I wonder how the new skills and story points will impact the effectiveness of this ship. We are all used to the current release, I'm assuming, where safety overrides costs 45 OP on a cruiser, and everyone grabs loadout design 3. Things are going to get weird when you can add safety overrides for a story point on a cruiser instead of 45 OP. Its a completely different paradigm than simply getting +10% OP. On a light cruiser like this, free safety overrides is nearly a 40% increase in OP, which means it probably can be effectively used in a 2 blaster setup. The next closest hull mods are like 13 to 16% more OP for a story point (15 or 18 OP cost). And safety overrides just magnifies the high tech design, namely fast, short range, high flux values.
I wonder if its going to be too much of a must have on a ship like this, and that any other build is going to fall short, simply because of that ~30 OP difference (effectively 26% more OP than other configurations, while simultaneously sinking all those effective OP into vents).
The thing about heavy blasters, when you consider OP cost and compare to plasma cannons, they're roughly as efficient in terms of damage per OP (to about 10%) if you are aiming for flux neutral. If one had the option to add unlimited vents.
Imagine you have a flux neutral setup, i.e. shield and weapons flux cost equals flux dissipation.
Now we spend 12 OP to add a heavy blaster, and 72 OP on additional vents to make it flux neutral again. 84 OP for 500 DPS. Or roughly 5.92 damage per OP.
Now imagine we spend 30 OP to add a plasma cannon, and 82.5 additional vents. 112.5 OP for 750 DPS. Or roughly 6.67 damage per OP.
Now imagine you've got "free" safety overrides.
Spend 12 OP on the heavy blaster, and 36 OP on 36 additional vents. 48 OP for 500 DPS. 10.41 dps per OP.
Spend 30 OP on a plasma cannon, and 41.25 OP on 41.25 additional vents. 71.25 OP for 750 DPS. 10.52 dps per OP.
Might not be the best for those late game dragged out matches, but early to mid game such a cruiser would probably pull its weight. Of course, often times early to mid-game, you're not DP capped. So I dunno if it matters.
I do wonder though if the story point for hull mods is going to make certain loadouts for high tech ships just so much better that you only see other setups when out of story points.