The easiest way to describe it is a combination of GritEcon and Carrier Battles mods.
Totally a humans-only class mod.
I'd be happy to see somebody write AIs, but that's not going to happen for a long time. The mod is still developing, and there aren't many people with AI skills out there either.
As far as individual details:
- All ship hulls are available from the start. However, build costs are proportional to size SQUARED. Maintenance is almost flat-rate.
You can build 20+ 45kt scouts in one turn, or you can spend 2-3 turns building a 300kt dread.
In the long run, the dread will cost only a little more than one scout to maintain. In the short term, the scouts will outmass you by a very large margin.
Overall, this makes all the ship sizes useful, and the size you build depends on how much time you can afford to spend on them and how many spare resources you have.
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Weapons are CBmod style. You've got DUCs, Plasma, Lasers and Torpedoes for direct fire, with missiles to round it out. Each has their own advantages and disadvantages, and they support each other well in mixed fleets. Each weapon comes in 5 different sizes from 20mm (size 2-3), all the way up to 100mm (size 100-150)
Fighters use small mount ship weapons.
- Note the lack of PD guns...
Small mounted regular guns are used for that, which helps to keep things balanced. At some point I may upgrade to a new scheme, where there are dedicated leaky PD guns (fixed 1% hit rate, with hundreds of shots per second for a poisson distribution of missile kills)
- CBmod style cultures, the key to which is extreme differences in a balance. Match it to your playstyle for maximum fun. Still needs playtesting of the balance, and to make sure all the effects it uses are actually implemented in the exe.
Stuff like Berzerkers, with double damage weapons, and about 50% more damage taken from enemy hits. Along with some penalties to production to even it out.
Or Preservationists, with half damage from enemy weapons, big bonuses to repair skill, but very slow build rates.
- GritEcon resource economy. Facility maintenance is based on common sense, not the build cost. A geothermal plant requires only a few organics to feed the workers... a hydrocarbon power plant burns copious amounts of organics to produce power (rads), but is independent of planetary value.
Greenhouses, industrial farms, deep shaft mines...
Overall, you've got tradeoffs between build costs, resource output, planetary value dependence, maintenance costs, and space efficiency.
You've also got to build up an interdependent economy... Farms need power, fission plants need fuel, mines need workers.
And then some factories to turn resources into supplies and ordnance for your ships.