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[Salter]

Another thing that excites me is that the factions are getting more distinctive. Hegemony has XIV, Tri-Tach has all the high tech toys, Persean League has the new Pegusus, the Church has the Invictus, Pirates have their scrap capitals…Lion Guard Battleship anyone? 

Since they have the one system and dont need to stray too far, maybe deploying a mobile weapon platform capital, similar to the Death Star or something. Otherwise I cant imagine what a capital from them would be like.

[Megas]

Devastators can target missiles, but they may favor non-missile targets over missiles.

[Dri]

Imagine how quickly this thing could flux out a Radiant with 4 Storm Needlers lol

[Amoebka]

The visual design is a bit... laconic. Definitely less excited about this one than the Pegasus. New weapons are always welcome, though.

[Okawal]

Imagine how quickly this thing could flux out a Radiant with 4 Storm Needlers lol

You mean flux itself out

[ANGRYABOUTELVES]

The very interesting part is that the large missiles are only on the one side, with what looks like fighter bays on the other. I could be wrong about this, but low-tech ships don't do asymmetry, and the blurb about large internal spaces being easily converted to fighter wing housing implies something. Could those large missile mounts be swappable for fighter bays, so you could choose to have anywhere from 4 large missiles and 0 fighters to 4 fighter wings and 0 large missiles?

[Grievous69]

Also it's yet another ship which will have Heavy ballistics integration. So what's the deal with large ballistics, do they suck, are they too expensive? You wouldn't even dream of a ship with Heavy energy or missile integration since that would be nuts. 3 capitals will have that hullmod, there has to be a reason. You could say it makes for more meaningful decisions with hullmods or other weapons but it honestly just pigeonholes those mounts. You HAVE to use a large weapon there, and leaving it empty is literally a loss of 10 OP.

Don't get me wrong, it's a nice thing to have on a ship but why do 3 ships that primarily deal damage with ballistic weapons need to have it?

[ANGRYABOUTELVES]

Also it's yet another ship which will have Heavy ballistics integration. So what's the deal with large ballistics, do they suck, are they too expensive? You wouldn't even dream of a ship with Heavy energy or missile integration since that would be nuts. 3 capitals will have that hullmod, there has to be a reason. You could say it makes for more meaningful decisions with hullmods or other weapons but it honestly just pigeonholes those mounts. You HAVE to use a large weapon there, and leaving it empty is literally a loss of 10 OP.

Don't get me wrong, it's a nice thing to have on a ship but why do 3 ships that primarily deal damage with ballistic weapons need to have it?

Capitals with HBI all have it because they have limited large turret arcs and prefer to only engage with part of their guns at a time. The Conquest can only reasonably fire one broadside at once; the Onslaught has separate forward, left, and right batteries; and now the Invictus has a heavy forward battery and a bunch of side mounts that only exist so it has something to shoot at flankers. Players would usually only put large weapons in the gun batteries on the angles they want to engage with to save OP, resulting in single-sided Conquests and only forward gunned Onslaughts. HBI exists so these ships can mount large weapons in all their large slots without either being OP-starved if they do, or massively over-OP when using loadouts that don't.

[FooF]

The very interesting part is that the large missiles are only on the one side, with what looks like fighter bays on the other. I could be wrong about this, but low-tech ships don't do asymmetry, and the blurb about large internal spaces being easily converted to fighter wing housing implies something. Could those large missile mounts be swappable for fighter bays, so you could choose to have anywhere from 4 large missiles and 0 fighters to 4 fighter wings and 0 large missiles?

I also made that observation and reached a similar conclusion. My thought is that because of the mount placement, you’re kind of forced into guided missiles so the choice is having a strong but limited punch versus a weaker but sustained one. Bomber wings are comparable to Large Missiles in cost so it’s not really a DP issue necessarily. A pair of Squalls with a pair of Tridents wouldn’t be bad.

[Thaago]

Its hard to tell with the gif being short and scale issues, but it kind of looks like the Dominator is firing at regular tempo on its gauss's (1 shot every 2 seconds) and the pilums seem to be flying at regular speed, but the dreadnought's main guns are firing at double time. Does the ship system act as accelerated ammo feeder? Or is the Dominator just letting flux dissipate between shots or something and the gif is sped up?

[CrashToDesktop]

Its hard to tell with the gif being short and scale issues, but it kind of looks like the Dominator is firing at regular tempo on its gauss's (1 shot every 2 seconds) and the pilums seem to be flying at regular speed, but the dreadnought's main guns are firing at double time. Does the ship system act as accelerated ammo feeder? Or is the Dominator just letting flux dissipate between shots or something and the gif is sped up?

I've looked over the gif since yesterday, the LIDAR ship system appears to increase rate of fire, range, accuracy (look at the tight groupings on those Mark IX Autocannons, at ludicrous range no less), and projectile velocity (those Hellbore shots are moving at a brisk pace). I'm pretty sure it's buffed just about everything except turret turn rate.

As a side note though, it looks like it disables PD weapons while active? Those Devastators aren't firing at the Pilums in spite of the missiles being well within range (one actually hits the Invictus), but it's not shooting the Dominator either, and all the weapons have the same 900 range. Even if the bonus doesn't extend PD weapons range as much as non-PD weapons (which would explain why it's not shooting the Dominator), it still isn't shooting down missiles. Maybe it just disables the ability to shoot at missiles for the duration? A bit of give-and-take, perhaps.

The visual design is a bit... laconic. Definitely less excited about this one than the Pegasus. New weapons are always welcome, though.

Personally I feel this could benefit from the use of deco weapon mounts. When I first saw this, I absolutely thought some of the weapons would be occluded by the armor (those curved armor sections next to the Mark IXs on either side are screaming to cover the gun), but it appears it doesn't use any, since the next-best area around the forward Devastators doesn't do that.

[Draba]

As a side note though, it looks like it disables PD weapons while active? Those Devastators aren't firing at the Pilums in spite of the missiles being well within range (one actually hits the Invictus), but it's not shooting the Dominator either, and all the weapons have the same 900 range. Even if the bonus doesn't extend PD weapons range as much as non-PD weapons (which would explain why it's not shooting the Dominator), it still isn't shooting down missiles. Maybe it just disables the ability to shoot at missiles for the duration? A bit of give-and-take, perhaps.

My guess would be it only gets the boost or can only fire at targets painted by the system, and the exact boost depends on how many parallel beams hit it.
Nasty against big, not as strong against small.

Also it's yet another ship which will have Heavy ballistics integration. So what's the deal with large ballistics, do they suck, are they too expensive? You wouldn't even dream of a ship with Heavy energy or missile integration since that would be nuts. 3 capitals will have that hullmod, there has to be a reason. You could say it makes for more meaningful decisions with hullmods or other weapons but it honestly just pigeonholes those mounts. You HAVE to use a large weapon there, and leaving it empty is literally a loss of 10 OP.

I think L ballistics by themselves are very good, Ms being better is not the reason.
Dominator doesn't have integration and I don't think you'll see many variants without 2 L ballistics.

Gauss, Devastator and Mjollnir are their own thing with no substitute. Nothing comes close to hellbore in budget anti-armor performance.
Mark IX is basically a straight upgrade to heavy autocannon (+100 range, double hit strength, better accuracy), only 80% extra OP for ~62% extra damage in 1 mount.
HMGs are super good so if you have elite PD storm needler might have some competition, but that's a skill tax and needler still has a range advantage (also constant pressure).
Heph also has some competition in heavy mauler/hellbore, but I was still surprised to see it's generally not considered good. Good turnrate, high projectile speed, decent accuracy, high HE dps. It's all-around solid IMO.

With heavy ballistics integration in play the ships using it can have serious power on all sides.
Removing it and reducing L cost would buff the non-integrated L ships, removing it and increasing OP makes it possible to push offense on 1 side super high and makes knife fight Onslaughts/combo Conquests comparatively worse.
Seems like a thematic consideration, I think it's a good idea.

[Dri]

What is the name of the ballistic/missile slots? Do we know if the 4 turrets on the side can also mount missile? That might make the heavy ballistics integration thing make more sense.

[CrashToDesktop]

My guess would be it only gets the boost or can only fire at targets painted by the system, and the exact boost depends on how many parallel beams hit it.
Nasty against big, not as strong against small.

At least so far, these tracker beams have just been tells, whether or not they hit the target hasn't meant anything to the DEM missiles Alex has shown before - I wouldn't expect that to change now. Also doesn't explain why the Devastators weren't fire at anything, either, not at the ship or the missiles.

What is the name of the ballistic/missile slots? Do we know if the 4 turrets on the side can also mount missile? That might make the heavy ballistics integration thing make more sense.

If that thing could mount 4 large missiles same as the Pegasus, that would mildly overpowered since it would be both a gun and missile platform (regardless of whether or not you could use Reapers).

HBI is there to limit the amount of free OP this ship has. If it didn't have HBI, you'd have 10 more OP for each large ballistic slot - around 100 more - which means you could leave the "unimportant" rear (and possibly side) slots empty for a chunky 30-40 extra OP to your budget, whether it be for better large weapons or more hullmods / vents / caps. It would probably be a bit overwhelming in that state, hence HBI.

[intrinsic_parity]

Could just be that the weapons weren't on auto fire if the ship was manually piloted for the clip.