I've been working on this for the past few days again. The current version is working with the new Starsector update, and since I'm sort of stuck with a coding barrier, I've instead taken the route of seeding the mod ships into the vanilla Starsector factions. They are somewhat rarely used compared to the vanilla ships, which is good, as they are powerful.
Hegemony: Liberty and Bretonia Persean League: Kusari and Gallia Sindrian Diktat: Outcasts Tritech: Core Independents: Civilians and Zoners Pirates: Corsairs and Gaians Luddic Church: Coalition and Hessians Luddic Path: Coalition, Hessians and Order
Foxglove and I have been playtesting this now for days and balance-wise, it seems fine. There are obviously some ships more brokenly good than others, but all in all, you can expect a regular gameplay experience. Nevertheless I strongly recommend to use this mod with Nexerelin. The Prism Freeport will actually offer the new ships at the High-End Vendor, so you can get your hand on the very rarely deployed battleships and dreadnoughts if you have the money.
Right now, the player starts with only a handful of open market ships: Waran, Mantis, Corvo, Salvager, Chonkporter, Whale and Bustard. Other ships need to be conquered or bought from other factions, or build from blueprints you find by exploring. Exploring will also allow you to get unique ships and fighters you otherwise can't get - like hero ships and nomad fighters. I even found a Phi-34 blueprint the other day.
Once Industrial Evolution is up-to-date, you can also reverse-engineer ships, but the new update broke that mod, sadly.
Generally, the mod will increase the difficulty as Pirates and the Luddic Path will use battleships. Especially if you play with Nexerelin, be prepared to face impossibly strong fleets with Murmillos, Legates and Luddic Path fleets with the new Invictus-class Dreadnought that got introduced with the update, but also Coalition missile battlecruisers and the Jormungand battleship. A valid strategy is to lure the enemy to your battlestation (or better, Star Fortress) and help the station deal with those guys. Ideally you focus the small stuff first so the station can focus on the strong ships at the end.
Today I added a lot of ship descriptions. Instead of giving them boring standard descriptions, I decided to have my main character tell your Starsector character about the Discovery ships, to have it better tie in with the lore of the mod.
There is still much to do, but here, have some screenshots!
