These changes are in as of 26/5/2018. If you find any bugs or irregularities immediately report them here. Feedback and everything else should be posted in the continuation of this thread.
Hello again, Discovery. As my first time doing this in Antonio's place expect some of this to look plagiarized (with his permission) and a little wonky. This is a relatively big patch with some pretty exciting stuff, including drone bays NEVERMIND, major balance changes to several ships, and a lot of fixes as well. As always, it is recommended that you view changes in FLStat - its tutorial as well as some term explanation (responsiveness) can be found here.
Small, agile, and with a large powercore, the Wyvern rivaled the Wraith for over-performance in group fights, all while sporting a 6th gun - its Rheinlandic counterpart's only drawback. Its responsiveness has been toned down heavily and its powercore reduced to a more reasonable level. It has seen a slight armor buff to compensate in duels, where it was performing pretty much as intended.
Titan
-Responsiveness: 0.5227 -> 0.5386
An already slow and unwieldly ship, the Titan's greatest advantage has always been its shape. Its thin center of mass gives it a great profile for dogfights where it was dodging just a little too well. While a possible model based solution is being discussed, the reduction in responsiveness should bring it more in line with its opponents such as the Odin and Rapier.
Tachi
-Guns: 6 -> 5
An agile fighter with a slim profile following its remodel, the Tachi was over-performing with no key weaknesses. Rather than creating a clone of the Wyvern, we opted to cut the number of guns on the Tachi down not only to create a more unique ship, but to fix its overlapping gun/cruise disruptor hardpoints underneath. As an aside, its codename slots have been changes, so make sure to remount your guns if you had codenames on a Tachi!
A large and slow civilian fighter, the Raven's Talon has always been a little underwhelming. This latest patch gives it a large buff to responsiveness, intended to fill the gap of dogfight capable civilian ships, alongside the Scraper and Starblazer. An Eagle or Sabre should be able to best these three ships in a duel, and as this is a big change we'll be keeping a close eye on these three ships.
The Scraper has always been an oddball. Following the formula of the Raven's Talon and Starblazer, the Scraper loses some of its turn speed in favor of reaction time and hull plating with the intent of making it a viable dogfighter. In addition, its ass-hugging camera has been adjusting to a much more reasonable distance, which should make the ship much less of a pain to fly.
The final ship in our groupfight lineup, the Starblazer is the smallest and most nimble with the weakest armor and powercore. Once another civilian duelist, we've chosen to rebalance the Starblazer as a dogfighter in the hopes of having a more varied civilian fighter selection. This ship is significantly smaller than the aforementioned two, and may prove to need further adjustment in the future.
Rabisu
- Center of mass moved 4 units rearwards.
The Rabisu had been over-performing for quite some time, and nobody could seem to figure out why. As it so happened, its center of mass was located almost directly on the tiny central area causing many shots to miss, especially during turns. The center of mass has been moved rearward towards its fat(ter) arse, and will hopefully create a much more balanced vessel. Demonstrations have been provided below. No octopi were harmed and/or armwrestled in the making of this change. We promise. Really.
Bringing the Recycler in line with other SHFs, it can now mount Novas, SNACs, etc. This is a pretty straightforward change that doesn't really require explanation.
The first in our capital ship lineup is our Typhoon. A slender, nimble ship which is already quite capable of dodging shots, the changes made to the the Typhoon are experimental in the realm of cruisers. Until this point, all cruisers have had a response time proportional to their turn rate, meaning every ship which turned faster responded faster. We opted to increase the turn rate of the Typhoon to help it out a bit in duels, but need increase its response time (which displays as a lower response time due to the turn rate buff). This should leave the Typhoon in the already good spot it's in now in group fights without making it overpowered in the process.
Kagutsuchi
- Turn rate: 20.63 -> 21.50
The Kagutsuchi has always been a little underwhelming, and this is another slightly experimental buff to make light cruisers/destroyers faster, helping them in duels without impacting their group fight performance too much. Unlike the Typhoon, we opted not to lower its response ratio in the process.
Crecy
- Hull: 260k -> 270k
- Mass: 750 -> 700
A master duelist, the Crecy's good turn rate and excellent weapon arcs meant it was capable of holding its own in a duel without much issue, but its strange shape and size meant it was under performing a little in groupfights. Originally slated for a responsiveness buff, it was found to have the mass of a heavy cruiser during the balancing process, a stat which affects all other handling stats, essentially making the whole thing a little bit slower to respond, strafe, et cetera. These changes should bring it more in line with the ships it is meant to combat, such as the Typhoon and Triumph.
The Triumph was always meant to be fast. With relatively poor weapon arcs, this ship is intended to be wielded like a blade, not a hammer. Its responsiveness has been standardized, maintaining the standard ratio as other destroyers and cruisers do, with the exception of the Typhoon.
If the Triumph was meant to be fast, the Penance was meant to be faster.
Hel
- Turn rate: 20.05 -> 21.50
This abnormally slow medium cruiser has gotten a substantial turn rate buff.
Harvester
- Mass: 800 -> 700
Another oddity, this light cruiser had the mass of a battlecruiser, and should be much more agile now. This is a fairly big change, and may call for another balance pass in the future.
Weapons Changes
While I'm not going to go into huge detail here as a lot of these changes were more on @Titan's side, we both agreed that capital missiles were under-performing and not filling the high risk, high reward role we had intended for them, particularly the silos. The Desolator, Apocalypse, and Nightmare silos have had their ammo reduced and damage increased to function on a sliding scale, with cruisers, battlecruisers, and battleships being able to deal totals of 15 million, 25 million, and 35 million damage with all of their torpedoes respectively - if they manage to land them.
As an aside, we are aware of the issue regarding nomad pulses, and you can expect their implementation soon along with some other goodies including revamped hybrid weapons, and some special additions for our more technologically oriented factions in general.
If you made it this far then congratz, you've read through my plagiarized Antonio style patch note thread. I hope to do these patch notes every time balance changes happen, regardless of who is involved with the balance team. A huge kudos to the people listed below (besides myself of course), we couldn't have done it without them!