First of all, thanks for the your suggestions, very constructive and solid, much appreciated.
I'm not sure but many of the weapons seem really under-powered, why is this?
Star Wars ships are a bit different from Starsector's instead of having handful amount of powerful weapons plus couple PD weapons or missiles, SW uses rather small turrets that scatter around the ships and the damage output between variants of turbolaser aren't hugely different.
Therefore, at the beginning, many ships, especially the capital and dreadnought, have more weapon slots than the ships in base game or the other mods (and the number had been reduced in v0.2 as there're comments complain about the number of weapons). So, I didn't make the weapons very powerful, more like quantity over quality? But it can turn out still being too weak even with the sheer number of weapons so there're still things to work on for the weapons balancing for sure.
It's great that they use 0 install points but then doing 20dps is a little bit pointless. I get that if all the hardpoints were populated by 0-need weapons then the craft would be OP in the game but that for me wouldn't be an issue since the Empire and Republic are meant to be the big fish in the galaxy and very hard to threaten unless you're a big shot like the crime syndicates (by the way these would be great additions in future).
About the install points, all weapons have install point now since v0.2 except for point defense laser cannon if it's what you're taking about. SW PD weapons aren't as effective as Starsector's laser or chain gun so I make it 0 energy used and 0 OP cost. As for crime syndicates, pretty good idea, can be added into the road map if I can find usable ship sprite (I lack the drawing skill so it's the only way
).
I also was wondering about the idea of the two key empires having planetary systems so close. I could imagine a scenario where more of the planets from the starwars universe are included and basically it makes the whole make effectively about two major powers fighting (that would really be the star-wars theme I guess) - maybe think the galaxy map on "empire at war".
The two system are close because Coruscant and Chandrila are close in SW map?
For more planets, it would be lovely to see the galaxy map of SW in Starsector but there're other systems in the base game and systems added by other mods which I don't know their coordinates so I need to be careful to avoid superposition with other systems, it will take a lot of work.
That way being commissioned by either side would give you a general mission - conquer all enemy planets/bases and they would be doing the same. Of course in terms of Canon, the Empire should begin much more powerful than the rebellion - I guess if you wanted to go all out you could have the rebellion be an in game alliance with the Empire basically being the hated group so would not ally with anyone. That could result in a "build the rebellion and fight back" scenario starting from a relatively hopeless position (sounds good in my head, not sure how fun it would be until balanced out).
Something like New Republic free the galaxy from Empire post battle of Endor? EAW Thrawn's Revenge in Starsector sounds interesting.
In terms of sound/music (if you wanted to go that way) I've done a star-trek music mod for the Homeworld Remastered StarTrek mod, that was very involved because there are about 16 eras/races each with their own signature combat and idle music and about 10 tracks in each playlist). But if starwars music is something that would work in the mod I could look into putting something together. There's not so much music in starwars and only two signature groups so it wouldn't be so hard (probably).
WOW, I'm looking forwards to it.
Oh and one detail about the fighters that I didn't like - the twin-tail xwings that look like ww2 fighters? I would just make them xwings but with a gold trim or something like that. Those pre-jet fighter sprites are out of place and break immersion for me.
I think you have a point, twin-tail is just too much a like ww2 fighters from top down, LOL. It looks good in
comics though. New Republic doesn't has as many starfighter variants as tie does so it's difficult to find a replacement for it. Is there any good fighter in your mind?