In .41 we have a new tech tree.    Lets analyze it and see how it goes...

First of all this is a fairly pricey tree, same as the Energy Weapons one.

Rocket PD - What an oddball weapon!  Unguided rockets against enemy fighters, missiles?  WTF? :-)
So it has 350 range vs 400 PD laser.   Max damage of 12 per rocket at 1.6 fire rate when fully upgraded.
That is a hull damage of 7.5 DPS  which is slightly better than the PD laser and worse than the 11 from the PD projectile.    Surprisingly good projectile speed and the fatter projectile has a better chance of hitting fighters.
The main thing is that it PENETRATES SHIELDS just like other missiles/rockets.    That makes this weapon a natural for missile strategies.
I really like this addition as it fills a specific niche and isn't bad for general purpose.   It is surprisingly good early game for taking out big targets like warpstations.



Ion Plasma cannon - Fairly generic 700 range weapon with solid upgrades.  Harder to get than Orb but superior.  Biased a bit towards hull damage as opposed to orb's shield bias.   Would have liked to see the higher burst with the slowdown effect of the harbinger ion cannons (tho less strong) to differentiate it.
DPS vs shields: 8.8.    Hull:  12.       Orb has 14.5/9 by way of comparison.


Mega Plasma - Kind of miss the giant ball of death, long reload, big impact with some splash of harbinger.   This one is a rather generic 700 range(?) with no splash.    Huge 43 DPS vs shields.      Rather weak  7 vs hull.      Megalaser is 50/12 by comparison and 1 tier up.
It is ok, but doesn't feel all that satisfying.   It is quite good in that it can take down an enemy's shield entirely with the first volley, making hull-biased weapons a lot stronger.

Death Ray - Somehow lacks the coolness factor of harbinger.  Probably since cooldown is so fast that it feels like another laser.  And same ole range.
Another 700 range weapon.   This one is hull biased but still quite good as a general purpose gun.
Very accurate obviously.   Surprisingly good 4.5 second cooldown when maxed.
DPS of 11 vs shields, 32 vs hull.      This makes it the best hull damage weapon in the game!   Even the amazingly good photon torps only do 19.5 hull (but 40 shield).
Obvious combo with Mega Plasma, tho they both have the same range and this is a laser so it will hit and be wasted before the plasma hits.
Great with Plama Eclipse (800 range), but that is not really feasible due to their tech tree positions.
Still, a great weapon.



Bottom line:  Always good to have more content.  Havent checked other changes yet.  New guns are decent and pretty well balanced, but don't bring much new to the game being kind of generic.   Rocket PD is the exception.  Low enough to be easily grabbed with missiles, good niche usage.  Interesting dynamic. I do also like Death Ray as an ultimate weapon. Much nicer than MegaLaser.

Hi, I'm a mobile player,

I just unlocked the additional space station BSE Harvester, and after comparing it to the BSE Avalon, it turns out it's inferior in every which way and has no additional bonuses that I've seen to offset the higher production costs.

To rattle off the stats: (midgame so not quite default)

BSE Avallon:
Hull:1540
Shield: 700
Turrets: 3
Hangars:0
Point Defense: 2
Marines: 80
Vision:5
Speed:0
Cost: 1600

The Harvesterstation:
Hull:1320
Shield: 600
Turrets:2
Hangars:0
Point Defense: 2
Marines:67
Vision:5
Speed:0
Cost:2000

The Harvester station also cost 260 to unlock to the Avallon's 200.    Now,  I'm guessing that this base is supposed to increase passive income,  but as I mentioned earlier,  there is no help tip describing the function of the station if that's the case nor have I seen an increase in my income/second numbers.

So is this a bug,  or does the station need to be buffed a bit to reflect it's higher base costs?   Otherwise,  kudos for the work...it's quite a challenge to beat some of these missions.

Cheers,

Pigeon

Okay, I searched this forum for "firstcontact" and found nothing...

What does this station do that's special?  I was kind of curious about that before I spent my hard-earned unlock points on it ;-)

Thanks for continuing to bring updates to the game so soon after launch!

Hi, is there any chance you could increase the number of ship to 5 please? Love the game, but 3 ships feels too little, especially when trying to protect carriers and low hull ships, since missiles bypass shields and there’s no way to increase hull.
Also would it be possible to add a blue point defence to increase hull, like the energy shield one, and a red turret that is also equivalent to the big energy shield boost.

Thank you for reading this.

Dear Admiral geezer I would like you to fix this exploit as soon as possible I found this out just by doing something in the game and I would like to send you guys an email on a detailed email on that it is cuz I don't want people here using it because it would ruin the fun in the drive of the game but I just want to let you know that I found something

Okay that's far I'd say I'm about a third of the way through my first campaign on easy and I've unlocked about 40% of the tech and ships so I think I have a pretty good grasp of the game so far and what's working and what's not. first I'd like to say that y'all have done an excellent job building a classic style RTS and I very much appreciate the hard work and I understand that there is the intention to include additional content including ships and stations and maybe even more weapons down the road. while I agree that stamping out all the bugs is priority number one I think there are few things that need to either be changed or added in the next patch or two that would have a significant positive effect on gameplay
.
 I will start however with a couple of bugs that I've noticed. first the ships seem to clip through other ships in space stations when passing over them. if memory serves in harbinger this was not an issue that's what either pass over or under each other and honestly I never got close enough to a space station to drive through it it simply wasn't necessary

.  second I have noticed the enemy ships and stations continue to fire after they explode up until the point that the explosion dissipates. this is very annoying and is cost me a couple of stations.

Okay with the bug report out of the way we can go on to those things that are working good. the system itself is very simple in the classic Westwood RTS Style and to anybody with experience in these older games you pretty quickly figure out the ins-and-outs of everything. the scope of the game is smaller then it's older counterparts but this actually works in it's favor because it keeps things manageable and the pace stays fast without turning into a rolling horde Fest.
 for the most part the weapons and ships are adequate to the game needs and the resource system is very simple and easy to keep up with. the fleetwide upgrade system for weapons is also a vast Improvement over the individual gun upgrade system used in harbinger and makes upgrading the weapons viable something that was not necessarily true in harbinger. the research system is simple and I like having the option to spend upgrade tokens to advance  research.
Okay now to the things that aren't working quite so well. first off the space stations. the ones available to the player are small underpowered when compared to hostile stations and not really beneficial Beyond functioning as a light alarm system for approaching enemy fleets. Once you've unlocked the three turret  station sorry still haven't got all the names memorized there's no point in unlocking the other two. Militarily they serve no practical purpose. you almost never recall your ships from the front line so you don't really need the jump station and the other one has no redeeming qualities compared to the one that you unlock first. it has less weapons bless health and less Shields then the 3 turret station. there is no single specification where it is superior and therefore for the player it is a waste of resources to unlock it much less build it. the station is redundant and needs to be revamped into something practical that serves a purpose such as a Cruiserweight battle station with additional Point defense turrets and Hangers since there are no stations that have both turrets and Hangers available to the player.
 second the boarding system. I was very pleased to see the option to utilize Marines to capture targets however the system as it functions now is not complete or very intuitive to use. the Lack of the ability to regenerate or replace lost Marines after combat or boarding actions renders the system very clunky to utilize. In its current state a ship or space station is only reasonably capable of conducting a single boarding action before it's Marine complement is render too small to be viable for offencive action. this makes the boarding system more of a novelty rather than a fully functional Tactical and strategic option. In order for this feature to be used and enjoyed to its fullest extent and method for replenishing Marines must be added to the game otherwise it will remain a feature with great promise that was never fully realized.
 third the repair system. Currently while it is possible to repair any ship or station completely the method with which these repairs are conducted is both inflexible and severely limited because of the use of the additional resource of upgrade tokens to repair ships when tokens are not used to build ships or stations. what this means is that it is quite often more cost-effective to scuttle the heavily damaged ship or station and replace it with a brand new one rather than use the repair feature to fix it. there is the additional problem that the only way around not spending upgrade tokens to fix things by bringing the damaged vessel back to your battle station is hampered buy both the extreme time it takes to conduct significant repairs and the fact that this option is not available for space stations. I would suggest two options that can either be implemented together or as and either or function of one or the other. first remove all upgrade tokens from repair cost. if you don't have to spend them to build the ship upgraded weapons included then you shouldn't have to spend them to fix it. that's just basic logic. second some form of mobile repair be it repair drones or a repair Cannon that fits in a turn slot or defense slot should be added to provide space stations with the same repair option as Starships. here again with only the most basic attention paid by the player it is very simple to render the current repair system unnecessary through new construction and selling of heavily damaged stations and ships and to some extent not only is this cheaper then repair but you technically get your new units at a discount. with the simple changes this would restore the system to actual viability and make it more attractive for all repairs as opposed to just light damage.
Fourth the researchable support ships. the three researchable support ships currently in game are for the most part unnecessary. because of the nature of the game and the rate at which you are normally able to accomplish research none of the ships are going to be a priority and will likely only become available to you during the late late game for each mission. at that point in the mission they no longer serve a purpose as you will have reached a point where you are economically secure and Firepower alone will be your primary concern. I suggest that this be fixed by implementing one of the two following suggestions. First make these ships unlockable items as opposed to researchable items. the pro of this is that once unlocked the benefits are always available to the player once he decides to build ship. the con of this is that it does not actually improve the usefulness of these vessels which in my opinion is marginal at best. Each ship is essentially and Novelty vessel and will never form the backbone of any battlefleet in their current configurations. it may Simply Be The Players money is better spent on the higher-end carriers and battleships. the second option is to replace the vessels with researchable modules that fit and either a turret slot or Point defense slot. the pro of this is that it makes your ships more customizable and allows you to assign these abilities 2 much more durable ship hulls. the con  is that  as research options  they will likely remain  very late game  but  at least  there will be  an impetus  to utilize  said  upgrade modules  which will have far more utility  then the current ships that are available from the research.
Fifth and finally weapons ranges. In harbinger one of the things that set the various types of weapons apart was the fact that some weapons were short ranged some weapons were medium ranged and some weapons were long-ranged. in Siege all of the weapons essentially have the same range. this removes the attractiveness of a whole host of weapons including the particle cannons and the missiles Beyond there bomber application. while I realize that the Maps are smaller then those of harbinger I don't believe this justifies dumbing down the different weapons ranges to a single unified figure. it would be nice to actually have a reason to mount Cannon or missiles because their reach was significantly more favorable then lasers and other available weapons. While the unified range doesn't necessarily detract from gameplay it does render a significant number of the available turret weapons superfluous at every stage of the game. it would be nice if you were actually weighing other factors besides raw damage when deciding what to purchase for your ships and stations. without this you quickly find that only one or two weapons are worth researching upgrading and using in the game.
 once again I would like to say that I am enjoying this game and that I think it's a fairly good job has been done on it so far. I simply see places where these minor changes could have a profound effect on gameplay thereby rendering the game even more enjoyable.