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[Sabaton]

Now that Starsector is really pushing up in age I'm seeing a bit of bloat content here and there. Mostly items that have fallen by the way side either due to changing balance or being outright surpassed by new stuff. While some could be reballanced into relevancy I feel most of it could be removed from the game and no one would bat an eye.

Lets start with the weapons:

Light dual machine gun: not much better than it's singular counterpart, if anything the single variant is superior due to its
lower OP cost given that small PD must be spammed to be reliable. All in all it lacks the affordability of it's single cousin and
the sheer firepower of the Vulcan while having similar range and being more expensive that both.

Point defense laser:

Has the same OP cost as its long range version but half the range, that alone out weights the superior damage given that, like mentioned before,
small PD guns rely on volume more than individual kick. The burst PD laser is more reliable in the similar range class and the mining laser is dirt cheap.
This leaves the regular PD laser without any saving graces, weak compared to burst laser, short ranged compared to long range PD laser and expensive compared to the mining laser.

On to factions and ships:

Pirates:

I think the pirate Shade and Aflictor were originally introduced so players could learn to fight phase enemies in a low risk environment? That mantle has been picked up by the more thematically fitting Gremlin. Leaving P Shades & Afflictors as just worse versions of their pristine selves that bloat pirate fleets.

Pirate Wolf:

Just a worse Wolf, its role as elusive nuisance is fulfilled just as well by Kites & Gremlins. The paint job is cool tho, so maybe give it to the pirate Shrike.

Mudskipper MK2:

A meme ship with less combat value than a Kite, put it out of its misery. The Buffalo & Atlas mk2 show pirate ingenuity & desperation much better.

Colossus MK2:

Ridiculously big and clunky for such a low fighter count. IMO best replaced with something else, perhaps the unused munition ships sprites? They still hold on well after all these years.

Luddic Path:

Colossus mk3:

Just a hammer barrage with engines, far surpassed in effectiveness and cool factor by the luddic Manticore.

In an unrelated note, we really need a way to remotely contact contacts, at least for some jobs. Going back to them every time is annoying.

[Megas]

DLMG is too expensive for point-defense.  It is SO assault weapon, a little HMG.

PD laser is the next best thing to burst PD for short-ranged PD.  Probably meant for the back two mounts on an Eagle or similar.

Pirate wolf needs more to set it apart from normal Wolf aside from being 4 OP and flat out worse otherwise.  Would like to see that one small mount made hybrid to make it a mini-Shrike-P.  This is not like pirate Afflictor where it costs 6 instead of 10 OP but still has everything it needs to do Afflictor cheese, but with one or two less AMBs.

Colossus2 is the Pather version with hammers, Colossus3 is the pirate ship with bays and raider hullmod.

Colossus3 is a raider ship with Ground Support Package.  It is the easiest of the three raider ships to obtain (others being Valkyrie and Phantom), and when I want to raid worlds for blueprints, this ship is the option I will probably start with.  While pirates use it for combat, the player can use it as a freighter and a marine transport.

[Killer of Fate]

i think autocannon was buffed recently, nonetheless I'm not certain whether it is viable now. Pirate ships aren't that awful, but they are meant to be slightly worse than their original counter-parts. Their job is to be kind of subtle world building at how Tri-Tachyon tech was stolen after they lost the AI war and many of their outposts fell into disarray...

The main issue however is the fact that all the ships you had using mining blaster as a generalist weapon haven't been updated. You have a wolf using a mining blaster and two annihilators, which doesn't work unless it's supposed to be some sort of an anti-vanguard ship... Same goes with the SO Sunder build which has 3 mining blasters, those being just anti-armor now... But I assume these things will be fixed... Some day... Or something...

Luddic Path Manticore is ridiculously rare, and it doesn't supplant the colossi in their existence of being a sentient rocket launcher, cause there are too few of them.

[prav]

The Col3 is certainly an oversized garbagecan for its number of decks, but it's also only 4 DP per flight deck.

As a dedicated carrier it suffers from carriers being bad, not from being a bad carrier.

[Wyvern]

Don't really agree with most of this, but I'll just touch in particular on the lowly PD Laser. Is LRPD generally better? Yes. Is it always better? No. Most notably, if the ship officer has elite Point Defense skill, then I'll absolutely take a PD laser over LRPD - but it's also a generally-better choice for massed light PD, such as on an Odyssey.

[Zsar]

Mmh. I agree with the spirit of the OP, but none of the examples seem to match.

• all the bad equipment - has to exist so upgrades are a thing
• all the bad Pirate and Pather skins - dito; also easily salvaged to make a comeback in Iron mode / to quickly grow power on a restart
• Afflictor (P), Shade (P) - are straight upgrades over their pristine counterparts: more-than-half the ship for half the ship's cost

I'd rather have more bad and mediocre weapons, more bad and mediocre ships - and much tighter restrictions on the better ones (e.g. fresh out of Arcadia one may get a pristine Eagle (XIV) or Champion thrown in their face for change by the two bar missions 'buy/steal ship' - good bye, early game, we never got to know each other), to help make the worse stuff meaningful because it's accessible.

Status Quo, however, yes, most of the hulls, skins and equipment in the game are currently rather useless. I blame the unchanging ship and DP limit, bountiful Black Markets, frequent bar encounters with e.g. Nanoforge production slot salesmen and aforementioned almost-free ships, Officer limit (makes respec-ing the fleet a pain, so we'd rather save a slot for the perfect fit ship than salvage a stopgap hulk today), etc. pp. Not balancing however, funny that!

[Serenitis]

The Col3 is certainly an oversized garbagecan for its number of decks, but it's also only 4 DP per flight deck.

I love the C3 - it's usually one of my early game goals to get a couple of these and armour them up so they can soak damage and distract stuff for me.
They're also not bad logistics ships, and being civgrade get buffed by Bulk Transport as well.

[ErKeL]

The Col3 is certainly an oversized garbagecan for its number of decks, but it's also only 4 DP per flight deck.

I love the C3 - it's usually one of my early game goals to get a couple of these and armour them up so they can soak damage and distract stuff for me.
They're also not bad logistics ships, and being civgrade get buffed by Bulk Transport as well.

I really like them for marine raiding and unlike the other two ships that provide ground support it can actually contribute to battle. It's not ideal but if you get caught out they can aid battle and throw talon support out to help which is better than any of the other logistic ships.

[Sabaton]

Luddic Path Manticore is ridiculously rare, and it doesn't supplant the colossi in their existence of being a sentient rocket launcher, cause there are too few of them.

Simple solution, make manticores spawn more often.

Mmh. I agree with the spirit of the OP, but none of the examples seem to match.

• all the bad equipment - has to exist so upgrades are a thing
• all the bad Pirate and Pather skins - dito; also easily salvaged to make a comeback in Iron mode / to quickly grow power on a restart
• Afflictor (P), Shade (P) - are straight upgrades over their pristine counterparts: more-than-half the ship for half the ship's cost

1. Arbalest, mortars, piliums, kites, gremlins, hounds, cerberii, wayfarers, mules, buffalos mk2, ventures, atlas & prometheus mk2s... There would still be plenty of mediocre equipment and ships around to feel good about your own fleet & rebuild quicker.

2. "more-than-half the ship for half the ship's cost" - and less op, an stat frigates can't afford to sacrifice

DLMG is too expensive for point-defense.  It is SO assault weapon, a little HMG.

PD laser is the next best thing to burst PD for short-ranged PD.  Probably meant for the back two mounts on an Eagle or similar.

Colossus3 is a raider ship with Ground Support Package.  It is the easiest of the three raider ships to obtain (others being Valkyrie and Phantom), and when I want to raid worlds for blueprints, this ship is the option I will probably start with.  While pirates use it for combat, the player can use it as a freighter and a marine transport.

1. Single machine gun and vulcan works well for SO build and leaves more OP for other stuff.

2. I guess people like the PD laser for its superior damage, something you can make up with skills. Personally I find it lets stuff get too close for comfort sometimes.

3. Good point. I mixed up the colossi... Colossus MK3 actually looks a lot better when you consider it as a raider with carrier & cargo capacity as bonus.

[Megas]

Afflictor is better than Afflictor(P) if you can use four AMBs or you do not care enough about the extra cost.  Afflictor(P) is better when you need the cheaper cost (mainly to avoid exceeding Phase Coil Tuning and/or Neural Link DP limits) and did not get all the skills to buff Afflictor use.  Unbuffed Afflictor can only support three AMBs.

I have used Afflictor(P) for less DP because of Phase Coil Tuning and Neural Link (I had Doom and Radiant in the fleet).

6 DP is huge discount compared to 10, compared to Wolf, which is 4 to 5.  However, Afflictor used to cost 8 OP instead of 10 OP.  Afflictor was bumped up, but the P version was left alone.  Maybe the P version should be bumped up too (from 6 to 7)?

1. Single machine gun and vulcan works well for SO build and leaves more OP for other stuff.

2. I guess people like the PD laser for its superior damage, something you can make up with skills. Personally I find it lets stuff get too close for comfort sometimes.

3. Good point. I mixed up the colossi... Colossus MK3 actually looks a lot better when you consider it as a raider with carrier & cargo capacity as bonus.

1.  If I want (anti-shield) damage, I go for DLMG over LMG if I can afford it.  As for Vulcan, it is widely acknowledged to be the best ballistic PD for its size.

2.  LRPD and Mining Lasers are not strong enough and burst PD might be too costly or rare (if early).  PD laser is the cheap and more common option to stop the occasional Salamander or similar.

[Zsar]

1. Arbalest, mortars, piliums, kites, gremlins, hounds, cerberii, wayfarers, mules, buffalos mk2, ventures, atlas & prometheus mk2s... There would still be plenty of mediocre equipment and ships around to feel good about your own fleet & rebuild quicker.

I think the real problem is that it is trivial to skip all these things. Generally we only ever have to use them in the incredibly-short-term before picking up the item we actually desire - from the Black Market. And that is why they feel useless. They should be things we have to use, because we cannot grab something better (yet) - but they never are.

I think it is better to fix that flaw in the design than to just discard them and power creep away.
(It would, of course, almost necessarily result in power creep - when new items would have to be "exactly as good" as existing ones, the design space will soon be spent, and with "worse" not being an option they could only ever be "better". Then the old items of today become the bloat of tomorrow and the cycle repeats. I hate it, when that happens.)

2. "more-than-half the ship for half the ship's cost" - and less op, an stat frigates can't afford to sacrifice

You can fit 2x Light Needler and an Antimatter Blaster and still have enough OP for Hardened Subsystems and Solar Shielding before S-mods. What more do you want? Mine are working fine and I would not want to miss them.

(OP are a bit tight on the Shade (P) but its system is the "main game" anyway, so I can e.g. drop the Antimatter Blaster for Heavy Armour or downgrade the needlers to Dual Autocannons and that also works.)

... Sure, the pristine skins also work fine and do work better, no question there. But they do not work twice as well, so it does seem clear cut to me to take the (P)s over the "good" ones every time. (I sometimes pick up a few pristine ones in the early game to train officers on, but they always eventually have to go.)

Long story short: Useless these two hulls are definitely not.

[BigBeans]

Completely disagree with removing content from a singleplayer game just because it doesn't fit someones idea of "useful" meta.

Tweak or rework stuff, absolutely. But removal, no. Especially as you are advocating for removal of some fun variety ships.

[Sabaton]

I didn't want this thread to focus on those 2 ships in particular. My wider concern is that SS has been steadily accumulating content over its huge dev cycle to the point trying to balance everything might slow down work, have unintended consequences or just bloat the selection with like X but better stuff.

Case in point the Missile Autoloader hull-mod which was added in no small part so the Eagle & Falcon would remain competitive with the newer cruisers. And while that was a good addition similar cases might throw something else out of whack.

As for general availability, that is as simple as tweaking the markets so that there's no need to have X just because Y doesn't show up often. I get that people are cautious of power creeps, but hoarding every piece of content ever added due to slippery slope worry is not a solution.

[Zsar]

I tested the following altered Black Market behaviour:

• weapon quality is linear with market stability
• weapon amount is inversely linear with market stability
• only pirate and market-owner weapons are available (vanilla: also Independent)

It now is very hard to get things like Needlers or Large missiles. The Mark IX Autocannon is still widely available, which is perhaps a bit bad. In general, weapon tiers could be a bit stricter. (And effectively there are still mostly two instead of the four in data: "effectively-civilian" and "effectively-not-civilian".)

At this point, the bar missions still provide far too easy access to highest-tier Energy weapons like Plasma Cannons and Tachyon Lances, so I think I will have to do more. But it is a very nice first step towards making low-tier weapons very attractive because we need them to get higher-tier weapons.

I think I will have to improve and try again:

• weapon availability on the Black Market should not be linear (logarithmic?) or maybe should have some greater-zero minimum
• bar mission blueprint selection seems to be separate from any faction technology list and has to be balanced separately
• weapon tiers themselves have to be reviewed - it is way easier to get Typhoon Reapers, of all things, than to get even Small Breach SRMs

[majk]

Don't hate on mudskipper mk.2!
I want mudskipper mk.3 with a large missile slot.