I am angry, angry about balance. This thread by its very premise is negative, which doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy Starsector at large, it’s just that there’s very little sense in telling people to change something that’s good.
Thanks to Certain Ungrateful Malaysian Mongolian Scumbag (this is what you get for acting obstinate), MesoTroniK and Avanitia for help.
Weapons:
Small energy weapons just don't cut it. There is a variety of weapons that fill various niches, but there isn't actually a weapon that is good for actually dealing damage. IR Pulse is the closest and it's not that efficient and also terrible against armour. You're more liable to drive your own flux up instead of the enemy's. Relying on IR Pulses for dealing damage is simply unviable, even if you supplement them with other small energy weapons, like Ion Cannon or Anti-Matter Blaster. This doesn't matter most of the time, as most ships can also use other weapons... Unless they can't and then you get to thoroughly experience how wanting the small energy weapons roster is. There needs to be added another general purpose small energy weapons, regardless of whether IR Laser gets any buffs or not.
Fighters:
Xyphos’ design is broken. They’re a pair of fighters with some point defence and 1200 range ion beams, that also keep close to your ships by virtue of being support fighters. They don’t have to fly to the enemy anyway, because they have enough range. Since they keep close to ships they support, this sometimes includes actually hiding behind them or hovering over them. This makes Xyphos completely invulnerable at times and hard to counter otherwise, whereas their firepower is very significant, if not directly harmful. 800 combined and EMP DPS gives the escorted ship an advantage that the enemy cannot get rid of, unless the Xyphos AI makes a mistake, with little counterplay otherwise. And since it’s flux-free for both the escorted ship and the fighters, you can’t shut it down sans for destroying the fighters. Ion Beams aren’t a good thing for fighters to have.
Hullmods and d-mods:
Logistical hullmods aren't very good, design-wise. Increased Maintenance, Compromised Storage and Erratic Fuel Injector aren't either. Erratic Fuel Injector perhaps least so, fuel is cheap and it’s not hard to stock on it with tankers, but it can become relevant when you’re out in woods exploring and you’re close to getting stranded. Increased Maintenance and Compromised Storage are both boring, uninteractive d-mods that only serve to increase your running costs. They can also serve as a justification for inclusion of Efficiency Overhaul, but it feels shallow. D-mods make you pay a little more and EO makes you pay a little less for everything. It also increases CR recovery rate, which is the most interactive and useful thing about it.
Ships:
Scarab is basically "small energy weapons don't cut it" personified. It has many mounts and thus much OP, but some mounts aren't worth anything and we can skip them. Its ship system is quite good, but since weapons are not, it doesn't get terribly much mileage out of it. One of the ways to use Scarab that provides the biggest payoff, comparatively, is to use it as a beam boat, PD or not, but that is a very frivolous use of 8 supplies per month and the crew's sanity.
Shrike is a... Some people like it, but that's not the topic. The issue here is that Shrike (P) also exists. Let's assume a test scenario, where a normal Shrike gets an IR Pulse and a pirate shrike gets a railgun, and normal Shrike gets to spend difference in OP for additional vents. IR pulse with 7 vents has a 80/150 efficiency against shields, railgun with no vents has 150/334 efficiency, 53% vs 45%. That's on top of railgun's much higher range and the fact that one railgun can substitute two IR pulses in terms of damage against shields, allowing the possibility of using heavy blaster or phase lance in the medium slot as an armour breaker, or to use something else than sabots in missile hardpoint. The reason why pirate Shrike is so much better is, again, that small energy weapons can’t stand on their own at all. Perhaps normal Shrike should get the hybrid mount as well. Having pirate Shrike lose hybrid mount would be a boring way of equalising the versions and Shrike in general would be worse off for it.
Atlas mk 2 might not be conceptually bad, it’s too early to tell. The only outstanding feature of it is Accelerated Ammo Feeder on a capital ship. This is typically a red flag on mod ships, since AAF on a capital ship is a very dangerous concept and easy to mishandle. Atlas mk 2 makes up for it in its bad flux stats, but it’s still a precedent. Hopefully people won’t get some stupid ideas from it.
Ship systems:
Astral has Recall Device, which is kind of akin to fast missile racks and missile autoforge. Gryphon with something like that would be broken, by just spamming missiles and getting them back instantly for some flux. Astral is worse, because its missiles (fighters) have 4k su range, more than any non-carrier can retaliate from. And another difference is that most missiles rely on high damage spike every so often, while all non-bomber fighters accrue damage over time. Recall Device doesn't do much to fighters, but it refits bombers nearly instantly, making them that much more important and useful, effectively warping Astral entirely around Recall Device and bombers, because everything else is very much suboptimal. Recall Device should have charges, a charge down or charge up, some limiting feature like Targeting feed does and most other ship systems. Astral is also just 45 DP and that is a serious understatement of its capabilities.
Reserve Deployment could be called the second side of the coin that is Recall Device, not affecting bombers and boosting all other strikecraft instead. It increases damage of the carrier, by increasing the number of fighters in combat, especially so for fast fighters, while also having the ability to negate some or even all damage dealt to fighters, especially so for fighters with long refit times. With a couple of drovers it’s very easy to mass fighters, so much that eventually the enemy cannot deal with them at all and damage is spread among them all, enough that it doesn’t knock out any fighters and your carriers are effectively unhindered in any capacity by the enemy fire. Reserve Deployment shouldn’t outright provide additional fighters, at least not directly.
Last but also the biggest culprit of them all, mine strike. It's not just strong, it's outright overpowered and broken while at that. There are several problems with mines. First off, they are strong and spammable. 2000 HE damage times 5 mines on a Doom, and even more on high-tech station. Doom can use mine strike when phased and station’s modules don’t have shields, so it’s very hard to stop either from spawning mines. Mines can also spawn wherever they wants, with the only limit not being able to spawn within ship's shield radius. This is fine for slow ships, but it doesn't take a target's speed into consideration, so it's possible to spawn mines in situations where the target has no feasible way to avoid them, due to its momentum. In addition to that, you can spawn mines on top of fighters (and since they're fast as well, you could also abuse tactic previously mentioned), which makes them explode instantly and can serve to instantly set off mines that have enemy ships within their blast radius, without the target being able to do anything about it.
Mine strike can attack also from behind the ship without being there. Doom can, for a pretty low cost, break one of the expectations of combat, that being "backwards is safe, that's where ships retreat", by spawning mines behind ships, meaning that they can be, at any point, instantly surrounded, either taking mines with no counterplay or opening themselves to Doom attacking it personally. High-tech station, on the other hand, has unlimited (?) range and, due to there being to modules, has even more mines to magic out of thin air. All the features of mine strike compile into the best “press to destroy everything” F button in the game.
