That's what was being discussed in the original thread and you know, basing something on the base model you're going to have seems logical. S-mods are finite powerups for your ships (until you get to the very end game when most of your ships will have them), it makes no sense to have ships feel weak and incomplete unless you spend your precious resource on them. They're supposed to make the player stronger so he can face end game challenges, not be a "here, use this to make this ship not crap". Back when the idea of built in mods appeared, I immediately said it would be cancer to balance ships around their empowered state when you have to spend so much on your fleet to become "baseline".
The player can start putting s-mods onto their ships from pretty much the beginning of the game. The base model of the ship is an intermediate, transitional state -- other than d-mods, it's essentially what you begin with and then improve upon. It's like balancing the skills around when the character is level 7, it doesn't make sense. You look at the full scope of what's possible when balancing, not what the player has when starting out.
In this case, your methodology involves maxing out vents, ITU, and generally filling in almost every weapon slot. Generally speaking, it's not necessary to fill in most weapon slots, depending on the build you're going for. That's going to artificially inflate the OP required. Also, quite a few of the ships on your list ended up being carriers, in which case it may not be a good idea to max out your weapons when you need the OP for fighters. That's part of the decision process, deciding where your want to prioritize your OP. If you want to load up on expensive bombers then of course you run out of OP for weapons, because they're expensive.
Both the Medusa and Fury are plenty good with the OP they have already; I'm not sure what's your use case or example loadout of why you feel they don't get enough OP.
@Weapon mount issues
First of all those aren't very good analogies. This is a game, and if the game is giving you something to use, but using that end up hurting you more than other options then why does it exist in the first place? It's just a waste. Now obviously I don't mind skipping mounts here and there, and yeah there are interesting playstyle options you can choose. But when you have a ship with 20 mounts, and you end up using half of them (while performing better), then that's just wrong.
No, these are quick examples of "just because something's available doesn't mean you have to use it." That's the analogy. Just because a key is on the keyboard doesn't mean you have to use it. Just because an app is on your smartphone doesn't mean you have to use it. You can choose to if you want to, but you're not obligated to. Similarly, just because a weapon mount is available on a ship doesn't mean you have to use it. It's an option, not an obligation.
The game is giving you the option to put a weapon there. It doesn't mean that you have to. It just means it's available for one if you decide it works better for the ship. It's there because the ship may fulfill different roles, and each role may have a different set of optimal weapons and weapon directions.
If you have a ship with 20 mounts, and you end up using only half of them, it just means the other 10 weren't useful enough for that particular role. Maybe in the particular role that you're fitting the ship for, you already maxed out the flux with 10 weapon mounts. In which case putting weapons on the other 10 just wastes OP and overfluxes your ship. But maybe later on you want the ship to be a porcupine let's say (PD in every direction), in which case, you may very well use all 20 mounts. You base the weapon selection on the ship's role, not on some "if it's there it must be used" heuristic.
How many new players cycle through every and all tips? Perhaps someone should drop a poll and ask newbs...
How is that relevant to the discussion? I was pointing out that even the game points the player toward leaving some weapon mounts empty if needed. In other words,
trying to fill out every weapon mount may not be a good idea, and I'm backed up by the game itself on this. Are you trying to say, because newbies may not have seen this tip, that filling out every weapon mount
is a good idea?
But regarding variations on ships vs weapon slots as options, designing a ship with multiple slots that aren't necessarily intended for use is just a trick to save time for dev design and coding. The same ship with different weapon configurations that are always fully loaded is correct way to go, just tedious as hell for dev to **** out. Got other fish to fry. Deadlines to hit.
No, it's to give the player flexibility in selecting how they want to configure their ships. They can choose to put a weapon there, or they can choose not to. They can choose a particular hullmod to put onto the ship, or they can choose not to. It's up to the player. That's part of the fun of this game, as well as pretty much every RPG in the past three or four decades or so, the ability to customize your character to your liking. In this case your "adventure party" is your fleet of ships, and you get to configure what gear they have.
In what sense is having the same ship with different weapon configurations the correct way to go? Do you realize how many hundreds if not thousands of possible weapon configurations are possible for every ship, and how frustrating it would be for the player to try to hunt down the specific one that they're after? That would be a terrible game design decision, not to mention a coding headache.
These are false dichotomies. You don't pop out all the keys you don't use out of your keyboard. They might pop out eventually from wear and tear, but then you just go buy a new keyboard if you can't pop the missing key back in. Even some grandma who never uses F1-F12 will buy a new keyboard. Whereas apps on phones generally don't have a limit on what apps can be added beyond just memory; configuration/location of apps can change, but player can't change location of weapon mounts on ships.
I don't see how "false dichotomy" can apply to what I wrote. I was giving examples illustrating the principle that just because something is available, doesn't mean you have to use it.
