Hoo boy, lots of replies. Lets see if I can address all of them
I'm not really too concerned about the coilguns; I suppose that's not a big issue. But, compared to the heavy mauler, the Coilguns have a much faster projectile speed. This is a problem with the Railguns vs. Hypervelocity Driver. This does affect balance, and I feel it makes them too good as enemies can't dodge the shots like they can with their vanilla counterparts. It's also worth noting that I generally perceive the heavy mauler as a little too powerful (it's almost always better than the Assault Chaingun, but it might also be that way by design, by virtue of being higher tech).
A turn rate nerf would be fine, but I also feeling slowing projectile speeds by 20% or more would also bring them in line with vanilla weapons.
That said, I hope you're going to have a harsh talk with the Small Ballistics, because I feel those are the most ridiculously overpowered weapons. At that projectile speed, range, damage, and efficiency, they're just far too good, even for 9 OP (only 1 more than a light needler, which isn't nearly as effective).
The biggest thing I can tell you is that, as a player who wants to do well, I can use railguns (any size) to chop through armor, even against heavier vessels. One small railgun (not an array) can demolish the armor of a Lasher, much less several. For a kinetic weapon, this just isn't right. This may actually have to do with how armor absorbs damage; it seems like simply having more damage lets you get through armor better than if you had equal DPS with several smaller projectiles. This also relates back to the heavy mauler seeming better than the assault chaingun even up close, though this could very well be me being off my rocker.
Point is, the 9OP railgun is just too good. I think projectile speed might not be accounted for in balancesuite, or not accounted heavily enough, because it's a big deal. It's why (I believe) beam weapons deal soft flux to shields; instant transmission. Given a choice between a Heavy Autocannon (vanilla) or the 9OP railgun, I'd choose the latter, every time. And it can be put on a small mount. That's a huge deal.
I don't think I want to lower projectile speeds -- for one thing, the Kadur's 'official' military doctrine calls for long-range engagement and reducing projectile speed would render the weapons nearly ineffective against anything more agile than a Prometheus at long range. For another thing, it's just unrealistic -- I mean we're talking about a game where spaceships shoot plasma cannons into the engines of other spaceships which disables them for ten seconds, sure, but I still think electromagnetic projectile accelerators should rightly propel projectiles far faster than explosive propellants do. What I am doing, though, is lowering kinetic damage across the board, lowering kinetic range slightly, and lowering all the non-PD ballistic turn rates to ensure that the weapons are far less useful against agile frigates and fighters that get in your face, while still very powerful if you can orient your ship's batteries towards the enemy at long ranges.
Fair enough. A slight nerf is all I wanted; ammo ought to be fine. Though I still think the small LRMs should get even fewer missiles (note that at 1 OP more, the Javelins have far more ammo than a harpoon; with only a slightly lower projectile speed and damage these are a far better option even for close-range HE damage).
The thing about Kadur LRMs is not their power. It's that they are very easy to boat. Civilians ships can be fitted with a bucketload of those and you can field a bucketload of civilians ships... I played with a fleet integrally made of Siroccos and Djinns class. The Mistral is just far too squishy to be effective, i always lost one or two of them because they are bumping with my own ships during the deployment phase, and Djinn is better as a tanker and missile boat in every aspect.
With my "Itano circus" style fleet, i was able to stomp everything in the game, save for the Kadur judgement fleet. I also always have a Hauberk class staying behind to provide the radar bonus, i'm not sure however if the range bonus apply to missiles. Also i wonder, i know their bonus don't stack, but are they nullified when your Hauberk is against another Hauberk?
So yeah, nerfing the small LRM would be good to avoid boating your entire fleet with them.
I haven't played much (yet) a ballistic oriented fleet. But as NikolaiLev said they seems very strong now, nerfing a bit the turning speed of the guns as well as the projectile speed would be good.
Yeah, I've reduced the VLRMS-2's ammo to provide only five volleys, which means that while a savvy Kadur freighter captain can still abandon all pretense of having an effective PD system in exchange for providing VLRM support to a fleet it is much less efficient and he'll have a lot less longevity in battle. If you think they're better than a Harpoon rack for close-in HE damage finishers, though, I don't really know what to say about that.
As for the Hauberks, one on either side should cancel each other out for a net change of 0% to sensor and weapon ranges for ships that are inside the effect range of both, yeah.
Not bad! But as much as I hate tearing your mod up, I feel this could take some looking at as well. It's powerful, and that's cool (the Hauberk is a destroyer with mediocre hardpoints, railguns notwithstanding) but it should have a larger drawback than merely disabling its shields; the fact it increases your range and decreases theirs is a huge swing in power. The enemy AI isn't smart enough to focus it down, so I feel it should also have a relatively high flux generation, and/or make it disable weapons as well. Problem with that being allowing the Hauberk AI know when to use it and when not to. But I'm sure you can think of something.
P.S. If it makes you feel any better, the only other mod I've "abused" to this extent was keptin's IFed, and that's because I loved it. It's just a form of affection, you know? 
It
is only a 15% bonus and a 15% debuff -- less than an ITU on anything bigger than a Frigate, and therefore effectively countered by one. That said, I'm actually in the process of implementing a bigger drawback in the form of slow flux generation and no flux dissipation while the system is on -- the hard part is getting the AI to use it intelligently, heh. A large part of why it is the way it is right now is that the AI script currently amounts to "if it's off, turn it on" and I'm not very good with Java. Rest assured, it will be fixed eventually. I might actually make the system a little
more effective, while I'm at it -- only once it has a substantial drawback and a functional AI script, of course. The Hauberk might catch a little bit of a combat stats nerf to make sure it's a dedicated support ship, too.
And as for your postscript, I love the abuse... Or rather, I love getting in-depth feedback. It shows that people care, and it's the only way I'm ever going to achieve vanilla parity.
P.P.S. The mod's interceptors seem to be really poor at being interceptors. This is a fair tradeoff given they have kinetic weapons (which makes them amazing support craft) but I think this could use some looking at. A weapon that had decent range, high burst damage but low DPS would suit the faction quite well. Problem is, it'd be balanced for fighters but it'd be stupidly good as PD. So, maybe give it short range ala the Vulcan Cannon, with its damage frontloaded in a long, potent burst which an equally long cooldown between bursts.
I've actually found them quite effective at intercepting enemy fighters! Could you go a little more in-depth as to what they're failing at?
P.P.P.S. (Darn, keep forgetting!) Martyr drones just seem far too ineffective. It's a dangerous thing to ask, but buffing martyr cannons just a liiiiittle bit would be nice. They are basically energy mortars, which are ineffective in every other way (but the concept is cool!)
They
are energy mortars, heh. I've lowered the range significantly and increased the damage a fair bit for the next update -- this should make the martyr drones act a little more like, well,
martyrs. Hopefully it will also make them a little more useful.
OH MY GOD I KEEP THINKING OF THINGS (This actually happened with IFed too, now that I think about it!) The Jackal deserves a buff to its peak performance time! While it fits with what it is, it just renders it far too ineffective and deserves to be able to stick around and contribute what little it can. It's a cute little guy and I'd like to use it more, but I just can't justify it; my other frigates (especially Hyenas and Vultures) are about as fast and are just as good for capping points.
Also I should've gushed about how much I love you for adding carrier frigates because I love carrier frigates and they need to be more common! Alright, hopefully this will be the last edit to this post.
I'm not going to buff the Jackal's peak performance time.
Remember, it's faster than literally anything else in the sector (unless you're playing with the Nihil, in which case it's faster than anything else in the sector
except their ridiculous "anti" fighter wings) and maneuverable to boot, so if you could fly it around with an ITU and a heavy railgun on the front for long enough to kite and kill anything that would be pretty uncool. That's the very thing peak performance times were meant to curtail. It's useful enough for capturing distant points in the start-of-battle scramble or for chasing down fleeing fast frigates/fighters and disabling their engines for long enough that something a little more heavily armed can catch up, and that's all it was built for. What I might do though is reduce its supply usage again, so that it's more viable to bring one or two along with a fleet for those purposes.
That said, if you want to play with a Jackal flagship or something of the like, go ahead and edit the peak performance time in the ship_data.csv for your own copy of the mod! If you manage to do something ridiculous with it like killing an Onslaught, post a screenshot.
And I'm glad you like the carrier frigate!
Oh, and One Last Thing: I might make my own faction at some point. I don't know if there's general policy for this, but I'm wondering if you'd mind if I copied the Sling ABM for it! I've already expressed my love for it, and I might still end up making my own missile-based anti-missile weapon, but in general I like the idea of mods having non-vanilla weapons in common and I wish it was more common. You'd get credit, of course!
Of course! It's actually stated in the description that it's an ancient weapon system, so it would make sense for other factions to have gotten a hold of the blueprints for them too and/or designed their own weapons based on them.
Thanks for interesting mod. Separately pleased integration of original fraction not only with original, but also with other mods in the form of four brisk systems . As pleased division of fraction into two conflicting parties that allows at the same time and to be on friendly terms with the main fraction, and to try the new ships as opponents. From the ships separately I pleased Dolfin. Against appearance of mods with trading I want to suggest to add fast transport of the average size, like clipper. It would seem to me not bad fitted into line of ships this fraction.
Thank you! I'm glad you like the way the mod integrates with others, and the Insurgency faction. I put a lot of work into those, the former especially. I actually have plans for civilian ships that fit the theme of the faction more than the existing ones do, I just haven't really had time to work on them lately -- so those, too, will be coming along in time.
i have to say this is probably my favorite mod at this moment, its the only one i have where there are "good" balistic weapons, almost all other mods are exclusively made for their energy weaponry...
Thanks! I'm a big fan of ballistic weapons -- my favorite ship in vanilla is the Enforcer. Glad you're enjoying it.
exerelin/kadur theocracy bugs
These I have no idea about.
I'll take a look at the things it's throwing up as errors, but I'm not sure what I can do to be honest. Hopefully it's something easily fixed, but I don't really understand where it's going off so I'm not sure I can fix it with my javascript skills being what they are (i.e. nonexistant). Fingers crossed Zaphide will find it so I don't have to.
EDIT: Hauberk field AI appears functional! Toying with the idea of a bigger range buff/debuff in exchange for lowering the Hauberk itself's armor and hull strength. Thoughts? It would make Hauberks considerably more important on the battlefield -- you'd need to intelligently assign them behind friendly lines, close enough to boost your ranges but not close enough to get blown up. It would also make them into much more of an "objective" where they appear in enemy AI fleets -- you'd want to blow them up (and if you could get a fast frigate behind enemy lines, it would be easy to do so) right away or risk being outranged dramatically, especially given that they'd be backed up by Kadur ships with Kadur weaponry. I think I'm going to do it, but for now the weapon range boost/debuff is only increased by 5% (to 20%), while the hull HP/armor nerf is considerably more severe. Thoughts?
I'm thinking I'll release tomorrow night, after some more testing.
