I'm back from 30 minutes of fiddling with my three asteroid ship classes in my fleet. The update seems to work just fine when stapled onto an ongoing campaign by the way, so no worries there
Cerus Heavy Cruiser Changes: Ordinance Point value increased from 170 to 190, 280(ish?)° front shield changed to 130°degree omni shield
How I feel about it:It now definetly, definetly has enough ordinance points to not only comfortably fill all the weapon slots but also some very important hullmods like Heavy armor (which
doubles the armor value) and ITU.
Now, 190 feels like a lot of Ordinance Points for a 20FP cruiser, but both the fact this ship has cruiser prices for the hullmods and the fact that mediums and especially small weapons are incredibly OP inefficient proves it's just enough to equip all the things.
I would honestly cut the omni shield coverage further down to 125, 120 degrees as that is barely enough to cover it from whatever it's pointing it at, not to mention preventing people picking this up and basically getting the same, nearly 300° front shield it had before.
The last thing that I'm not too sure about the Cerus is the ship ability: Burn Drive. I'd wager something like Advanced Ammo Feeder as a ship skill would work a lot better for two reasons.
1) Giving what basically amounts to a Pirate Dominator with an Asteroid as hull 50 top speed and burn drive more or less makes it able to chase and butcher anything faster than itself also thanks to the agility and the very generous front weapon angles, with the only weapons not really being able to keep firing at, say, a Frigade evading the Burn Drive being the one Medium Ballistic and the 4 Composite bolted at the front. It's a bit
too good at competing in mobility not only with Cruisers but also destroyers and even some of the slowest frigades.
2) I feel Accellerated Ammo Feeder would make a lot more sense on the Cerus since it's the ship with the most concentrated firepower per Deployment Point in the whole mod and, if I were to assemble a fleet completely made of Asteroid Ships, I'd have one or two of these escorting the Pebbles and use them as mobile gunboats to both combat the approaching enemies but also provide impressive point defence coverage with the ammo feeder. The lack of a mobility skill further adding to the ship's already impressive mobility would also prevent it from absolutely deleting anything too small to contest it at short range and unable to get away from it.
I could see it being bumped up to something like 22 Deployment Points (Having it compete with the Eagle and only being 3FP cheaper than the Dominator) if it did get Ammo Feeder tough, since that would make it a lot scarier to anything going slower than 50 speed while in combat.
This is the setup I feel happy about using. It's got one set of long range weapons (the three mediums) and another for shor range (two Dual Autocannons, two light assault guns) and vulcans everywhere else.
Rock Light CruiserChanges: OP from 110 to 120, 300(ish)° Front Shield converted into a 140 degree omni shield
How I feel about it:The Rock still really struggles OP wise considering the amount of weapon mounts and the fact it gets the same OP cost for hullmods as the Cerus, but I'm pretty sure that is by design. This is quite the twitchy cruiser that can reliably go around and hunt frigades by itself, while it generally really struggles against destroyers due to the weapon composition being very short ranged. 10 more ordinance points really go a long way to at least make it fit Dedicated Targeting Core/Integrated Targeting unit.
I think it still needs the shield further trimmed down in coverage, 130-125 degrees should be enough to barely cover it from what it is fighting and that's more than enough for how good of a shield it really is for an original Pirate Vessel.
One more thing I'd personally love to happen if for this ship to actually become a Destroyer, not a Cruiser. Frankly speaking, it's too small and having it pay cruiser OP amounts for hullmods absolutely butchers it. In addition to that, being a cruiser makes it compete with the Clanker, which has the same role and even ship system but brings more ordinance points and more weapon mounts for just 5 more Deployment Points to the table.
As for changes during the transformation into a destroyer, I'd compensate for the fact Targeting Core/ITU provide an inferior bonus by giving the Rock a slight top speed increase, making it even better at hunting frigades and small destroyers now that it's significantly outclassed by cruisers and above.
This is my current build for the one Rock I have in the fleet. Don't look at the integrated hullmods. I was litterally drunk the moment I spent three story points on it.
Spoiler
The name of this particular Rock is a nod to the animated parody "TRANSformers" by Flashgitz on Youtube. It's great, just don't watch it while someone is around
Galileo Support DestroyerChanges: OP from 80 to 90
How I feel about it:I love this thing. It's so damn good when set to escort the other Asteroid Ships and providing missile fire support, sspecially now that it can fit
7 Salamander missiles plus ECCM, decent defence, reinforced bulkheads and have points to spare for something else too!
The only problem I have with this adorable missile vomiter is as stated in the previous reply connected to the Destroyer AI, pushing it into range to shoot at the enemy with its weapons even if it has nothing but point defence and long range support missiles. I don't think it's either lacking or too good at its job. It does what it's built for well and gets butchered when attempting anything else, the end.
This is the setup I'm using, it could honestly work with Harpoons aswell, even pilums if we're ever going to get a vanilla pilum for small missile mounts.