That entire patch was to refine Low Tech. To make it not "worst tech". The dev himself spoke about high cost high performance, as in fuel burning/high crew usage/high supplies/simple ships that get results.
But getting results doesn't necessarily mean more speed. At the end of the day, the question is does the entire package work? Having every ship in the same class have only +/-10% variation is a bit limiting in terms of ship diversity. Also the already existing ships were doing reasonably well in 0.95a, and I think the skill changes brought them up to par (nerfing shield skill options, adding more armor options).
I feel like he tacitly acknowledged that making all the low tech ships slower was crippling their performance, not only are they using inferior shields but those shields take more hits because the ships handle like a bathtub. "Eradicator, Manticore, and Vanguard" and including the Lasher because it was reworked into a very good low end ship.
What I got out of it was that Burn drive wasn't doing it's job properly, since the AI was too conservative with it, and sometimes got it wrong, putting ships out of position. Low tech was supposed to have the ability to dictate the initiative, some of the time in pursuit. At least for the ships with that system. Which is what made it into the patch notes - not a general speed increase for existing ships, but an improved burn drive system.
"Alex, from A tale of two tech levels
"The key thing is that high tech is not intended to be better than low tech, just a different way of doing things. High tech has speed, good shields, and fairly inefficient (but varied!) lower-ranged weapons. Low tech is slower and more ponderous, has high armor and hull integrity, with efficient longer-ranged weapons. The dynamics you get when they face each other is that high tech ships dart in and out of engagement range, relying on shields to see them through, while low tech ships try to make them pay a price for closing in."
and
"So, one key change that supports much of what’s in the rest of this post is making Burn Drive able to be toggled off at any point in the burn. (This can be done either by pressing the system-activation key again, or by venting.)"
Do you understand why that is happening though? Without that speed the extra tankyness does little more then allow it to take more beatings for longer. That tankiness isn't increasing it's damage output. But it the ship is fast and tanky it can escape and recover, if it's slow any tanky then it just gets hammered to death.
I disagree. Line ships do just that, because as they fall back, a fresh slow line ships step forward, allowing for that hammered ship to vent and come back. Fast ships won't pursue into a mass of enemy ships. The extra tankiness does in fact give the slow ship enough time to do just that. And flux free survival (i.e. armor) means you can return fire for longer. So while damage per second perhaps doesn't go up, damage over the lifetime of the ship does.
This games entire design rewards speed. Who dodged the reaper? Who retreated and recovered to reattack? Who skirted around the back and shredded the engines? Who has the most uptime and least downtime because of travel? The faster ship(s).
Low tech doesn't need to dodge reapers given it's rather impressive point defense options. If I'm personally piloting an Onslaught, I typically don't worry about missiles at all, and fear Plasma Cannons, Hellbores, and Tachyon lances more since I can't shoot them down. And if there is a heavy missile salvo I can't shoot down, I use omni-shields on my Onslaught, so I just put it up where I need it.
I'll also point out burn drive Enforcers are faster than AAF Eradicators in terms of travel speed. By like 25% or so. And have no problems encircling an enemy when they have a numerical advantage. Which they do when up against Eradicators, 2 to 1.
Those 3 ships are never doing those things. In many exchanges, not all, all that extra armor does if give you a slower death.
I just ran a low tech fleet against Doritos, and it had no problems flanking around the ships. I lost a single Enforcer in the initial exchange. Flanking usefully typically has more to do with numbers of ships deployed than speed of any individual ship, except possible for a player piloted one. In hindsight, I should have deployed the Legion and Onslaught first, then the enforcers to get them at the front of the line. Overall, because of the direct fire problems, my Onslaught did very little while the Enforcers essentially wiped the Doritos. See attached pictures. 1 personally piloted Onslaught, level 7 officer Legion, 7 level 6 officer Enforcers, 13 support doctrine Enforcers, and 2 support doctrine LP Lashers for point capping, for 240 DP worth of ships. 5 combat, 5 leadership, 2 tech, 3 industry.
No one is investing heavy into armor hull mods to face Omega content. This is an example of why speed matters in general. I'm not saying that an enforcer should be doing that content, I'm saying it to highlight the importance speed plays on ships in an actual fight.
I did a vanilla low tech run in 0.95a, and just took my standard fleet without tweaking and threw it against Doritos. Just piloted and let the AI do it's think without orders. Took heavy losses, but mostly because it wasn't configured right. And just slapped another one together in 0.95.1a, with a reasonable configuration, and it's losses were minimal. And did include heavy armor on every ship. I'm personally not seeing the issues with Enforcers in the current iteration. They seem to work fine for me.
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