Someone has been insanely busy on this hunk of junk. They extended the ventral hull, slapped a new turret on the bow, shoved as much automation as they can into it, and even added a crash dive funtion by flooding the new ventral docking ring. They did add manufacturing and clean it up a bit though, and greatly improved its survivability, somehow making it less of a death trap.
After a few days of learning the game with friends, I decided to try my hand at upgrading the most default, death trap of a design out there. It resulted in a full night's worth of studying guides and wiring examples, with Qwerty_XVIII's guide doing a massive amount of heavy lifting in teaching me exactly what I can do with wiring signals. The results are a fully automated airlock, reactor, and battery system, a fabrication and recycling suite, double the cargo capacity, much improved buoyancy control, and roughly double the combat potential.
I only bumped up the cost of the sub by about 1300, seeing as it's still a Barsuk under the hood, and desperately wants to rip itself apart on some components, or is woefully underpowered in others. There's just only so much you can do with a junk heart, and I want to hold on somewhat to vanilla balancing so this is still approachable.
Hard stats
4 standard hardpoints
5 dive suit racks
1 electroshock discharger
mech fabrication facilities
8 shelves for cargo
Automated power management
Crash dive function
2 supercap, 2 battery
Railgun Variant:
The railgun variant of this modification is a big game hunter of the collection. Armed with a railgun on the ventral bow, double hull across most of the surface, electrical dischargers everywhere there could be a blind spot, and even turning the ventral docking port into a true, though cramped airlock, this craft is designed to take on larger game than its standard issue cousin. Rusted, neutron embrittled components got swapped out on the reactor to squeak out a couple hundred watts to power the new weapons compliment, but I wouldn't take this thing against much worse than a hammerhead pack, as she's still just as vulnerable if she floods as any other Barsuk out there.
ARC Variant:
The advanced reconnaisance variant is a lot less armored than its railgun cousin, but it is still a boosted overhaul of its own right. Equipped with proper mineral scanning, medical fabrication facilities, and work in progress on reducing crew cost with gunnery, this variant by the end of R&D should get most people where they need to go until they can get a true ship of the line. As much automation as possible was crammed into this ship in the hopes that high technology can offset crew injuries and fatalities in expeditions gone wrong.
