The main "
tumor" on the Radiant is that's
it's just 40 Deployment points and yet it has 2 large energy hardpoints, one large energy turret, 2 large synergy turrets, 4 medium synergy turrets and 4 small energy turrets
all pointing forward.
If someone that never played Starsector before looked at my current Remnant Ship roster and I told him/her there's one mod ship that's broken among them after giving a brief description of each, the Radiant would be singled out every single time.
Litteral
Phase versions of the Brilliant with Alpha Core Officers are more balanced DP wise than the Radiant right now. No, it's not a joke:
I could see a lot less istances of Remnants becoming absolutely disgusting in the wrong ways if
1)Radiant got bumped to 55-65 Deployment Points
2)Autofit stopped butchering more than half the Remnant ships all the time, like putting 3 medium energy weapons on the 3 Large Energy mounts of a Radiant just to name one
3)Some more Remnant drones were added to not make the one (or two in the case of the Scintilla) fighter bay on most remnants a wste of Ordinance Points most of the time, especially considering the faction as a whole is completely lacking a strike bomber and a support craft
4)Some Remnant ships had better autofit options. As an example the Overridden Brilliant, Fulgent and GLimmer are some of the strongest setups aside from the Radiant but Vanilla does not seem to use any of them
5)Vanilla stopped giving Alpha/Beta cores on every Ludd-forsaken ship abomination the Remnants fielded. The only two vanilla Remnants that should have an Alpha Core are the Radiant and the Brilliant (if there is no radiant). Destroyers should get Betas and Frigades should stick to Gammas.
6)I would honestly
prefer Vanilla to stop adding officers above 60 Officer levels (which is the maximum the player can field without Automated Ships) and started adding integrated hullmods to the most expensive ships instead for every 8 officer levels that would've been added instead.
As an example, that relatively small phase fleet with the Brilliant-X Drone Phaseship only has 16 ships as you can see:
But it has
9 Alpha Cores (including one on a Lumen, heh), 2 Beta Cores and 2 Gamma Cores, which considering they add 10, 8 and 4 skills respecively amounts to
114 skill points, which is 54 Skill Points higher than what a player fleet with both level 4 Leadership skills can achieve.
The change I suggest would translate into the same fleet having:
1)1 Alpha Core on the Brilliant
2)6 Beta Cores on the most DP expensive ships after the brilliant
3)1 gamma core on the most DP expensive ship that does not have a core yet, bringing the total "officer points" to 62
4)114-62= 52 additional commander skill points, which divided by 8 equals to
7 (rounded up) Integrated hullmods in the Remnant Force
5)Meaning the Radiant gets 2 Integrated Hullmods, The Brilliant X gets another 2, the Horseshoe Remnant which I forgot the name of gets 2 and whatever is after that gets 1.
Addendum: I am sorry my reply is getting too long for most people to be happy when reading it already, but the best stategy when dealing with high mobility, high durability enemies is rather straightforward. You need to deploy a force that is both able to distract and isolate the enemy force (which usually stranslates in some durable frigates-destroyers goign around and contesting buoys) and then a mobile or durable strike force to focus the major enemy threats down.
I am aware Remnants don't usually spawn in hyperspace but the standard Remnant Ordos spam Alpha Cores in a similar way,
if not worse.
Here's a small screenshot compilation of that fight:
If you have a keen eye you'll also notice I've got mods introducing more Overridden setups of the Brilliant (I think Vanilla has just one and it rarely spawns?). I love hurting myself, that's why.
Another side effect of this Alpha Core Spam is that there's a lot of cores to be farmed:
Edit: corrected math