Okay, the first thing I did was to load my 0.95 save and test my double-Ordo fleet against the new Remnants.
The first two fleets I pulled had a combined XP bonus of 300%+ which is something that never really happened in 0.95, the typical XP bonus for my fleet composition was 100-200%. And sure enough, in three out of three attempts my Conquests ran out of Squalls. I don't know how typical such large combined fleet is - since I use double Ordo mainly as a measuring stick for the Omega bounty, this might not actually matter to me. I also haven't updated the Conquests to the current version of the game, since now they have bit of extra OP and free flux with the weapon changes.
I then jumped on a different save and checked my Lumen-Gryphon fleet and that did well, certainly better than what I remember. Granted they were not fighting a 300%+ megafleet, but it still had a Radiant in it and it's not like Gryphons would ever run out of missiles. As I expected, the fact that Brilliants no longer have Active Flare Launchers makes missiles more effective. Plus the AI seems to be better with missiles now, less stingy.
The Nova failed to meet my expectations, said expectations being "nova burst face first right into my frontline and die instantly". It's fast enough to retreat and still has the certified Remnant AI core armor tank. Overall it seems like a weaker version of the Radiant so in enemy fleets it's pretty whatever. I expect to be most useful in player hands because Radiant's 60 DP was hard to work around in fleets, 40 DP is a lot more reasonable, and it has some serious firepower potential if fit right.
On the other hand, the Apex turned out to be annoying simply because of how stupidly tanky it is. It doesn't really DO much - even with Energy Bolt Coherer it doesn't have the range to compete against capitals - but it just doesn't die. The fact that it's 30 DP and therefore you'll see most of them at the very end of a fight only exacerbates the issue.
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"Hostile Activity" kept catching my eye so I checked it(I'm kind of surprised it's in the Intel menu and not Command menu by the way) and...
it didn't look good. Now granted, this is a pretty crazy colony setup with 9 planets, each with an Alpha/Gamma AI core and a bunch of items, but still - keeping the bar from progressing seems like a pretty difficult thing to do. I might have to just eat the periodic -40% Accessibility and -4 Stability(I don't expect the actual events to be much trouble if they involve combat) I wonder if "High Command" bonuses stack so there's a reason to build more than one?
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The new Lion's Guard weapons don't seem to appear on any markets, even black markets. Seems like the only way to get them is from Diktat's cold dead hands. Guess it's time to do some bounty hunting for pirates, kinetic blaster is too good to pass up.
Then I just started playing around with the refits:
Single KB Shrike,
Double KB Fury,
The Better Paragon and, well, I'll just call this one
"Why Are You Running"As for Retribution, it has so much OP that you can actually dual tank it.