Adjudicator-Class Dreadnought Fixed Version

I remember when I first DLed the old version of the Dreadnought. I was impressed with it then. I did side by side testing with it and AS3R's Kronos Dreadnought. I have to admit his ship has so many turrets that it's annoying having to set the AI on each one. However this ship boasts incredible firepower, especially when using the beam weapon unfocused. It will eat away at anything as if it were a salvage beam. This is as close as you get to a death star super laser.

I tested it on small pirate and asteroid pirate stations. It decayed and disintegrated the stations so fast that two minutes later I was spinning around (I adjusted the turn-rate modifier in my server.cfy so Capital ships can turn like small frigates!), blasting fighters into space dust. The long range lock-on missile launchers are handing for taking out a fleeing fighter or an alpha strike on a target before the rest of your weapons and turrets are in range.

So enough about the greatness of the ship. Let's talk about the reason I had to give it 4 out of 5 stars. After spawning it, I went to the turrets to activate the AI and Faction modules as I always do. I didn't find any. I got into the ship's core and switch to a turret and went into build mode and moved around inside the different turrets. They're rail-base which is good, but there were no AI or Faction modules.

As far as main armament, the ship is really to go as soon as you make it, but I had to get into a core and fly to each turret, get out into astronaut mode salvage two blocks and replace them with the aforementioned modules. This is something I should not have to do. It is already bad enough having to set up specific AI for different turrets for ships over 400m, but most turret-using ships have these modules installed in the base, front or back of the turret.

After setting up the turrets, they would finally track and shoot down missiles and fighters. The turrets made short work of the pirate fighters while I sat there clicking my "Easy Button" to destroy what I wanted in a matter of seconds. After everyone was overheating I would back up and there would be a complete massacre of fighters and decayed or destroyed station.

The turrets do work, and power isn't an issue unless you use the doughnut cannon. The power problem seems to have been fixed as it says because the ship takes like 3 seconds or less to reach full power again.

If I didn't have to modify those turrets, I'd have given this ship an easy 5 stars. It's a great ship and I like the inset hangers. Reminds me of the Venator Star Destroyers from Star Wars. I did add some external and internal docking/rails so I could dock any kind of ship. It servers as a ferry for other capital ships and fighters, and those capitals serve as ferries themselves. Even hooked up Luke's UNSC Infinity to one of the top four antennas, lol. Had its turrets going then I cut it loose under the AI next to a pirate asteroid.

Anyways, I obviously am enjoying this ship very much. I hope you create a fleet of similarly designed ships such as mini versions like missile frigates and point-defense frigates. The starfighters could also have the sloped aesthetics as well.

IMPORTANT NOTICE
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This is a re-review of the ship above after an update was released to address serious issues faced by the original design. The previous review highlighted these issues and I am happy to say the author like a real trooper took it in the spirit that it was given and used it to really polish this new and improved version of the ship.

Now onto the re-review :P

1) Visuals

The exterior, interior and layout on the systems and details all blend in well together. Never does anything placed on the ship feel like it doesn't belong there. The colour scheme works very well with the angular hull design and inset sides. Weapon placement is as you would expect with good angular design of the turrets. The primary weapons feature some good detailing especially in terms of different lighting to inform of the different functionality.

The details on the interior is where the design really shines, the hangar area in particular is a real work of art featuring a good LOD as well as functionality.

Score: 5!

2) Technical

All issues faced by the unmanageable power grid have been addressed, along with the lagging issue and movement issues with the turrets. To that end this means this vessel is sporting a MASSIVE power grid and a even more MASSIVE array of weaponry... EXACTLY what you are asking for in a titan and BOY does this one deliver now!

The only point I want to make that might be considered a negative is a caution regarding the "current" state of the primary beam weapon, both myself and BJammin (author) have noticed something inconsistent with our test results when trying the weapon. At present we have both come to the conclusion that there is a game glitch which is coming into play when the weapon is fired. I am confident in saying that this is most likely a very temporary matter (expecting a patch soon).

All that being said the main beam cannon is a beast, when fired it is something like a space light saber blazing out the front of the ship, it slices the blackness of space like a solar flare! Brilliant!

Score: 4.5!

3) Combat

This is the part which let the last design down in epic style. I can now say this is definitely not the case. Load, spawn enemy fighters... enemies go BOOM! Rinse and repeat until you are surrounded by LOTS of dead enemies and then spawn in a capital ship. Seconds later the ion torpedoes will remove any idea of that ship having shields and its beam cannon and rocket pods will remove any idea of that ship thinking it will live!

The turret placement is complete enough to give the vessel true 360. The primary weapons and systems all now function within tolerable power levels and yield enough destructive power to make even the death star think twice.

For that I am going to score this last stage;

Score 5!

Overall I am very happy to recommend this monster. It does everything it says on the tin and will in the future do even more.

Great job BJammin I am eagerly awaiting more ships like this from you! :D

I know giving this ship 2 stars might seem somewhat unfair but when you read why I have done so I believe you will find the rating to be a reasonable one. I want author to know I was REALLY looking forward to this ship but unfortunately I would strongly suggest either pulling the design or at the very least addressing the issues post-haste. Once the changes have been completed I'd be more than happy to "revise my review" to reflect new state of the ship.

I am going to be comprehensive and cover this review in 3 stages, visually, technically, and combat worthiness.

First, visually this ship is brilliance, no doubt, the detail, the shape and design of the weapons is all visually impressive. The interior in places was a bit sparing on the eyes but was functionally sound. Some of the placements of the weapons and the turrets were a bit huh! and didn't seem to distribute the capabilities of the ship very well, but that's just my opinion.

For this stage of the review;

4 out of 5

Second, technically this vessel has everything you would want from a capital ship, size, presence and ultimately BIG ass guns! For that I would of given this stage another 4/4.5, that was until I did a systems check. With 378 mil power and 17 mil recharge you would of thought this ship would be A-OK in a fight! Unfortunately this is not the case, in a controlled environment I dry tested the various systems of the ship, 3 of the primary weapons drew so much power from the ship that it could effectively zero cap the ship in less than 3 shots. This would of left the vessel in a serious powerless stage, meaning shields were unable to draw power, automated defences would be offlined temporarily and most importantly any bonus effects the ship had would be switched off to conserve power. All of which would spell trouble for any ship in the middle of combat. Do not misunderstand, the weapons were incredibly powerful but in some cases completely pointless!

One example that springs to mind is the donut cannon, points for creativity, more points lost for the complete pointlessness of the weapon, it lagged worse than Arkham Knight and failed completely to hit the target unless you focused fire, which defeated the creative purpose of the weapon in the first place. Then there is the uber beam of lag cannon, the less said about that the better. Suffice to say while massively destructive, it was virtually unusable due to excessive lag it caused. And for the record this is not a off the shelve mid range PC, its a £1200 custom gaming rig.

Overall what this said to me is that the design of the power grid and functionality of the primary weapons need to be seriously looked at. The power grid can only deal with half of the weapons and only being shot 2 times when the rest of the systems were active. On top of that there were particular weapons that yielded very little stopping power for the problems they caused (lag/power draw) the donut cannon for example. That being said the homing missile and the cannon/beam combo array worked fine and were managable in terms of power and had no impact on fps!

For that I decided to give this stage of the review;

2 out of 5

Third, now this is the important part, the part where we see if the design matches up with functionality to give performance in combat. So I first ran my test with just turrets versus a number of small light fighters. I started with just 1 fighter, something that should of been no problem.

Man WAS I wrong! :D

The moment I spawned 1 fighter the frame rate dropped fast than Donald Trumps presidential chances! I watched as the fighter ran rings around the ship, the only weapons that appeared to engage were some beam turrets awkwardly inset into the side of the hull. These turrets struggled to turn correctly to track the fight and at time couldn't align correctly for a shot. On top of this the forward missile turrets, the main body turrets and the aft turrets completely failed to engage at all. I deleted the fighter, which was quite literately laughing it's ass off at the apparently lack of opposition, and started to look into what the hell was going on! It hit me pretty quickly. The turrets were unable to turn due to what I can only assume to be excessive mass, at no point had the designer factored in the need for mass enhancers, the turrets were turning but at an incredibly reduced rate. Wow! A tad of an oversight there to say the least! Then there were the aft turrets, their problems were worse, they had been placed so close together that they were impacting into one another and interlocking, the aft of one turret was stuck in the front of the turret behind it and so both turrets were unable to turn at all! This was obviously the cause of the massive lag as this particular problem was occurring to a fair few of the aft turrets.

I pushed on with my test with a capital focusing on missiles, again the ship failed, it lagged and more than that it didn't appear to have any effective missile defences. This may have been some of the turrets that were failing to turn but frankly I figured if they had been all placed at the aft of the ship it was just another reason to give this ship a bad mark.

I decided at this point to just call it as I was getting increasingly frustrated with the ship and ended my review there. The ship just failed in combat it was being out fought by a mass 9 fighter for the love of god!

For that I decided to give this stage of the review;

0 out of 5

To conclude this review I rate this ship at 2 out of 5 this is due to visuals versus overwhelming issues caused by a unbalanced power grid, lagging weapons and non-functional turrets which also added to the lag. I believe this to be a fair review given the experience of the ship.

very nice ship