Alex, these new ships RULE. I'm one of the (apparently rare) players who dislikes loading his game down with tons of mods that cram the game full to bursting with wildly mismatched ship styles and types, all of which (of course) bring their own special snowflake factions along. I like the vanilla ships and I like, especially, how they all fit into the world. These latest additions are very, very, VERY welcome.
Foremost and up-front - I'm not surprised at all that all the new low-tech offerings also have pirate fits in their autofit menu. Pirates have desperately needed this. In the last version I finally solved my pirate woes by realizing their true strength came in their disgustingly dense brick tank; they could just cram the field full of Ventures and Mules and other low firepower, high armor/hull ships to the point where the escorts served as ablative armor for others. I eventually found that the absolute best anti-pirate fleet was one heavy in HILs.
Not only will these new ships make pirates much more interesting (and much more dangerous, but that's the same thing) to fight, but they all make sense as ships the pirates would want to use, as well. The Venture always did, given it's durability, missile focus and civilian nature, but it was the only gun cruiser the pirates had and just intensified the brick tank hullgrind issue drastically. Now that they have a wider variety of cruisers and destroyers to use I expect fighting the Red Tide to be MUCH more fun.
On the ships:
Eradicator: This ship is aptly named. I'm very, very glad we have a dedicated (P) version because pirates would be a lot scarier if they had a fast cruiser with accelerated ammo feeder on it. This thing has excellent turret arcs and general design and good lord, FIVE small missile slots? It's amazing. It also means it works very well with the new burn drive, which not only makes it an excellent candidate for a pirate missile ship conversion but also makes it one I'll definitely want to include in my fleets and try flying myself, much like the Falcon (P).
I love how effectively this fits into the old Domain battle-line doctrine; it's the PERFECT compliment to the Dominator. You put this bad boy on the wings to smack flankers and perform flanking attacks of their own. Preferring AAF over Burn Drive on this hull makes perfect sense in that regard; esp. given its already high (for low-tech) base speed. Also makes sense that the lineage of the ship's design would lend well to a burn drive conversion - perhaps even because it was originally designed with the potential for such, mirroring internal debate in the Domain admiralty over fleet standardization.
Manticore: All three of the new ships look great but this one looks the best. It really does. And the new built-in hullmod + another destroyer with a Large slot just WORKS so well. Yet another design that has obvious uses in the old Domain battle-line strategy (big gun with the range to be effective) but also, coincidentally, is perfect for the fast kind of hit-and-run fighting pirates prefer. It is very, very much a Domain style escort ship - "flank is fine, flak is good, but if you're going to be hanging next to a capital ship anyways, you may as well be shooting with them."
Vanguard: Good lord this thing looks fun. The combination of Damper Field and Burn Drive on this little beast is fascinating, especially since Burn Drive is now much more useful than before. Not only does it have incredible mobility, but Damper Field is the perfect combination to make with its preferred armor tanking. This also means that missiles are more dangerous, since even with Damper Field on they can do a number - but low-tech ships are always balancing offensive firepower with point-defense anyway. High risk, high reward - because as the fluff text says, it need never reserve flux for its shield system. All firepower, all the time - and burn drive on a frigate is just hilarious. I can't wait to see this thing dueling with high-tech frigates that struggle to bust its armor with energy weapons and marvel as it zooms away at sanic velocity. It's exactly what I would expect of the Domain's approach to a fast frigate - "strap huge rockets to a ball of armor and guns and set it loose. Oh, and we're gonna lose lots of them most likely so make it cheap."
Phenomenal stuff. I can't wait to play with all the new shinies!
