However I have the nessecary files on my laptop to work on Rheinland and Kusari ships. I'm currently working on the Rheinland battleship (wich I'm calling a Bismark Class)
Due to freelancer being very turret focused, and Sins lacking any true turret capability the Rheinland Battleship will be primarily a broadside vessel with the following weapons loadout:
Powerful mid-range port and starboard Plasma Cannons. (Inflict heavy damage against capital and station sized targets. Cannot target fighter craft)
Long range Tacyon Pulse-Beam Turrets with forward and side arcs. (Low damage, fast refire. Can hit fighters due to instant hit)
Forward Micro-Nuclear Torpedo bays wich can fire on stations and other capitals, and can also be used to bombard planets from orbit (fairly powerful missile attack at larger craft and stations only, long refire delay. also has bombing points)
very short range, very powerful 'Plasma Lance' with one each forward, port and starboard (To help boost firepower at very close range.)
This battleship will have weaker sheilds than other factions battleships, but will have high Hull points and higher armor than the others. While it's top speed will be roughly the same as a Liberty Dreadnaught class, it's higher mass will mean it takes longer to reach top speed.
The Bismark class is built for staying power and heavy bombardment. In a one on one slug match against other battleships it will win most of the time due to sheer firepower, but because of it's poor mobility and lack of much anti-fighter weapons, you will want to fly support with it as most other ships will outrun its primary guns. (Kusari in particular will run rings around it)
Love it, that sounds like an awesome loadout for that battleship. The Chancellor's Fist will crush it's enemies!
Long range Tacyon Pulse-Beam Turrets with forward and side arcs. (Low damage, fast refire. Can hit fighters due to instant hit)
Does this mean Tachyon weapons will join lasers as another set of beam weapons? I can see this working pretty well, a more electric and sparky beam texture than the smooth, straightforward lasers.
I've been brainstorming based on your comments about wanting the Artifacts being various types of alien tech that also unlock new features of your faction, here is what I've come up with. Please tell me what you think.
These artifacts generally give a slight boost to a certain stat, and also unlock a series of experimental researches you can perform to unlock new things, or just stat increases. I'm not entirely sure if you can apply different research modifiers to artifacts, if you can, change the Nomad laser to increase normal weapon damage types and the torpedo to increase missile and torpedo damage.
Cloaking DeviceUnlocks a research that will unlock Osiris class ships or the equivalent cloaking vessel for your faction, except Nomads. The other house factions could probably use a different kind of capital ship model for their cloaking capital based on what resources you have available from the Freelancer mods. It may not even need to be a battleship level vessel, perhaps Kusari can build a fast cloaking destroyer or gunboat for deep strikes against enemy installations, for instance?
Nomad Laser
Increases all weapon damage slightly, and unlocks additional energy weapon augmenting research based on the faction, so Liberty get increased laser and plasma damage.
Proteus Tome
Decreases research time, unlocks some additional time or resource-reducing research.
Dam'Kavosh Scriptures
Increases culture power, maybe unlocks culture resistance research or something?
Hypergate Artifact
Allows travel between different stars at high speed, unlocks research that detects all phase jumping ships.
Nomad Torpedo
Increases all weapon damage slightly, unlocks additional missile and torpedo augmenting research.
Crystalline Hull Layer
Increases hull repair rate to vanilla Sins level, unlocks additional armour research. (If that hull repair rate would be considered too OP, then something lower.)
Nomad Power Core
Increases antimatter regen, unlocks additional antimatter research.
Dam'Kavosh Stablilizer (Dunno really, kinda ran out of existing Freelancer stuff.)
Allows travel through unstable Jump Holes (Wormholes), unlocks faster cruise speed research. (Phase Drive speed, not charge time.)
If you manage to obtain every single artifact and complete every single related research, you unlock additional research that allows you to design a new class of capital ship based on this alien tech. When completed, unlocks a Zone 21-styled experimental shipyard that constructs a capital ship utilizing all this new technology to the max. This would be the Titan mechanics, so you can only have one vessel built at a time. The ship is armed with Nomad lasers and torpedoes, high antimatter regen, a cloaking device, and a fairly decent hull repair rate. It would also likely have more Nomad-styled variations on existing capital abilities, with more exotic effects.
The Nomads however, if they obtain these artifacts, each artifact will unlock a research that improves ship build rate, cost and culture power slightly. If you complete every single artifact research, then you unlock a final research that greatly improves all of these stats. Basically, as you take these powerful artifacts back from the humans, reducing their chances for victory, the Nomad war machine speeds up, until the final invasion is unleashed upon the Sirius Sector. This final research also unlocks some sort of Nomad mothership, which has a variation of the Novalith cannon ability, based on the star-killing cannon shown in one of the trailers.
But yeah, seeing a demo vid of that Rheinland battleship, mmmmmm, I'd love to see that.
