E.F.D. - 2  |Ephla Industries|

    E.F.D. - 2 |Ephla Industries| 2015-09-06

    Outstanding and such a wonderful presentation. I look forward to seeing what else you guys have coming out.
    ephla442
    ephla442
    Thank you Remy90
    AmazeBALLZ!!
    ephla442
    ephla442
    Thank you shade1121 ;)
    I say that you deserve the video's badge right away...
    Vessel looks cool, and the video increases a lot the willing to download it...
    Extremely nice work.
    ephla442
    ephla442
    Thank you very much Incendiario for you kind words and support, it is greatly appreciated! ;) Have a great day!
    The presentation video alone deserves that rating! Awesome work!

    The ship itself looks good, has respectable weapons, and is quite maneuverable with its 2:1 thrust ratio. The modular weapons are a good idea too, although they came with several flaws:

    Unfortunately, the AI doesn't seem to handle pulse weapons well (unless it has to do with their energy consumption?), meaning the Breach's turrets must be manned to fire their weapon (or a least, I wasn't able to fire them without entering the turret).
    The turrets are also turning very slowly, this is somewhat mitigated on the buckshot thanks to the cannon/missile spread projectiles, but it really hinders the ravager usage. Actually, you forgot to put rail mass enhancers on your main ship (you have 50 free mass per docked entity, past this point, you have to add 1 rail mass enhancer per 5 mass to keep the original turning speed; for instance the Ravager's turrets weight 324.4 each, 55 rail mass enhancer on your main ship would allow them to track ennemies more easily).

    The shield generation is great (1500/s main+2x 1000/s turrets), even though the shield capacity might be a bit low (3000 main+2x 4000 turrets) for a roughly 1500 (800 main +2x 350 turrets) mass ship. Still, it's a fighter/drone (even though it's a bit heavy) so I guess shield capacity isn't that relevant as ships that small relies on avoiding hits rather than absorbing them. Besides, this ship also has a small ion effect (~15% may vary depending on the version) virtually increasing both shield regeneration and capacity. I think however the ion effect could be better replaced with something else (I tend to like overdrive on fighters, although it requires 10% of the ship's mass to reach the maximum effect).
    The energy recharge is average, but the ship doesn't need that much energy, so it's perfectly alright (even though a greater energy recharge would allow to remain power stable while using even bigger weapons, but efficient reactor layouts in such a small size are tricky and heavy). The energy tanks however are slightly oversized given the low energy consumption of the ship (and the absence of high consumption/high damage/high cooldown weapons), except for the Breach version given the very high energy consumption and long cooldown of pulse/beam/piercing weapons (I think you could add capacitors on the breach modules and replace capacitors on the main ship by something else, that would make the Ravager and Buckshot more efficient).
    Actually, I even suspect the Breach weapons to consume far more energy than what could be provided by the ship: you use 10 groups of 10/10/10 pulse/beam/piercing per turret controlled by a single computer, meaning a single activation should cost 10*(10+10+10)*500*1.9(multiple groups penalty)*3(beam slave multiplier) energy (i.e. a daunting 855000 energy per shot!!).

    Overall, the Ravager and Buckshot are both very usable, even though their turrets lack turning speed.
    The Breach is more tricky to use because of its turrets' flaws (btw, avoid too many groups per computer, especially when the turret is controlled by an AI: just use one computer per group, that will greatly decrease the energy consumption at the cost of the weapons being harder to fire at the same time by a real player).
    Again, the presentation video is awesome and the ship's esign make up for these flaws (nothing is perfect after all)
    ephla442
    ephla442
    Thank you very much for your very in depth review, I can not tell you how much I appreciate the feedback, and knowledge you have shared with me.

    I will be adding the changes you suggested, and will be sure to follow your advice in my future builds.

    I am very humbled by all the support the Starmade community has shown me, and I thank you, and everyone who has taken the time to give me their advice!
    Holy Molly. This... I'm absolutely stunned. Putting that presentation together must have been taking at least as much - if not more - time as constructing it. And the modules? Sweet baby Jesus. I have experimented with docked weapon modules myself, but you're on a completely different level.
    Looks: 9/10
    Utility: 10/10
    Performance: 10/10
    Presentation: 1000000/10


    I think I had a nerdgasm.
    ephla442
    ephla442
    Thank you very much Matt, I really appreciate your kind supportive words. You sir, have made my day ;)
    I will say one thing, BEST Video eeeeverrrrr

    also the drone is nice too
    ephla442
    ephla442
    Thank you Abedon, I'm hoping to apply this video format to other Starmade users creations, so hopefully see some more videos in this style fairly soon :D Thanks again! :D