First, Alex this update looks amazing and almost a major update in it’s own right.
The skill rework looks *mwah* magnificent, the less variable weapons load out for all ships will be great if it works like it did for redacted.
The new low tech ship and rugged constructed hullmod is exactly what low tech frigates have been missing.
Max level officer retraining, cheaper cargo pod stabilisation, patrol distractions, defend assignments, thumper burst changes, HSA rework are all awesome and amazing and aren’t the only small but great changes so thank you.
I suppose 600 flux might not be a big deal for one mauler, although multiple maulers could be mounted.
Set them on alternating, that would even out the flux and damage over time.
And about the worries of the low DPS, the increased accuracy means actual DPS will probably be up as there will be less misses and the burst and accuracy means that you can shred armour much better. It won’t be too good at actually taking out hull but kinetic can do that reasonably enough anyway. So overall it fulfils the niche of taking out armour at long range better. You can put it on cheap frigates and destroyers and they might actually do something against low tech cruisers and capitals. It may need tweaking like 0.5 or 1 sec faster cycle but otherwise I think it’s in a good place. It’s not as good as a suppressor to prevent shield flicker but then it can be paired or replaced with HVD which does respectable armour and emp damage anyway and so whether the shield is up or down it’s effective.
I’m gonna try putting it on some hounds and have them just plink from long range.
With civilian ships, you can’t make full civilian ships like the buffalo good combat ships, not without buffing it to the wazoo and going crazy. That’s just not worth even trying.
Ships like the mule, gemini, kite, colossus mks and such though, especially with the increased burn bonus from skill means that militarised subsystems can actually be reserved for ships that will fight rather than using it for the burn bonus.
Spoiler
Basically, the goal was to see some more true-civilian ships in battle, and that didn't work out at all.
You've designed yourself into a corner, there. Civilian ships simply don't have enough weapon slots to compete. The only role I have figured without redoing all the sprites is to let civ ships become bricks: can't really deal damage, but able to soak lots of damage to take pressure off of the real combat ships.
I suggest replacing Assault Package with 2 hullmods: one super-buffs flux capacity, the other super-buffs hull. In exchange they neuter all of the ship's logistics stats and have a high enough OP cost that most civilian ships can't fit both.
(Escort Package should be rebranded as a normal hullmod bc it is cool. Militarized Subsystems should not make a civilian ship count as a combat ship for skill buffs.)
SafariJohn made a lot of good points that I won’t repeat, but to add, making combat civilian ships work as damage soaking bricks with just enough firepower to not be ignored would be a good niche that doesn’t really have other ships filling it (they either have damage, armour and or dissipation as well). Making the hullmod reduce cargo, fuel and crew carrying capacity to low side of standard combat ship amounts and then significantly increasing capacity or hull per unit reduced would automatically scale the benefit between those that don’t need it so much like venture and atlas mkII and those that do like gemini and even make the original colossus into an interesting meme. I can just imagine it like a truck parking in front of a paragon and rolling down their windows to swear at them for honking
It would also let it have very low OP.
Question, why Scarab OP reduced?
With carriers, I actually think how they are is pretty good. They’re frankly, boring to use, they can be fun to watch but I don’t think personal skills are necessary for that. I suspect why some people really want them is because they used to be really strong and they have fundamental advantages over weapons with much longer ranges and don’t produce flux or have limited missiles.
Not really having any reason to add officers to them is a bit of a problem though. A possible idea is a officer only skill that gives the fleet wide skill effects onto just their ship and remove that ship’s fighter bays from the fleet wide skill count. That will also help if we just want 1 carrier or all carriers. Which could actually be fine if the reduce weapon variability means more consistent point defence. Then 4 other skills can then be filled by the likes of system expertise, helmsmanship and ballistic mastery.
Otherwise I think if someone wants to focus on fighters that may be better suited for mods.