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[Culise]

the bactrain has no brakes

I usually try to pronounce it as "bacterian" so "bactrain" (choo-choo!) is a tasteful compromise.

I'm not really sure what the intended name or its entomology is.  My brain can't parse it.

The ship draws its name from the camel, which derives its English name from the region of Bactria.

[puke]

Nice, thanks!

[puke]

Okay, I may have judged the new updated a little harshly.

Looks like there is an expanded region of alien space, and a bunch of new hulls and outfits that are only available via capture.

There are also a few new civilian / pirate carrier class ships, and a bunch of new missions.

Fun to play with again, even if the bactrain

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

is still the only ship worth flying

[E. Albright]

349s are wonderful, but yes, for flagships nothing competes with a Bactrian, even at the next tier up. And it's not like it would be that hard to balance it; there's just no will to do so. Increase its minimum crew to something more on par with other large warships its size (I'd say double it), throw on an extra 800-1k empty mass, give it +50% engine capacity to compensate, make it a licensed purchase like its description implies, and there might actually be question as to what's the best flagship. A Korath Raider is supposed to be Tier 2 vs. the Bactrian's 1-1.5, but Raiders are no better or worse on almost every score. Even the fanboi argument of "oh, Bactrians aren't the best at everything, they're just the most flexible" is laughable, because they're basically "jack of all trades, and master of most"...

[puke]

Even the fanboi argument of "oh, Bactrians aren't the best at everything, they're just the most flexible" is laughable, because they're basically "jack of all trades, and master of most"...

This is exactly my grievance.  The real shame is that it seems as if lots of effort went into balancing outfits.  For example, Wanderer outfits are a nice balance of features (heat, power, weight) but you can get better pure performance out of dedicated outfits.

Even outfits are not perfect, the new Hai thrusters seem a little underwhelming and mostly seem to fit a niche in that they occupy odd-mass-numbers in between the superior Deep thrusters.  Hai powerplants are efficient, but generally worse than others, or so they seem at my casual analysis.

The new Kor stuff appears to be generally "better" than most things, in terms of dedicated power output, cooling, and those awesome "core" devices.  But there are cases where I'd rather have Wanderer outfits, or Hai.  So that is balanced, right?  There are various reasons to prefer one over another in different circumstances.  That is sort of what game balance MEANS.

But the Bac... you cant even begin to make arguments for other ships as you can with the outfits above.  It is just better.  If it is going to be the jack-of-all-trades, then fucking MAKE SURE that there is a better troop ship (there isnt).  MAKE SURE there is a better cargo carrier (there isnt for flagship boarding/raiding, but there is for crew-to-cargo ratio).  MAKE SURE another heavy hull out-guns it (only carrier/cruiser have more weapon capacity).  And do it with human tech, which should be vaguely balanced against its self.

If some alien ship -- or even the Kestrel -- was quantifiable the best, I wouldn't have such a problem with it.  But the Bac is a common hull that anyone can buy and is just plain better.  And there is no desire to fix it.

I saw the developer state that it was balanced in terms of price, that a legion of smaller ships was better economically.  I feel like that is kind of bullshit; by the time you are buying fleets that size, price is less of an issue than managing your ship inventory.  I don't want more than 10-20 ships in a fleet, the notion that 100 light warships should replace 10 heavy ones for the same cost is just silly.

[E. Albright]

IIRC Hai engines and reactors are as good or very slightly better than Deep engines, but they're only available in smaller sizes. The net effect is that sometimes their stuff is preferable, and sometimes the Deep stuff is. Their batteries and anti-missiles are just flat-out superior though.

Bizarre how that means in some circumstances one thing might be desirable and in others another thing is... *subtly thwacks dead camel again*

[E. Albright]

Necro? Necro.


There have been a few more updates, and more higher-tier stuff has been put out. Some of it is quite cool. Most ofl the Coalition ships are just downright pretty. Oh, and asteroid mining is a thing, though it feels clunky and is kinda annoying. And looting isn't quite so much as an absurd only-sane-way-to-make-money loot pile because parts depreciate in value now.

However, there's still precisely zero reason to get off the Bactrain.

The ES community is in some respects thoroughly appalling.

I just finished watching a fiercely-fought month-or-so PR campaign from a number of content devs to force very minor nerfs that would not reduce the Bac's predominance as the only real flagship choice. The fanbois exploded, and rallied against the injustice, and made their typical argument that the real problem was that there was no Bactrian 2.0 to be even more OP and to finally lure you onto a different platform. And the content devs, and a good part of the community pushed back, and they seemed to make progress and garner support for their change... and then they folded. The Bac will still reign supreme, though other human factions will get something Bactrian-ish but specialized (e.g., the Syndicate's camel clone will be better at cargo compared to other ships in the class "OP Tier 1 ship"), while the Bac will get a minor nerf to be named latter. However... I'm very guardedly optimistic. This smacks of power creep, but it's also possible the devs got sick of making the same argument over and over, and are just going to try to ram a nerf down the end user's throat as a fait accompli. Assuming they have the main dev on board. Which seems more hopeful than it used to, but I'm still not truly optimistic. And in any case, as a slow-moving open-source volunteer project, it'll probably be six months before the changes see daylight. But development does roll on...