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[Randolf]

What if the built in solar shield mod for LG ship was a improved version that took up a couple of more OP (or just the same amount maybe)? It would fit in with lore reasons, the megalomaniac wanting only the best for his "elite" forces and the Diktat shipyards/engineers being the original makers of the mod would be the ones that could do it, and it would fit in with the whole "this thing is actually a good thing except the dictator is using it badly" that is the Diktat military. A better reduction in energy weapon damage is great against certain factions... those being [redacted] and TT (who seem to be helping Diktat). Against the LG's usual foes of Hegemony and pirate forces? Pretty much useless. Even against independents it is a net loss in OP.

It would make LG ships more of a side grade, especially if you can get rid of those reinforced conduits, and make them juicy ships to capture if you expect to fight a lot of energy weapons.

[Hiruma Kai]

I'll point out the Kinetic Blaster is, well, a kinetic weapon.  By definition, it's designed to be good at shields, OK at hull, and terrible against armor. So you generally aren't going to mount it if you don't already have an anti-armor solution (heavy blaster, high explosive missiles, etc).  It doesn't need to be good or even OK against armor, in the same way kinetic Needlers don't need to be good against armor.

Actually, in the comparison against Heavy Needlers, Kinetic Blasters work out about as equally efficient against armor.  Kinetic Blasters have half the flux efficiency, but 5 times the armor penetration, so against cruiser tier armor (1000) it'll work out to be slightly more efficient.  Of course against shield, Heavy Needlers are literally twice as efficient as Kinetic Blasters.

But this is with an eye towards the Ballistic/Energy weapon divide.  There is a reason Medusas aren't allowed to mount Heavy Autocannons and Heavy Needlers.

IR pulse lasers aren't necessarily in a competition with Kinetic Blasters because their mounts and OP costs are different.  You're not going to under mount a Hyperion's medium energy slots with an IR Pulse Laser, but you might consider mixing a Heavy Blaster with a Kinetic Blaster.

If you've got 15 OP left, and a medium mount open, it's not like you can choose to put 3 IR Pulse lasers in there.  Similarly, let's say you have 2 smalls and medium open and 15 OP free.  You could put in 3 IR Pulse lasers for 450 shield DPS and 360 flux/second.  Or you could put in 1 Kinetic Blaster and 3 vents for 500 shield DPS and 400-30=370 flux/second.  If you've got armor penetration covered elsewhere which do you pick?  You're trading roughly 11% more shield damage (and 100 more range) for about 20% less hull damage and literally 1 vents difference.  Seems to be in the ballpark of reasonable decision making to me.

Although Megas' point about Elite Point Defense skill and Integrated Point Defense AI does shift it in the IR Pulse's favor with +200 range for them.

[ubuntufreakdragon]

I really want a civ hull cap for the indis.
https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=24529.0

[intrinsic_parity]

Fair, I wasn't considering max damage reduction, although if the enemy has the skill that changes the threshold to .1, that does make kinetic blaster slightly better at higher armor levels too. 800 armor is not a ton, but it's relevant for frigates and destroyers.

In terms of DPS, IR pulse laser does have better armor DPS as well for targets over ~600 armor which is saying something, considering how awful IR pulse is vs armor.

The kinetic blaster has much better hull DPS though (37.5 min vs 22.5 min at high armor values and the advantage is larger at low armor values.

TBH all the comparisons of hull/armor performance of these weapons are kinda irrelevant though. The values are so much lower than dedicated anti hull/armor weapons that we are talking small percentage changes in overall hull/armor DPS.

At the end of the day, IR pulse and KB have the same shield damage efficiency, so KB is pretty much just an IR pulse scaled up to a medium mount. The DPS per OP is quite a bit better for KB vs IRPL though so that should be considered in KBs favor, although the range with elite PD is also pretty relevant. I think IRPL also has a distinct advantage because using it for shield damage frees up medium slots to be used for hull/armor damage where there are much better options than in the small slot IMO.

Overall, I think I agree that 400 flux/sec is definitely not too little, and might even be too much. Otherwise the IR pulse laser would also be too efficient which it clearly isn't IMO. If the comparison between the KB and the PL is too much in favor of the KB, then I think that means the PL is too weak and either needs to be more efficient or better vs hull/armor to compensate.

In terms of competition, sure they are not competing directly for the same slots, but in the loadout as a whole, they are competing for the same role. For instance, you might consider an aurora loadout with IR pulse + phase lances/HB vs an aurora with kinetic blasters and anti matter blasters. Of course there are many more combinations, but I do think weapons in different slots compete with one another. That's not equally true on every ship, but there's definitely a lot of cases where the comparison is relevant. The comparison is also just valuable to put into perspective the output of the weapon.

[Megas]

Gut feeling, I probably would take kinetic blaster over pulse laser.  Pulse laser is not very good anti-shield, but it is the only easy option if ePD+IPDAI is not an option for the ship.  If ePD+IPDAI is an option, I may take even IRPL over pulse laser if I have enough mounts left for more guns, and high-tech ships usually do have more mounts than they need.

IR PL is good anti-shield for an energy weapon, but its weakness is terrible range... until ePD+IPDAI give it +200 range, then it is much better (still worse than good ballistics, but better than medium energy weapons).

For what it is worth, I have taken two IR PLs over a single pulse laser on a Wolf due to superior range and efficiency.  Wolf desperately needs the range, especially against a Lasher with Ballistic Rangefinder.  Now Wolf could make good use of Energy Bolt Coherer, especially if it is the expected starter ship, and if its dissipation remains low for medium bolt weapons.  I have also placed IR PLs (and Ion Cannons) in the medium mounts of Fulgent, Apogee, Aurora, and Astral wholly or in part because of the +200 range from ePD.

[Embolism]

What about a PL version of the Manticore that has ECCM instead of ballistic rangefinder and fast missile racks as its system?

Hmm - the PL has *all* midline right now (except for a few civs, maybe?), so that'd feel a bit weird to me.

I was thinking along the lines of Brawler (TT), where the ship is basically overhauled into a high tech ship. In the same way the Manticore (PL) would be overhauled to essentially look like a midline ship.

Could be justified as Kazeron looking for a good destroyer-sized missile platform, find none, and decide to overhaul an existing design to suit their needs. Maybe they contracted tri-Tach to do the redesign for them or something.

[Oxer555]

I dont know if it was already said but I think it would be a good idea for lion guard ships to have a better version of solar shielding since they were made with that hullmod in mind unlike the rest of midline and other ships where that hullmod is an afterthought and andrada would want lions guard to have the best version of it, for example giving it 25% or 30% energy damage reduction instead of 20%. Not only would that small change keep those ships in lion guards fleet still a worse versions of original ships because of special modifications d-mod but it would somewhat award a player for taking an effort of capturing the ship and fixing the dmod.

[Farlarzia]

Hi Alex,

Lots to look foward too for the next updates, but like many others, I am confused about the new Lions Guard skin variants (excluding the Exectutor which has more major changes), so I'll leave my thoughts on this.

Firstly, they look fantastic. Lions Guard ships have existed in the modiverse as their own thing for a while ago, and while those skins were good, these are phenominal.

However, its when looking at what they add to the game that I become confused.


As written in the blog post, they come with built in Solar shielding, but then have the full OP cost of this removed from their OP pool - I don't understand this at all. This would make them strictly worse than the default midline variants, as they're just instantly less flexible.
Compound that with the problem that these ships are much more difficult to source than the default versions, and come with a built in D-mod, that would cost more credits to remove, and you've got a ship that is completely pointless to ever choose.
And this doesn't even consider that as you've currently written, there seems to be no way to aquire the blueprints for them, full stop.
You've mentioned its likely these ships won't have built in Solar shieldiing upon release anyhow, and get their OP restored, but again, why? At that point you've undone some of the "uniquifiying the factions" its intended to do, and just made it completely stock with extra steps, rarity, and cost.

These factors combined just make these ships completely obsolete, which feels like a massive missed opportunity. Hegemony gets XIV upgrades, LP gets free SO (after you remove the D-mod at least, which is actually worthwhile doing), LG gets... nothing.

If they're going to be rarer, give them some form of  up/sidegrade at least - my first thought was exactly how the modiverse versions executed it - solar shielding being truly free, with no OP cost reduction.
This would give the player an actual reason to covet these ships, justify hunting for them, and the cost of restoring them, or use them at all.
I really do not think this would make them broken in the slightest - they still end up being inferior to the XIV versions!! Which, with the bonus OP, and counting in the OP value it also gives in vents and capacity, covers the cost of solar shielding. And then they also get the armour bonus, which is worth another 5OP for a destroyer (If you compare the amount of armour given by heavy armour for OP cost that is), for a minor speed and maneuvability downside.
My other suggestion would be a mix of what you've currently got - the D-mod and Solar shielding, rolled into one, similarly to how XIV handles it.
Combine into 1 hullmod, with the downsides, but also the free upside - just make solar shielding incompatible with it.

Campaign wise, you seem very keen on keeping these ships unreasonably rare for how useful they are.
To again compare them to the XIV ships, which as far as I'm aware lore wise should be even rarer, as they're irreplacible artefacts, the technology and techniques used to create them lost, these seem like they'll be on par, if not more annoying, to locate, and you'll never be able to make your own (not that you'd want to with their current implementation)
However, you have made gameplay concessions for their (XIV ships) case, making them suprisingly easy to aquire.
You can straight up buy from the markets, raid them for the blueprints, or the historian can just generate a blueprint for you to go find. And these are the supposedly rarer ships! And gameplay wise more powerful to boot!

Anyhow, look forward to the update regardless.

[Embolism]

I think having LG skins not being better than base skins is good actually - XIV skins are better because they were reinforced with Domain-era know-how, the Sindrians should (and are) if anything worse than the Hegemony at ship-building. The special modifications mod being a negative is fine too (though I think a small positive would make it more nuanced for storytelling purposes - megalomaniacal dictator who is also comedically incompetent is a tired, if well-attested in history, trope).

The problem is Solar Shielding being built-in with a OP cost which is a straight nerf no matter how you look at it. Though Alex has already said that he's gonna make it not built-in just standard loadout for SD ships, I do feel this is one area where Sindrians should have an edge over the sector-at-large; given that they invented the hullmod and all so Sindrian Engineers are clearly good at what they do. Making LG skin Solar Shielding cost 2/3rds less OP (so an OP reduction of 1/2/3/5) seems fair to me.

[Alex]

I think this wasn't mentioned in the blog post but just had this thought. The Executor doesn't share the Fast missile racks with the Pegasus right? Would be pretty underwhelming to have a capital with halved missile firepower, but same system.

It's got Fast Missile Racks; two large missile slots is enough to where it's still useful.

hmm, thanks for explaining this! I honestly hadn't considered that other players would value the central location of sindria that highly over, say, the better stuff nearby nakicheta (chico for cheap supplies, corvus for free storage, galatia etc).
though i'm still not 100% convinced on making them exclusive to the executor only, that'd still leave players who decide to get illegal with it at the mercy of autofit & weapon drop rng - maybe fleets that spawn with an executor have a few of them spread about the other stuff in the fleet?
Still, it's a fairly interesting decision & I do want to see how it plays out in-game.

(They've got similar "weapon drop RNG can't be *too* bad" mechanics to the Omega, btw.)

On the subject of energy bolt coherer: If it gets added to the Fulgent, it would be odd if it doesn't appear on any human ship in any way, maybe a good fit would be the Medusa? It's always felt a bit lack luster as a fast attack craft (if you don't SO it) so I usually set it up to be a mid range attacker with extended phase lances and needlers/railguns.

Range boosters, imo, generally make sense on high-tech-ish (in the sense that they use energy + missile) ships that are also slow and thus can't dictate the engagement. The Medusa is quite good at that, so I don't think it'd be a good candidate for that, though I don't disagree that it might use a little something extra. But only a very little, if anything - it used to be the best destroyer before the other ones got some buffs, and now they're in a good place, and I'd hate to return to the "Medusa is best" state. I'm not entirely convinced it's actually bad; I'd need to spend some time with it in a campaign setting.

On the subject of IR Autolance, kinda: Since it seems to be focused on basically being the energy-thumper with a focus on anti-fighter, I'm worried it will make the burst PD (heavy & light both) even less attractive options. Generally they don't seem worth the OP for their effectiveness IMHO, and giving energy slots longer range anti-fighter for cheaper seems like it will definitely obsolete the heavy variant.

Well, it's not PD, so there's that - and Heavy Burst also ignores decoy flares, which is a nice bonus. Both the PD burst lasers are also better against armor. I mean, the IR Autolance does step on some toes - the Phase Lance's, also - but I hopefully there's enough room there.

Hi Alex,

... and you've got a ship that is completely pointless to ever choose.

Hey, long time no see!

In brief: that's exactly correct and the LG ships (aside from the Executor) are not intended to be appealing to the player. As someone pointed out earlier, the blog post kind of just goes from stuff that *is* appealing to the player into those without making that distinction super clear - to me it was just because, I mean, they're clearly worse, so what other conclusion might you draw from that? But it's definitely something I could've framed better in the post. In-game, I don't think it'll be like that; you'd have to see them in-campaign to even become aware of them (at which point you also clearly see they've got a d-mod!), it's not like they're presented as something good you want to get anywhere.

Basically, it's best to think of them as you might of a few extra d-modded pirate hulls - though in this case shinier than usual. But in the end it's just some added Diktat flavor that mainly comes into play when you blow them up.

Though Alex has already said that he's gonna make it not built-in just standard loadout for SD ships ...

Just to be clear, I said that it was a possibility and that I was going to think about it some more. Leaning towards not doing that at the moment; there really doesn't seem to be a lot of point to it. As is, it's a few ships fulfilling their intended purpose, which definitely doesn't include being something the player wants to get.

The special modifications mod being a negative is fine too (though I think a small positive would make it more nuanced for storytelling purposes - megalomaniacal dictator who is also comedically incompetent is a tired, if well-attested in history, trope).

I feel like people are *vastly* overestimating the amount of incompetence required for something like this to happen. In fact, as an exercise to the reader, I leave it to you to come up with some perfectly reasonable scenarios where this exact thing happens and there is zero incompetence involved at any stage of the process.

(Hint: in real life, if you see glaring incompetence - I mean, sometimes it is that - but more often than not it just means you've misunderstood the motivations of the actors involved.)

Edit: on the flipside, being an admiral does not necessarily imply any degree of competence in naval matters - one could easily advance up the ranks through some combination of charisma, politics, and patronage.

Basically, I feel like there's a lot of room for nuance here in just how things happened - is he competent? isn't he? in what? did he do it for some other reason? Which really is the point of this, to let the player think about this sort of thing. There are a ton of possible explanations; the ones where Andrada is an exaggerated pastiche seem both unlikely and uninteresting.

[Harmful Mechanic]

on the flipside, being an admiral does not necessarily imply any degree of competence in naval matters - one could easily advance up the ranks through some combination of charisma, politics, and patronage.

One of my favorite real-life examples; Miklos Horthy, Hungarian regent-slash-dictator, who was an admiral in the Austro-Hungarian Navy, back when Austria and Hungary had... a coastline, who had a distinctly mediocre record that consisted mostly of 'not losing'.

Or Ernest King, who rose to Fleet Admiral without ever commanding ships in battle at sea, drank heavily, and was frequently described as stupid and bullying (you can find numerous unflattering and hilarious comments about him by plenty of public figures; FDR once joked that King 'shaved every morning with a blowtorch').

The less said about David Beatty, the better. Dumb, sloppy, self-aggrandizing, indisciplined... and the longest serving First Sea Lord in the history of the Royal Navy.

This is just off the top of my head; it's easy to find more examples.

[sgtmook]

Agree with the sentiment that the LG ships being worse feels terrible.

...to me it was just because, I mean, they're clearly worse, so what other conclusion might you draw from that?...

There is a reason they appeal to players which is, and this cannot be overstated, they look awesome. People will want to play with the new awesome looking skins. One of the mods had a LG series (with free solar shielding balanced by a notably higher price tag) and I had my entire fleet in LG purple. And it was awesome.

Having it be a downgrade would feel pretty bad.

[Alex]

On the one hand: they really do, don't they? David really outdid himself there.

On the other hand: you can still use them and feel awesome, knowing that you're flying with style despite taking a (minor) penalty. That's true style, that is. There's an applicable saying that I think is really thought-provoking - at least, it was for me - that I first saw here - "fashion is pain".

[Rojnaz]

Amazing update, want to play with that LP Venture with a mining blaster, I just love using it in any low tech ship, it just feels "correct".

I see some people aren't that happy with the new information about the Sindrian Diktat, that's normal I suppose, if someone really liked that faction and now find the leader is a "joke" and the corresponding ship variants are "downgrades" they gonna get sad.
I am in love with everything new about the Luddic Church/Path.
While I suppose it's not a faction, I hope we will see something new about the Exploration Derelicts in the future 

[Amoebka]

you're looking at flux/damage, try considering comparing weapon DPS rather than flux efficiency.
Because while the IR may be more flux efficient, it's doing less raw effective DPS (i think?)

It isn't. IR pulse is higher DPS against both armor and hull as well, at all armor values.
Literally better off just downsizing mediums to IR pulse than mounting kinetic blasters. Saving OP on that, too.