Core Content Expansion inc. new alien faction: the Xapleaux

[MasterOfGrey]

Content (Artwork / Missions / Jobs)

Summary

Hello all, to add to this festive season (now that Amazinite has PR'd the Bunrodea and new things are no longer at risk of in some way disrupting him and further delaying that) I think it's finally time to bring together the stuff that many of those on the Discord have known I've been working on for some time now. The race is a little less polished than Amazinite's, but there's a lot of map work underpinning it that needed to get out there.

This PR attempt to address quite a few things at once, but they're all somewhat tied up in the same sort of conceptual underpinning I first raised formally in #5814. Conventionally you might seperate some of these into their own things, but each one would be incongruous without the others, so they're together.

Core concept explanation and gameplay correlation:

Obviously the closer you get to the core the more systems actually exist, logically that should also increase the number of useful systems. _Life_ may not be more common in more hostile environs further in (due to the length of time required for complex life to develop), but that doesn't mean that systems aren't perfectly exploitable right up to the edge of the core. Inside the core itself there's a little bit of suspension of disbelief that's required, but it's reasonable that something sufficiently alien could exist there, within certain constraints.

Purely looking at the number of exploitable systems though there should be a gradient going in, and this achieves that, with different levels corresponding to appropriate zoom levels.

Zoom 1:
This far-removed level is sufficient for navigating in the edges where systems are widely placed, but only gives you a general indication in more densely packed areas.

Zoom 2:
This level is appropriate for navigating in the majority of the galaxy, but gets difficult further in.

Zoom 3:
This level is sufficient for navigating among fairly tightly clustered systems with great discernment, but still contains some potential for confusion in the core.

Zoom 4:
Finally at the closest zoom there is sufficient to visually discriminate even in the core.

This stepwise process not only provides an actual clear use-case for each zoom level in the game, but additionally provides a real sense of varying galactic density within the gameplay experience.

Full scope of map changes:

The image below captures all the map changes which fall into the following categories:

1. Addition of the core systems with the Xapleaux.
2. Separation of Syndicate space into sectors with uninhabited systems breaking them up.
3. Addition of some Pirate systems.
4. Relocation and addition of some relevant Exile systems.
5. Addition of filler Korath systems.

Addition of the core systems with the Xapleaux.

For these systems, they are the home of the Xapleaux, their naming is long but there's a logic to why they're like that.
These systems all have 1 of two blackbody hazes, a bright one and a dimmed one. The dimmed one represents systems that are either toward the safer edge of the core, or are shielded by large volumes of interstellar dust which shelters them from the more extreme heat and radiation. The bright one is for systems that have no protection and are inimical to anything resembling life. Notably, no systems exist in the strict death zones.

Additionally two systems make use of a "cloudbright" haze which looks extreme, but is derived from an actual real world image mapping heat and radiation from the inner core of our galaxy to visual light.

Even in the systems which do have habitable worlds, the habitable ranges have been expanded to reflect the reduced reliance on the heat from the actual system's star.

To-do still: I need to recreate all the planet sprites used in the core to use much less pronounced shadows on the night side, to reflect the "there isn't really any such thing as true night" aspect of the core. This is also the main reason why the bright hazes in particular look a bit much at present.

Separation of Syndicate space into sectors with uninhabited systems breaking them up.

One thing that the pirate campaign peeps noted is that there's no way to get around human space that doesn't involve slipping past the cops in damn near every system you enter. That informed the method used to expand the Syndicate map according to the issue posted and for the purposes of expanding the core concept area.

To achieve this I have broken the Syndicate into 7 clusters of habitable systems. I have then filled in the gaps with chains of uninhabited systems that allow someone to move from one cluster to another without passing through the intervening clusters.

However, if you look closely at the map above you will notice that the shortest distance from any Syndicate world to any other Syndicate world still goes through exactly the same systems it did before. Avoiding the inhabited clusters is always the long way around.

This also now fills things out enough that the Syndicate doesn't look like the poor afterthought in the design of human space.

Addition of some Pirate systems.
These two systems are from the Korath expansion and are desired by the pirate campaign group. It made sense to accommodate them here.

Relocation and addition of some relevant Exile systems.

This change firstly relocates the Exiles into the Yellow zone where life as we know it is unpleasant but possible, and out of the zones where their ships could never operate without overheating.

Note on the Yellow zone from the issue:

This is generally a bad time. Not volatile enough to rely on it, not gentle enough by far to allow more normal types of life to safely develop. This is why I would put the exiles here in a re-work of the core - a world like Far en Lai could exist here and support life like we know it, but it would be unlikely, and it would be the sheltered gem in a space otherwise unpleasant to life and technology developed further away from the core.

They gain a few filler systems mostly for flavour, but also to provide them something a little more to work with than their own heavily crowded systems, or raiding. This also preserves an easy pathway to the Ember Wastes which is naturally essential for Zitchas' work.

It is intended that all systems in the vicinity of the waste will get significantly reduced jump range attributes, as well as slapping a general reduction on most of the core so that existing jump barriers aren't suddenly overcome by this change.

Addition of filler Korath systems.

This change is many-fold. Firstly it helps to address the thoughts behind #4893 by adding some empty disconnected star systems mostly in the vicinity of where the Archons keep the exiles separated from their brethren. (Which could easily have been disconnected by the Archons.)

Further these provide material for anyone wanting to make stories about Korath relics or other in-between events. They were named by HMS Hood using automata naming conventions.

These systems are not locked-in though. The point of these systems is to fill a gap as it presently stands, and to provide flexibility. Future creators should feel free to relocate these systems to other places around the fringe of Korath space (or delete them entirely) if they need to eat into the space they occupy for something else. (Look at the Pirate campaign here.)

Description of the Xapleaux:

The Xapleaux are a large species with a body-form not dissimilar to that of a centipede, though they will appear rather more like a caterpillar due to the symbiotic fungus that grows on their carapace, and the 6 distinct limbs at the front that they can use to manipulate things.

Their physicality was initially inspired by these guys from Stellaris, but they've deviated somewhat since then.

They come in multiple variants derived from different climates, and the background for this is contained in their history file.

History of the Xapleaux:

The Xapleaux have been around for a very long time, but after their first foray beyond the core ended in disaster they asked the Quarg (who they were on speaking terms with at the time) to close the way in. They have remained sealed inside the core ever since apart from one brief experiment with not-quite jump drives that ran into a few problems, not least of which was meeting the Hai (briefly) during their aggressive empire phase. They later abandoned all further research into that direction of development.

Attached here is a history of their major moments as chronicled from an outsider relaying their perspective. It is not objective:
Xapleaux History.txt

Design Notes

This concept of the Xapleaux, a race which lives in the core and fears the dark first dates to June 2020 - a year and a half ago.
Everything about their ship design comes from the assumption that shedding heat is the biggest challenge for them, and this influences their visual style and outfit design. (Some of which is drafted but not yet in this PR.)

As a very old race that has foregone the search for anything like a jump drive, their specialty is in having actually come up with a highly refined hyperdrive, called a String drive. It is the pinnacle of their main technological avenue, and has been refined continuously since its development quite a long while back. All their other unique systems are all about heat management, safer power generation, resilience in a hostile environment, or more recently borrowing concepts from the Korath who attempted to raid them briefly during the civil war.

Their ship classes are named for categories of beetles and other arthropods. Their drive names are named for the categories of insect wings.

Their world, system, and individual ship names are long, but they serve a purpose. Their names are descriptive and contain both a spoken and a hand-sign/body language element. The sections with hard guttural sounds are the vocal parts, and the rounded soft sounds are textual representations of gestures. (If display names become a thing I might, optionally, replace all the names with a mission at some point when you can understand what they mean.)

Their current language is difficult enough that even the Quarg don't have the capacity to talk to them, though that's partly because the Xapleaux face their own barriers when it comes to trying to deal with Quarg. The first contact process will be a mission chain that requires you to have actually finished other story plots sufficient to unlock access to certain things and characters.

To Do

Much like Amazinite, my sanity cannot endure attempting to get this all polished before PRing it - it would be a futile effort anyway. So it has a list of things that need doing first.

• Repeatable "you can't go here" first contact mission.
• For the Following:
• Convert draft outfits into actual outfits.
• Get images for outfits.
• Outfits:
• • cryo-arithmetic engine
• • piezoelectric shaft
• • small mof capacitor
• • large mof capacitor
• • string drive
• • type x engine
• • type i engine
• • type v engine
• • type h engine (optional)
• • small trajectile assembler
• • medium trajectile assembler
• • large trajectile assembler
• • terpenoid template
• • terpenoid launcher
• • quininoid template
• • quininoid launcher
• • microchannel coordination centre (optional)
• • microchannel node (optional)
• • multi-node microchannel coordination system (optional)
• Replace placeholder outfits on ships with actual outfits.
• Implement static security fleets where applicable.
• Create and properly apply suitable system hazards.
• TBD (There's definitely more.)

Optional:

• More ships. (Their roster is deliberately light on though for design reasons.)
• Stations
• Get shipyard image renders of ships (Saugia has kindly rendered the images used, using a model made by Wrzlprnft and 2 of his own.)
• Sort out security levels and such for planets.
• Populate outfitters and shipyards correctly.
• Ship variants.
• TBD (There's definitely more.)

PR Checklist

• I updated the copyright attributions, or decline to claim copyright of any assets produced or modified
• I uploaded the necessary image, blend, and texture assets here: Asset PR
• I created a PR to the endless-sky-high-dpi repo with the @2x versions of these art assets: High DPI PR

[MasterOfGrey]

Wow, GitHub Desktop did something real weird there when I pushed that fix commit.

[Galaucus]

First pass was purely on pirate-related stuff and map changes, but it looks great! I'll review this in more detail soon.

Definitely digging having some new systems off Durax. For the record, you're okay with future tweaks to those systems, yeah? Or is there anything that needs to be established about them for the Korath expansion content?

Specifically I'd want to:
A) Set up an Independent station in Durax
B) Make it so that native Raider spawns are only in the two more corwards systems instead of Durax
C) Set up background haze so that it looks like you're inside a stellar nursery. (Artistic license rather than realism, here)
D) Populate those two inner-core pirate systems with a mixture of distillery workers gathering gas, pirates preying on them, and Korath raiders doing a bit of both.

Later on a story event will trigger if you're on the pirate campaign, or just fire on its own in... maybe two years if you've chosen sides in the other campaigns. It'll turn Durax and nearby systems into the Korath-on-Pirate mosh pit we all know and love.

[MasterOfGrey]

For the record, you're okay with future tweaks to those systems, yeah?

Obviously, you add what you want to them.

[Zitchas]

The Xapleaux & core content expansion is an interesting development. Overall, it looks like an interesting concept. The map changes look like good changes based on the descriptions, but I'll need to see them in-game to really understand them.

edit: Oh, and I really like the concept art for them. It is about time that we have some more aliens that aren't humanoid. (Just for the record, I'd really like to see the centaurs descriptions replaced with something that's a bit more alien. Perhaps more like the Elcore? (but that's a different topic.)) Anyway, caterpillar-ish aliens sounds interesting and different.

In terms of changes, one thing I noticed is that the engines both have specific mount requirements, but I couldn't see the mount listed on the ship. (I also couldn't see any mount outfits, which would be an interesting way to build a modular ship and make them available - at a cost - for non-Xapleaux ships)j. I did make code suggestions adding in the appropriate mount attribute to the three ships.

I don't know how many ships you have planned or done, but an idea that occurred to me is that, depending on how much lore work Brick has done with his plant-based Vivari ships, but those ships might make a good fit for the Xapleaux as either an alternate ship set, a different shipyard, or a second race in the same area. Anyway, the point being that an area with as much radiation as this area does would probably be a good place for plant-ships that emphasize absorbing energy from their surroundings for use.

One thing that I'm not really sure about is how powerful these ship are supposed to be. 41M puts them into the same ballpark as the Tempest, Solifuge, Breacher, and Strong Wind. (of potentially purchasable warships). But the combination of having 31k shields along with 98k hull puts it solidly into the Wanderer and/or "golden days of Korath" sort of levels. I don't have a problem with this, I'm just trying to figure it out. Having another T2ish faction around so that Wanderers and Heliarchs aren't the only ones at this level is definitely welcome.

That being said, I'm not sure about the built-in ram-scoop. Given how plentiful the solar wind is (and the description about carrying enough fuel to make it across the region without slowing to refuel) kind of makes it sound like they wouldn't have built-in ram-scoops, instead opting to have an outfit that provides it when desired, or just having powerful stations that take care of it for them. I think this probably depends a lot on their mentality. If they have a large swath of uninhabited territory that they patrol, then ram-scoops make sense. If they are generally sticking to well established territory, then they probably shouldn't be valuing ram-scoops so much that they incorporate them into the base hull. That being said, having lots of built-in solar power is both eminently sensible for the region and also unique. Definitely a fan of having that solar built-in, as it fits into the lore of the region and the faction very well.

If I could make a suggestion for a first course of action: Adding a pilot file to this PR that has visited all the changed and/or new systems so that we can actually see how the changes look and feel in-game would be very useful.

[Ferociousfeind]

Two issues I have discovered:

1. These ships are much smaller than I had expected
2. They overheat immediately, and so does everything else, I am softlocked here.

but perhaps that has to do with how heat is handled by the game (COUGH COUGH AHEM AHEMMM maybe I could FIX that?)

[Ferociousfeind]

There are a few things that flying into all the new systems revealed to me- mostly, two unexpected softlocks and one unexpected not-game-end

[movingpictures]

As with Amazinite's creation, I can't code, but may be able to provide images for planets/stations if I have some time to be creative. (Former photojourno here ....so I know pictures.)

[MasterOfGrey]

Oh, and I really like the concept art for them. It is about time that we have some more aliens that aren't humanoid.

:)

I don't know how many ships you have planned or done, but an idea that occurred to me is that, depending on how much lore work Brick has done with his plant-based Vivari ships, but those ships might make a good fit for the Xapleaux as either an alternate ship set, a different shipyard, or a second race in the same area. Anyway, the point being that an area with as much radiation as this area does would probably be a good place for plant-ships that emphasize absorbing energy from their surroundings for use.

Now this is actually not a bad idea, and if @Brick63 wants to entertain it I am open to the suggestion.

One thing that I'm not really sure about is how powerful these ship are supposed to be. 41M puts them into the same ballpark as the Tempest, Solifuge, Breacher, and Strong Wind. (of potentially purchasable warships). But the combination of having 31k shields along with 98k hull puts it solidly into the Wanderer and/or "golden days of Korath" sort of levels. I don't have a problem with this, I'm just trying to figure it out. Having another T2ish faction around so that Wanderers and Heliarchs aren't the only ones at this level is definitely welcome.

These are meant to be ~Tier 2.5 on their home turf - exceptionally well adapted for dealing with the shedding of heat, and the enduring of hazards and other phenomena that might skip you shields and batter you around.
Korath space abuts these guys and the intent was that they acted as a wall. e.g. Why don't the Exiles raid further afield? They can't. They're blocked in.

In terms of how they line up when taken out of the core though they're meant to lag a little bit, more ~T2 for things like most weapons and stuff.

That being said, I'm not sure about the built-in ram-scoop. Given how plentiful the solar wind is (and the description about carrying enough fuel to make it across the region without slowing to refuel) kind of makes it sound like they wouldn't have built-in ram-scoops, instead opting to have an outfit that provides it when desired, or just having powerful stations that take care of it for them. I think this probably depends a lot on their mentality. If they have a large swath of uninhabited territory that they patrol, then ram-scoops make sense. If they are generally sticking to well established territory, then they probably shouldn't be valuing ram-scoops so much that they incorporate them into the base hull. That being said, having lots of built-in solar power is both eminently sensible for the region and also unique. Definitely a fan of having that solar built-in, as it fits into the lore of the region and the faction very well.

Yes Saugia was kind enough to provide some default stats with the models. Reviewing them is pretty much top of the list when I get some time.

If I could make a suggestion for a first course of action: Adding a pilot file to this PR that has visited all the changed and/or new systems so that we can actually see how the changes look and feel in-game would be very useful.

Ah yeah, point taken.

[MasterOfGrey]

1. These ships are much smaller than I had expected
2. They overheat immediately, and so does everything else, I am softlocked here.

1. I didn't want to overdo it straight out the gate, though the Ascomy could be scaled up if people like. I actually scaled it down from original plan because it made me nervous to bring it in too big. I think the civilian ships are about right though.
2. Yeah, see my response above. Placeholder stats haven't had a chance to be reviewed due to life things. System hazards also need balancing, but the idea is that Korath ships can only barely avoid overheating by sitting perfectly still in some systems. These peeps are meant to handle that comfortably. Sorting this out is basically top of the list.

[MasterOfGrey]

As with Amazinite's creation, I can't code, but may be able to provide images for planets/stations if I have some time to be creative. (Former photojourno here ....so I know pictures.)

I would absolutely love absolutely anything you'd like to make on this front. All planets implemented have full descriptions at this stage, but I personally don't do art assets, they're all placeholders. You can guarantee I'll appreciate anything you want to add. :)

[movingpictures]

Tellya what - show me where the descriptions are, and I'll see what kind of images I can capture. I'm in wintery Canada, so warm-place images may be a wait.

…

On Thu, Dec 30, 2021 at 2:32 AM MasterOfGrey ***@***.***> wrote: As with Amazinite's creation, I can't code, but may be able to provide images for planets/stations if I have some time to be creative. (Former photojourno here ....so I know pictures.) I would absolutely love absolutely anything you'd like to make on this front. All planets implemented have full descriptions at this stage, but I personally don't do art assets, they're all placeholders. You can guarantee I'll appreciate anything you want to add. :) — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#6439 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ASNL3RHLNQQ2HJ4YTQMXT2LUTP4H5ANCNFSM5KZ7JP6A> . Triage notifications on the go with GitHub Mobile for iOS <https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1477376905?ct=notification-email&mt=8&pt=524675> or Android <https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.github.android&referrer=utm_campaign%3Dnotification-email%26utm_medium%3Demail%26utm_source%3Dgithub>. You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[Zitchas]

@movingpictures Probably easiest to just click on the "files changed" tab, then click on the "load diff" link for the map.txt. Then scroll down about 3/4 of the way. They're all highlighted in green, as typical of GitHub. The first one starts with
planet Atch-werimoural-tinikt

[movingpictures]

So I tried this PR out, but I regretfully report that I wasn't that enthralled with it. I had a bunch of ships, most of them loaded to the hilt wiht decent cooling. I got locked within minutes. Before that, there was zero missions/interactions with the aliens. The string drive seems over-powered at 15 outfit space ... The Zapleaux heavy warship has a stack of leftover outfit space - 400+? Too much, too open for abuse.
May I suggest you follow the Wanderer/Coalition line of thinking, where they don't let you land save on one world?
Anyhow, this needs more work.... there's a good foundation here, but there needs to be more for testing.
Also, the heat-lock is a game-killer.

[MasterOfGrey]

So I tried this PR out...

Hi, please note this is currently marked as a DRAFT and has 17 items on the to-do list. Almost everything you've said is on that to-do list.

For the things that aren't:

If you downloaded your branch before commit 77fefa6 then your experience with the heat is outdated.
If you downloaded it with the current state, that's the challenge: that's the whole point. That's why the core acts as a foil and keeps the Exiles from just travelling wherever they want in the galaxy. You're meant to have to prepare specially for the core.

The string drive is meant to be a bit overpowered. Once some more of the to-do list is finished you won't be able to access it until late game, and it's their main special outfit that you're meant to want access to.

[Zitchas]

Random idea for if AI and support-weapons ever become a working thing. (I know support weapons, as in "weapons" that have a beneficial effect instead of a negative one, are already a possibility. X-27 has demonstrated them. I mean a thing that the game AI actually recognizes as being beneficial and uses)

What if, should the player get stuck or heat-locked in the area, Xapleaux have some sort of support ships with a support-cooling weapon that they use on the player to un-lock them. A brief reset to 0 heat, even if it obviously doesn't last, should be enough to at least let a player hyperjump out again. That'd be a neat chain of events:

1. Player jumps into the area. First system is warm, player doesn't notice.
2. Player jumps into the next system, which is hot. some players notice, most don't.
3. Player jumps into next system, gets soft-locked by heat. Shortly thereafter a Xapleaux support ship comes and zaps them with a cooling weapon.
4. Player gets out of the area as quickly as possible, and makes a note to come back when they have a lot more cooling capability.

[warp-core]

There don't appear to be copyright entries for files in the _menu, effect, hardpoint, label, or projectile image subfolders, or the repulsor wave turret outfit image, or the sounds.

[roadrunner56]

Lovely writing as always.
Aside from a few weapon descriptions, the writing side of this PR appears ready aside from a couple of minor things I found.

[roadrunner56]

Does the world of ES still use 'film' as a catchall term for a movie? I seem to recall the word 'holovid' being used instead.

[roadrunner56]

Are you planning to have the crystal as some sort of special outfit or license? Seems natural if the player owns it now.

[MasterOfGrey]

It will likely feature as something. In this particular scene it is merely being used as a trivial object to visually represent the idea that the animations are associated with you receiving something.
The fact that it was something conveniently to hand though, will certainly come up.

[tibetiroka]

Wow. I love it.

[tibetiroka]

I sense another outfit name capitalization debate...

[MasterOfGrey]

Lol, it can just follow the convention of whatever is used for the others?
It's basically a souped up scram drive.

[tibetiroka]

Hyperdrive, jump drive and scram drive are usually lowercase iirc, but they are used by multiple species. This one is unique to the Xapleaux, so it should be capitalized - which sounds rather confusing. Maybe just the fact it's a drive could mean it shouldn't be capitalized? Even I'm unsure about what the convention would be.

I'd probably leave it as-is because that keeps it similar to HD/JD.

@Amazinite thoughts?

[lumbar527]

I would say capitalized, because it's unique. If we get different jump drives for different races (like I tried in #8721) they would also be capitalized.

[lumbar527]

I played the PR, here are some experiences and notes:

If you stay too long in the hot systems, you're stuck.


The black hole is fun, looks really cool, and is escape-able.

I just noticed this as the only city image here.

Should the Bunrodea be affected by the heat, haze, and stuff?

There is no escaping from Sag A*. As soon as you enter, the heat freezes you. (Will stop the player from completing the Remnant mission) Also, should there be a rainbow haze there?

[Quantumshark]

Some thoughts on outfit balance:

Cryo-Arithmetic Engine

This is an interesting one.
So, let's start with the most notable thing: If you don't mind losing some hull points, this is better on paper than large heat shunts. I don't think that's necessarily a problem in itself - nowhere is there any rule that says the large heat shunt must be the best cooling outfit in the game, and the Xapleaux have lore behind them that does make cooling a sensible niche for them. The hull point cost ends up nontrivial, but sane - if you want to cool a whole TPC with CAEs, you lose 30,800 hull. That's about half your hull on a 349, and considerably more on anything else. In exchange for this, your net generation per outfit space improves from 11.017 (with large heat shunts) to 13.292 - a considerable increase, but at the cost of a considerable amount of hull. Your mass is also reduced by 30.8, which is largely irrelevant for a ship large enough to want a TPC, and you gain 123.2 scan interference, which is quite a bit. For a cooler-running reactor, the hull loss will be lower, but so will the gain in efficiency compared to large heat shunts - for a blue sun, for example, you lose only 7800 hull, but your efficiency improves from 11.09 to 11.74 - a smaller increase. And of course there's also the higher idle heat from active rather than passive cooling to consider.

In terms of the overall balance of cooling in the game, this provides a competitive top-end option with significant downsides. I can imagine some people will opt for it, while others won't be willing to give up the hull points.

As a minor thing, I'd personally like to see all the stats multiplied up by a factor of 10 or even 100 - no effect on the overall balance, but just tweaking it to fit better with exisitng outfits - it's a little odd to have this one outfit that you want to install hundreds of, whereas anything else you're likely to want generally 1-10 of. If you have a specific reason why you want the outfit to be extremely small, then feel free to ignore this point.

Small and Large MOF crystal capacitors.

These are, essentially, slightly less efficient equivalents of the Remnant crystal capacitor. Unless there's a specific reason otherwise, they should have scramble resistance equal to their ion resistance added.
There is one minor issue, which is that the large capacitor is precisely identical in every way to two small capacitors. I'd suggest either making it more space efficient, or changing the size of it so that it's not an integer multiple of the small one.

Piezoelectric Shaft

Heat capacity is a complicated stat. Outside of relative heat damage, it's functionally similar to extra cooling with an additional scaling factor based on heat dissipation. Based on some numbers I worked out when looking at the liquid sodium cooler a while ago, the current 2420 heat capacity should increase your max heat (as displayed in the outfitter) by (14520 * heat dissipation).
For a 349 with .5 heat dissipation (I hear they're commonly used), this means that in total the Piezoelectric Shaft lets you handle an additional 11820 heat, in 134 space, with an additional 312 energy generation. This doesn't work out as a better cooling outfit than the large heat shunt here, but it easily does on a ship with better heat dissipation - on a 512 (with .8 heat dissipation) this is considerably better than a large heat shunt. Still, under our current paradigm of larger outfits being more space efficient it's expected that a 134-ton outfit will be better than a 24-ton one. Also it's rare for a ship to actually need to devote this much space to cooling, so it may not actually be hugely useful in practice even so.

Engines

The Coleo and Lepido engines are much, much better than any other engine in the game (I'm ignoring the Strepsip for now, as their stats are placeholders). That doesn't break the rest of the game, because they're attribute-locked to Xapleaux ships, but it does mean Xapleaux ships will be unable to use any other engines effectively. I'd rather see them in a balanced state against other engines, but as mentioned I suppose it's not neccessary as such.

You've also got some very unusual numbers with regards to mass, outfit space and engine space - the Coleo has 88 mass and uses 44 of each space, the Lepido has 178 mass and uses 54 outfit and 57 engine space.

[MasterOfGrey]

Some thoughts on outfit balance:

I really appreciate you looking into the math on this and such. It actually ended up justifying my decisions too.

Cryo-Arithmetic Engine
[...]
As a minor thing, I'd personally like to see all the stats multiplied up by a factor of 10 or even 100 - no effect on the overall balance, but just tweaking it to fit better with exisitng outfits - it's a little odd to have this one outfit that you want to install hundreds of, whereas anything else you're likely to want generally 1-10 of. If you have a specific reason why you want the outfit to be extremely small, then feel free to ignore this point.

The reasoning is 2 parts realism and 1 part game design.
If this (highly theoretical) outfit were in fact possible, it could only effectively work on a very small scale. Anything much larger than your fist and it'd negate its own benefits - and so this tries to reflect that.
The other part is that outfitting is often a bit of a zero-sum game, and its usually cooling limited in some way due to the impact of outfit expansions often requiring more additional cooling than they allow. This gives another dimension of trade-offs to play with.

Small and Large MOF crystal capacitors.
I'd suggest either making it more space efficient, or changing the size of it so that it's not an integer multiple of the small one.

Fair

Piezoelectric Shaft

In addition to all of that, which I'm glad works out about right, it is also effectively locked to Xapleaux ships for the moment.

Engines

The Coleo and Lepido engines are much, much better than any other engine in the game (I'm ignoring the Strepsip for now, as their stats are placeholders). That doesn't break the rest of the game, because they're attribute-locked to Xapleaux ships, but it does mean Xapleaux ships will be unable to use any other engines effectively. I'd rather see them in a balanced state against other engines, but as mentioned I suppose it's not neccessary as such.

You've also got some very unusual numbers with regards to mass, outfit space and engine space - the Coleo has 88 mass and uses 44 of each space, the Lepido has 178 mass and uses 54 outfit and 57 engine space.

Yep, I wanted to break away from the progressive increases in size and power model that engines follow for other species.
They're unusual because rather than focus on scaling, they're simply optimised for different purposes.
The Lepido is very energy efficient (comparatively) -> so it's big, but it's designed for ships that don't need to go fast and can carry more things with a smaller generator.
The Coleo is instead optimised for performance -> it's much smaller, but much hungrier and hotter, to propel warships around.

Their stats are also derived from some maths on moment of inertia for the ships they're designed to go on - so rather than balance them against other engines, the plan is to balance the masses of their partnered ships to achieve the desired level of performance.
Short of a curious narrative outcome, no other race should ever be using their engines; and if the story goes that way, it'd be a new specially designed ship, not an existing one.