The scatter CEPC isn't very good at the moment. I think its range is the same as it was before numerically, but in practise it is much shorter. Because it always spreads so wide it is important to move in close before firing. If you don't you end up doing trivial damage at hefty flux costs. Once you close in it does fairly well against shields. Even the smallest amount of armor really puts a damper on it though. Shadowyards and tritachyon frigates were the only ships the scatter CEPC did satisfying amounts of damage to. Fighter wings were usually small enough that even at extremely close distances you could still over spray.
Possible remedies:
Make it more strike-y by decreasing the ROF and increasing the flux cost and damage.
Bring in the scatter by half or more. possibly have it go in a couple bursts so the projectile density looks the same.
Increase the range and make it more flux efficient so you can use it to sweep fighters and frigs at a more reasonable flux cost.
I couldn't get a good feel for the Tartarus. The silly mission was hilarious, but buffalos aren't really that threatening even in a massive herd like that. I just used ITU'd medium CEPCs and harpoons. It was a breeze. Maybe put one of each of the hulls in the outlet plant in the campaign? I use omnifactory and that'd make testing things super simple.
The Mimir's new phase skip is more reasonable. I can't kite the world any more. Something strange is happening now though. When i use it my frame rate plummets. It may be related to some difficulties i had with my old video card recently. If nothing has been changed then that is probably the cause. I really like how fast the integrated cannon fires now. I can use it at long range against some of the swifter cruisers.
The Pandora Array sparks spread out so far now that it mostly misses destroyer sized ships. Against cruisers and capitals it does a reasonable amount of damage still. I don't know if it is intentional, but usually half the sparks simply vanish after a short time. I don't dare let the AI use them in fleet battles though because it fires them all over and i'm not a fan of getting destroyed by my allies. I have no idea how you can make the AI do things so i don't have any useful suggestions there.
I haven't used the new tanker, but it looks good. If it dies when combat ships merely breath heavy on it then it is keeping in line with the default tankers.
Advanced apologies if this doesn't make sense as i'm posting in the wee hours of the morning.
Thank you very much for the post, CC.
On to the critique; I guess I'll make the weapons spread a tighter and maybe boost her range. The "more strike-y" suggestion sounds good as well. I wish I knew why she does so little damage to armor since, as an energy weapon, the damage ratio should be ~1:1 regardless of the defense... I think. Regardless it should be doing more damage than it is. Maybe it's only counting one of the projectiles when they hit?
And sorry 'bout the silly mission. I'd intended to revise it from my testing setup to something a bit more 'real world' and revising the mission managed to skip my mind in the bustle of finishing the cruiser up. Adding the hulls to the Outlet plant for testing though sounds like a pretty good idea to me.
As for the changes to the Mimir coming out like they ought; good. More reasonable is pretty much what I wanted, and I'm pretty sure I've got it about right in terms of charge time and the like. The Pandora Array, on the other hand, is kind of a trick to balance and I'm not surprised that I may have overdone it. As for the sparks mysteriously vanishing that's... not supposed to be happening actually, but I'm not sure what's causing it, and it doesn't happen entirely consistently under various circumstances (e.g. it sometimes, but not always, happens when the sparks are receiving point defense fire); it may be related to the effects culling but that seems like it would be a bit strange seeing as the sparks are technically missiles.
The Lambent is quite likely to perish at the slightest odd bump or funny look; it's actually a bit less well defended than the Phaeton, but also a bit less expensive... (I think, I need to double check the prices). Anyway, thanks for the commentary, much appreciated.
Starting to play around with the Tartarus, and one thing has become very clear: its ship system will need to benefit primarily energy weapons. I don't have one in the campaign, yet, but at least in the mission, there's a strong temptation to build Tartarus variants that use the universal hardpoints for ballistic or missile weapons - even with its current High Energy Focus, you're generally better off using more flux-efficient guns.
The other thing I've noticed so far is that the Light CEPC is completely ineffective as a point defense gun - I think it's too accurate, maybe?
Have not tested the Scatter CEPC yet - haven't had a variant it was suited for.
Already spoke with you on Skype about this, but thanks again for your thoughts.