Ambitious Entrepreneur gamestart:
1. Could add some additional map knowledge to match the background of having travelled from Albion.
2. The CVs have no Architects and, like the third Taranis, they're not listed in the start's description. Without knowing the locations of any friendly stations, and the nearest vanilla ones being in a non-highwayed zone or different zone, it's a bit of a pause getting them setup (plus dealing with them following or removing them all from Squad). Especially when otherwise, the player's character went to all that trouble to bring all those building materials along
A lack of Architects is the only barrier I can think of for a player going totally independent as from a quick look, it seems like they have enough materials to build a capital shipyard and with mods the available mods for NPCs on player stations and ship recycling, they could harvest all they needed for an empire from local materials and other Faction's ships.
Apart from time, if they were to contain
After gamestart, I did a tour of of the 5 vanilla zones in Blurred Reflection sector and although there were several HV miners with escorts in the sector, I didn't see any Split ships. Later, on return from exploring Sigma Sector, Sixth Scripture contained several Split capitals and fighers so maybe it the initial situation was randomly quiet or perhaps there's an appreciable delay on gamestart before they start spawning.Changelog wrote: 7) Split will try to control their home sector and defend it (ALREADY IMPLEMENTED. NEEDS BALANCING AND ATTENTION TO DETAIL)
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3) Split now strongly defend their home (Blurred Reflection and Sixth Scripture) - Split can also now be completely eliminated. For now, they will never leave Blurred Reflection. They will come into conflict with Heretic Vanguard (who look for resources in their space) and Xenon.
3. Resource distribution within Blurred Reflection leads sector-level mining of Nividium and Crystals within Prevarication, which is the home of the jump beacon. Mentioning just in case that wasn't intentional as it seems like there will be a lot of mutually-hostile traffic through that zone. If unintentional, perhaps swaping the distributions around with Prevarication would fit.
4. The following popped up on the top-left of my screen while in Blast Quarry, shortly after a notification of a station being destroyed in Lookout Alpha. Not sure what if coincidental but o or not, although I don't think I was doing anything budget- or probe-related (just exploring to generate feedback).
"Reserve:
5 Probe
100,000,000 Cr."
5. HV in Sigma Sector feel a bit close to Argon in Alpha Quadrant. It feels like a no-mans-land of empty zones would be nice but I think it would be difficult to achieve. I guess that is partly restricted by wishing to keep HV in Sigma Sector and supplying enough wares for their economy. The one-ways highway system also seems a bit unfortunate for HV and Argon having a sense of separation, particularly for M ships and their escorts.
Would it be possible and desirable to re-route 1-way highways to Inviting Colossus and Blast Quarry to come from Aged Duckwork, or perhaps remove them and make others bi-directional?
6. HV look like they can make some of everything an Argon-esque economy needs - nice one.
7. On return from exploring Sigma Sector, Sixth Scripture contains the wrecks of two Midirs (liquid miners) and a HV combat capital (escort, I guess) that are aligned to suggest they flew there from the jump beacon in Prevarication, or maybe after mining in Twisted Faith. Since Twisted Faith contains the same materials as The Sixth Scripture and Twisted Faith is closer to the jump beacon, their presence in The Sixth Scripture seems odd. Maybe, perhaps only after jumping, mining AI defaults to the zone at the top of the list of zones rather than the closest one? Seems a bit unfortunate for both HV and the Split. While in-zone, a Fedlem with Chimera escort arrived too but I didn't see what direction it came in.
When I explored Sable Vortex, there was a HV Dwalin with ore, silicon and crystals returning towards the super highway to Blurred Reflection. Not sure travelled to Sable Vortext or spawned there but it seems far from home and carrying materials that are closer to home. In vanilla, player station-managed mining ships are meant to be able to harvest anywhere within a system whilst using ores closest to their station's sector. I think I read that NPC miners were moved from stations to be free miners so I guess they don't have a home zone/sector to prioritise by distance.
8. The danger zone in Study Crusader looks like it Could be problematic for M traders and miners leaving Blast Quarry, assuming they were not killed in Alpha Quadrant. hehe. It could be nice to swap the stations Blast Quarry with the danger zone in Sturdy Crusader. Although on the other hand, that could conflict with point 9. I sent a Gigurum Container and a Nudung through Sturdy Crusader while I was OOZ as a test and they took zero damage moving between the Study Crusader highways but that sounds like a [vanilla] bug (while I was in-zone for test 2, the Nudung (108 km) took damage and was at 54% hull after going through).
09.
Spoiler
Show
According to the Lino's recent screenshot the next update/DLC could be based at least in part within Sigma Sector (I won't describe rationale in case wishing not to avoid further spoilers). I've no idea if that could matter to CWIR or how it may play out but it's something to keep an eye on and perhaps a reason for postponing further major changes in Maelstrom (e.g. Split).
10. Seems to be working fine - stations sell new ships and I had a popup saying RoC were about to build an outpost somewhere.
11. Notes on the new HV combat capitals:
Caveat: apart from Hades, I mostly went on in-game stats and quick visual comparisons with each, and with vanilla ships (so hull shielding unknown).
- CVs for sale in Sunken Frigate have a purchase price of zero Cr and no listed base price on their info page.
- The purchase costs of Behmoth, Chimera, Hades in Eternal Dawn are 13-24% less than their base costs compared to 4-5% for the vanilla OL XL combat capitals. In the above Ambitious Entrepreneur gamestart I observed a similar trend. Vanilla base costs for L and XL ships are normally ~ 2-times the cost of all construction materials in case that helps to identify a potentially unknown cause.
- Hades has L combat ship-ranged radar (24 km).
- Harpy and Wraith have XL combat ship range (36 km).
-Wraith has same base cost as a Heavy Sul and although it has 9% less hull, it can can mount 44% more HIT/MAs. Perhaps it is a little undervalued.
- Harpy cost seems fine to me (stats a bit like a cross between vanilla Suls with interesting weapons and a price above the Heavy Su)l.
- Behemoth cost seems fine to me (less sub-capital defences but higher hull, higher anti-capital weapon potential and higher cost than a Fulmekron).
- Chimera cost seems OK in the sense that it is kind of like an Olmekron counterpart along the lines of the Behemoth - no anti-figher guns and less hull for 33% less cost. It feels a bit more effective than it's 25% cost increase over a Heavy Sul but that is probably more an issue with the way cost-effectiveness scales in vanilla across size classes.
- I purchases a Hades to have a look since it was the one I felt least unable to assess on paper being as it was a carrier. Wow, she was a surprise
Wow, that's a lot of surface elements. Maybe a bit too much shielding at 13.6 M but I guess the cost is OK at Fulmekron-levels. As with Suls, undocking with it while moving can painful if the Skunk starts bouncing up and down.12. The Lepton Armadillo has a slightly higher base cost and purchase cost than the Lepton trader. I think that makes sense the same trend is seen with the Sucellus variants. However, although the Stromvok, Stromvok Arblast and Stromvok Fury have increasing base costs matching increased potency of weapon mounts, they have identical purchase prices. Overall, it seems like something unintended is occurring somewhere.
13. The Argon Capital Shiyard in Eternal Dawn sells the same ships as the HV shipyard in Sigma Sector (Harpy, Wraith, Behemoth, Chimera and Hades). Going by earlier posts, I guess that could be partly unintentional. Although I am inexperianced with this mod so I am not sure.
14. HOA SY in Far Out: Scaldis Battlestar may be a bit over-priced at x2 vanilla Scaldis* (cost is identical to a Taranis). Although they come with 2 HIVI turrets built in and they are lovely, I think they have the similar to or lower performance than PLASMA/JETs (same DPS, 1.6 km more range but projectiles may miss), which only cost ~1M Cr each. In line with other RoC ship varients, a higher base cost makes sense to me but maybe not 2x. A HOA comparison would be the Sul Mobile Weapons Platform, which is only 15% more than the base Heavy Sul.
*Caveat: in-game encyclopaedia doesn't show hull shields so not sure of all stat comparisons.
15. Similarly to 6 above, the Light Sul and it's variants have differing base costs (higher for non-vanilla) but identical purchase prices.
General comment on player-owned shipyards:
16. I noticed recently that the cost of the materials required to build multi-race, civilian ships (Gigurums and M miners) was about 50% lower in OL than ALbion/DV. Hymir example variations being 2 vs 5 Pod Gens and 2 vs 4 Fusion Reactors. Purchase prices are about the same so I only noticed this when I looked at the methods on display in-game when an OL SY was building such ships. I don't know if this has any bearing on the price we can get from selling ships we make since I don't have a SY yet but I thought I would mention it in case it could have an impact. The issue may extends to the value of the materials needed to make other other S and M ships ship in OL (e.g. fighters) relative to thier purchase prices but I've not checked.
Edit: Updated #2.
