Hey Vayra,
I tried another run starting with Kadur Remnant. I do love the difficulty associated with it, as always. This time I decided to play a true fanatic and "convince" Luddic worlds they were wrong, so I needed a strong fleet based on what I can buy from Requiem station and what I could scavenge amd see how far I could go. In short, probably one of my best runs, I managed to use some pretty nice combo for weapons and ship from Kadur Remnants:
-The most important thing, their ships have incredible synergy with there Vanilla counter-parts: an Falcon (K) + Eagle, Falchion + Hammerhead, Rukh + its vanilla buddy. It work incredibly well, the (K) ship is the hammer, the vanilla the Anvil thanks to better shield and flux handling.
-The Sphinx is a monster thanks to its ship system. Others ships put shield pressure, the Sphinx go close and deliver the killing blow (frontal Torpedoes launcher, but could probably work with assault chainguns). I like it so much I no longer use capitals when assaulting orbital station.
-Sirocco is great for raiding thans to its storage.
-Javelins missile are great with wings. So many targets on the field that PDs are unable to stop the incoming waves of bombers
I cannot say much about the weapons, I was unable to get enough of them.
A couple of comment/suggestions:
-The burn drive is interesting on the Eagle and Falcon (K), but the AI don't know how to use them and often ends ramming it in orbital station... Maybe they could benefit from little changes in AI hints, or from the same system than the Camel?
-The Kadur Remnant could probably benefit from a third world or system. So far they are not easy to deal with and feel isolated. I know it's probably what you intended but gameplay-wise it's easy to just forget them and deal with other factions which is a shame as their backstory is great IMO
-On the other hand, others factions are a little bit overcrowding both systems: too much factions in Mirage, and definitively too much pirates in general: 3 new markets, with military, and 2 Heavy Industries! Maybe it's tipping the balance a little bit too much for them? Especially considering the presence of the star fortress.
Anyway, these are just little details, 'cause overall the greatest thing the mod is giving new way to play the game with the start options. They add needed variety to the base game.
Thank you
Thanks for the feedback, and I'm really glad you're enjoying the mod! I'll address some of your points here:
- I'm glad that that strategy works! All of the new ships I'm introducing to flesh out the Kadur are designed for that anvil/fleet anchor role. If it works well with vanilla, it should work well with their new toys as well, which will make them much more of a complete faction.
- The Sphinx is indeed an excellent assault craft -- try it with a ton of Assault Chainguns, Machine Guns of various sizes, and Safety Overrides! It's so strong in fact that it'll be getting a (small) nerf in the next update which will be releasing shortly after 0.9.1 -- a slight increase in supply cost/deployment points.
- I need to come up with some other logistics ships to support the Sirocco, heh, as it starts to get a bit silly in bigger fleets... So many of the same hull. I am happy you like it though. I find I often need something like it in my fleets -- a mid-sized logistics ship to carry both fuel and cargo for a smaller fleet of destroyers and frigates.
- Javelin is the old name
Interstellar Imperium took it for
their LRMs while I was away between 2013-2018, so I had to rename mine to Jerichos and Janissaries.
- Burn drive on the (K) hulls is meant to be a downgrade, but hmm, maybe I'll take a look at it and just give them a simply less powerful Maneuvering Jets or something.
- I don't think I'll be adding a third system, at least in the traditional (core, inhabited) sense, but I might look at doing more procgen content! I definitely want them to feel like a presence in the sector, but I don't really want to add any more "static" markets or otherwise compromise the feeling of them being a faction of exiles and refugees. The raider bases are an attempt at this currently, though that's still pretty barebones.
- On "too many factions in Mirage", we'll have to agree to disagree, heh. I love big, chaotic systems, maybe because I remember when Corvus was all we had and every mod added a station or an exoplanet or a moon or something...
Thanks again for taking the time to write all this out! I'll definitely keep this stuff in mind while I'm working on the mod.