Short update. Work on Seeker is slowly starting, for now the team is composed of me, CrazyDave for the writing, dd_Dent and Wyvern for the coding. Debido is also giving a hand with one
Anomaly he designed. No campaign stuff yet, but mostly bringing in the game what was already sprited, like the four civilian ships (Not much more to add on them than what has already been said in the OP):
Then there are two new ships with a bigger role. I decided to try and put them in spoilers for those of you that are too curious. I'll never show the
Anomalies as they truly are the meat of the mod, but some
Artifacts (that is the unique man-made ships central to a quest) may appear in "Major Spoilers"; and the rewards or other interesting elements not central to the stories will be in "Minor Spoilers".
If you want to comment, please use spoilers too where needed for those who don't want to know anything in advance!
Minor spoiler:
Spoiler
Added the Owl-class SpecOps cruiser. A fast modification of an Eagle-class hull, armed with four medium ballistic hard-points and five small energy turrets (all in hidden mounts). It also has a "Switch mode" ship-system that halve the top speed but deploy two drones armed with graviton beams and raise sharply it's maneuverability. This ship will be a reward for one of the quests.
MAJOR SPOILER:
Spoiler
And finally a new
Artifact ship has been implemented:
DSS Wolverine, Guardian-class Dreadnought
While the Onslaught class battleships were designed to be the Fist of the Domain's might, the Guardian-class dreadnoughts were designed to be it's gate-keepers. Quite literally in fact since those gargantuan ships were only deployed to guard strategic hyperspace gates. With all their firepower concentrated in a small frontal cone, they were meant to cork any invasion attempt by raining shells on anything that emerged from the gates. And to avoid any interruption in their strike, they were equipped with an active flux dissipation system. By purging their cooling fluid, they could dramatically increase their dissipation rate for a short duration, reducing flux buildup. Unlike normal venting systems that can take a while at emptying the flux capacitors, that one had a fixed limited time. However any ship caught in the cloud of vapors would see it's own flux capacitors filled. Since the Guardians were supposed to hold their position alone, it wasn't considered an issue.
Unlike it's smaller cousin, the Guardian blueprints were never updated when shields and missiles became more common. At first because the technology couldn't allow a radius large enough, and then because the production of those colossus ceased due to the availability of better, cheaper designs. Since with an up-to-date load-out they were still able to fill their role, the few existing ones were maintained in active service for centuries.
When the gates shut, only one Guardian was present in Corvus. It wasn't even meant to: an engine failure during a transit left it stranded in the young sector, without a dry-dock large enough to fit in for repairs. It was waiting for the Domain to send special tugs for weeks when the Collapse occurred. Then the war broke out, and this huge unmovable slab of metal was abandoned, looted and forgotten.And yes, triple Hellbores!
(for those of you curious, a Firecane is the hypothetical result of a lightning storm in a hurricane that is passing over an oil spill...)