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[liam556]

Having just some simulator battles with the Galileo I can safely determine that the issue your having with the A.I. is the fact your putting it on escort duty which is making the ship get to close to the enemy, however I've just changed the how the A.I. will use the ship and it now pretty much guarantied to stay as far away from enemy ships as it can.

Now to just give the Cerus Accelerated Ammo Feeder and see how well that does and the next update will be ready.

Oh, and I don't plan on changing the Rock to a Destroyer. The Rock was built from the ground up to be a poor cruiser whose only redeeming traits are good speed and cheap to buy and maintain. I have given it a few buffs so it should be a bit better to use in the campaign.

[liam556]

Update 1.3a
https://github.com/Liam5563/astroidships-pack/blob/master/Asteroid%20ship%20pack%201.3a.rar?raw=true

Changelog:
Vesta's and Tholen's fleet points have been lowered to 9
Rocks fleet points have been lowered to 10 and burn speed increased to 8
Cerus's system id has been changed to Accelerated Ammo Feeder
Both Rock and Cerus have had their shield arcs reduced.

[Arcagnello]

Wooo!
Galileo
Can't wait to see it in action now! I reckon it's going to be used a lot more by very capital happy fleets wanting to make enemy destroyers, cruisers and battlecruiser's lives miserable!
Rock
The changes are quite a welcome surprise, I did not expect it to go that way but it makes a lot of sense for it to have done so! It's going to be the ultimate Walmart Cruiser and I love it. The only slight issue I could see is that 10DP might be a bit too low (still have to test it, will come back for feedback), 11 or 12 to put it in the same ballpark as the Sunder or, Ludd Forbid, the Medusa (may the poor Rock rest in little asteroid pieces) would feel right.
Cerus

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I can't wait to get in the campaign and try it out, but I can guarantee you people fighting it in the future will have their situation go from 0 to 100 real quick, especially if you go ahead and make an autofit variant with safety overrides *Shudders*
The shield changes seem OK. They both be more than enough for the ship to have and will provide incentive for players to actually flank them and start working their hull points down!

Will update once I update the mod and try the asteroid ships I have out in the campaign!

Update

Cerus changes look really nice, the shield reduction is also barely enough to cover whatever it is fighting against so that's also good (same applies to the Rock)
Galileo now properly distances himself from the enemy when equipped with support weapons
Rock has some issues, for one the tooltip and the simulator indicate it still somehow is still 15Fleet Points. The Burn speed increase to 8 did go through tough!
Simulation FP:

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Stats in the refit screen:

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[liam556]

Starsectors fleet points are very weird sometimes. If you look at the stock ship CSV file the Dominator is supposed to have 15 fleet points but actually has 25, the Legion has 28 but actually has 40. The underworld ships you have also have this problem. The Stalker is supposed to have 14 but actually has 20 and the Infernus is supposed to have 28 but actually has 50. Also the Cerus is supposed to have 22 FP now.

[Arcagnello]

Starsectors fleet points are very weird sometimes. If you look at the stock ship CSV file the Dominator is supposed to have 15 fleet points but actually has 25, the Legion has 28 but actually has 40. The underworld ships you have also have this problem. The Stalker is supposed to have 14 but actually has 20 and the Infernus is supposed to have 28 but actually has 50. Also the Cerus is supposed to have 22 FP now.

Huh, did not know the game was wierd like that! I'll let you know how I feel about the other asteroid ships the moment I get them, but they all seem to fill their own unique spot in the mod now that the Rock-Clanker competition got solved and 

Also, Holy Ludd, the modding subsection of the forum is like a shark feeding frenzy over a fresh new whale carcass. Not even 24 hours have passed and this thread is already down the second page!

[Arcagnello]

I am going to bed now, but I just wanted to say I've finally managed to build myself two Pebble Asteroid Battlecarriers back in my colony and after around an hour in the refit screen I can safely say it's an amazing capital ship, and probably the only asteroid ship that's strong enough for late game.


A quick list of things that stand out about the ship, I'll probably be able to produce better feedback tomorrow when I'm not writing on the phone and near to collapsing asleep in my bed. Considering it is 40FP:

1)It has fortress shield and 35000 hullpoints with very mediocre armor. The thing puts even the XIV Onslaught to shame when it comes to just surviving anything thrown at it.

2)It has 35 speed and very impressive (maybe too impressive) handling, in line with all asteroid ships

3)It's probably the only ship in both vanilla and the entire modiverse that can field Fortress Shield, at least 1 large ballistic weapon and fighter bays. Which is absolutely crazy wonky, especially considering it's made my the pirates!

5) There are two light ballistic hardpoints in the bottom left of the ship that make no functional sense whatsoever and that could very well fit a medium, even a large hardpoint.

6) There's also another strange, circular part in the middle-right section of the ship where a medium, 360° turret would fit very well on top of.


I think this is the 40FP ship that needs the least help in the form of integrated Hullmods and an officer to beat the Simulation Paragon under complete AI control.
I will cover why I believe the following statement extensively tomorrow, but I think the ship needs a bump to 45 Fleet Points or even 50 (with minor buffs) to properly fit into this mod's power scaling of ships. It is scary good, especially under AI control and a setup that can "exploit" the Fortress Shield with, like the following:

Hullmods: Hardened Shields, Stabilized Shields, Integrated Targeting Unit, Expanded Deck Crew

Weapons: 1 Gauss and Two Hypervelocity Drivers in weapon group 1, All missile slots filled with Salamanders and linked togheder and on weapon group 2, all small ballistic mounts filled with light machineguns (apart from the two hardpoints) and on weapon group 3.

Fighter LPCs: Three Khopesh Rocket Bombers

Rest of the OP: Vents

Hullmods to be integrated: Heavy Armor, Reinforced Bulkheads, Hardened Shields
Additional hullmods to add after integration: Solar Shielding, Armored Weapon Mounts, Blast Doors.

[Arcagnello]

Popping back to say that I'm still testing the Pebble as I approach the final segment of this campaign.

All I can say for now (without writing too much while in bed with my phone) is that it would feel a lot better at 50DP with minor rebalances to its stats (and weapon mount size/number).

Having a 3-bay battlecarrier with good flux stats,  kinetic mounts + a plethora of missiles, an amazing 360 shield and the Fortress shield ability stay at 40-45DP would require it to be even MORE constricted by the lack of Ordinance Points than a Legion to fall within Vanilla game balance, while being slightly less expensive than a Paragon at 50FP could make the Asteroid Capital shine without feeling gratuitous.

[Qipchak]

I also tested the Rock Capital. Its good, but not OP. I played it with Reaper Torpedoes, Forward Railguns and 3 Heavy Maulers - no large gun. It has 40 DP, same as Onslaught. It has more agility but less armor. I basically hull tanked that ship. Firing till max flux, venting by tanking hull, firing again. So the staying power of the ship is payed with more supplies needed for repairing hull damage. I would keep the DP cost but would remove the Fortress Shield for Maneuver Jets or something weaker like Flares or Reserve Deployment for the Drones.

I really like the style of the rock ships. High hull ships with focus on smaller guns but mediocre armor and lower ranges due small gun focus. They are unique. Oh the enemy has fired some holes into our ship. Just melt some stony bois and fill the gaps.

[Helldiver]

I think there are problems with the Clanker's movement. One is that it changes movement direction (i.e reversing) faster than frigates.

The other may have something to do with AI and how it treats collision on the Clanker specifically. The Clanker when used by AI acts as if it's much smaller than it is and constantly pushes against friendly ships. For example, if a friendly ship is between the Clanker and an enemy ship, the Clanker will ram the friendly ship and push against it while trying to get closer to the enemy ship. It also does this at the start of battle if there are friendly ships that spawn in front of it. It will run into them trying to squeeze between ships that even a Kite couldn't have passed between.

[liam556]

Update 1.3b
https://github.com/Liam5563/astroidships-pack/blob/master/Asteroid%20ship%20pack%201.3b.rar?raw=true

Pebble's system id has been changed to reserve deployment
Rock's turn acceleration has been slowed from 100 to 90
Clanker's turn acceleration has been slowed from 100 to 90 and acceleration have been slowed from 300 to 250

[Arcagnello]

Opening this reply with an "I'm sorry it took 4 days" and the "I was busy driving two of these around the sector, dabbing on [Redacted]" excuse. But I am ready now!

Pebble's system id has been changed to reserve deployment

I believe this is a logical, balance change if you want to keep the ship at 40 Deployment Points, but I'm under the impression the ship is in the same boat as the Infernus Battlewagon From Underworld: It's too big to stay at 40FP and it would just get its signature features butchered if it tried. 50DP would give it a lot more room to be its own ship while not sacrificing any aspect of what makes it unique, so here's my argument for the Pebble to become 50DP:

Stats
First things first, here's the stats of the Pebble Battlecarrier

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and the Paragon Battleship, for comparison, since it supposedly has the same shield and the same ship system (maybe, eventually)

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The shield, the ship system and the flux stats
I fully support the idea of degrading the shield to damage ratio of it from 0.6 to 0.8, but everything else somehow varies from the original ship for some reason:
1)The Paragon has a 360 Omni shield with horrid raise rate, while the Pebble for some reason has a 360 front shield that's inherently faster raising
2)The Paragon (the one that's 60DP) has a shield that generates 750 flux per second just to stay up while the Pebble (that's supposedly a Pirate conversion and is currently worth 40FP) has a shield that only generates 450 flux per second.

Making the assumption the Pebble is raised from 40 to 50DP, it would be a neat balancing factor to give it the exact same shield and ship ability as the paragon but with a 0.8 ratio instead, which would mean having the player invest in quite the amount of Ordinance Points (which would be lower than the Paragon's) to get the shield in shape for battle, if he/she decides to even think about installing flux hungry weaponry.

As an example, Hardened Shields, Shield Conversion: Front and Stabilized shields cost a whopping 63 Ordinance Points to install and only one of those hullmods is eligible for Integration with a Story Point.

Both flux dissipation and flux capacity feel absolutely fine the way the are. I don't think any change is warranted even if the ship is buffed up to 50DP.


Ordnance Points
The current iteration of the ship has 300 Ordinance Points and believe me when I say it's barely enough to give it everything you want it to have, considering it has
-3 Fighter bays
-17 small Ballistic, 4 small Composite and 5 Small missile mounts (not even considering those two small hardpoints)
-2 medium ballistic, 2 medium composite mounts
-1 large hardpoint

The weapon setup (that uses all weapon mounts as a prerequisite) that's been working best for me is the following:

Spoiler

3 Khopesh Rocket Bombers
17 Light Machineguns
9 Salamanders, 2 Salamander MRMs
2 Hypervelocity Drivers
1 Gauss Cannon

Light Machineguns are both cheap and effective, but they also provide quite the good kinetic power to drive off the enemy with, especially good if you also have Elite Point Defence raising their range even further.

Triple Khopesh Wings deal amazing damage to slow moving or otherwise immobilized targets, for which I needed...

13 Salamanders all firing off at the same time, ensuring the ship is immobilizing enemies left and right

The Two HVDs and the One Gauss both provide long range kinetic firepower and combine very well with the Fortress shield, allowing them to keep most of their damage potential as the ship keeps activating the Fortress Shield.
This setup can beat the Simulation Paragon almost undamaged

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Considering this ship is basically an amalgamation of a Mora's fighter bays, a degraded Paragon's shield and the kinetic/missile/composite weapons of a few cruisers fues togheder, being bumped to 50DP and have the Ordinance Point pool slightly increased to something like 340-350 would make a lot of sense and still be inferior to not only the Paragon (which has 370) or the Onslaught (which has 360, the XIV variant has 370).

The Weapon Mounts
This is the one nitpick I have with the ship's design as a whole. Some mount positions don't make sense, some others overlap with one another despite the ship being absolutely massive and there also are strangely empty spots that could fit turrets a lot better than current positions, in order and assuming it would even be worth pursuing:

1)

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-The small ballistic turret in the top left could be moved further right to not be almost over the small missile hardpoints.

-the spot in the top-center is very crowded. I would personally remove the small ballistic turret right in front of the large hardpoint and move that one small ballistic turret a tad down and left to not touch the missile hardpoint and be abit more inside the hull.

2)

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-The center-left spot seems absolutely perfect for a 360° medium ballistic turret
-There's quite the massive empty spot just below the main bridge, I could perfectly see a backward facing, 180 degree arc, medium ballistic turret there too
-Those two small ballistic hardpoints in the bottom right corner have no functional purpose to be there, I would remove them for a medium ballistic hardpoint in their stead and also remove the middle small ballistic turret in front of where it would be placed to not overlap.

I could see the 1) changes applied regardless of the shiip being moved to 50DP or not, while the 2) changes would nicely accompany the ship's higher Deployment Cost and slightly improved OP pool if it was moved to 50DP.

Durability, Top Speed and Handling
Darting off to aspects of the ship I have not yet covered:

The Durability of the ship beyond the shield is both  incredible and fitting of a ship this size and made out of Asteroids. I would not change it regardless of the ship staying 40DP or being moved up to 50.

The 35 Top Speed of the ship is really, really impressive (keeping the theme of asteroid ships going) for something this size and I feel it's perfectly adequate, the handling on the other ship is, on the other hand, a bit too much, to the point when it becomes absolutely mental with the presence of an Officer with Helsmanship, Auxiliary Thrusters or even both, I would personally cut it down a notch.

Maintenance, fuel economy and CR
I had not looked at these numbers all that much before, but they have some strange connotations to them:
-Maintenance is fine, all asteroid ship roughly have a Supply/Month maintenance cost that's around 6o-65% of their DP. It would also mean bumping the current 25 Supply/Month of the pebble to 30-35 if it was moved to 50DP tough.
-Maximum Crew and Skeleton Crew values are quite strange. This ship is basically double the size of a Legion with a lot more weapon mounts and only one less fighter bay, but are you telling me the ship can only house 700 crew at most (Legion can hold 1500) and only needs 540 to properly run legion requires 700)?
-Cargo and Fuel capacity are in line with the ship's size, but the Fuel/Light Year, Jump Cost value is really, really low at just 12 while, by comparison, both Onslaught and Legion have 15 despite litterally being half the Pebble is. Assuming the ship uses double the thursters (to move double the volume, if not more) and has the same 0.65 efficiency of the Monthly Maintenance, a more sensible fuel ecomomy would be around 20, 22.


This about covers everything that was on my mind after playing a whole campaign with two pebble Battlecarriers tagging along, assume I'm perfectly fine with all the stats of the pebble I did not mention.
One last piece of feedback I'm going to give is about the Reserve Deployment you gave it instead of Fortress shield. It is a nice system to keep the fighter bays functional a bit longer, but it hamfists the ship setup to use fighters instead of bombers quite a bit, while a system like Targeting Feed (from the Heron) would keep the ship open to using both bomber and fighter LPCs, not to mention actually justifying that giant radar dish in the back of the ship.

Anyway, have a good one liam556, I'll love this mod regardless of where you decide to take it 

Oh and by the way, this mod is arguably the best one for WH40K Orc Roleplay campaigns, along with Junker Ships from HMI:

[liam556]

Update 1.3c
https://github.com/Liam5563/astroidships-pack/blob/master/Asteroid%20ship%20pack%201.3c.rar?raw=true

Pebble now has 50 DP. It's speed on all accounts(except top speed) have been lowered, and now has an OMNI shield. The Pebble's OP points have been increased to 340, shield flux upkeep is now 540, crew requirements are now 800, fuel/ly has bee increased to 22 and supplies per month have been increased to 30. Pebble's system id has been changed to Targeting feed. Some front small mounts have been moved to not collide with other weapons.

[Arcagnello]

Nice!
I'll get back to testing it the moment I get to continue my campaign! Really looking forward to what I can squeeze out of the ship with extra OP and a damage focused ship ability!

[Blorg]

Wonderful. Rarely meet a good pack of non-high-tech ships.

[Arcagnello]

Wonderful. Rarely meet a good pack of non-high-tech ships.

Indeed. Having more low tech alternatives really makes Starsector shine, they may even provide for solid alternatives for endgame, altough currently High Tech is very, very strong and basically impossible to beat in the "fight power" per Deployment Points ratio.

Welcome to the forum by the way, fellow Asteroid Ship conosseur!