Felt like playing Starsector recently, with mods, and Magellan was always one i wanted to try but never found the time for. So that's what i did. I'll write a little bit about it while i'm at it. This post may or may not contains my 88-page tendentious ideological manuscript on post-Domain fleet doctrine as well.
---
I tried to use as few mods that modify the base game as possible, only SOTF (because it's a good™ mod), Starship Legends (because it's useful to keep track on how my ships perform after a battle) and Better Deserving S-mods (because i'm still not quite satisfied with how S mods function in the base game). Beyond that, just content mods, so the Magellan ships i used shouldn't be too out of the ordinary.
Disclaimer : i did not played a whole lot of 0.95a, and even less of 0.95.1, so there's a non negligible chance i'll say something wrong/outdated/dumb here. But let's do it anyway.
I started this campaign with a Janz frigate. And... That's it. The thing crashed and burned catastrophically in the first battle. That first test drive left me a bad taste in the mouth with this ship, to the point that i pretty much never used it again in this campaign. As such, i don't have much feedback on it.
From what I've seen It's a cheap, pseudo-Lasher. And should be used as such. Just like the Lasher, i suspect it can work pretty well with Safety Override. Unfortunately, i wanted to play a campaign without using SO for once. As such, i did not gave it a second chance. The few AI Janz i had in my fleet did not perform extremely well either, and i chose not to recover them after battle.
Following this false start, the Dekker frigate became my new starter ship, for real this time. At first glance you can tell it's a low-tech Wolf, and that's how i planned to use it. Thanks to its superior mobility, it worked quite well for early game encounters. I used a pair of Ripfires SRMs on my ship, which are perfect for hunting pirates and derelicts with their crappy armor.
Later on, i would keep using them as quick cappers and harassers. They're not resilient though. They would explode quite often, especially to fighter wings, but i would always salvage them. The ability to rush to the center of the map and quickly capture strategic points, as well as being a constant annoyance to bigger ships in battle, was something invaluable the Dekker brought to my fleet.
Spoiler
Look at this cute little bastard.
An array of long range kinetic mean they can harass their target from a safe distance. The Salamander is ideal for protracted engagements and a perpetual annoyance to isolated enemies. The electron bomb is for assisting my fleet against overfluxed targets. Sure, the light autoguns with IPDAI are terrible against fighters. To counteract this I often created waypoints to the edge of the battlefield, a rally point for my Dekkers to relocate to if a menacing enemy carrier came too close. Letting the danger pass before resuming operations.
If i had to choose a MVP for this campaign, it would be the Dekker. An uncommon award for what is essentially glorified cannon fodder.
But back to my early game experience. My Dekker pack functioned well against other frigates, but lacked firepower to deal with destroyers and other well protected foes. So i chose the Pollard as my next flagship, a very close cousin to the Hammerhead. At this point i was having some issues with finding weapons, so i often ended up with suboptimal loadouts. It did not help that i was trying to stick with Magellanic weaponry. No SO builds allowed either, which made my early game harder than usual. At the very least i could crack open heavier armors with its two medium turrets but i still felt limited in battle. Still, nothing special to say about it. If you can know what is a Hammeread, you know what is Pollard. It's probably the ship that deviates the least from its Domain counterpart.
I used these destroyers as the backbone of my fleet for nearly my entire campaign, mostly as escorts for my bigger ships. A role they fulfilled adequately, somewhat. In hindsight, it was a mistake, i think they would have performed better by themselves, not tethered to another vessel.
Still no proper flagship for me to pilot though. I tried something bigger : the Chenel fast cruiser. Again with mitigated results. I needed something impactful with a low Time To Kill as to quickly influence the battle. The Chenel with its underwhelming frontal firepower brings limited impact in combat. I turned it into some weird torpedo boat, which worked decently with the sudden burst speed from its impulse burn system. Having said that, it's a very clunky ship, not quite good enough for a frontal assault, nor for broadside. Even after playing this campaign i'm still a bit puzzled as to how this ship should be used.
Its bigger brother, the Kreshov shares a similar design, but pushed the whole shtick further enough that it made more sense to me. A heavily armored broadside cruiser with a wide weapon coverage making it pretty much un-flankable. Unlike the Dominator that brings the pain to anything in front of it, the Kreshov makes itself unassailable from all sides. It won't deal a lot of damage in battle, but it will make for a pretty good fleet anchor. I only had one Kreshov in this campaign, and it survived to the very end despite facing some very nasty opponents. In retrospect, i think i should have experimented more with a cruiser doctrine based around this ship, the results could have been interesting.
A flagship however, it is not, not a really good one at least. I tried a similar torpedo build like the Chenel, with limited success. Also i tried- Alright i lied, i did try Safety Override on the Kreshov. I know i didn't wanted to but i was getting frustrated with the flagships i had so far in this campaign. I made it into a chaingun/machine gun brute. While it did greatly improve my ability to kill things quickly, it also came at the cost of nearly losing my ships in every single engagements. Just like the Chenel, it's quite clunky to fly.
Things weren't looking great for me at this point. the Khamn system was getting raided on a regular basis. Only a few, D-mod ridden rustbuckets were the only things available for sale in Jeshad, and that for months. So i needed to find a solution to grow my Magellan exclusive fleet.
A little shopping trip to Voscune Secundus solved that ! The graveyard system is a treasure trove for local spacers, with many abandoned derelicts waiting to be salvaged.
I got quite a few new toys here, the best one being the Capella destroyer-leader. The BCR version. You can tell this is a player-bait ship because it's the only pointy-one among the brick shaped Magellan ships. It's an exceptionally mobile destroyer with a lot of frontal firepower. Exactly what i was looking for. I turned my Capella into a Bonecrusher boat with machine guns and electron bombs.
This is also the first time i managed to make the electron bomb work. A very expensive and unreliable EMP blaster that tends to miss a lot. Difficult targeting becomes less problematic when fired at point-blank range, and the ruinous EMP damage ensure the target has been properly defanged. I'm still not sure overall if i would use this gun over the much more practical ion cannon though. It works but it's really easy to screw up, potentially forcing you to cancel an attack run. For the sake of Magellanic authenticity though, it would mostly be electron bombs for this campaign.
Not much later, i got very lucky and replaced one of the Bonecrushers with a cryoblaster. With so much frag burst, it made for an exceptional frigate/destroyer hunter.
Despite its armored prow, the Capella is not a good brawler. With little (basic) armor, a fragile hull and a weak shield emitter, even pirate destroyers can be dangerous to fight head-on. Of course, i did not have to, the Capella is incredibly mobile with its heavy impulse jets, and can easily outmaneuver opponents, or "dive" from a safe distance before unloading on an unsuspecting target. Another fun trick is combining EMP weapons with the impulse jets to ram and displace enemy ships, or even allies if need be.
While i did not pilot it for the whole campaign, i always kept the Capella in my fleet as a backup flagship, and at no point it did disappoint me.
Another salvaged ship was the Sung missile cruiser. Even after this campaign, i'm still not sure what to make of this one. A weird hybrid between long range fire-support and close range combat that doesn't shine in either categories. But perhaps that's the point. I did outfit my Sungs with long range kinetic weapons, which is always useful on the frontline to back up the rest of my fleet. The built-in Stormfire MRM-C offers long-ish range indirect support.
While it does works, more often than not i ended up wishing i had a Gryphon or a carrier instead. I just couldn't find a proper place for it in my fleet, not at 24 DP. The Sung was stuck in a limbo of "not great, not terrible" that saw it being mothballed and recommissioned on and off for the whole campaign. When i used it, it was mainly to fill the holes in my fleet.
It doesn't help that my most vivid memory of this ship was the regular friendly fire from its Stormfire missiles. The second stage warhead splits from pretty far away, and anything in-between can get hit. As i like to pilot my Capella up close and personal, it wasn't uncommon to see my rear armor being ripped apart by my own allies.
Much more useful than the Sung, the Mallory is another gift from Voscune Secundus. A cheap battlecarrier that happens to be fairly mobile and tanky. It stayed part of my fleet to the very end. I'm not gonna lie, i did not looked too much into it. I salvaged it, filled the empty weapons slots, built-in a few S mods, and now go do your thing. And it did, wonderfully. I never really bothered about the how and why of it. Maybe i should have. But then again : "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".
The Edger carrier, another salvaged ship from the graveyard system, and an important part of my fleet. A Heron/Mora hybrid, a ship i feel i should have been using more, and better. It took me a while to it right despite the design being straightforward.
For a while, i did commit the mistake of using my Edgers as defensive escorts, loaded with Bastardswords corvettes. I hoped they would punish anything that would engage too close to my ships. Unfortunately, the Bastardsword tends to stay behind the carrier, and lack the range to properly interfere during a clash. They don't have the weaponry to force back an aggressor either. Definitely not the low-tech Xyphos i expected.
I later changed my loadout with Jitte fighters and use them as long range interceptors like Thunders. It worked much better. My Edgers could now hang back in relative safety while providing support to the my allies. This vastly increased the life-span of my Dekkers that often fought far from the bulk of my fleet.
I did not try the Chela interceptor a whole lot. To me they first appeared like Talon-sized Jitte. Same role but with less range and survivability. What i understood much later is that unlike their bigger brothers, Chelas can target missiles, making them arguably better defensive crafts. Unfortunately, i realized that pretty much at the end of my campaign, so I don't have a lot of experience with those.
As for the Lochaber bomber, it did not fit my combat doctrine at the time. So... Maybe for another time.
I was now reaching the point where bounty hunting featured several enemy capital ships. As much as i liked my Capella, it wasn't the tool i needed to break the enemy's line. So i went for the biggest, baddest thing available. The Mazian dreadnought is that. It felt strange going from a nimble destroyer to a ponderous capital ship.
It's probably the ship i tried with the most different variants possible. I went for a long range bombardment platform, a close range brawler, a point defense fortress with guardians, an unexpectedly effective beam boat and even a reaper boat by the end of the game. All of them performed well but never quite as well as i'd liked. For the most part, i mostly used a slightly modified version of the base "Standard" variant with the twin electron bomb launchers. I don't know if it's best variant, but at least it's an enjoyable one to fly.
"A broadside Onslaught" would be the best way to describe how the Mazian flies. I preferred to stay at longer range, peppering the enemy's fleet with heavy kinetic fire, circling the target like a shark would. Once an opening appears, either a break in the enemy's formation or a vulnerable ship, the Mazian would pounce in close with its torch drive and finish the job with the electron bombs. Like with my Dekkers, i liked to use the ER light autocannons with IPDAI for the ability to pressure shields at long range while keeping some semblance of point defense.
Unlike the conquest that tends to work better with asymmetrical loadouts, the Mazian lacks the maneuverability to properly position itself. So i felt more confortable with symmetrical builds. One reason for a symmetrical loadout is because this dreadnought isn't afraid to dive straight in the middle of the enemy's line to get a kill. It got the armor to survive some reckless maneuvering and the flux to fire all guns on both port and starboard. It's not a scalpel, it's a bludgeon.
At least, that was when i piloted it. In the hand of the AI it is a bit more... Passive. Regularly i had to deal with my Mazian sitting at the limit of its weapon's range, almost contemplative of the battle with only token participation. It can be a capricious beast. Very often i had to direct it where i wanted through waypoints and eliminate orders. I paid for that heavy armor and i'm going to use it !
By the way, there's a mention of a triphammer thing in its description. Some old scrapped concept?
Overall, the Mazian worked well enough. Which is nice but at 50 DP, i was expecting a little bit more from it. Especially when its little brother, the Porey battlecruiser, performed similarly for a noticeably cheaper price tag.
I loved the Porey. A simple and practical capital ship that can do a little bit of everything. While not extraordinary in any role, and certainly not the line-breaker i needed, it's very reliable. Sufficiently tough despite its disastrously bad shield emitter, reasonably quick with its impulse jet and can hit surprisingly hard thanks to its built-in main gun. The fighter bay is also a nice bonus.
I did not fly it directly though, it didn't appeared like the best candidat for a flagship to me. On the other hand it's arguably one of the best AI ship available to Magellan. I even mothballed my Mazian a bit later in favor of two additional battlecruisers by the end of my campaign.
By now, my fleet was nearing its max capacity of 30 ships. I also accumulated a comfortable stash of money allowing me to do whatever i want without worrying about my finances. So i decided to fix my main issue in this campaign : the long travelling distance between my home system : Khamn, and the core worlds. Yes, there's a gate on Karic next to it, but it was constantly swarmed with Leveller pirates so i wanted something more practical. So thanks to the magic of Nexerelin, i decided to invade the
Holy Covenant of Kemet. But before going in there, i made some adjustments to my fleet in preparation for the siege, and swapped flagship.
I bought a Keu phase cruiser some time ago, but never really tried to do anything with it. "It's a crappy Doom" was my first reaction, and it stayed at that for a while. It's only after fiddling a bit more in the simulator that i realized its potential. It's a torpedo boat, one with stupidly high damage potential. This is something i needed as even my dreadnought struggled with bursting down key targets.
It may only have two medium hardpoints and two small universals for mounting missiles, but it's also blessed with fast missile racks. That means if the target is still alive after the initial strike, just instantly reload and fire again... And if that doesn't do it, reload and fire one more time. And if you're facing a really tough cookie, well, fast missile racks got 3 charges so there's not many things out there that can survive an angry Keu.
With that discovery in mind, i turned my phase cruiser into a mobile reaper delivery platform. Not really a good combatant, but more of an executioner waiting safely among my ships for a weakened target, ready to finish it in one blow before retreating to safety. As i had the missile specialization skill, plus expanded racks, this gaves me many torpedoes to deliver. Unlike the Doom, the Keu isn't cursed by the delicate machinery hullmod so it can fight for quite a while. In the event it runs out of ammunition before the end of the battle, the built-in fusion cannon is an acceptable substitute weapon, although i often preferred to retreat the ship and swap to my backup Capella.
By the way, there's something weird with the cloak. It shows as a special ship system with no description, also no stats. No glow either when phased. Also i have a question. How do you pronounce it? Kyu? Keh-oo? Kuh?
While we're talking about phase ships. I only found one single Yeager in this campaign. I did not had much use for it at this point, so i used it as some kind of scout/missile boat to fly alongside my Dekkers. Unfortunately i lost it fairly quickly, so i don't have much feedback on this one.
So, with my merry band i went on to assault Kemet. I had no idea what i was getting myself into. I saw the shiny ships on the forum and downloaded the mod without thinking through. As a result, i was ill-prepared for the invasion of the Kemet's home system. Of course, things did not went as planned.
It turns out that the space Egyptian are very good at hit-and-run tactics with their high-tech ships. By contrast, my lumbering Magellan armada was more comfortable in a proper line battle of endurance where everyone shoot at each others until someone dies. Not a very effective strategy when the enemy's doesn't want to stick around for the "die" part.
Kemet ships showered me with a curtain of kaleidoscopic bullets, and thanks to their efficient shields, could safely disengage once their flux ran high. Catching them with their pants down wasn't going to happen, so i did the next best thing. I turtled around a strategic point and forced them into an endurance battle. They would come in waves and my fleet would push them back, dealing damage in the process, sometimes even taking one down. Occasionally i would break the formation with an eliminate order, usually to destroy a key target before reforming the deathball. Waves after waves, the enemy's fleet would diminish. The Kemet vessels, despite their psychedelic looking arsenal, weren't well equipped to deal with this.
I wasn't well equipped either. My Keu flagship, despite being a superb battle station killer, struggled to land its torpedoes on the agile opponents. Most of my time was spent hiding in the deathball, desperately waiting for an opportunity to kill something. Even the rest of my fleet had too much emphasize on high-explosive weapons, which wasn't gonna be much help against those strong shields. Only my Capella felt at home here, sufficiently quick and deadly to engage and pursue enemy crafts. Unfortunately, one single destroyer can't win a war by itself.
Breaking a defensive formation isn't easy, especially when it's a formation of heavily armoured ships. But with every attacks, chinks in the armor starts to appear. Damage needs to be repaired, CR recovered in between battles. Unfortunately it was just me against an entire system. After taking on several response fleets, i had to retreat my heavily damaged fleet to avoid being wiped out.
The siege of Kemet failed. Back to the drawing board.
I was extremely disappointed with the Keu and decided to decommission it, for a time at least. As for the rest of the fleet, i felt a simple loadout change was necessary. A change in strategy that would require a f*ckton of Magdrivers and Solenoids. I needed a lot of kinetic to pierce those shields, and the "crit" chance on hull from those weapons would be perfect to deal with these technicolor idiots.
The Kant destroyer was also a new addition in my fleet. Not that i considered it especially pertinent for the oncoming war. I just thought that throwing more bodies at things was an effective problem solving solution. In that regard the Kant worked pretty okay despite an awkward weapon layout. The fighter bay that comes with it is always useful, so are the targeting drones. The Kant is rarely bad in combat. Here, i turned it into a sabot boat, something that can harshly punish anything that gets too close. I did try some build with Magellan's own kinetic missile, the Foxfire rocket, but did not liked it. Expensive to mount, frustratingly unreliable and unlike sabots, easily ignored by lowering shields.
With these changes, the second invasion for Kemet began. It went much better this time thanks to the excessive amount of kinetic weaponry i employed. Grinding down the resistance took some time but i eventually conquered the system, giving Magellan (and me) some precious new military markets easily accessible through the gates. It was also at this point i decided to shelve my Mazian and replace it with more Poreys.
Next target, the Star Federation's home system : Octavia VIII. That was the occasion to try the Keu again, with some adjustments. I mainly replaced the two Typhoons with Magellan's Fusion bomb launchers, and boy, did it made a difference ! While it may lacks the raw killing power of reapers, it's much easier to use, allowing my Keu to hunt even frigates. The energy damage makes it capable to crack open shields, the huge AOE is also really good at intercepting bomber waves, and it got a bit more ammo than typhoons. What not to love? It's a better option in most aspects. Now to test it in real time against the Federation...
My new trio of Poreys, plus the Keu for bursting down key targets, proved to be a winning strategy. I refined my tactics from the Kemet's war into something a bit more sophisticated. Instead of one big deathball, i separated my ships into three squads centered around the battlecruisers. Each squad was sufficiently resilient to handle the brunt of the opponent's fleet for a moment, giving the two other squads precious time to engage the enemy's flanks. My invasion utterly trounced everything they threw at me and Octavia was conquered in record time. It would have been a nice time to celebrate, alas the Hegemony grew tired of my shenanigans and declared war on Magellan.
Alright, time to prepare for this new opponent. Even with specialized loadouts to take on low-tech ships, the war against the Hegemony was the grind one could expect. Big armored brutes facing big armored brutes in painful, protracted engagements. Unexpectedly, i also discovered the Dekker's natural predator : the Hound. Those things relentlessly pursued my frigates all around the map and i had no way of stopping them. Too fast to outrun, no shield to pressure, enough armor to ignore most of my frigates's weapons, flares to distract the Salamanders, and agile enough to dodge electron bombs. I did not want to modify my scout ships since they worked so well against anything else, so instead that was the moment i decided to almost integrally use Jitte fighters (i was still trying to make use of the Bastardsword then). With their longer range, they could back up my Dekkers against the enemy's skirmishers.
So far so good. I had to be mindful of enemy's Onslaughts wandering too close to my battlecruisers, but overall i managed to score victories with little losses. The Hegemony wasn't alone in this war though, they joined the fight with their eternal ally :
Iron Shell. Just like the Holy Covenant of Kemet, i never used this faction before, so i did not really know what to expect. On my first encounter with them, i noticed a pretty heavy use of mobile battlecarriers, as well as-
Holy frickin Ludd what the hell are those ?It did not went as planned. That was the first time in this campaign my fleet got so thoroughly steamrolled. As i played more, i understood that Iron Shell mostly favored a mix of carriers and line breakers ships, something the static line defenses of Magellan struggled with. This was going to be a long and painful war.
Still, undeterred from this severe defeat, i began to siege the various enemy systems. Despite many loadouts adjustments and changes in my fleet composition, it was clear i wouldn't win against the largest of these fleet. I did my best avoiding Iron Shell patrols, only fighting the smaller fleets, keeping an eye on those ramming pseudo-dominators with rabbies. After a while, i managed to conquer nearly all of Hegemony space, except Naraka, the home base of Iron Shell.
Spoiler
No, i did not kept control of Yami.
The final addition to my fleet was the Graf destroyer, as a replacement to my Pollards. In truth, i did try the Graf early in this campaign but decided against it, judging the Pollard a superior alternative. My early assessment wasn't wrong per se, the Graf lacks the ballistic accelerator system, and is penalized by suboptimal flux stats. But i also ignored the part where the Graf is armoured like a cruiser. I would definitely not outgun my current opponents, but the durability would sure come in handy when it comes to survive them. Plus it's a bit cheaper to deploy as well.
I tried many loadouts for this ship, attempting to build an effective defensive escort to protect my Poreys. The result is a bit of an oddity that functioned fairly well.
Spoiler
Thanks to Better Deserving S-mods, S-modding converted hangar can sometimes be better than S-modding heavy armor.
Its damage dealing potential is poor but that's not the objective. I wanted it to be as frustrating to engage as possible, and ideally to survive for a little bit. This is also the only time i think i managed to make the Bastardsword work, the short range leash wasn't as much as an issue when they're constantly stuck in close range combat.
My tests against Iron Shell went... Well, not gonna lie, it went badly. But then again, it's hard to test the effectiveness of a ship when i'm facing what is essentially a boss fleet. So i did put my invasion of Naraka on hold and went to test my fleet against a more reasonable opponent. Luckly for me, there was a red beacon system nearby.
The results were much more convincing. A trio of Grafs made for a very solid escort for my capital ships. Again, very little damage done to the enemy, but they tanked quite a bit. Granted, i would have got better results with Monitors, but i did with what i had and was reasonably happy with my new cannon fodder destroyers. At least my Poreys were kept in one piece. After harvesting the local Ordos and acquired a decent of amount of AI cores. I had now the financial means for the final push to win this war.
Or at least that's what i thought. After several attempts, despite the backup of other Magellan invasion fleets, it was clear i wouldn't be able to brute force through the fortress system. I managed to perform some hit and run bombardments on the planets while avoiding the two giant patrolling fleets, but capturing something would require too much effort. Moreover, this campaign lasted quite a while already.
So i decided not to capture anything.My final contribution to the sector went under-appreciated. Indiscriminate saturation bombing somehow being bad and all that. Can't fret over every egg i'd say. Oh well, Iron Shell has been erased from the sector. Everyone hating my guts is a small price to pay. I see this as an absolute win.
---
So, how did this campaign felt? Pretty good i think. Magellan ships tends to be very basic and quite close to vanilla low-tech in how they fly, with the Capella being the big exception. It looks like it's part of the mod in appearance, but feels completely different to use. Not a bad thing mind you, I desperatly needed something like the Capella to make things "work" in my game. What was glaring in my opinion, is that it is the only one that can do that.
To develop a bit further, i'll try to write an exemple with the Mazian. As i said up there, it worked, it's even fun to fly! I enjoyed this ship quite a bit. But it's definitely not a top capital ship. Not a huge deal, not everything can be the best. It's just that trying to make things "work" with it is a little bit of an uphill battle. I knew i couldn't rock the world like i did with the Capella. And i felt that nearly all of Magellan feels a bit like that. Mind you, i did not try absolutely everything the mod has to offer, and maybe missed something important in that regard.
The Keu is a weird exception to that remark. It works well, but possibly not in a way that was intended. It almost feel like it does so by "cheesing" rather than proper piloting. A one trick poney. In some way, it reminds me of the old Harbinger with typhoons, although in a much less obnoxious way. It fights by "exploiting" the game rather than "playing" it. I'm not sure if i'm communicating this correctly.
Dang, this all sound so needlessly cryptic. I'm not really sure myself how i feel about it. Anyway, i think Magellan is a good mod. One i will certainly use again in the future as it just fit nicely into Starsector. Perhaps i would have appreciated it better with some more "spice" in it, but as far as i'm concerned, it's good enough to stay in my mod folder.
