:
giving it 10 more OP makes the Brasher a lot better now, it can equip a Gauss and fire is sustainabily at long range with integrated targeting unit to boot.
With the now updated 82 total OP from the change with maxed Fleet Ladout, you get a gauss with 7 Caps, 24 Vents, ITU, Auxillary Thrusters and Flux Dissipator.

Probably won't change the Brasher past this because this is very good already. It's still slow, has no defenses and costs 10 to deploy so not overpowered by any means. Missiles will be the bane of this thing. That said it is now a viable fleet heavy support.

-----------------------------------

Now going to test the Heavy Shepherd after the change to health I did, hopefully the engines don't die constantly.

edit:
Heavy Shepherd is amazing now. The engines go out far less quickly with the drone having 150 health more. The unfortunate side effect is that the Heavy Shepherd  essentially has an 800 HP , 300 armor drone shield in front of it now, that's renewable. I mean don't get me wrong it the ship is still slow and lacks a sustainable damage source outside of it's one ballistic mount and the drones. The thing is now basically a tanky tugboat that chases for days because the drones still have *** range!!! autocannons have 600 range right??? why do they fire when the enemy is so close only plus they have next to no turret swivel depending entirely on the shepherd turning them to face the enemy???). The drones still have to swivel as the shepherd turns and the lag behind by quite a bit, so the heavy shepherd isn't foolproof. The increased health also means that the AI doesn't keep spamming the ability. That said Alfonz probably could just have put insulated engines into the drone and we’ll achieve the same thing.

So far I got my expected result but 800 health per drone might be too much, might lower it to 735 instead.

edit 2: Settled on 750 health for each drone, it's probably not perfect (I did test with 660, 680, 700, 725 and 760/780/800 health. This doesn't actually affect the combat of the heavy shepherd as the engines still get knocked out relatively frequently but does add to the defensive power of the shepherd and makes it spam it's ability less while giving it an edge in melee fights. I expect it to be commanded to escort carriers/capitals now. High health/armor defensive drones with short but effective weapon layouts for a tanky but low mobility hull. This change I'm pretty confident can be put into the actual mod. As a side note I decreased the cargo capacity from 125 to 100 to compensate sorta.

A final note is that while the combined PD of three heavy borer drones each having their own vulcan is nice, the fire cone is so narrow that the shepherd must be facing the missile to disable it. This is particularly significant for an ESCORT frigate, and the vessel you're escorting regularly (the Brasher in my tests) regularly eats a lot of missiles even with three or more heavy shepherd escorts.

-----------------------------------

I basically redesigned the Brasher to still be fragile and weak but have a larger option pool due 10 more OP, the Heavy Shepherd now is more better suited to it's escort role (that is commanded to escort a ship). Combining the two results in a very effective destroyer kill fleet that has a very clear weakpoint in the fragile and defenseless Brasher (missiles are RIP). It might be too strong but Alfonz would probably fine tune it better than I did.

[Orcling]

Red Water doesn't seem to exist/get produced in a Random Core worlds/Derelict Sector in Nexerelin and everyone is making Trade missions for it all the Time
Any way to get a planet to produce it?

Spoiler

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