https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2089498315

This is a comparison between the two base versions, they are all given the best Argon equipment and annihilators for L turrets and hunter for M ones (except yours has the two antimatter ones).

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2089498564

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2089498904

These are the two I have ingame at the moment, with a more realistic and varied setup (the MK3 one has extensive shipmods applied though, so its stats are a bit higher than the base ones would be, should be around 30%). The Ship Pack one, as you can see, would have almost twice the firepower if both were unmodded (not surprisingly, as it has several more L turret hardpoints, for a total of 18 turret banks between L and M ones). Honestly, as Leon said, the Ship Pack one is overpowered, like the Starcatcher they are supposed to really be one of a kind at most, I would keep yours to more balanced levels as it's the Ship Pack the one having an issue here rather than the opposite imo. A Ship Pack Arawn basically can come out on top of a battle against an I and some Ks/Vs alone, which is a bit too much (the VRO "vanilla" Titan doesn't fare much worse though).

The difference about the SP Arawn that I like and would like to see in yours too is, as mentioned, better shielding for the subsystems: the SP one has L shields even on some M turret banks, and if there's one thing I find annoying is when the repair drones come out to repair a subsystem while you are still in combat: they keep getting in the way, making it sometimes even impossible to apply thrust, and once the combat is over you often can't really engage the travel drive until they have finished repairing (which means you kinda have to teleport away and order your ship remotely if you don't want to just sit there doing nothing for 20 minutes). I know it kinda is "realistic", but from a gameplay point of view it's mighty annoying: and it happens often anyway, with the weaker shielding on your variants it's only gonna be even more frequent.

Got ninjaed in the meanwhile, obviously the screens are from the version immediately before your latest tweaks. They should give you an idea anyway :P

Yeah thank you a lot, i am adding shields to some arawn mk3 groups.
After that, you can compare again, but i dont want to buff the arawn so it gets overpowered again. :-)

What about to increase missile storage a bit on mk1 variants and decrease missiles and maybe speed of the ships for mk3 variants?
So mk1 variants are still viable?

That could be a thing, yeah, the stronger ships being more sluggish would make sense, but I wouldn't go overboard with it: you sure have quite the ample space for manoeuvre when it comes to speed (your engines seem quite faster than normal VRO ones, my MK3 Arawn reaches 10k travel speed after chassis and engine modding, while the Ship Pack one goes no higher than ~7500: if you consider 7500 is also the top speed for a similarly shipmodded Nemesis, the carrier being faster than the corvette is indeed a bit weird), but when it comes to agility it takes relatively little to make such cap ships too annoying to fly yourself. As you can see in the previous comparison screenshots your MK3s have just a bit more yaw, pitch and roll, but they aren't far from that average, and I wouldn't go much below that. Nor I would increase the MK1 agility to compensate on the other end, as the models are still the same, very huge, and there would be the risk of them looking silly.

At the end of the day, anyway, there's a bit of a conundrum as MK1 and MK3 variants are the same models, so while the best thing gameplay wise would be to have them assume completely different roles with wildly different stats, having two ships that look the same being so much different would probably feel a bit strange. Can't really think of anything else that's pivotal and that you can extensively modify between them other than the aforementioned hangar space to make a carrier-battleship distinction.
Except, maybe, another interesting route you could take could be a distinction in weaponry: you could make the MK1s have more M turrets and very few L ones, so they'd become antifighter platforms, while the MK3 would sacrifice M turrets in favor of more L ones, taking the role of anticap-ships, but needing a twin MK1 to protect them from fighter swarms. That could be a good approach, very reminiscent of X3 (with Litcube's Universe especially). MK1 would still be objectively "weaker" than MK3s, but they'd have their specific usefulness, and two identically looking ships mounting different weapons wouldn't feel as weird as them having completely different base stats would.

They could perhaps also benefit from more differentiation between the models themselves, though: like, for instance, the Taranis could be the faster but weaker one (and with a very small hangar), while the Arawn would be the slower megacarrier, while let's say the Bayamon could become the sluggish mobile fortress. The Sucellus would be your glass cannon all focused on the forward guns and so on. There's already a bit of that of course, but it doesn't look very pronounced, and most ships feel more or less equivalent.

Oh, and yeah, missile availability could be another thing to tweak to make them different, but unless I'm an exception I'd say most people don't waste too much time with them on cap ships, as their logic for deciding which ones to use on turrets is... flawed to say the least (IE: I had two cruise missile hardpoints on my previous Arawn, but when carrying different kind of missiles once the AI decided to fire one kind, then it wouldn't switch anymore. So it would often end up firing flail swarms at cap ships or torpedoes at fighters: useless and rage inducing in both cases, so I ended up scrapping the missile turrets and got two more heavy lances, that being hitscan are great against both kind of targets).

Honestly, that's another thing I would go for making one of the models unique rather than a difference between MK1s and MK3s accross the board: a relatively weaker - in firepower - ship that however can carry A LOT of missiles, so it has the intended role of a mobile missile platform. Won't really change how the AI sometimes decides to make you want to tear your hair off, but it would be a concern only for that ship itself. And if you don't want for that reason to play with missiles much, then it's just one ship that's less interesting to you, rather than an entire class.

Yeah ofc you are right. If it would be easy to create new/changed optical ships, then i would a lot of diversity and new ships to the game. :-)
I have many things on my paper what i want to do...but it is a matter of time.
Even replace M turrets with L ones takes some time, because you have to replace these in blender, export the coordinates and change this in the xml files.
So i think i will stick with the missile amount thingy first to bring a little more difference between mk1 and mk3.
And if i got more spare time, then i would create more differences.

Absolutely, there's no rush indeed, just brainstorming long term ideas, for the moment it's already pretty fun as it is.

BTW, while I was at it giving a try to the other ships as well, I noticed something I'm not sure is intended: most unique front guns have both a MK1 and MK3 variant (like the TB cannon for the Eos or the B-Ray of the Eternal Dawn), but their relative MK3 ships can only mount the MK1 variant, the MK3 doesn't appear as an option, even though you can buy the blueprint and see it in the encyclopedia. Might be you simply disabled them as the MK1 variants seem already pretty powerful (and indeed looking at the MK3 B-Ray stats in the encyclopedia, it looks waaaaay OP :P ), or perhaps you restricted them to the protectors, just thought I'd mention it in case it wasn't intended.

Another kinda odd thing about the Eos: while it obviously has those 4 "arms" meant to be cannons, it can only mount 2 TB cannons, on the two left arms. So, when it shoots only from that side while the right side "cannons" do nothing, it looks and feels a bit weird.
I guess it was meant for balance reasons (4 front cap ship guns could definitely be a bit overkill given the player is much better than the turret AI at aiming). If that's so, I suppose it would look a bit better if the cannons were rigged to be 1 per each side, instead of both on the left. One would still wonder why the upper or lower cannons don't fire, but it would at least be more symmetrical.

Buuuut this could very well be my underlying OCD talking, so heh, just a nitpick :P

Yeah, it is intended, that some mk3 ships have mk1 B-Ray because of balance.
The Sucellus mk3 has the mk3 variant and only one, so it would be op if the taranis gets the mk3 variant too, because it have 2 slots for a weapon.

Yeah, got this fixed already with the eos cannons. You are right, first it has 4 weapons, but it is too much. It will be fixed in the next version.

Anyone else having AI Docking issues with the Titan? Every time I try and dock more than 4 fighters, i'm left with the rest 'bouncing' around outside - trying to come in through the side or edges//

In the meantime I've managed to build all the (MK3) ships and give each one a very quick tour. A few more oddities I've noticed:

- Another little simmetry quirk: the dorsal turret bank of the Taranis has 6 turrets, 4 on the right side and 2 on the left.

- The Sucellus as well seems to be able to mount only the mk1 variant of the TB cannon.

- Both are quite smaller and proportionally a bit less powerful than the other ships, which is absolutely fine by me as it adds to variety (they work perfectly as heavy escorts), but they cost just about the same as the others: perhaps their price/resource requirements could be toned down accordingly?

- The front cannon of the Eternal Dawn is absolutely awesome and a joy to play with (even if a bit OP in the player hands, but what isn't in this game?), however it fires very well below the crosshair. It might be inevitable due to how the ship is designed and where the bridge is positioned at, but if something could be done to better align it with the crosshair it would feel less clunky, as at the moment you have to aim well over the target and sometimes even by doing that (especially when the target is a bit too close) the laser fires under it, missing the shot.

- I know you've received the kinda opposite report a few days ago in the main comment section, but... to me it seems the ANMAT turrets have virtually no sound when firing. Again might be a result of where they are placed in comparison to the bridge position, but while all the other turrets have their ooomphs and pew pews, on most ships I've tried them they seemed totally silent (or at least so muffled that they are completely covered by the other sounds in battle). Feels a bit strange especially because of how much visual and audio feedback they then give once they hit the target. I definitely don't want an artilley cacophony like some other weapon mods, I still have PTSD from the flak artillery arrays in X3, but a little more for such otherwise imposing weapons would be justified imo.
BTW, about the explosion effect they have once they hit: I'm not sure if it could be because I also run the Fire and Smoke mod and they interact (I need to try without it), but between the shockwave and the smoke, they sometimes are a bit too much, to the point of almost completely covering the enemy cap ship if it's far enough.

@Sentinel-Ghost: I rarely bother to actually give fighters to my cap ships because of how squishy they are in OOS combat (and thus both useless and a pain to replace), so I can't tell you much about AI behaviour on the Titan. But I can tell you it's not part of this mod, the Titan is in base VRO itself, so... *shrug :P

Originally posted by Sentinel-Ghost:

Anyone else having AI Docking issues with the Titan? Every time I try and dock more than 4 fighters, i'm left with the rest 'bouncing' around outside - trying to come in through the side or edges//

Docking should be improved with X4 v3.2. I know the strange docking attemptions from other ships, where the fighters stutter around during docking or try to dock through the bottom of the ship to land at the upside positioned dock.

Originally posted by Kadatherion:

@Sentinel-Ghost: I rarely bother to actually give fighters to my cap ships because of how squishy they are in OOS combat (and thus both useless and a pain to replace), so I can't tell you much about AI behaviour on the Titan. But I can tell you it's not part of this mod, the Titan is in base VRO itself, so... *shrug :P

oh... could have sworn its was from ROR. ooops.:P