Hello, I made this account just to complain about people complaining. From what I played of the mod, I think the complaints about the mod being too OP are from the people still trying to play a normal game of Starsector that just so happens to have some Star Destroyers floating around. While I can agree I can shred several capital ships in a single Secutor outranging all of them, as well as unleashing several angry screeching wasps all over them, I think the balance was just right when two Star Wars factions decided to throw down. Yes it isn't a total conversion, but you can also disable the vanilla factions if you're so mad about the vanilla ships being manhandled by what I call flying pizza slices. Honestly, I think certain aspects of the mod are still underpowered, but only a few things.
I do have suggestions I've thought about playing it. One is about the Empire's main strength: TIE spamming. TIEs were known to be complete garbage, but they came in huge numbers. From the version I got a while ago, I feel like the Empire does show great strides in strike craft superiority, they're a bit too uniform. Most classes of TIE only have 3 fighters (except TIE Droids for some reason). In my opinion, I think more trash TIEs should have their numbers reflect their model. TIE Fighters I think should have wings of at least 5 instead of 3, while stronger variants might keep the usual 3 craft per wing. Interceptors are simply faster TIEs, and Bombers are just the ones canonically equipped with bomb pods. Of course, it's up to you to decide if they should be designed the same. For me, I think TIEs that lack shields should have greater numbers, while TIEs that are actually dangerous (like the Defender), should have less fighters, especially if they're a rare model, like the TIE Phantom.
On top of this, I think some other factions should reflect their starfighters as well. Rebels I think should have fewer fighters overall, but have them better than most weaker TIEs. This reflects their nature as being poorly supported, but ensuring their pilots are better fighters than a bog standard flying orb. Y-Wings were always known to be much more armored and better shielded than the X-Wing for instance. A-Wings are the weakest overall, but are blisteringly fast. The best Rebel ships are some of the later designs, like the B-Wings, but the X-Wing is still a good ship despite being the primary, and one of the earliest strikecraft of the Alliance. The only thing that'd probably be worse than an X-Wing is the Z-95 Headhunter.
As for firepower, every faction has their strengths, and I think some ships were always meant to be really beefy. ISD-1s were always scary, but the octuple turbolasers of an ISD-2 was the full might of a Star Destroyer. Only the biggest and meanest ships could hope to survive it. MC80's on the other hand went in the other direction, and had amazing shields. I think Mon Calamari ships in general should be hard to crack, even with greater firepower. They should make you sweat a little if you're being swarmed by them, and an ISD-2 would be essential (or some degree of it) to taking them out. Some of the CIS ships should also be like the Empire in fighters, but maybe more so. The Providence and especially a Lucrehulk are massive carriers, with the giant slightly eaten doughnut having a mass of fighters it could deploy at any point. I think it should have as many fighters as a Secutor, as they're both essentially super carriers. I don't know if Starsector has a limit on hanger bays, but those two I think should have the absolute max.
There are other things I've thought about, but those are the biggest things I think would improve faction uniqueness.
