Great feedback, thanks a lot! I'll go through it piecemeal.
Here's my feedback after a short time with the campaign and some cheating to play around with some of the more expensive ships. I haven't had really very much playtime on the whole so take with a grain of salt.
The p9 design/fleet 'doctrine' that I am trying to inferentially work out while playing is potentially very interesting. Small number of turrets, good shields, low armor/hull, very high flux dissipation, but very bad venting. Minimal PD. Frigates are fast; but destroyers, cruisers, battleships are comparatively slow and unmaneuverable.
Frigates, low armor combat destroyers and low armor combat cruisers were supposed to be fast for their class. PD platforms are supposed to be somewhat lower speed as they are mostly there to escort larger slower ships, but the problem there is that they are too slow to support the fast killers that also lack PD. I'll see if I can maybe boost the speed on some stuff.
Most interesting is the implicit synergy between a lot of the PD-less ships that effectively exist and specialized PD platforms like the SNZ-PD and AGG-R.
But also some general design issues:
Frigates are pretty divergent. The Sike outclasses everything. Super fast, three medium turrets, enormous flux dissipation. Its only weakness is very fragile armor/hull. Some other frigates like the RS-class seem more in-line with vanilla balance. Still other frigates like the tartiff 'gell' frigate have no shields and instead regenerating armor; which isn't very thematic in my opinion. The Sike seems like the obvious winner in 80% of situations; it isn't an elite ship; it is plentiful in the campaign; it doesn't have very high price or supply cost.
Broader divergences between frigate and destroyers. Frigates are fast and manouverable. Destroyers, cruisers, battleships, meanwhile, are comparatively slow for their class. Low amount of turrets means a tendency for ships to be 'upgunned.' Medium turrets on frigates. Large turrets on destroyers and above. This makes frigates OP and destroyers and above actually kind of underpowered. The Sike (as mentioned before) is OP. It is capable of outranging and outmanouvering almost any standard frigate you can expect to encounter in the early campaign. I can easily take on 5 pirate frigates with 1 Sike. But SL-T2 destroyers meanwhile have pretty bad speed and maneuverability and only two large turrets with narrow angle of fire. This is a ship that has difficulty exploiting opportunities (no missiles) and is easy to outflank and destroy. SL-T3 destroyer seems somewhat better balanced (1 large, 2 small; higher top speed?) but still has issues with the low number of turrets.
The Sike and partially RS was supposed to have terrible combat stamina to compensate, but it turns out that I somehow have set the peak performance time quite high compared to 0.95 vanilla. So that will indeed eat a nerf, I'll probably up the cost/support profile of the Sike too. In general all support profiles ad cost profiles have not been reviewed since this mod went into hibernation several years ago. The gel frigate was supposed to be the prototype of a line of gel ships or a subfaction for the mod, but I never finishied any other gel ships or the subfaction so it is just that one for now. I mostly just kept it in faction because Tartiflette made it work so nicely and I myself think it is pretty fun to use the ship system to bounce enemy ships into my own lines
I think the general design philosophy that is holding this all together is that low turret mounts encourages high flux energy weapons; which then requires (potentially imbalanced) high flux dissipation; which is then hopefully compensated for by lower weapon variability (few missiles; few kinetic/explosive; narrow angles). But this is a very tricky balance that doesn't really work as presently constituted. Overall: early frigate/destroyer gameplay has a pretty off-kilter balance. It doesn't feel that the main fleet elements are generally complementing or synergizing with each other. Sikes dominate while SL-T2s and T3s are sort of left behind. In a softer way, it doesn't really feel like the coherent design/fleet 'doctrine' of a relatively small colony. If the Sike is nerfed everything might feel different.
The bolded part is generally what I intended yes. In my brief experience this patch the destroyers still seem to work pretty OK in the players hands especially if you fit some vanilla weapons there too (like large missiles on the SL-t2). But I agree that they do feel a bit lacklustre atm.
Some more specific issues:
- Lancer Destroyer: Almost a suicide ship. Extremely dangerous special ability that shoots this ship forward and discharges its forward beam for 5-10 seconds. The extremely narrow profile, the general destroyer sluggishness, and the extremely narrow turret angles creates incredible vulnerabilities.
Yes it is terrible in the current iteration, both for AI use and player use, I have plans to make the current one into some novelty ship obtainable via bounties while remaking the old one to a more standard ship of the line with 3 medium turrets in the middle space. Though I must say reinforced bulkheads and the skill which reduced damage per D-mod had pretty good synergy with this ship in my very brief Nex trial...
- There is a destroyer/cruiser phase ship (I forget the name) that is probably too slow to be of much use.
The Korlo cruiser? Yes, it probably needs a speed boost, it's current speed was more appropriate when you could stack two or three speed mods on ships ~3 patches ago.
The Cyz destroyer? It seems to work pretty well but could maybe use a slight speed boost?
The Eyfel battleship? Yes, its a slow huge blob. The current placeholder ship system makes it a bit more mobile though.
The Cimex carrier and the Tick hauler are indeed slow though, but they are not supposed to be frontline ships anyway so it's mostly ok.
- Samaa-DSI Battleship: many of the issues with the SL-T2/T3 destroyers are recurrent here. Again very few slots for its class; thematic; but weak for a battleship; low/no missiles means difficulty pressuring and exploiting. There is a large turret mount with narrow angle facing completely backwards that is close to useless. These problems are all somewhat compensated for with a built-in 'Tachyon Ray'--same visual effect as small salaa laser--which will typically overload the shields on any class of ship. Almost certainly OP. But the battleship, on its own terms, is peculiarly both OP and underpowered. Because it has so few slots it has difficulty exploiting the shields it downs.
It is essentially a gimmick support ship not meant to solo stuff. If you fly it yourself you still need a fleet to actually kill the stuff you disable. I agree that it is somewhat OP but, only in the players hands with the right fleet to support it, as the AI is pretty bad at both picking good targets for overloading and to exploit the overloads. Not sure how to fix it without actually destroying the gimmick. The large slot in the back is basically to have some big sized PD that can mess up smaller frigates that outflank the shield coverage, simply so that you do not get humiliated by hounds too often.
- p9 weapons mostly have good custom descriptions; but they don't have their own p9 design type designation; missing description on some special weapons like the tachyon ray; improper usage of it's and its in most descriptions (a pet peeve; w/e).
I'll go through the descriptions. Though I'm not a native speaker and I suck at grammar so I'll probably miss something again.
- I don't like the visual effect of the Salaa laser; dull from long camera distance; should ideally be more vibrant. It's an effect that is repeated on a number of other p9 weapons.
- The visual effect on the SKV cannon is dark to the point that it is somewhat hard to see. Low amount of turrets encourages energy weapons; so many ships using P9 weapons will use the SKV.
I'll note that down and see if it can be improved.
- P9 talaa laser is a beam with only 50 range; it seems impossible for this to have a use other than to be placed on the lancer suicide ship. I don't really like any of it.
I'll set it to something more usable like 400 or so.