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[Mephansteras]

Minor update to the pre-release version that updates the usage of SDV ships/gear by various vanilla factions and tweaks the ship variants to better fit the gear each factions actually has available.

[Cryovolcanic]

Hi Meph--

Enjoying this mod quite a lot. One suggestion--can you keep a version of this that is NOT a faction mod? I like some of the SD ships and I love the colored missiles. However, adding lots of faction mods really slows the game down, and unless there are quests etc connected to the faction, I'd rather not add another faction that doesn't add actual combat content to the game (eg like IX Battlegroup).

Also, any chance the missile cruiser can get a resprite closer to vanilla? I like the coloring of the SD ships but something about the sprites feels very different from vanilla. Not sure what.

[Mephansteras]

Oh, yes, the mod already has in it (on the pre-release version) the ability to enable or disable the faction. So if you just want it to be a ship/weapon pack in the future you can do that.

I have not done an export midline version of the missile cruiser yet, but it is on the eventual roadmap so hopefully that'll fit better for you.

[Cryovolcanic]

Thank you. Some additional feedback from me:

1) I also like the strange support ship that looks like an oceanic creature. I love support ships that have new support-type abilities. I can feel the hyperspace agility on the campaign map and it is a really nice touch.

2) Regarding more versions of ships, this is just a personal opinion: I like mods that have a smaller amount of content, but more effort has been put into making that content good. NES SAW is a good example--it only adds ~6 ships and 1 weapon, but each of those is carefully designed and pretty unique in comparison to options available in vanilla. I just went through my modlist and removed ~10 mods because they were just adding clutter that I never use.

3) A poster above mentioned that the Fel PDS is overpowered--it does indeed look overpowered from its stats, but I've been using it on the Volt cruiser from NES SAW and it doesn't seem clearly better than other mod alternatives. It is MAYBE overpowered by vanilla standards but it doesn't feel out of line in modded play. My only complaint with the Fel line is that there are way too many different kinds of them and they are hard to keep track of. Suggestion: debloat the weapon list and remove stuff that doesn't add anything really new or different.

4) Also, a question about the Diana's Spear weapon line--is this intended to benefit from missile modifiers? It appears to behave like the Copperhead Gun-launcher from either Amazigh Ship Foundry or BigBeans ship pack (not sure which it's from). (It pairs nicely with the Copperhead in any case.)

5) Want to say again that I love the Streak MRM line. I have four medium-missile Focalors from VIC rocking full Streak loadouts and it is a beautiful light show.

6) Overall a great mod. A little bit of sprite work and debloatening uninteresting ships and weapons (less is more) would take it to excellent.

[Mephansteras]

Thanks for the feedback!

You'll find in the next release that the Celestial Guide is even more versatile as it'll get some custom hullmods to help specialize it. Right now you don't really get much benefit from having more than one beyond the burn speed boost, but it's cheaper to use an Ox. So there will be some reason to use more than one in the future.

On the Diana's weapons, they're due for a rework. I would like them to just be guided projectiles rather than missiles, but that was the only way I could get it to work without custom code back when I put them in. I do have plans to give them that custom code in the next release.

As for bloat, well, I make things I want to use myself. If there are any specific ships you don't want you can set the values for that ship's variants in default_ship_roles.json to 0. For weapons you don't want showing up you can edit them in the weapon_data.csv file to have a rarity of 0 which I think will stop them from spawning. I realize that's a bit of effort on your part, but I use all the stuff in this mod extensively, so there isn't anything I personally want to take out. Although I may consolidate the Diana's weapons down to a single multi-damage type rather than having them split into Frag/Kinetic/He like they are right now.

[Cryovolcanic]

Well it is your mod! If you like it and use it, well, that's a reason to keep it

My point is more general. A lot of artists, chefs, writers (creatives) think that putting out more stuff--more colors, more ingredients, more words--is better but the best work is often very simple. The best piece I've ever written was 1.5 pages. Starsector modders are classic creatives in this respect. To make the mod better, they just add more stuff--nobody ever takes things out.

I think mods would stand out more if instead of adding 50 forgettable ships, they added 1 really distinctive ship that everyone remembered. The former is easy, the latter is more difficult.

Regardless, you are doing great work and I look forward to seeing how SD evolves, whichever direction you decide to take it in.

[Mephansteras]

Glad you're enjoying it!