Some various little bits and bobs at the tail end of my first (modless save for portraits and aesthetics) campaign:
- DEMs are fun and have caused a few laughs. I don't yet quite know how
good they are compared to equivalent missiles for the same OP/size/ammo counts, which at least suggests they're in the right ballpark, but I've found I tend to prefer Gazers to Sabots now. Dragonfires are cute but I think Reapers generally feel better and more impactful. Gorgons have caused a few harrowing near-misses and armour dents since I'm not yet used to how to move around them.
- The new capitals, while I find them aesthetically rather ugly, (personal taste and all that) seem to mostly do their thing well enough. The Pegasus especially has been neat to have around and the missile floods can be pretty nifty. I haven't had the others in-fleet yet, mostly because I find the Legion and Onslaught way too clunky and exploitable as is, but the fights I've had against the two low-tech ones have been interesting enough. The Lidar Array blinking on you is pretty unsettling, even if you can get out of its way quickly in my ever-trusty Fury.
- The Sindrian quests were... Very interesting. I couldn't help but feel
far out of my depth, especially with the Big Insinuations in there. Nice. Is there perchance a next step somewhere in the "to do" documents?
- The pilgrimage quest sadly broke on me this in a rather bewildering way so I haven't seen where that goes.
- The little extra dialogue options added in the main story quests were neat, especially
Spoiler
the conversation options with clone Loke.
But I also always really loved the chat with Cotton in general.
- I like the Fury and Eagle buffs, but I was always a Fury flying enthusiast and liked the idea of the Eagle already.
- The mining blaster change is nifty too, I've actually found some consistent uses for it now!
- The colony threat event I'm a little iffy about, mostly because it felt that until the step where you get the freebie -14 or whatever the only really effective way of keeping it down seemed to me to be to get a military base up really early since there were never enough fleets around to keep the number from steadily rising. My first colony was on a decivilized world, though, which definitely caused stability to be a bit lower which in turn might have pushed the event track along a lot more than it normally would have. Furthermore it didn't seem like friendly patrol fleets cleaning up pirates or Pathers gave the reduction which feels really weird.
- Are black holes supposed to not give hyperspace topography points, or is it maybe some kind of weird bug I've been having? Or have I just not gone close enough somehow? It feels to me like if gas giants and nebulas are then black holes should definitely be major topographical features worth checking up.
- Brilliants with Plasma Burn are very scary for their footprint in combat.
