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[Loud Whispers]

Yeah, I think my biggest issue with the Hivers is that you can just...use their stuff. Like, let it be OP, but don't just hand it to the players. Especially for weird bug stuff, that logically just shouldn't be easily usable by folks. That and the weapons sell for a stupid amount of credits.

But a lot of that is just me having opinions based on what I'd do as a modder with them. *shrug*

Yeah. Their ships feel OP in a way that isn't all that fun because they're just too good at everything. I like OP stuff like the Cathedral ships, the Invictus brick, 100 million derelict bricks equipped with every hull/armour mod buff & nothing but flamers. But stuff that is just "we're you but stronger better faster" isn't as interesting as low tech or midline designs where they're very much "if you come at us head-on without a plan we'll win."

I miss the Kingdom of Terra mod, which I feel was one which did the whole "living ships" angle in really fun ways without breaking game balance or design philosophy of core starsector. The beeshooter in particular was super fun. Incredibly high flux demanding anti-armour weapon, any successful hits on the enemy hull produced a wasp interceptor. But the thing had such a high ordnance point cost, high flux cost and trash anti-shield stats that if you didn't balance the beeshooter with railguns or something, you'd never get a chance to use it

Which one is your mod btw?

[Micro102]

I'm fine with some types of ships just being objectively better than others. I actually expected High-Tech to be that. Why wouldn't more technology lead to stronger ships, right? I just need a reason that they are better, and a barrier to those ships to make it feel like progression. Maybe some unique downsides or requiring a certain economy.

[Loud Whispers]

I'm fine with some types of ships just being objectively better than others. I actually expected High-Tech to be that. Why wouldn't more technology lead to stronger ships, right? I just need a reason that they are better, and a barrier to those ships to make it feel like progression. Maybe some unique downsides or requiring a certain economy.

Of the core game ships, there isn't really any ship that is objectively better than the rest. There are ships that are objectively worse, but none which are the best. Especially since "low tech, midline, high tech" aren't really cases of "more tech" but rather "design philosophy." There's a reason why both in game and lore "low tech" ships beat high tech, and continue to be the dominant force.

Compare the ships of each category. The majority of the technological differences come down to:

1. Engine drive options.
2. Crew requirements.
3. Weapon demands.
4. Defensive systems.
5. Logistical requirements.

But there isn't an objectively superior option between those design philosophy groups.

Civilian-tier
The objectively "techno-scrap" tier... It's also by no means "inferior" or obsolete. Drone tenders, venture cruisers or hounds may not be able to compete with dedicated warships, but they're not dedicated warships. They're utility ships that can fight, smuggle shielded cargo & guide you around the galaxy cheaply whilst salvaging and surveying your way to riches. Typically light on shielding & armour, fast in combat but with limited weapons loadouts, you really can't go wrong with a civilian fleet's vast cargo and fuel holds & light logistical overheads.

Salvaged Civilian-tier
Typically the work of pirates or the luddic path, the salvaged civilian-tier is a perfect example of why the game's designs for ships isn't based around "better" or "worse" but rather "design focus." E.g. look at all the pirate vessels. They're heavily up-gunned, fast and come with loads of logistical support options based around raiding. Their ships are fragile hulls and melt when thrown against players or heavy opposition, but with the right control are horrifyingly effective. An Atlas MK.II isn't just the poor man's capital, it's the poor pirate's capital overloaded with ballistic and large missile slots. At just 24 deployment cost, you can swarm the field long-range firepower that just annihilates far superior ships.

Low Tech
Low Tech is defined by:
1. POWERFUL Engines. Whether it's Orion Drives, combustion Burn Drives or overdriven frigates, Low-Tech has all of the most powerful engines with the highest top speeds in the game.
2. HIGH crew requirements. Typically the highest in the game, average 2x higher crew requirements than high tech counterparts. Their larger crew capacities do come in handy for colonisation fleets though.
3. Low weapon demands, MAXIMUM firepower. The flux-efficiency and ordnance-efficiency of low tech weapon systems and hull deployment costs is unmatched. Anything that sits in front of low-tech ships just dies under a withering hail of ballistics fire, and you can field many more low tech ships in battle across vaster regions of space than any comparable fleet.
4. Lots of focus on armour & firepower. When a High-Tech ship is fluxed out, that's game over. But a low-tech ship is sufficiently armoured and flux-efficient in its weapon systems that it can lower shields and continue blasting until the enemy is dead. This fits with the lore of low-tech ships being designed to fight decisive battles against remnants and rebels. But it also comes with the serious drawback of maneuvrability. Low techs like the dominator or onslaught may annihilate everything in front of them and be fast as all hell, but they have trouble turning and if a mutually supporting battle line of low tech ships is broken, they can be picked off one by one by more nimble ships.
5. Low logistical overheads. Low tech ships are cheap to buy, cheap to run.

Chronologically, the developments of starsector shipbuilding develop much like how our own world's naval history developed. Two alternate ship-design philosophies emerge in response to the low-tech decisive battle fleet doctrine the Hegemony championed. Rebels begin experimenting with ships incorporating novel technology, like the Tri-Tachyon wolf frigate raids on Hegemony civilian convoys, or the Persean League's first attempts at making ships with weaker armour but more speed, maneuvrability and armour-piercing torpedoes or carrier slots. In response the Hegemony begins experimenting with battle-carriers, and even their precious XIV battlegroup ships begin seeing thinner armour and more focus on speed & firepower.

The Midline
This leads to the development of Midline ships.
1. Like Low-Tech, powerful engines, the best maneurvability.
2. Lower crew requirements as more ship-systems are automated (the majority of what makes high-tech "high-tech" are these automated life-support systems which lower crew requirements).
3. A focus on versatile weapon mounts capable of mounting ballistics/energy weapons/missiles & carriers, held back by a lack of slots, ordnance points and lower flux than high-tech.
4. High focus on speed, carrier-strike actions & missile/torpedo strikes.
5. Reasonably decent logistical overheads and deployment costs.

All in all, the midline are a bit more than just the "jack of all trades" design school. Imo they make the best player flagships, as all of their ships are fast-moving glass cannons with a focus on missile/carrier strike actions, all of which benefit the most from player decision making. The Heron, Pegasus or the Conquest are just weird ships and tend to die very quickly in AI hands, but in player hands can act as devious hunter-killers eliminating weaker enemy ships screening slower enemy capital ships, until you're ready to go in for the kill with your supporting ships. If the Low-Tech school epitome the decisive battlefleet doctrine, then the midline are the battlecruiser doctrine.

High Tech
1. Engines: Lots of experimental engine drive options, like phase drives (phase ships), teleportation devices (the dreaded wolfpack) and plasma burn drives (it's a small but cute detail that every tech-school of ships has their own coloured light-trails when they zoom around the map to symbolise low-tech's combustion engines and high-tech's plasma drives).
2. The lowest crew-requirements of any ships, as their ships have the highest automation on board.
3. High weapon demands, high flux requirements, heavy emphasis on beams, long-range warfare and experimental weapons like EMP arcs/phase mines/tachyon lances/entropy arrays.
4. High focus on defensive technologies designed to mitigate damage altogether, e.g. phase drives or the paragon's fortress shield & deep flux pools.
5. Expensive as hell to maintain, repair and deploy. High tech ships are typically outnumbered by their foes, but this is often more than made up for by a focus on high-efficiency. Most high-tech weapons rarely miss, and while you may be able to field more bombers from massed Moras than Astrals, the Astrals are able to generate more combat-sorties with their teleportation array in that same time.

Whereas low-tech ships can operate on their own over long-distances, high-tech ships are really constrained by their logistical leashes so strongly benefit from having civilian logistical support. Even the "exploration" oriented Apogee and Odyssey come with low cargo holds for an explorator vessel. There is also a rather unique design difference between high-tech and the other ships. Whereas low tech and midline have a lot of fixed weapon mounts, where the direction the ship is of great significance, high tech weapon facings are normally amazing with wide arcs of fire. E.g. compare an Onslaught's forward focus to a Conquest's broadsides vs a Paragon's nearly 360* arcs of death-murder or an Astral's ability to launch rapid doom-strikes.

High Tech has some of the most fun and best frigates, especially in player hands. The wolf and the omen are a must-have at least in some small quantity in any fleet for claiming those initial objectives and pushing enemy frigates away. The Doom lives up to its name with an officer whose got the extra charges specialisation (the AI will just dump 1,000 phase mines per second on top of enemy formations, annihilating them all). As long as they don't get overloaded on flux they should survive fights easily enough. A paragon in player hands is scary just because of how well a player can typically abuse fortress shield/aggressive venting to really maximise their lance power.

Overall though I wouldn't say there's anything conclusively superior at everything. Each ship and design school has some area where they excel in. It makes sense for the remnants and the space doritos to be absolutely mortifying because those ones really do represent the pinnacle of a space-fighting warmachine with unrestricted tech & no crew survival concerns. But both for lore and gameplay reasons it would be very dull very quickly if there was just an optimal fleet composition that was optimal for every situation

[Mephansteras]

Yeah, I think my biggest issue with the Hivers is that you can just...use their stuff. Like, let it be OP, but don't just hand it to the players. Especially for weird bug stuff, that logically just shouldn't be easily usable by folks. That and the weapons sell for a stupid amount of credits.

But a lot of that is just me having opinions based on what I'd do as a modder with them. *shrug*

Yeah. Their ships feel OP in a way that isn't all that fun because they're just too good at everything. I like OP stuff like the Cathedral ships, the Invictus brick, 100 million derelict bricks equipped with every hull/armour mod buff & nothing but flamers. But stuff that is just "we're you but stronger better faster" isn't as interesting as low tech or midline designs where they're very much "if you come at us head-on without a plan we'll win."

I miss the Kingdom of Terra mod, which I feel was one which did the whole "living ships" angle in really fun ways without breaking game balance or design philosophy of core starsector. The beeshooter in particular was super fun. Incredibly high flux demanding anti-armour weapon, any successful hits on the enemy hull produced a wasp interceptor. But the thing had such a high ordnance point cost, high flux cost and trash anti-shield stats that if you didn't balance the beeshooter with railguns or something, you'd never get a chance to use it

Which one is your mod btw?

I've seen people using KoT in .96. Not sure if it's a bootleg or if it just works ok by upping the version number. Might have to hunt that info down and give it a whirl again, its a hilarious mod.


Stardust Ventures is mine. Currently working on trying to make my dedicated exploration ships a bit more interesting. One of the things I dislike a bit with the current state of the game is that you're usually better off slapping Survey equipment on a big freighter than running actual exploration ships, so I want to give them a reason to be used beyond "it already has that hullmod on it".

[Majestic7]

I've been playing Starsector since it was Starfarer and never really felt the need to use modded ships, because their balance tends to be dubious. Either they are completely redundant (that is, there are other ships that do that same exactly the same), completely overpowered or just feel wrong regarding the general feel of ships in Starsector. This is not a moral condemnation though, people who find modded insane ships fun are free to have fun with them.
 

[Mephansteras]

In my case it was a desire to a) have ships that exactly fit my playstyle, and b) learn a new skill (spriting). And flying around my own ships just feels good to me.

But I also enjoy mod ships, as long as I avoid the crazy OP stuff. A lot of the mods out there are actually really well balanced to vanilla.

[Loud Whispers]

I've seen people using KoT in .96. Not sure if it's a bootleg or if it just works ok by upping the version number. Might have to hunt that info down and give it a whirl again, its a hilarious mod.

I had some success just updating the the line of code from .95 to .96 but I did have some instability (though I can't tell if it was due to KoT or something else). I might give it another shot just because of how much fun the bee shooter is

Stardust Ventures is mine. Currently working on trying to make my dedicated exploration ships a bit more interesting. One of the things I dislike a bit with the current state of the game is that you're usually better off slapping Survey equipment on a big freighter than running actual exploration ships, so I want to give them a reason to be used beyond "it already has that hullmod on it".

I'll give it a spin. Currently I feel like besides the drone tender and the venture there isn't really a satisfactory adventure & exploration ship. But most of all I want to give your double thumpers a try XD

I've been playing Starsector since it was Starfarer and never really felt the need to use modded ships, because their balance tends to be dubious. Either they are completely redundant (that is, there are other ships that do that same exactly the same), completely overpowered or just feel wrong regarding the general feel of ships in Starsector. This is not a moral condemnation though, people who find modded insane ships fun are free to have fun with them.

Yeah, I agree 100%. But then there are those special modded ships that just fit in so well, you can forget they're modded ships. I've even had shocking moments where I realised a ship WAS a modded ship. Vayra's badger drone tender and the dire wolf destroyer for example are both ships I wish were vanilla. The badger is super amazing for nexerellin mining and the dire wolf destroyer is just a bigger wolf frigate. The Luddic Path enhancement mod also has that honoured spot of "we tried to add depth, not cheese" by giving more flavour to the luddic path. Nothing is OP, everything fits into the design/aesthetic of the base game neatly... And it adds prometheus tankers rigged to explode. Just incredible. These kinds of mods where they add more ships of a particular niche rather than "we gave the onslaught plasma cannons" get the most joy out of me. Though I do know one mod did the reverse and gave a paragon a billion heavy ballistics slots. Felt like tech-heresy of the highest order ;p

I also wish you could download the pilotable fighters of Arma Armatura or that basegame let you play as a fighter/bomber pilot. Ship packs like that which allow you to play the game in unique ways like smugglers/explorers/salvagers/galactic factories/kamikaze fleets/mass carriers/fighter pilots e.t.c. add loads of depth without stealing the thunder from the pretty nice base game flavour and balance. One thing I noticed with the pilotable fighters is that in AI hands, they tend to eat your command points due to a bug when they get injured (they trigger a civilian rally order). But in player hands, it is really unique being able to fly over ships, dock in friendly carriers or duel with enemy fighters [and run away from flak]

Cathedral ship also gets an honourable mention. It is just amazing as an ultra-late game prize. At 60 deployment points it is kinda inferior to more efficienct capitals like the pegasus or paragon but it is just... Magnificent. Auto-loading nuclear missile beast. Biggest downside is it's just not as interesting for players since it's such a slow beast and you can only directly control the phase mines & main guns

[Mephansteras]

Stardust Ventures is mine. Currently working on trying to make my dedicated exploration ships a bit more interesting. One of the things I dislike a bit with the current state of the game is that you're usually better off slapping Survey equipment on a big freighter than running actual exploration ships, so I want to give them a reason to be used beyond "it already has that hullmod on it".

I'll give it a spin. Currently I feel like besides the drone tender and the venture there isn't really a satisfactory adventure & exploration ship. But most of all I want to give your double thumpers a try XD

Hehe. Yeah, it's not at all a pirate themed pack, but I just had to dabble a bit into that with some rejected ship designs. Was fun to do, and the Walloper is indeed rather entertaining to use.

[Frumple]

Yeah, I think my biggest issue with the Hivers is that you can just...use their stuff. Like, let it be OP, but don't just hand it to the players. Especially for weird bug stuff, that logically just shouldn't be easily usable by folks. That and the weapons sell for a stupid amount of credits.

But a lot of that is just me having opinions based on what I'd do as a modder with them. *shrug*

For what it's worth, the FAQ has instructions on how to change basically all of that if that's how you want to play them. There's actually files included with the mod that stops dropping and/or cuts credit value of the junk, mostly just have to switch some file names around, maybe do some light editing. I've been doing a lot of easy mode runs lately (which I don't think effects the campaign level any?) with hiver active and unchained, and it's remarkable how long it takes for them to actually, like. Kill anyone. Except the freitag corporation, who I keep including 'cause they have supply/fuel generating ships -- those guys fold like flimsy origami paper. Like, hiver's hyperagressive but they rest of the factions hold up pretty well... though it's possible that's a consequence of all the other mods I'm running, heh.

I've been fiddling around with fairly significant mod mashes myself lately... can't go as wild as I'd like, because I just don't have the RAM for it, but it's usually a fair bit. Inevitably ends up with me having a fleet full of remnant ships, though, heh. Assuming I'm not doing abyss runs, anyway, then I end up with a fleet full of the fish ships instead :V

Hiver's definitely the less ridiculous biological faction I've been playing with lately, though. The prv starworks mod has these remnant equivalents called Agni that are just farcical. Pretty mean weapons, stupidly had to kill, nearabout hard-counters carrier spam (my second favorite spam in starsector, after missile), they're just a frikkin' menace. Not sure if I can get them as a ship, but they do drop their silly weapons (like a 7 OP small-something weapon that gives a stacking 5% boost to ballistic and energy range) occasionally. Their frigate size critters are adorably doofy looking, though. Like fish with googly eyes.

For fun, latest batch:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

{"enabledMods": [
  "pantera_ANewLevel40R",
  "AI-Retrofits",
  "adjustable_skill_thresholds",
  "Cryo_but_better",
  "aod_core",
  "Planetace_AstralAscensions",
  "automatedcommands",
  "timid_admins",
  "CaptainsLog",
  "combatactivators",
  "aaacrew_replacer",
  "diyplanets",
  "dex",
  "GrandColonies",
  "HIVER",
  "IndEvo",
  "JYD",
  "lw_lazylib",
  "logisticsNotifications",
  "lunalib",
  "exshippack",
  "MagicLib",
  "sun_new_beginnings",
  "nexerelin",
  "OMM",
  "planet_search",
  "progressiveSMods",
  "assortment_of_things",
  "swp",
  "sun_starship_legends",
  "stelnet",
  "Terraforming & Station Construction",
  "thong",
  "thongredacto",
  "which_industry",
  "aaamarketRetrofits",
  "prv",
  "shaderLib"
]}

Few other things I want to get around to adding that I haven't, though. There's apparently something that makes salvaging debris fields automatic, which'd be real nice. Hopefully there's something that makes it so sustained burn doesn't cut off when you do an active radar ping. Slow down's fine and dandy, just... stop making me turn the damn burn back on, come onnnnn.

Though if any of y'all are aware of something else that adds hullmods or ships that help with logistics that'd be grand to know about. Managing fuel and supplies is probably my least favorite part of playing the game at the moment, heh.

[Mephansteras]

Yeah, I think my biggest issue with the Hivers is that you can just...use their stuff. Like, let it be OP, but don't just hand it to the players. Especially for weird bug stuff, that logically just shouldn't be easily usable by folks. That and the weapons sell for a stupid amount of credits.

But a lot of that is just me having opinions based on what I'd do as a modder with them. *shrug*

For what it's worth, the FAQ has instructions on how to change basically all of that if that's how you want to play them. There's actually files included with the mod that stops dropping and/or cuts credit value of the junk, mostly just have to switch some file names around, maybe do some light editing.

That's good. I never messed with them too much and disliked what I saw in some playthroughs. Good to know they're easy to tweak.

Few other things I want to get around to adding that I haven't, though. There's apparently something that makes salvaging debris fields automatic, which'd be real nice. Hopefully there's something that makes it so sustained burn doesn't cut off when you do an active radar ping. Slow down's fine and dandy, just... stop making me turn the damn burn back on, come onnnnn.

You want the QoL Pack, it's got stuff like that in it.

Though if any of y'all are aware of something else that adds hullmods or ships that help with logistics that'd be grand to know about. Managing fuel and supplies is probably my least favorite part of playing the game at the moment, heh.

Forge Production can let you make your own stuff, which is handy when out away from the core worlds. Nomadic Life adds in some more stuff to do on planets with ruins, which sometimes lets you craft/loot/trade for fuel and supplies. There is also a new mod on the forums that lets you trade with scavengers for stuff, though I haven't tried it out yet.

I feel you on the management side. My own ships all have higher fuel efficiency, so that helps a good bit on the fuel front. And they have a built-in version of solar shielding, which cuts down on repair costs from storms. Doesn't eliminate those things as issues, but I have way fewer cases of "Oh no, I'm out of [X] and can't get more" and a lot more "I head out with full fuel and X amount of supplies and I should be just fine".

[Frumple]

Really, I don't tend to actually have much trouble keeping topped off in regards to supply/fuel (at least not unless I have very small or very large fleets), I just don't like having to constantly fiddle with it, heh. Sensation's similar to arrow management in a roguelike; just give me a friggin' quiver and let me play a character that doesn't have to be micromanaged to pick up reusable ammo, raaarrrgh. It's usually not hard to keep topped off, so stop making me worry about it! Do something more interesting than busywork! Stuff your food clock in your piehole! Etc., etc. I've had issues with that kind of thing since the first day a *band variant made me keep eating food rations and picking up sling ammo, actual decades ago.

I'll check out the qol thing, though. Looks like I actually had it open in another tab, I just hadn't gotten around to actually downloading it yet

[Great Order]

-snip-

I'd also point out a lot of midline ships are specialised. The frigates are a good example.

Brawler - Highly maneouvreable, good forward firepower, literally no PD. Tends to operate best as close support, or a dedicated harasser, suffering badly if it's directly engaged by multiple targets. Except the LP variant, that's just an aggressive ball of rage.
Centurion - Firepower and maneouvreability leave something to be desired, but good shields and the inertial dampeners mean it's a solid tank for its size, and the large field of fire provided by its many mounts pointing different directions means that it's got good PD potential.
Monitor - Absolute champion of tanking. 360 shields, a unique inbuilt system that lets them slowly vent hard flux with shields raised, and fortress shield ability. Two inbuilt flaks and slots for small PD mean that it can also avoid being swarmed by fighters looking to overwhelm its absurd defences.
Vigilance - Pathetic survivability. In a one-on-one with most ships it'll lose because it's slow and made of papier-mache. Given the right tanks, however, it serves as a solid support frigate, being able to bring a rapidly firing medium missile slot (Thanks to the fast missile racks) and a medium gun to the battle. Basically a mini artillery platform.

I think they're probably the most missile focused group. The Vigilance has a medium slot on a frigate, the Drover is a small missile platform-carrier hybrid at destroyer size, the Gryphon is literally dedicated to missile spam, and the Pegasus is the big brother of the Gryphon who realised that dedicated missile spam is cool when you're young, but grown ups also use guns.

Also shoutout to midline for my favourite ship, a CQC hammerhead with twin assault chainguns, two double autocannons and sabot racks for shield cracking. Great fun.

[Loud Whispers]

Hehe. Yeah, it's not at all a pirate themed pack, but I just had to dabble a bit into that with some rejected ship designs. Was fun to do, and the Walloper is indeed rather entertaining to use.

So I gave Stardust Ventures a spin, and I must say I love it. Nothing felt OP, it felt a lot like Sindrians if they fielded exploration fleets. All of the explorator fleets and tech felt like it had a great emphasis on striking first, hitting hard and fast, but having little sustainability. For dealing with derelicts, pirates and even small remnant ordos they fit the task. But noticeably in massive engagements with high armour/firepower/quantity fleets things get dicier because even if I had the flux to keep firing, my energy weapons ran out of ammo. For fun I took a station defence mission (a modded mission - very fun) of 760 enemy deployment points vs my 120 + the station. My stardust guys really struggled to deal with a luddic church/hegemony mixed fleet where it wasn't possible to flank because of the massive enemy fleet size. Our ships tickled the enemy whilst we distracted them long enough for the station to stay alive and do the real work; noticeably, despite not doing much to hurt the enemy, many of my ships were able to successfully disengage and retreat despite being heavily damaged. The little superfighter frigate is adorable and I love it; I loved running around like an absolute menace pestering everyone with my little energy brrttttttttts until a salamander flameouted my engine and I got dogpiled by a billion little broadswords.

I still managed to escape with 12% hull

Still haven't found any doublethumpers yet, or given the stardust battlecruisers a spin. I like that you can find the stardust ships in a lot of faction shipyards too as it makes acquiring their hulls without building your own colonies a lot more viable. All in all I like the mod and the ships have a good niche. I hope you don't mind if I have a suggestion though - but I don't think any mod has made a "scanner" ship and I thought an exploration mod would be perfect to introduce such a beast. Some kind of logistic ship that is just a giant active radar that gives +500 to scan range or something, but also +500 to detection range?

Brawler - Highly maneouvreable, good forward firepower, literally no PD. Tends to operate best as close support, or a dedicated harasser, suffering badly if it's directly engaged by multiple targets. Except the LP variant, that's just an aggressive ball of rage.
Centurion - Firepower and maneouvreability leave something to be desired, but good shields and the inertial dampeners mean it's a solid tank for its size, and the large field of fire provided by its many mounts pointing different directions means that it's got good PD potential.
Monitor - Absolute champion of tanking. 360 shields, a unique inbuilt system that lets them slowly vent hard flux with shields raised, and fortress shield ability. Two inbuilt flaks and slots for small PD mean that it can also avoid being swarmed by fighters looking to overwhelm its absurd defences.
Vigilance - Pathetic survivability. In a one-on-one with most ships it'll lose because it's slow and made of papier-mache. Given the right tanks, however, it serves as a solid support frigate, being able to bring a rapidly firing medium missile slot (Thanks to the fast missile racks) and a medium gun to the battle. Basically a mini artillery platform.

I think they're probably the most missile focused group. The Vigilance has a medium slot on a frigate, the Drover is a small missile platform-carrier hybrid at destroyer size, the Gryphon is literally dedicated to missile spam, and the Pegasus is the big brother of the Gryphon who realised that dedicated missile spam is cool when you're young, but grown ups also use guns.

Also shoutout to midline for my favourite ship, a CQC hammerhead with twin assault chainguns, two double autocannons and sabot racks for shield cracking. Great fun.

Monitor is actually a disgusting beast invented by Moloch himself. I absolutely love the little guy, I always like to deploy them in the second wave after the omens have taken all the objectives and the big ships have killed all of the enemy screens. Luddic path brawler is absolutely hilarious and for some reason has twice the flux dissipation rate of the Tri-Tachyon brawler. Why does the luddic brawler scream into the void? What secrets does it know?
The Gryphon is one of my all-time favourite ships despite me never having any real success using it. My heart desires a massive wave of gryphons saturating the map with a billion pilums, salamanders and squalls. But their deployment cost is really too high to do this :[

It is pretty fun at least to use them with the automated commands mod, that lets you auto-retreat any ship that runs out of missiles/CR/hull. Makes it a lot easier to keep your gryphons alive and use them as a kind of super skirmisher who vomits torpedoes, shoots and leaves. Still a waste of supplies but fun as hell

[Frumple]

My heart desires a massive wave of gryphons saturating the map with a billion pilums, salamanders and squalls. But their deployment cost is really too high to do this :[

Some mod or another (I think, anyway... I don't actually know what's vanilla or not at this point) I'm using has these lovely silo drones: 2 large, 3 medium missile slots, with autoforge, for 16 -- compared to the gryphon they're -3 small missile but +1 large and medium, for 4 less. Good stuff. They're automated, don't have shields, fairly slow and not very sturdy, but they're basically my favorite missile platform so far.

Only problem I have with them is that, well, you need cores in them to have missile specialization for the really good spam, and cores are remarkably stupid. Like, just in general they're suicidally dumb, but they're especially poor at understanding the concept of stand back and fire. Sometime earlier today I had a silo full of 1k+ range missiles rubbing its face up against a drone capital's ass when someone blew the capital up. Silo went with it in the explosion, because of course it did.

... there's a forbidden AI love fanfic in that, but good gods from the perspective of missile spam is it so, so very dumb.

If you don't have cores in them you can use auto commands to assign cautious or timid to them and they live a lot, lot longer, ha.

Honorable mention goes to MVS's stilettos, though. They're little missile frigates that are kinda' awesome -- four sets of infinite ammo small missiles built in, plus a small slot to do whatever with (I like crickets, so far) and a few other bits and bobs... and they have a hullmod that drops missile damage by 10%, but increases reload by 25%. Fairly speedy, not entirely flimsy, small enough to dodge well... their built in stuff isn't amazing and they don't really have the space or flux to do anything wild, but especially with a missile specialist driving it around they just spew out an unending stream of boom and it's wonderful. They're probably my second favorite missile ship, so far, heh.

[Mephansteras]

Hehe. Yeah, it's not at all a pirate themed pack, but I just had to dabble a bit into that with some rejected ship designs. Was fun to do, and the Walloper is indeed rather entertaining to use.

So I gave Stardust Ventures a spin, and I must say I love it. Nothing felt OP, it felt a lot like Sindrians if they fielded exploration fleets. All of the explorator fleets and tech felt like it had a great emphasis on striking first, hitting hard and fast, but having little sustainability. For dealing with derelicts, pirates and even small remnant ordos they fit the task. But noticeably in massive engagements with high armour/firepower/quantity fleets things get dicier because even if I had the flux to keep firing, my energy weapons ran out of ammo. For fun I took a station defence mission (a modded mission - very fun) of 760 enemy deployment points vs my 120 + the station. My stardust guys really struggled to deal with a luddic church/hegemony mixed fleet where it wasn't possible to flank because of the massive enemy fleet size. Our ships tickled the enemy whilst we distracted them long enough for the station to stay alive and do the real work; noticeably, despite not doing much to hurt the enemy, many of my ships were able to successfully disengage and retreat despite being heavily damaged. The little superfighter frigate is adorable and I love it; I loved running around like an absolute menace pestering everyone with my little energy brrttttttttts until a salamander flameouted my engine and I got dogpiled by a billion little broadswords.

I still managed to escape with 12% hull

Still haven't found any doublethumpers yet, or given the stardust battlecruisers a spin. I like that you can find the stardust ships in a lot of faction shipyards too as it makes acquiring their hulls without building your own colonies a lot more viable. All in all I like the mod and the ships have a good niche. I hope you don't mind if I have a suggestion though - but I don't think any mod has made a "scanner" ship and I thought an exploration mod would be perfect to introduce such a beast. Some kind of logistic ship that is just a giant active radar that gives +500 to scan range or something, but also +500 to detection range?

Yeah, sounds about right. They do best when you can flank and EMP out your opponents weapons. Ideally, they like to work in small groups so that when one needs to fall back and deflux they someone else can move up and tank.

Fighting larger fleets, especially low tech, gets a lot harder. Although having a few battlecruisers does wonders, since they can tank a lot of shots (even if they are a tad lighter than a Conquest). I've also had good luck running a missile heavy fleet. Had one run where I had 5 of the Twilight Defiance cruisers and a few of the Comet Tail frigates. A few specc'd with Streak MRMs to smack lighter ships and the rest specc'd around torpedoes and other heavy hitting missiles.

Glad you're enjoying them! Assuming you're on 8.1 you should find dedicated shops at Ilm, Agreus, and Baetis which makes getting the gear and ships a good bit easier as long as you have good Indy rep. And Indy planets in general tend to have a good amount of their stuff, since they use the ships more than anyone else.

As for the idea, I have pondered it. Might end up adding one of those in at some point. Right now I'm working on special systems for the exploration ships to aid you in unusual ways. Like, being able to do initial surveys from some distance away from the planet or having planets with ruins be highlighted on the map. We'll see how easy all of that turns out to be.