I tried out the first release of this ship, and this latest version is an improvement in every respect. It looks good and there's nice details both inside and out. I don't know if you were more interested in roleplaying with it, but even with your latest revisions it is very underpowered for its size, and slow. I have some practical suggestions to improve survivability:
- Your energy pylon system is not very efficient. You spend enough blocks on it, sure, but you're not getting the kind of power you could out of a ship this size because they're fragmented into multiple groups that aren't that large. For example, the booms that go out to your wings could have pylons slung through them from the rear nacelles into the main hull, and if you connected these to the network in the hull you'd improve energy regeneration markedly. Extending the length of a pylon in any 3 dimensions will help your ship much more than adding more blocks into compact groups.
- However, your weapons don't tax your power supply in the slightest. On ships less than 2000 to 3000 mass, you can make compact weapons much more powerful using the overdrive effect, and you've power to spare. The railgun especially could be changed into a cannon-beam rather than cannon-pulse, and overdriven. This would give you far more damage, faster reloading and greater range and accuracy from a weapon that would take up the same amount of space. Most of your weapons and especially turrets would benefit enormously from this change.
- You've improved your armor distribution from last time, but you should consider a few things - first, advanced armor is four times tougher than standard armor for less than double its weight, and hull is three times lighter than standard armor. Since a fighter can carry a rapid fire weapon easily capable of breaking through standard armor, it's not much of a practical improvement over hull. Fitting more shields and hardening the armor around vital systems is probably the way to go if you want to save weight and improve durability.
- On ships in this weight class you can afford to have much stronger engines! Engine blocks have diminishing returns when it comes to thrust, but you're not yet hitting that point. You could have an extra 40-50m/s speed easily if you lengthened the hull a bit.
- Additional systems can be added while minimally affecting your ships lines by stripping armor, them around the outside of the ship and using armor slabs to cover them. This is especially useful with wings.
I was surprised you didn't have any kind of EMP, pull or stop effect weapons for those rare situations in law enforcement where death is not an appropriate penalty.
Anyway, keep up the good work and stay out of mischief.
