I have a question about this change. The Odyssey's large mounts are in a weird place arc-wise, as there's no overlap between left/right until a fair distance from the ship, but at Tachyon Lance distances, the overlap is wider than a capital ship - here's what I mean. Will my Fire Support Odyssey now try to hit with all three Lances, or will the AI just use the two on the left?
It'll fire with all three, but only if it's a Fire Support assignment (there, it actually evaluates a wide range of possible facings for optimal firepower). In regular, close-in fighting (even when it might be able to sneak in a shot with all three), it'll pick the left side.
It should already be doing this in Fire Support mode, though - it's not a recent change.
I just ran a few battles and hung back with my Odysseys, and yeah, they work perfectly. Sorry about that, I based my question on when I used to use one as a flagship and would go into autopilot for the ultra-long-range shots (but no Rally Fire Support active, I guess), combined with the more recent times when I was in the thick of things and saw only one or two beams go by, which isn't a very accurate metric either.
For the Phase Skimmer, will there be a UI element to show what your current vector is? And if so, can it be made universal? It would really help with lining up those pesky Reaper shots.
The odyssey's ability seems like its going to limit it to tachyon lance use, sort of sad about that because i liked using it in close with autopulse lasers. Not using it's subsystem would feel like a waste, but no shields and 50% extra damage taken is just a death sentence for any high tech ship thats in anything but tachyon lance range. Not sure what i would have preferred tho.
I agree. It's not that there's no benefit to using it with a close-range build. The problem is that a Tachyon build will
never see any of those drawbacks unless they were already screwed. Remember, three lances with a 50% damage bonus means that every six-and-a-half seconds, a Tachyon build can do 6,750 damage from across the map with
no meaningful downsides (and don't forget 3,375 EMP damage on top of that, or "only" 2,250 if EMP isn't boosted).
Maybe just greatly increased weapon flux generation would work? With, say, +200% flux gen, it's more of an "I want you dead
right now" thing, useful when your opponent has a weapon with a massive cooldown and you want them taken out before they can fire again. It also penalizes all builds equally.
