I've been playing a lot more today and have some more feedback. I don't mean to be too critical, I just want harbinger to be the best it can be. I'm actually going to update some of the notes I made in my first post, I think I may have been a little too harsh on a few items. I made it partway through level 6 today before getting jumped on by 8 wanderer ships all with flak cannons, OUCH. I was also really excited to find that enemies on maps 5+ drop items that continue to get better stats. I looted two 900+ range wanderer flak cannons that were VERY strong, so fun!
-I've played a bit more with the particle cannon. It is actually pretty good. It definitely has better balance than some of the other weapons like death rays. While subtle, the particle cannon's accuracy and ability to do shield damage actually make it pretty powerful. I still feel like it doesn't seem great at anything. It's decently balanced, and really cool, but seems lacking in identity maybe? It's hard for me to place exactly.
-I used bolter fighters for a couple play-throughs. They are better than I remembered. Combined with the change to bolter drones they actually feel like they are in a pretty ok spot. I noticed the description says they have more health than drones, is this true? I still think the option to upgrade their health would really suit the bolter fighter well and help to cement their role. I would actually raise their cost slightly, compared to other modules (like the pd bolter at 200 scrap) they feel cheap.
-I think the bugs related to photon cannon upgrades have been fixed. It is hard to tell without patch notes.
-I may have been mistaken regarding the shield reenergizer nerf. My apologies. However, I still suspect the item's stat panel is inaccurate. It is hard to judge, but it seems to be more effective than the description suggests. Stats say when fully upgraded it repairs only 40hp per shot, it seems higher than this. For reference, the repair beam claims to do 85. In my opinion (just my opinion =D) the bigger issue here is that the repair turrets are so much weaker than repair drones. The repair drones seem well balanced, I just wish I could use repair beams to trade guns for more drone slots in some playthroughs. Beams can't be destroyed while drones can so if beams were maybe 80% as strong as drones, I think that might feel just right.
-Admiral you mentioned that the vulcan cannon actually does lose rate of fire when you upgrade range, for balance this might be fine, but that isn't what I take issue with. I'm not trying to give you a hard time for this, but I want to make the player's perspective clear here. When the upgrade shows that a stat changes and the text for the stat doesn't actually change, that FEELS to the player like a bug, and it feels unpolished. Additionally, when other modules are known to have upgrade bugs (repair beam, photon cannon before the update, and possibly still the shield reenergizer), the player can't know if the vulcan cannon is bugged, just has a display bug, or is actually losing rof. This makes the game feel cheap, which frustrates me because harbinger is one of the best space combat sims I have ever played.
-I want to make a tiny clarification regarding my comments on bomber behavior. I tend to agree admiral, plasma are very strong right now. I did not mean to suggest they are too weak. It is just frustrating to watch them suicide onto enemy ships since the player has no control over.
-I believe other players have mentioned that the battles feel too fast, and I agree. Battles are mostly dependent on the player's initial positioning. There generally isn't time to maneuver in battle. I think this a bummer because it makes the battles less interactive. I think there are three ways to help with this, that shouldn't create balance issues.
1) Create an armor module. This has been talked about, I won't go into it here.
2) Add a shield and armor damage reduction upgrade to the shield and armor modules. This will allow the player to redirect some of their upgrade points from damage to tank if they choose. being tankier and doing less damage will both help draw out the battles slightly. This will have to be implemented carefully to make sure the player can't achieve too much damage reduction.
3) Add the speed/agility module. Once the battles are slightly drawn out, faster ships will have time take advantage of their maneuverability in combat. This should probably provide multipliers to the ship's speed and agility, so that slower ships can still be improved, but the faster ships are improved even further.
Not only would these changes improve the pace of combat, they also let the player choose between damage, survivability, and maneuverability in their blue slots, which creates excellent game play choices.
I'm gonna do some more testing with the photon cannon and shield reenergizer to try and verify any changes.
