I decided to play a HMI campaign with the beta version from the discord. I wanted to go with an Industry/Leadership focused playthrough, more focused on commanding a fleet than piloting. Because of the vast amount of content added by the mod, i preferred to focus exclusively on the Junker ships. I also disabled the sub-faction like Fang and Brighton because my PC is a also a junker. Anyway, here's how it went.
As i knew beforehand of the dubious quality of Junker ships, i started my campaign with the Nexerelin "small combat fleet" (Cockroach destroyer, Greasy and Shotglass frigates) start instead of going with just lone frigate. A few experiments in the simulator indeed confirmed my original thoughts about my new ships : they are junk. Slow, unshielded, unarmoured, with shoddy flux stats. The absence of proper shield or any defence system made the Junkers unable to fight for prolonged duration, and their lack of mobility left them extremely vulnerable to kiting. Even with their incredible amount of hull point, there was no way my ships would handle a long battle. All of those flaws ensured they would never survive in a fair fight.
Fortunately, Junkers neither need to fight fairly, nor to survive said fight.
There was a wise guy that once said that the best defence is a good offence. Another wise (?) guy also that said that quantity have a quality all its own. With this in mind, i went to build my warfleet. Every single ships were based on the idea of lobbing as many harpoons and sabots as possible, all in the purpose of maximising their alpha strike potential. The enemy can't shoot you if the enemy is dead. That's one way to resolve the survivability issue with Junkers.
Among the first few ships i got was the Shotglass. A frigate barely deserving of being crewed both for safety reasons and actual fighting ability. It's a piece of scrap, but it's a dirt cheap piece of scrap with a missile mount. If somehow you can't find a Kite laying around, the Shotglass will do. There's no magic trick that makes the Shotglass good, but it doesn't need to be "good", it just need to shoot at things sufficiently until they die. A few eliminate order, every weapons set to linked on the same weapon group... This is a good way to ensure your stuff will fire everything they've got before exploding. And when there's a few Shotglasses in the fleet just doing that, things start to die surprisingly fast, both on your side and the enemy's.
Thanks to their affordable price, i could buy a few more frigates before leaving for bounty hunting. The Snail was one of those frigate, and it is probably the most dangerous tool in the HMI roster. Even cheaper to deploy than a Vigilance, and with more missiles, it flies the same way the Shotglass does, recklessly and violently. With its ridiculous armament, it can burst through any frigates and even destroyers that get in range. It still needs to survive long enough to unleash its entire payload, but that was rarely an issue since my faster Shotglasses usually reach the frontline first to distract the enemy.
I also got myself a Streak. It's not as good as a Snail, but the medium missile hardpoint still makes the Streak an interesting addition in a fleet, and its numerous ballistic mounts gives it a very nasty bite if it can get close without exploding. It's also the best Safety Override frigate the Junkers have access to. With its numerous front facing mounts, it can pump out an absurdly high amount of DPS, enough to threaten even the biggest destroyers.
The Greasy works just like the Streak, although it trades firepower for resilience. There's not much to say here, the Greasy isn't as spectacular as the Snail or Streak at killing things, but it does a good enough job. It's not like i had a reason not to deploy as many ships as possible anyway, so every ship i could get my hands on were sent to the frontline.
The Cockroach destroyer was my first flagship. Like all Junker ships, the Cockroach tank hits with its hull, and it got a lot of hull, even more so with Reinforced Bulkhead and Blast Door, which are absolutely mandatory hullmods for Junkers by the way. It also got a very decent amount of missile mounts, and more than enough weapons to turn it into a Safety Override brute. Although at this point SO felt almost superfluous, since my fleet could end fights with missile saturation alone. There was no need to get close to actually fire my guns during early game, just sit at a reasonable distance and fire the missiles when appropriate.
This is with this merry band of clunkers that i went hunting pirates, derelicts and the occasional remnants. Battles were finished very quickly, and casualties, mainly due to hugging exploding ships, could be salvaged safely after the encounter thanks to Reinforced Bulkhead. I went with the obvious route of Industry and Leaderships skills for this campaign, with a few Technology ones. Very rapidly, i amassed a large armada of D mods ridden junks, but it's okay, Junker ships love D mods! Each D mod (up to 4 i think?) does increase the OPs and reduce the repair costs. Combined with the Industry skills, those ships becomes very cheap to maintain and repair. Although each D mods also reduce the quality of the fighters, that's a trade off to keep in mind.
I rarely went back to the core worlds, only to resupply in fuel and crew. Yes, Junkers ships run on meat instead of supplies. Well, not literally, but even with the proper skills and Blast Doors, i kept losing large amounts of crewmen during battle. Hull tanking will do that to you. Supplies however are relatively plentiful in the outer rim, and you barely spend any on repair anyway.
As the campaign went on, i got my hands on more Junker ships. The Creep destroyer is probably the one i salvaged and used the most. It is the logical evolution of the Streak frigate, a fragile glass cannon with a hefty amount of missile mounts. Just like the Streak, the Creep can be built in one of the meanest SO destroyer. Which is exactly what i did. Junkers do struggle to catch faster ships. Using a lot of missiles and Safety Override tends to mitigate that weakness.
Also got a few Convict carriers. Unexpectedly expensive to deploy (as much as a Drover!), very fragile and slow. Because of D mods degrading the efficiency of fighters, it makes for a relatively poor carrier. It compensate by being an extremely heavily armed missile boat. if noticeably starved in OPs. My main issue was getting them to the frontline before the battle ended. To resolve that, i start the battle with an escort order on my carriers, forcing my fleet to deathball around them. Once the main bulk of the enemy's fleet is engaged, i can cancel the escort order and press the red button.
Spoiler
The red button. When you absolutely, positively got to kill everyone in the room, accept no substitutes. Junkers love the red button, it's the signal that the leash is off and they can ignore trivial matters such as self preservation. Not a good idea to use from the get go, because you don't want your ships chasing that Hound on the edge of the map. That's also a good reason to start with the escort order to keep a close formation before the big brawl. Of course, after a time during big battles, your ships will inevitably disperse to chase something, but you can still force them to regroup for a moment, then repeat the process.
I also got my hands on the cruisers, the Roach King and Slugworth. Both are very similar, big bricks of armour plates welded together, with more weapons than good sense. The Roach King is the brawler, the one that is on the frontline, hugging that capital ship while choking on its guns flux. The Slugworth is the support, the one that is on the frontline, hugging that capital ship while choking on its guns flux. Except it also got fighters. Both got a lot of missiles, both were loaded in a way they could kill things as fast as possible with a blatant disregard for their own safety. And it worked! Backed by the rest of the fleet, my cruisers could dive deep in the enemy's formation, and kept going until they reached the other end of the battlefield, ignoring torpedoes and bombers trying to deplete their huge, fat sack of hullpoints. My crewmen didn't liked this tactic one bit, but hey, it "works".
A bit later, i acquired a Junk, the HMI combat superfreighter. As its title implies, the Junk is not really a combat ship, but just like a butcher knife isn't a weapon, it will still wreck anything that would think it little more than an armoured Atlas. The Pummerer cannon reach far, is accurate, have a high rate of fire, and hit surprisingly hard. Sadly i couldn't make good use of it as my battles always devolved into messy close combat brawls with constantly blocked line of sight. Regardless, the Junk is still a worthy acquisition, even if only for its gargantuan cargo hold, and you'll haul a lot of crap when playing HMI. Yes, it's slow as sin, but at this point in the campaign, i was daring everyone to try to engage for a fight, so i didn't cared much for its slowness. Oh i almost forgot, the Junk is also armed with an inexplicable build-in swarmer near its bridge., for some reason.
Early, mid and even some late game battle were handled fast enough that the lack of armour and shield weren't too much of an issue. Very late game however, proved to be more complicated. Drowning the enemy under an avalanche of missiles works only if you have the number advantage. This is why i eventually disabled the 30 ships limit in the player fleet, so i could see how far i could push it. Battles often devolved into a bloody meatgrinder, with extreme causalities on both sides, but i just need to win, if i win i can salvage back all i lost and keep going as if nothing happened. Moreover, if you play with Starship legends, Junkers are under-evaluated in term of power level, every fight will be counted as an uphill battle. The bonuses for winning such fight, even with 90% causalities, will often be positives. So yeah, 90% causality rate makes for an acceptable win for Junkers.
I did take a look at the fighters too. I was pretty underwhelmed by the Trapdoors bombers. Dirt cheap and fast but also extremely fragile and barely armed. I don't think they're worth it. Maybe if there were six of those per wing, maybe as a cheap alternative...
The Shell drones are similar, although not as bad. Cheap, and heavily armoured, but also barely armed and frustratingly slow. In theory they could be really annoying when massed, blobbing around a ship. However with their lack of mobility they would spend most of their time trying to chase a target, and anything slower than Shells usually have the firepower to rapidly burst through their heavy armour.
The Bombardment drone is a much more interesting one. It is simply a flying annihilator launcher. Unlike the Kopesh that fires all their missiles in one burst, the Bombardment function like the small annihilator launcher does. Yes that includes its hefty ammo capacity. That makes the Bombardment a very decent support bomber that rarely needs to reload, one that is best to keep at the ship's side as it keep firing volleys after volleys of rockets. It's also extremely cheap to mount, what's not to love? Arguably overpowered when used on a proper battlecarrier, a constant and unlimited stream of Annihilators for such a cheap price feels really damn strong. One thing of note, unlike conventional bombers running out of ammo, the Bombardment drone does not go back to resupply to the carrier when set in engage mode, it needs to be done manually by regrouping them. The Scale fighter also suffers from this issue.
Speaking of which, the Scale function in a nearly identical way as the Bombardment, although its is much more expensive, and its Mbecke rocket launcher is much weaker. But it also have much longer range. That long range makes the Scale a pretty incredibly fire support alternative to the Xyphos. Not really adapted to the fleet i used during this campaign, but something to keep in mind when playing another faction.
After a surprisingly long campaign, i finally met my end during a reckless incursion in Mansa. Overconfident, i charged headlong against three local fleets. I didn't expected those feeder drones to be a hard counter to my missile spam, and those high-tech ships are also pretty good at kiting. Oh well, that was a fun ride at least. I'm very sad that i never found a Fishkill carrier. The Junker Astral was all i could have wished for during this campaign, lot of missiles, lot of bombers, a truckload of hullpoints... Still, i managed to go pretty far with just a swarm of scrapships. As for the overall balance of the ships, it's... Hardto tell. Junkers does not really function like vanilla, or any other mod faction really, as such the comparison is difficult to make. The brutal missile spam deleting things obscenely fast could make them appear overpowered, but that's also something that vanilla ships can do, although to a lesser extent.
On top of bounty hunting, i also did some exploration, and i have to say i did quite enjoy the content added by HMI, the writing too. Vanilla is pretty barebone in that regard, so it's always a plus. The Domain Resurgent, the Horrors and the Mess also respectively bring some welcome mid, late and very late game challenge.
In the end, i did quite enjoy this campaign. The Junkers do have the chance of offering a playstyle completely different from other mods that i know of. It's also the closest thing we currently have to Warhammer 40.000 Orks in Starsector. HMI feels like a worthy addition to the modlist, although from my perspective it did feels more demanding on performances than other mods, which makes sense given all the stuff it brings in the sector. I personally won't use all the time, but for people that like exploration and plethora of content in the sector, HMI is a very good bet.