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Mil-Spec Ion Quad
With a start you leap back, instinct putting enough space between you to drive a bus
through. Your blaster is in hand bucking with the recoil of half a dozen shots,
which the Alien shrugs off. A loud crack behind you and the Alien shudders, then
looks at you. You find yourself on the floor, having blacked out for a second.
There’s an exchange of blaster fire inside punctuated with...gunshots? The alien
runs out, leaving a trail of rust- colored metal-oxydizing droplets on the floor.
You follow. A brown-out in the spaceport and a big flash beyond its confines
reveals a trio of spacecraft lifting skyward. “Stop’em,” is the major’s call over
your comm.
To make a long story short, I doubled the jump values of larger ships because I didn’t think that small fighters should have similar jump ranges. I also reasoned that larger ships would have more fuel.
You’ll find that I’ve doubled the armor values of purpose built capital-scale warships. I took a look at the Confed frigate and Kestrel and saw that they had the same armor rating. The Confed frigate, however, is 50% larger. So I changed the value from 50 to 100. The other capital warships followed.
Lasers now move at 2000, not the original speed of 875 as in standard EV.
Proton bolts are nearly as fast.
Neutron blasters are now primary weapons and have velocities of 1500, not 325. Watch out for capital ships, as they have clusters of these or similar weapons with a number equal to the max cannons available for the type. Sluggish cruisers have swivel gun variants.
When I increased the speeds of energy weapons, I had enough flexibility to alter the sorrowful mass driver, a large weapon that fires slow rounds and has slow repetition rates. Mass drivers should be deadly and also quite large, given their mechanics. Slugs now move at 900 and have good, long ranges. It’s still a 40-ton outfit though. But the rate of fire is now 5 times what it was. It’s quite effective at shredding armor, but still not as effective against shields as lasers. You’ll definitely want one of these now.
Space bombs and launchers are now static mines and bays. They haven’t changed much, except for the graphics and duration. I set duration for 32000. You can only get 1 launcher for them now, which is 50 tons. But the bombs have no mass requirements in and of themselves as the space for them is accounted for in the bay.
If you like bays, you’ll like this plug. Most fighters are available in bays now, except for the Defender. Bays now generally hold four fighters each and range in size from 50 to 70 tons. There's a nasty rumor that the Lightning bay may be acquired and purchased in 'Pale', but I don't know if that's true. ;-)
Cargo and mass expansions don’t have any wastage now. Meaning ten tons of space will get you ten tons of cargo or mass expansions.
For the most part, quantity limitations are gone on primary weapons. If you want 8 laser cannons in your ship, you may buy them. You are still limited by the maximum number allowable per platform, though. Missile launchers and similar weapons are limited to two.
Fighters are more heavily armed. On average, they will have a few more missiles/torpedoes and a couple of more cannons each. I had to update the performance of fighters in a big way because of the modifications I madeto weapon physics and the heavy emphasis of primary armaments on warships in 'Pale'. Fighters are a little tougher now, and they balance rather well with the modifications I've made. I've been dissapointed with how quickly they disintegrate when under fire by cruiser- grade warships. To rectify this, fighter sprites were made smaller in v1.6. They're now 24 pixel sprites. And fighters are more survivable because they're much harder targets.
