Sooo... Is there a time that we can expect the next release??? Really really excited for this!
When it's ready
Carriers will no longer be favored, normal ships now have [REDACTED] specials to use.
To some extent, yeah. Also not just energy mounts; not over-favoring one specific tech type by giving it exclusive access to new shinies was definitely a consideration.
So you like playing some Brigador then? I'm playing it heaps at the moment, really good stuff..
I like it a lot, yeah! David's probably spent a good bit more time with it, but it's a really good game.
Mixed feelings, to be honest. Some of these look really over the top and super distracting. I mean, those trails on torpedos are wider than most cruisers.
The thing about torpedoes is their visuals have to signal how dangerous they are
I get what you're saying in general, though. If every fight in the game was full of these that probably wouldn't work real well, but that's not the context or intent for these.
Really love the ice-themed ones. That smaller one with the Hound, especially. Just the right amount of cosmetic effects for me.
It's probably the most "normal" one in the gifs. There's also a number of small weapons that aren't nearly as over-the-top. The gifs show the flashier stuff, though, so I think overall it paints a
somewhat skewed picture.
And those purple wisp things, too. Look eery.
<makes spooky noises> (Which reminds me, they actually *do* make spooky noises in-game.)
most if not all of these weapons also made me feel like the enemy ships fielding them come from a separate pocket of space. AKA they live in subspace and are invading normal space.
all in all 11/10 excited for the future.
It only raises difficulty when you first encounter them. After you crush some of them and loot their toys, everything becomes easier. This can be seen now with Sparks for carriers. It is why I consider Templars a god mod, after player loots enough weapons.
Yes, after having played with Knights Templar for many versions, I can agree that pushing the power envelope only ever goes one way. If a weapon is a usable upgrade, even with high flux and OP requirements, that just means that every single Paragon from now on will boast an array of these weapons and other slots will be left empty. Don't forget that leaving alien weaponry strictly to NPCs is always an option as well.
Without getting into too many details, this won't be a concern for the next release, due to the very strictly limited access the player would have.
If there was more access, then there are options to handle it - either to constrain access (say, enemy ships don't drop these at all; a "Weapon Autodestruct" hullmod or some such), to balance them somehow ("interference", higher flux costs, higher OP costs, a hullmod that gives them more damage on enemy-faction ships and a corresponding damage nerf, etc). That's of course assuming the current balancing measures were insufficient.
I am curious about Knights Templar, though - what was the power level of the weapons, just in terms of raw DPS? Something like a homing 800 range medium energy weapon is kind of overpowered by default, though - that range in that slot type combined with hard flux is pretty much impossible to balance out in player hands. Though one could have absurd OP costs, but that leads to a weird balance where, yeah, it might technically be balanced, but the ship has to be built around having that one weapon and a lot of empty slots, and it probably wouldn't be interesting to play. Range is kind of harder to counter-balance than pure damage.
I really hope that Starsector introduces late game crisis events that can shake up the entire playing field. Like Terraria's "hard mode".
I hope so too
I can already tell the real threat will be the ships having those weapons, not so much the weapons themselves.
That's a big part of it, yeah.
Also most of these weapons don't seem great vs fighters, so maybe a different strat from Paragon spam could prove to be more efficient.
There's a bunch that are very good vs fighters, too. And the "flamer", while not being strictly an anti-fighter weapon, can really erase them.