Hello everyone, I'm a long-time Starfarer player, but I've registered to post some comments here. Apologies if any of these comments have been made already, but when the existing thread is 170 pages long it's not realistic for me to read it all!
Firstly I have to say this mod has rekindled my excitement for the game. The amount of new ships and weapons is already mind-boggling, and the sheet amount you have planned just blows me away. Keep up the great work!
There are a few things that I've picked up, having played the mod for a good few hours, which affect my enjoyment somewhat. Most of these issues involve balance for one reason or another, and I'll try to list as many as I can think of:
- Cerulean-class Phase Destroyer. This has been one of my biggest bug-bears so far. In the hands of the AI the ship is unkillable. It can cloak on demand to avoid any and all fire directed against it, with seemingly no cost. It's my belief that the phase-cloak should generate flux over time, or have an initial cost, so as to make the ship balanced.
- Fighter craft. I love the variety of new fighter and bomber wings that have been added to the game, but I've tried almost all of them and they're all almost impossible to keep alive in combat. I love the idea of shielding on many of these ships, but I think a combination of most fighters being larger than in the standard game, as well as being slower and less maneuverable, results in them being picked off by larger weapons that can kill them in one or two hits. I've tried most of the fighter wings in the game and virtually all of them suffer from this problem. The faster fighters aren't so bad, but they're so flimsy that they're not particularly practical either, and I find for the FP cost, it's almost always better to use Frigates than Fighters.
- Boot-class Carrier. A carrier with a hangar space of 4 seems silly.
- Designations. I loaded a Horizon-class Cruiser with Fire Support weapons, ie Pilums and a Tachyon Lance, but despite this it doesn't count as a fire-support ship for the purpose of rallying and AI control. I'm unsure if this problem is specific to the Horizon, but I'll test more to find out.
- The Deme Laser is stupendously overpowered. I stuck a couple of these on the forward mounts of my Overlord-class, and it can kill virtually anything with sickening ease. Perhaps tuning them to allow for a shot that lasts x seconds before having to recharge would be a good balance tweak.
- Hitboxes. Some of the longer ships, notably the Osprey and the Harriers class have strange hitboxes, in that AI controlled weapons seem to exclusively aim for the rear quarter of the ship, resulting in them being extremely difficult to hit. Particularly with the Harriers class, as it's so long that some shots "fade out" before they reach that end of the ship, despite the prow of the target being well inside weapon range.
- Flux dissipation. This is most apparent on the War Hawks ships. Flux dissipation seems to be a little inconsistent, with the Overlord-class Battleship having a base of 285 whilst the smaller version of the ship, the Raven-class Cruiser has a base of 455. Considering the amount of guns the Overlord can mount, the dissipation seems a little low. I've countered the problem with mine by removing the shields altogether and maxing out on vents and mounting a flux distributor, but even then I can't fire for more than a few seconds without needing to vent, which by the way takes a long time. If this is merely a balance or design choice by the modder in question then I stand corrected, and I still love the ships, funny numbers or not!
Please don't think that me raising these concerns means I dislike the mod; on the contrary, I love it even more than the vanilla game now and I wish you guys the best of luck in your continued development of the mod!
Cheers,
Archaidian
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Topic: Project CAELUS ,the biggest project starsector will ever see. (Alpha 1) (Read 808983 times)