It's a nerf. It does the same damage on frigates as maximum shield mitigation would. So yes it bypasses shield mitigation, but it does  exactly the same direct damage to the hull that it would have anyway once shields are down.

Default shield mitigation is 15%. So if you use it as a snipe, instead of doing 340 damage, it does 160. That's a nerf as well, especially as you consider that that damage will fix itself while you take down shields. When shields are taken down it does exactly the same damage that it did before.

The only time it's a buff is against capital ships - because their shield mitigation is greater than 60% by default, so you are actually doing more damage than you would otherwise. But capital ships are excessively vulnerable on less than 1000 hull, so I'm not convinced I would choose to spend the antimatter on this when I could save it for later.

At least it's cheaper. That's a good thing.

GRG isn't really meant to be used on frigates, it is meant to be used on caps, SBs, and titans...if it is doing more damage than it was otherwise against 2 of those 3 things, I think it is safe to say that is a buff....when trying to kill caps and titans, you will be facing max mitigation for most of the battle anyway, so you don't really benefit from the "mininuke" effect that the original GRG had...

It is also a buff against Advent since Advent have shield regeneration (a fairly common ability) and in the late game have higher shield mitigation...

Is it huge? No...but hardly a nerf...

Yes, but it is actually much more common to fight max mitigation targets (heck, only your first shot hits 15% mitigation, a fact GRG used to rely on to do any good). When you compare max mitigation(57%) on frigates, yes this new version does slightly less damage, but they also reduced the antimatter cost which I'd argue evens it out in the long run but it only does damage to hull, which as Seleuceia said is a big advantage against the Advent or say the Kortul. If you add Advent shield mitigation tech bonuses into the mix I'm sure its a huge buff even against frigates.

Yeah but when do capital ship battles rely on you surviving with less than 160 hull?

Well, it's not going to change the Kol so that it is a good choice for a starting capital ship. Plus it makes using the Kol more inflexible - using it on a target with maximum shields for your supporting frigates isn't possible.

I do like that you can use it more often. I'm just not sure that that outweighs the gains won by restricting it from being used against shields.

I remember a certain PVP battle of mine where my advent colonization capital survived with 70 hull

And so far it seems like it is fine, I did not feel like my kol got any worse by the change.

That's the point. Practically anything can snipe your capital at that point. If you're depending, great. If you're not...

I still encounter the sticking gas giant effect on strike craft. It is annoying to lose 80 squadrons of bombers in 3 seconds because of this at a Volcanic planet..

I hope it gets fixed in the next patch.

I wonder if this is another bug related to the entity files. According to AbilityUnstableGas, the gas giant explosion buff (BuffUnstableGasPreExplode) is applied directly to the strikecraft as a direct buff, sort of like Flak Burst. The buff is supposed to end on entering phase space (so the buff is removed when units are not in the grav well), but strikecraft cannot actually enter phase space - they have to dock with their parent first before the parent hyperspaces. Because of this, the buff is never actually removed from any specific strikecraft that were present in the gas giant well for any period of time, and will cause the explosive damage later on when they are eventually killed (which may be in a gravity well distant from the gas giant). In essence, the strikecraft become mobile suicide bombers, which is perhaps an amusing exploit since each will still do 80 damage to everything within 750m. Strikecraft that do not launch into the gas giant field (for example you never undock them, or you dock them while they are still being manufactured) do not have the buff applied and will not show this behaviour in the next gravity well.

I guess the fix for this is to add a new buff that is cast by the gas giant that applies a form of BuffUnstableGasPreExplode only to linked strikecraft, in much the same way as Concentration Aura works (BuffBattleMeditationParent). This buff would end on hyperspace and the strikecraft-specific pre-explode buff would end once the "LastSpawnerNoLongerHasBuff" -> [buff targeting strikecraft parents], thus preventing the strikecraft from exporting the buff when they leave.

Unfortunately, I can't verify this fix by doing it myself (my modding skills are poor) so hopefully someone else can confirm or refute the above.

Good catch - I'll take a look at that for the next update.

OP updated.

I just noticed a 10mb download, was that some small fix to whatever or just steam being weird?

Up at the top.