@BeyondTheHorizon
I played around a bit in the variant editor to test your ships. I have to say....in all honesty? I have a few things to mention.
the positives:
1: Ship models look good. Good integration of weapons on the sprites.
2: Shield system is a MASSIVE improvement over what I was working with years ago when I was attempting to build this mod
3: Weapons are comprehensive and very well done.
4: Love the way you did fighters. Very good application within the limits of the game.
Now my critiques (WARNING!!! STRICTLY my opinion):
1: Weapon range is FAR too short. The main battery of a MkII ISD should at least match the firing range of an Onslaught. I found it utterly impossible to fight any vanilla ship. the ISD was losing against an Onslaught due to being unable to actually hit the thing.
2: Thrust seems to be a small issue on larger ships. All the SSD variants I tested were pointless. Lack of forward thrust combined with the limited weapon range meant that EVERY ship was able to stay out of range yet still damage me.
3: Scale is a bit wonky? Granted I understand that there are limitations that must be dealt with due to the game engine and physical screen space. I just felt the SSD and other dreadnaught-class ships were not massive enough compared to the more typical line ships. This is a minor point that is more question than critique.
Overall I am impressed with your work. It just doesn't quite have the right feel to me. I am working on trying to test your ships vs themselves for more complete data comparison, but currently the lack of range on the weapons and having a MkII ISD fall on its face VS an Onslaught strikes me as a major design flaw.
Update after some testing:
When the "Long Range Heavy Turbolasers" of the First Order Dreadnaught are unable to hit ANY ship because they can all fly backwards and out of firing range? Maybe a little tweaking might be needed.
Thanks for your opinions, quite an insightful observation. For the record, if your were testing the ISD II vs Onslaught in simulation, the Onslaught has a dedicated targeting core which increased its weapon range. On the other hand, the main turbolasers are located at the rear half of the ship so further reducing the effective range. I guess you have a point on the weapon range, I'll increase it and see how it goes.
As for the speed of the larger ships, I think the increased weapon range may make up for it? Tell me if you have any idea about it.
For the ship size of dreadnought ships, I had been thinking of adding a more up-to-scale Executor as a boss bounty to test out how large ships do in the game to decide whether to upscale the ships or not.
EDIT: The firing arc of the long range turbolaser of First Order dreadnought is frontal only, it's kind of a design flaw from Disney, lol. Maybe I can increase the turn rate a bit, but it's better to bring some escort ships.
