in testing with a friend, I found that the laser cannons (the weapons of the navy that fire projectiles) are completely ineffective against ships that are too thick. I've fired over 2,000 hull lasers at an armor-shredded ocello, and only did 3% of the total damage potential; dealing in total 7k damage.

this appears to be because the hull laser has a max penetration depth of 25 meters. I didn't realize that this entire time, laser cannons do very little damage over a battle despite their high damage on paper, because ships pointing their front at my vessels end up not taking any further damage after modules deeper than 25m are destroyed. I had previously thought that I was consistently getting around 10% of the damage potential or less because I was not armor shredding effectively.

armor lasers have a penetration depth of 0 meters but appear to do damage to internals regardless, but only a very little amount, and it seems to also not go far enough to damage modules deeper inside a ship.

to reiterate, the hull lasers have high damage on paper, but modules that are too deep will never be affected by them, leaving the navy ships completely reliant on beams to destroy ships past their surface-level modules.

I'm not sure what the intention of the design is, though I have a few suggestions in mind. the gimmick of the faction is neat but hard to conveniently apply. I understand that the navy as it is now is designed to shred the armor of enemies before destroying them with high damage low penetration projectiles.

however, with automatic targeting, ships that are simply large, or broadsiding, cause the armor shredding process to be slow and random. manually targeting is out of the question with both the shooting ship and target ship on the move and constantly rotating. furthermore, with the issue that hull lasers have a limited ability to penetrate, causing them to completely stop dealing any damage to modules that are too deep, this makes them consistently ineffective against ships that simply point their fronts or their most voluminous parts at the navy ship.

an alternate way the navy could work is that the armor lasers, the purple projectiles, could be repurposed to behave like vanilla armor piercing shells. they could potentially keep the armor shredding properties, perhaps in a lesser capacity, or forgo it entirely. armor piercing lasers could have a longer range but less damage, but still be able to destroy ships independently.

hull lasers, the orange projectiles, I could imagine making them shorter ranged and higher damage; and cause damage the same way vanilla high explosive impact missiles do. this would eliminate the problem of targets simply being too large to be damaged deeper than the surface.

both would either have sufficient armor piercing to immediately damage ships, or both can shred armor in order to eventually damage ships without needing to exclusively use one or the other just based on the state of the enemy's armor.

the other alternative I have in mind is simply changing the way the lasers deal damage so that they aren't consistently defeated by the enemy being too physically large. to solve the problem of ships having too much surface to effectively armor shred without changing how the lasers work, armor lasers could have more spread and a large armor shredding radius.

I feel that the laser cannons fall off hard compared to their beam weapons from a combination of armor stripping being too long and tedious of a process against targets with a lot of surface area, and the issue that ships with too large hulls simply not taking any module damage deeper than their skin.

with the aforementioned issue of "skin-deep" damage aside, in my opinion, having a method to destroy ships without having to wait for all of their armor to be shredded due to random targeting would be very healthy for the faction.
it could be a new set of ammo types altogether if you wish to keep the armor shredding into low pen high damage gimmick. however, unless if the ease of armor shredding is increased greatly, I don't see this being effective against large targets such as liners, broadsiding warships, or modded ships that are larger than the norm.

This is grand and I will be taking this on board, I would however say that in future you only need to bring me the problems, not solutions. Working out how to fix the problems is my job, just make sure that I'm aware of issues as they arise. Thank you again!

alright, I'll keep to bringing up problems only. you're welcome, I appreciate the response, and I look forwards to seeing how things are developed further

is it intentional that there is nowhere to mount the Fleet Command CIC on the Instigator command cruiser? It's a 10x1x12 compartment, and its largest compartment is 6x3x8, and this makes me curious since the FC CIC is specially designed for the Instigator, in the description.

on another note, the Trespasser corvette is said to be able to mount either weapons or a shield depending on its role, though there isn't currently a shield small enough to fit on the corvette and also be powered even when not fitting weapons.

I just thought to ask on these topics, noticing some things during fleet designing. I understand the mod is still heavily WIP and doesn't yet cover all the bases

as a follow up on the previous remarks about speed, it seems that across the board acceleration of the ships is wack. in testing the Invader cruiser, show hidden stats states that with 3 agility drives, its flank speed is ~41.3m/s, and its cruise speed is ~27.5. it should take 43.91 seconds to reach that velocity.

in reality, at full throttle and driving forwards, it takes 1 minute and 34 seconds just to reach its cruising speed.
on flank speed it takes 46 seconds to reach cruise speed, which appears to be a lot closer to what the stats mod indicates.

driving forwards at flank throttle it takes 1 minute and 36 seconds to reach flank speed, and 50 seconds to slow to a halt, still on flank.

2 minutes and 35 seconds of flank throttle to reach cruise when strafing sideways.
1 minute and 34 seconds of flank to reach cruise when reversing, same time as if it were driving forwards on full throttle to reach cruise.

these tests I've only done on the Invader cruiser so far, though I feel similar feelings when using other ships: that their acceleration is anemic, and their top speeds are not reasonably attainable in a short span of time mid-combat, whereas vanilla ships can certainly expect to go from stationary to top speed in well under a minute regardless of which direction they're going; especially forwards.

not only does it take a long time for the Invader to accelerate forwards, when going anywhere that isn't forwards, it will practically never reach top speed in a reasonable timeframe, let alone cruise speed.
I've noted acceleration rates, even moving forwards, of less than 1m/s^2, which is entirely outpaced by vanilla ships despite the well above-average top speeds of Colonial ships. The ships handle as if they are twice their actual size or larger than that, in both acceleration and rotation, even with multiple expensive agility drives. With stock drives lacking bonuses, I cannot imagine how much worse the problem would become for the Invader in particular.

across multiple battles both pve and pvp, I've noted that the Colonial navy's ships are practically incapable of evasive maneuvers even as far out as 9-11km away from the enemy due to their insufficient thrust and authority over their trajectory.
they are also notably vulnerable to having their ankles broken, where other ships, even vanilla, can outmaneuver them in point-blank range if distance is not controlled carefully. often times my ships are mainly saved by their wide firing arcs but it's tough to maintain maximum firepower against someone in my face.

while Colonial ships can back up to help this, even vanilla ships can accelerate forwards faster than they can react. side-strafing is also a solution on paper, but as mentioned previously, Colonial ships have issues accelerating forwards, let alone in any other direction aside from that. they are still handily out-flown by non-Colonial vessels.

this problem is only exacerbated further by the high points cost of Colonial ships, which often leaves them outnumbered by ships even of similar size/mass and role. with the already-high difficulty of maneuvering against more agile opponents in duels, it becomes an even steeper battle against multiple opponents as they are easily overwhelmed by hostile maneuvers.

smaller Colonial ships don't suffer from this as much as the larger vessels, however they still experience much the same issue, and are similarly incapable of evasive maneuvers or quick action compared to other ships, vanilla and modded alike, of similar size and role; even while using agility drives.

the anemic nature of the acceleration and rotation rates of the Colonial fleet appears counterproductive against their current arsenal that's specially designed for knife fights at point-blank range where high agility is vital on top of the speed needed to get there in the first place.

on a more subjective note, their clumsy and floaty flight feels conflicting with their high tech aesthetic that appears suited for uniform and efficient omni-directional movement compared to vessels that must use chemical thrusters pointed every which way to maneuver; let alone the limitation that these rocket thrusters for maneuvering are often far smaller and less powerful than their main engines.

Hey, sorry to trouble you. I know firsthand how tough maintaining a mod is especially when adding your own assets. But I appreciate what you're doing.
Just wanted to point out two of the more major issues in balancing I found.

1 - Shields

Shields feel a bit unfinished in the current implementation.
It feels less like a shield and moreso like a free damage sponge.
Think Halo vs Saxton Hale


Makes fighting them more of a DPS check and fights more one dimensional
breaking a lot of tactics and vanilla balance.


Maybe could potentially replace the shields with much weaker but fast recharging ones to encourage skirmishing? It would also give the ships a very unique identity in playstyle

Probably shouldn't go any lower than 15s on the delay though.


2 - Ship Maneuverability and handling

The ships feel quite clunky to use especially towards the more large ships.
They have extreme top speeds but are incredibly slow to accelerate. Taking minutes to accelerate to top speed with the only real upgrade for drives.

This causes them to feel incredibly unresponsive which is unsatisfying. And less like the advanced spaceships they are.

There are also not a lot of meaningful drive upgrades.

If wanting to streamline the balance, maybe you could balance around ship speed.
Making the saucers handle consistently well(Angular turnrate) but being more limited based on their classes for their top speed.

As for drive options, the goal would be providing unique options that change significantly how the ships fly to increase creativity and build variety.

Just as a couple ideas but:

Maybe have a drive that increases forward/back acceleration but significantly decreases side thrusting. Causing the ships to have a more linear movement like a plane that encourages strafing runs.

And opposite of that, a drive option that increases strafe acceleration but reduces the forward/back acceleration and top speed(to compensate for extra usefulness of strafing)

Along with the usual more minor options. Ones that trade acceleration for top speed. Or speed for turnrate.


Just giving some ideas
Ones that should hopefully be easily implementable by ripping vanilla properties.

@anomaly I'll add this to the ongoing docket for Navy feedback

@RDC The major issues you're finding in balance is because the Navy isn't being balanced against vanilla or vanilla aligned factions, they will be exclusively balanced against the Marduk Clan Collective. However I will be revisiting manouverability issues as you aren't the only one to bring this up. As I said to Anomaly earlier, what I need help with is finding the problems, finding solutions is my job so you don't need to make suggestions. Thank you again.

I appreciate the response. I look forwards to how the mod develops further. as of now the acceleration and rotation problems are the most major thing I'm noticing aside from the previously mentioned laser problem. I'll take note of anything else that comes up that I haven't mentioned already

another small thing, in the in-game mod manager, Colonial Navy does not include Fly Forward Dependency as a dependency, which also messes up auto-sort

It doesn't? Wtf... Although that might explain why it's not been working all this time...