Click the picture to download! Unzip in to the Mods directory of 0.9.1a, and let me know what you think!
(353 seemingly more stable / better null checking all round)
What is this Mod in a Nutshell?
The Junk Pirates themselves are one of the oldest mods for Starsector (even featured in a Blog Post back in 2011!).
Is compatible with Nexerelin. Requires Graphicslib & Lazylib.
Contains many small contributions from the community and a couple of significant ones from others:
MUSIC from Versus The Ghost
SOUNDS by MesoTroniK (all custom weapon sounds)
GIFS:
The Three New Factions
- Junk Pirates – 24+ ships, with original artwork, covering all aspects of the StarSector fleets. Asymmetric and unusual arrangements, but easily underestimated.
- Post Anarchist Canis Kollective (P.A.C.K.) – 14+ individual ships with numerous additional high-end skins, all original artwork. Limited larger ships (two cruisers + one light capital) NOW WITH CARRIERS & 5 unique fighter wings!!!. A bit of a ‘challenge’ Faction – or one for the destroyer-lovers.
- Associated Starline Parcels (ASP) Syndicate – Mini-faction created as part of a forum initiative some time ago, continue to be maintained as part of this mod. About a dozen original ships total (and a few vanilla skins), the faction mainly adds flavour and not too distinct from vanilla when e.g. played in Nexerelin.
Read on for more fluff (and check out the PACK thread in my signature for even more fluff around the imaginary history of this faction).
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How do I play with these? What can I expect when playing as / against these ships?
JUNK PIRATES
The Satsuma is flexible and mobile, and can be a good hunter-killer destroyer. The Boxenstein is very sturdy, with lots of forward-facing weaponry – but suffers in mobility. The Clementine and Mandarine-class frigates are decently survivable, and have enough weaponry to at least stand up to Vanilla.
Don’t expect the Sickle and the Hammer to act as generalists; but in either case they do have their niche (Sickle is super fast and can pack a decent punch – save a few to deploy late in a battle for quick support; Hammer carries a medium missile mount so can be very dangerous as a support vessel).
Fighters are an okay option for the JP fleet – with the Orca being a capable carrier and all the fighters being able to hold their own.
PACK
I think it works, to an extent, and generally mixed fleets are more effective than simpler fleets.
Take for example:
In this fleet, we decided to take a couple of Schnauzer-class frigates. These operate similar to ‘Safety Override’ ships (without the CR downsides) and consequently have high mobility and high flux handling. They are, however, paper thin – but the base level of mobility and flux efficiency gives them some level of survivability. Depending on fit-out – they can bring some high-alpha or some generalist support with her all-round energy mounts.
Supplement them with a Pitbull – which has high alpha-damage potential from four small missile mounts, decent resilience from high armour, good pinning potential from the kinetic barrage of her built-in Ripsaw – and the fleet becomes much stronger. The Schnauzer and the Pitbull are somewhat reliant on each other – as the Pitbull can’t get close to anything that isn’t harassed / distracted – and the Schnauzer can’t stand toe-to-toe against many things without high levels of personal danger.
This fleet also has a BRT (an Escort Destroyer with good point defense capabilities), which can be a good defensive choice – to give respite to the Pitbull and hopefully field against smaller / more mobile threats.
The Labrador is included to handle some logistics for the fleet, but also has a FELIX drone to provide on-field interference; minor support; and can operate fairly safely in a retreat condition with her burn drive.
Also note that each one of these craft will perform poorly on their own, and it can be difficult to field a very small PACK fleet that maintains a decent level of combat effectiveness.
OR if we are feeling like we should go all customized:
We are immediately stronger due to the PACK Custom-shops having wide-ranging nett positive benefits (so comparable base ship vs. any of the Canebianco / Caomarelo / Rothund will always be worse; in differing amounts and against different comparable strengths).
The Bedlington (CB), a high-tech modified version of the standard, has a much improved shield (although now locked to front, it covers about 300°). This also has an Ion-drone following it around (as a built-in wing), basically a free ion cannon. It’s a great disruptive force – and can be built around the front-locked medium energy for support or alpha-strike hit and run. It’s super-quick, and with an efficient shield it can survive some abuse. It’s even lighter than the Schnauzer, and will almost entirely buckle under the weight of just a single stray Harpoon MRM.
So we’ve taken a Komondor (RH), a heavily armoured version of the standard Komondor. The Komondor has lots of forward facing universal mounts, and an Accelerated Ammo Feeder, which forces some real decisions to be made in how it is kitted out – but it can be a pretty decent generalist combatant and can use the distraction of the Bedlington to close in on individual ships to finish them off with perhaps high-alpha missiles or a collection of front facing ballistics pushing out ordnance on overdrive.
The Ridgeback-X (RH) and the Caomarelo Samoyed are included primarily as logistic support, but (as per the Labrador) there is a pair of FELIX drones on board the Ridgeback to provide interference; and a decent enough weapons package to contribute generally – perhaps safer operating in a close support role. The Samoyed is quick enough to avoid a lot of trouble (including an on-board burn drive), but a missile-centric loadout skews this particular model in to a more specialist combat role, and may not be deployed most of the time.
Again, particularly with the ‘Logistics’ ships – these will struggle on their own – but work okay as a team.
ASP
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Any criticism, constructive or just plain rude, is more than welcome in this thread. Go for it, but hope you have fun.
current version 3.53 – Pack MESH, Intel, Junk Explorers & Cyborg Queens from 3.52 plus more null checking …
I’d love to see a mission or two that lets you control the pirate ships. It would be awesome to have a first-hand look at all your ships – fighting against them makes me want to pilot them all the more.
It’s supposed to be suggestive of Hegemony arrogance, and therefore hard, but I’m not sure if the Hegemony fleet even carries enough firepower to down all the fighters, never mind the new destroyer. Those MIRVs are deadly against the Hegemony ships, as well.
And I forgot to turn Spikes in to FIGHTERS. I’ll probably drop their deceleration and lower the armor rating slightly as well. Maybe delete a Dugong, see how that plays out.
And I will definitely get a Pirate mission in soon.
Maybe do the one where they captured the Onslaught in the first place.
1) your asteroid field was kinda funkily going right off the map (dimensions are wrong)
2) I suddenly /switched to commanding the enemy forces/ in the middle of the battle O_O (I think its an error in that you set it so that the onslaught was set to be commanded by the player (the last argument should be set to false, not true)
yep – here it is: api.addToFleet(FleetSide.ENEMY, “onslaught_Standard”, FleetMemberType.SHIP, “HSS Achilles”, true);
that should be changed to false.
I didn’t notice this in my limited playtesting.
(e: oh by the way, file is updated with changes)
Some feedback:
– The Dugong is a really fun ship. I love its broadside, just sends so much ordnance flying. Really a fan of asymmetrical designs, they add some twists to the gameplay.
– The last mission’s name doesn’t quite fit in the allotted space
– The last mission, the enemy is set to “ESCAPE” – which is cool, because the AI finally knows about that. But, due to a quirk, military ships will try to retreat a bit too early if there are no civilian ships around. If you add a “tarsus_Standard” or some such to the fleet, it’ll behave more intelligently.
– I’d put the download link and instructions near the top of the OP. The post is long enough so that the download link is below the bottom of the screen when you first click on it.
Great stuff overall, really enjoyed it. Well, the last mission – didn’t have a chance to play the first two beyond the first time I’d tried ’em 
Very interesting and fun mod. Only one question: are the ships in the third mission supposed to fight the player or to run away? They are running away currently.
I was wondering about that, I thought that maybe my brilliant strategy scared’em off. Oh well 
I thought the missions were quite fun and I enjoyed fighting against the new ships. They look quite nice. The lot of you have put together some fun mods, this bodes well for Starfarer’s future!
On the ‘escape’ mechanic, I think I need to add a civilian ship to make them behave less wimpy.
Whilst I did test that level a few times, I didn’t notice it as I was only really thinking about getting to, and stopping the Onslaught. I’m not a very good tester, clearly.
And I’ll see if I can spend some time tweaking it soon, polishing some of the ships, graphics and adding the boxer destroyer to a fourth mission.
Location: Breh’inni 3
Date: 207.10.13
Our simple transfer of our new gunboats has apparently hit a little bit of a snag. We’ve just left Breh’inni 2, on our way back to the King and a small and previously undetected Tri-Tachyon detachment seems to be nosing about.
It’s clear that they’ve detected us. It’s clear that can’t happen.
Ready the munitions and silence them, but protect our new destroyers at all costs.
DEPLOYMENT:
SCATTER PD LASER – Modified PD laser. Fires an innaccurate burst of short range bolts of energy. Providing point defense on the Sickles and the Boxer. Can be useful as for close quarters fighting, if you can get close enough.
CUTLASS – Two modified tactical lasers bolted together and souped up to fire bolts of energy. Fires in bursts of 4, can be powerful but can also eat through the flux. Careful using it on a small ship with the shields up. Currently on the Sickle (Assault), also provided for the Hammerhead flagship on the first Hegemony missions.