Empyrion Galactic Survival - New Helios start and ideas 11/1/2023
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ก.ย. 2024
- In this video I first take a quick look at the work in progress Captain's Yacht (For the USS-Europa) and then the rest of the video is about a new Helios. I Talk about ideas, layout, specs, etc. Also, please let me know in comments any thoughts on the build or ideas for it. I want this new Helios to be improved over the original so feed back is very helpful.
My thoughts:
* Hull may need to be steel. If you convert it to plastic and try to fly it empty it may be nearly uncontrollable. Would be curious to know what the actual weight difference is.
* Use miniguns over sentries. The range on sentries is too short to cover a ship that size, they will be completely ineffective for their intended role.
* Can you give one of the standard bays access to the hangar? There are several standard-bay drop ships people will still want to use.
* For shield parts, you can possibly save space by leaving out chargers (the medium ones). These ships won't go in and out of battle, so having a higher HP pool with a very slow recharge should be fine (as long as it has enough chargers to actually charge, that is).
* Don't forget grav gen placement. That was sort of an afterthought with the last iteration.
Overall I think this is a great set of improvements that will make this a much more player-friendly iteration of the carrier. Very excited to see how it progresses.
This is the project I always hoped you'd go back to!! My all time favorite of your creations. Not the prettiest but for sure the one that played the best. Steel and the module sizes and number are fine on the new one. BUT I'd suggest you lengthen slightly and bring back two of smaller bays and use them as empty closed player expansion rooms! This way players could use the larger shield or power options if they wanted. Or just space for new components as they come out. Thank you for re-visiting a fan favorite!
Thank you for overhauling the Helios! This was a wish of mine for a very long time!
OK some suggestions:
The sense of this ship is to carry around all your utility ships through the whole galaxy. At least iin my oppinion. On top of it a big battleship to clear out sectors. So please dont make it to short. Carbon is the way to go. It lowers the wight and it also lowers the cost of the carrier. And the lower the wight is the more heavy ships you can carry around without having to many thrusters on it.
Dont put to much production or farming stuff on it. Thats the job of the modules.
One last wish ... would it maybe possible to have two bays of the dropship size class instead of one? Before I forget ... please make the surface flat. 😉 **meiamhyped** ^^
Love the Helios, and am so glad that you are revisiting the design! I spawned a custom Helios last season, with the blocks converted to steel, and modified the intermediate spaces in-between module bays to accept Jhoosier's limpet modules. A cross-compatible docking interface would be a nice-to-have, to allow docking of non-Helios modules. (Mojura/Aurora/Astra/Limpet/etc)
I have used the Helios in many forms since you first released it. Lately I've been usng the 4M6Da Kurma Command Carrier which is designed for use in Reforged Eden and allows the additional of all the shield parts. There's a lot of role play options and two interior decks for HV and SV storage as well space for 14 modules of varying sizes. I love the idea of you redesigning the Helios as that walk from bow to stern was tedious.
After building a Zeus I put together a Helios and regretted not going with the plastic variant. The stock one was painful enough to fly around(slow to turn) that I ended up preferring to just take out the lighter, easier to fly Zeus. No shade to the Helios design, you can only do so much thrust and stay core 9. But typically I was never taking a carrier into hot zones so the metal was a waste. I'd usually just park at the sun, board a combat SV/CV and warp to my target zone.
For the Helios itself, the variety/capability of modules was excellent. Great farming, storage and production options. No complaints there. A drop ship re-work would also be nice for the new Helios. Something high G rated, warp capable, so you can park at the sun, warp your dropship into a sector and take combat tanks/SV's onto hell planets for aux farming.
The Zeus is an incredibly high bar to put a ship against!
Hi Jeff. Love the ideas for the rebuild. Please keep the 6 bays - they are very useful - extra grow modules are always nice. When I've used it in my play through I tend to add modules and keep them in place - production, storage, grow modules and leave the deck for holding the ships that get used. Thanks!
Hi Jeff!
Been using the Helios since I found it pretty much, in both Vanilla and RE. I tend to use it from relatively early (I generally start with a Janus module) till end game in RE (with an antimatter warp drive, to warp my combat CVs anywhere in the galaxy). I've used the 6 bay ones adjusted by other players and the 4/4 originals. My thoughts below:
- 6 bays are great. The more space for modules the better!
- would be a fan of more shielding in RE. Have recently converted 2 mini modules on my current playthrough to house additional shielding / generators.
- I generally use a massive storage module in the dropship bay, as I'm not a fan of trying to move HVs in space. Having the dropship module docking into the hangar is a big improvement and would make me consider using a dropship again.
Love the ship and all your work!
Awesome design change. I tend to use the original Helios' large bay for a mass storage module and sacrifice the drop module. This helps me on long runs. For me, the Helios works as a mobile base for large scale commodity trading and ship carrying purposes. The Helios can be configured to handle many needs, including dense ice and other collection. Squirreling tends to happen quite a bit in this game. I see a great need for more storage on the newer RE version. Unfortunately, losing the drop ship restricts some areas to land planet side as weight increases during trading sessions. If possible, on that back bay, setup the framing to use a second large module, but build in the normal sized bay. That way the back bay could be easily converted as a second large bay, but start as a standard bay. I would like to be able to add all small and medium shield modules, with enough generator bays to be able to add a little more firepower as enemy ships can show up within Warp-in zones. That could be useful in case of being jumped in the warp-in zone. Additional thruster areas to install later would be great. I am getting tired of having many ships for many needs, but would rather start with a solid frame and configure modules to meet my needs for all aspects of Vanilla and RE, plus other scenarios as well. I would like to see a small garden area, but the garden module works just fine. I personally like the Apollo as a manufacturing area, with some storage for High-G or other landing.
More for the wish list that I forgot earlier. Enough space to add all AUX cores and at least a few Quantum cores, in case that was not part of the design update. In the current Helios, there is room for 10 AUX and I think a couple of Quantums', but in case you were thinking of changing the layout of the core room. I do have 4/4 of the small shields in your current Helios, but looks more bolted in vs JRandall designed. I have added a few Medium's as well. Turns out there is quite a bit of room between the back bay and the engineering sections on the outside underside sections. As long as you keep the belly away from fire, those medium shield parts can be bolted in and covered as well. Again, that looks more added on vs designed, but highly functional. Though I would like more Helios defense, I do use both the Stan21112 "SSW Corseque" and ArtemisRogue Sledgehog and keep them ready at all times for all problem solving needs, which works well but would be nice for the Helios to handle some light duty combat as a light fighter/freighter type of thinking.
Hey Jeff, hope you find my input useful and getting this rework done would definitely get used by me.
Maybe add points that you asked our input for in the video description? I reckon it would give people a chance to easily check important points and give short feedback. I hope I don’t miss any personally.
Steel around important parts just as a security, definitely plastic. Weight can be better used elsewhere.
Don’t really think you can go only sentries, they lack range and don’t pack a punch. You already sacrificing with going plastic and no one wants to see a carrier getting wrecked accidentally by a few drones. No one would ever take this thing anywhere close to a combat, but drone encounters do happen. Finding a sweet spot with the balance of turrets and sentries might be good, but should be maybe tested or leave players with adequate space to place additional turrets if they wish to do so.
Space carrier, landing is for modules. Ditch the idea for landing optimisations.
Stock storage is needed and useful for production while moving. I wouldn’t be opposed to 2x 640’s and would think this to be a minimum. Ammo can be easily be just a few boxes.
No harvester, no harvesting should be done with it. CPU should be prioritised for thrusters. This again is something to be done by modules.
You need a single advanced constructor to make stuff on the fly while moving, or refilling the pent. Prod module’s CPU should be used for other production tasks.
Try to optimise med bay placements to facilitate quick access when landing/taking off with both CV’s and SV’s.
We want those upgradeable thrusters, we like to pimp it up.
I agree with not going for large shield parts and fusion reactors, don’t think you would need them. But I think people would appreciate the option to slap max amount of small and mid shield parts. I mean, once you get to the point in RE where you can afford them, why the hell not.
I see a lot of people saying they don’t need that many modules, honestly can’t see why you wouldn’t have them, but to each his own. We all have different play styles and preferences. To cater to this, maybe you could build a blueprint where you would basically have a section that players can copy and paste it into the place where the module would be? Have like an additional hangar, or big engineering or production section or even large shield parts rooms or fusion reactor. Not sure if you know what i mean. Like something they can spawn in creative along with the Helios and it would be basically a section that would be placed where the module would have been and just be a section of the Helios. Instead of giving players only modules, giving them these easy options to modify the Helios would be more appealing to larger number of players. So if someone doesn’t feel like he needs all those modules, he can easily load it in creative, spawn whichever of those pre-made sections he wants and slap it onto the Helios. I know this would be a lot of extra work, but might be something worth looking into.
Well, it’s 3am and I think I’ve uttered enough nonsense for one night. Did I miss any of the questions you made? 😊
I listed things I found suboptimal on the Helios 1, that does not mean they all can (or even *need* to) be addressed. If you are making a flying landing pad base ship, it just won't land well. Do not change the Helios 2 just for that. Your time is more valuable than that. Instead, keep a thought on it for future big ships. You know, like a big base that hops from planet to planet. This ship is not that, it is, again, a space carrier, the landing can be mostly ignored.
If it'll be more nimble I will be pleased.
I very much like the improved travel pathing. I'd like to see the bridge be more on the right side of the ship for a side window you can also see through from 1st person. Less tunnel vision. I like the dropship in the front, and the module bay right at the bridge. I would like to see 4 320k storages (0 ammo, 1 harvest, 3 storage, ammo boxes!), 1 adv constructor, and 2 small constructors. IIRC that was the stock constructor layout on the Helios 1.
Go all carbon. I never had anything punch through the shields on the Helios 1, as I just kept it out of the fight. The shields kept the drones off long enough to get safe, and it was not gunned enough to punch through shields of other ships, so you just get away. Carbon is cheap to repair at a base as well. The biggest thrusters are best use of CPU, even if it makes the base model more expensive. I always love ability to add thrusters later.
I would guess if a person *really* wanted fusion reactors, you could hang them in an empty module bay. I would likely do so with the back most bays myself. Same with the biggest shield modules.
I personally would not mind if the very backmost bay was engineering as well, and it had 5 bays instead. I rarely used all 4 before, but the dropship bay was always vital.
How about a tiny little cockpit in the back of the ship in a little closet, as an emergency cockpit? Literally as small as you can make it with just a ventilator and maybe an emergency light.
It's a great start to a revision of the first ship build. You aren't reinventing the wheel, you are finding better ways to use it.
Thanks Jeff!
Looking good so far, the revised layout makes more sense. I'd stick with a steel hull and use gatling guns for defense. The sentry guns just don't pack enough punch for dealing with drones. Also, I wouldn't worry about landing this thing. A ship this big is never going to be able to land cleanly.
I've used this ship on 2 playthroughs on Spanj Reforge Eden servers and have a heavy rebuild one with lots of storage. The drop bays on the sides, I filled up 4 bays with 8 640K storage and 2 bays with farms. The front was rebuilt to get more engines there to have the ship stop faster. I also made the front a production area. When I play I just park at the top, I hardly ever fly inside the ship and I never land it, so my HVs are on the top of it, so for my gaming, internal landing areas isn't important. I end up having a lot of shields on it though. I tend to get into sticky situations, so I need it to get out of dodge! I've had more holes in this ship than I like to admit to because of me been careless! Think I saved it on my last playthrough... Not cretain though... So will look forward to a rebuild of this ship. You do great work Randall, really like your designs. Used your Skaar rider a lot.
I'm glad this is getting updated! I like the 6 bay + dropship update, and since something like the helios shouldn't ever see combat you can probably make it out of plastic to save weight. Other than that I have been a big fan of low power modes with 0 fuel consumption recently, so hopefully the helios will be able to support that.
My opinion: The Helios MSC you have built is perfect the way it was in the first place. That is because it is a modular and design to give players enough freedom to customize her the way they see fit according to their play style. They can install stuff as much as they need and they can use modules build for special purposes i.e farming, cargo, construction heck even a module for holodeck, if they fancy. There are many SVs and HVs out there that can pass through the 9x5 hangar doors heck even the 9x3 module access doors and they can dock in the long corridor in the middle. One can install tons of constructors left and right on this area if needed. For me 6(+1) was too much, so I closed with extra blocks 4 of them, were I installed cargo containers and fuel/o2 tanks, totaling 24 cargo containers and around 172 tanks. Heck there is so much space one can install a lot more. I have installed 8 constructors on other places the player visits rarely if not at all. The excessive amount of back thrusters in contrast with the front ones is maybe the only issue, but can be solved by not installing extra back thrusters. One needs to install them anyway? Fine. Can then use a module area to install extra thrusters to increase stopping momentum. Hull material can be changed with simple use of "replaceblocks" command and you are good to go, with a lighter vessel. She is not a combat ship. If you really want to narrow the center corridor you could go by means of cut/copy/paste etc and just maybe create longer module docking areas, while re-purposing it. I know you love to build stuff and we love you and your creations, but you can go build something else. Helios does not need to be asymmetrical, shorter, narrower, or whatever, for the reasons above. The colors painted, might need some refreshing though. So save your time and either just narrow the corridor on the Helios, or just build something else. And this is "my two cents". 🪙🪙
PS Link to the customized Helios of mine, if you like to take a look at her, visible to friends only : steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=3068708395
steel hull because it is easier to farm from space wrecks, plastic is harder to farm. awsome adition!!
Oh one of my favorite ship with your Pioneer so for me 2 biggest issues of last version of Helios was the fact there was not a flat surface on the top creating clipping issue when you walk been stuck and the fact it was almost impossible to land because too long so I get ride of the last 2 slots at the back because I only use Helios Garden for grow plots and the Plutus (upgraded your version to get more mining lasers and a small SV bay) for mining and a dropship ofc. No ideas sorry for what kind of material is better to use but I am looking forward this new version a lot. Cheers !
This new layout looks amazing, the travel distance was my only complaint about the original Helios.
For hull material, why not both? Build it a steel outer shell with carbon interior. Then use the block replace command to make an all carbon version.
So this is my personal experience and my dream Helios. 😊
1. More storage 2x640K, 2x320 Harvest controllers, 1x320 Ammo.
2. More thrusters.
3. Made of steel NOT plastic
4. it would have places for mining rich asteroids at least a dozen spots.
5. At least 6 mining lasers
6. Spot to integrate HV for mining Magmacite within the ship.
7. It can be shorter.
I use it only to park another combat CV ,combat/mining SV and a tree harvester,that's it so I don't need a crazy amount of room.
8 I would stick with minigun and flak turrets for defense. I know where you got the idea from 😊, but if not mistaken those small guns have short range and won't work well as defense. Where he has them in front of the ship and steers that ship and keeps it close to a target. This is big ship ,unless you have them every few blocks or something.
such a great channel
I think Heavy storage and production should be the focus as the other areas can be adequately covered via the modules like farming, mining defense, etc. I would need the carrier for rearm, refuel and repair. Like the shield enhancement at the risk of armor (good trade off). Keep it a space borne carrier, not interested in landing it on planets (drop ship or base production module for that). Should be another JRandall classic when your done 😊.
So excited when I saw this pop up on my feed! I love my Helios!
Storage, more please! 1 or 2 640k (or 320's that can be easily joined. Doesn't need a harvest container and it's easy enough to change a controller over yourself if for some reason people do want to mine with it. Only really needs a small ammo container if you're only planning to put sentry guns on it.
Hull material, if it's getting shot at you mucked up. All carbon with some little armouring around sensitive areas (engineering/bridge) Lighter is better, especially with the amount of ships I have in mine, hehe.
Weapons, again, if it needs to shoot, you mucked up. Maybe put in places for turrets but not include them stock? Sentry guns are ok, but can they even shoot the length of the ship? You'd need a lot of them for full coverage.
Accessibility. Would you consider a pair of the largest hangar doors in the roof of the docking bay? One of the problems I have in mine is because the ceiling is quite low, maneuvering craft around each other to get them in or out is tedious. Thinking about this right now, I'm off to edit mine :D
I see you've parked the dropship module in forwards as normal, so the cockpit door is adjacent to the corridor next to the bridge, will you be putting a door there so we can jump straight into the dropship?
Modules. The rearmost module bay. If that were expanded to take an additional dropship? At that size it can be used for either modules or dropships, user choice.
Landing. Made me chuckle, never even tried to land the Helios. Leave it as it is or ditch the gear altogether.
RE 2.0. Passive power gen. Have you give any thought to the plasma turbine placement in lieu of CV Solar? I doubt they'll be lovely flat panels unfortunately.
Same with the amount of placeable thrusters, maybe not to much space dedicated to this, if each thruster can be upgraded several times to become more powerful, so many spots would be excessive. I know you can only build for what we have so ignore this bit if you like.
Hope this is helpful, I tried building ships but I don't have the patience or the imagination for it!
Still need the gear to dock to a base for repairs when it is needed.
@@tarsis6123 CV's can't dock to a base unless that has changed and I didn't notice? Can only dock to other CV's, which would be awkward for a Helios as you'd have to move all the docked ships and modules off first.
@@rdyson101 Sure you can. It's how you use the T2 repair bay to repair CVs. It just doesn't use the little docked icon IIRC. Yes, you still have to undock all your stuff first, which can be a PITA, but when you need to repair hundreds of blocks, you do it anyway.
Liking the new layout with the dropship at the front as it was the run back and forth to the dropship which lead to me no longer using the original. I would also make it out of plastic as who takes a carrier in to combat and i would not worry about making it land on the ground as it a space carry all. Nice work look forward to trying out the new one.
Love all your ideas on the new Helios.. Go plastic on the hull and just armor the engineering areas. Maybe sacrifice one bay for some 640 k for all the trading in Reforged Eden nowadays?
Remove the landing gear altogether. Set it up that when landing in WATER you can still use the walkways? Will require some tweaking on the overall CV height. Landing CV’s especially carriers makes for good photos too.
Someone made a 2 bay Helios with a drop ship bay so it was smaller than the normal Helios and I turned all the blocks into carbon, making it super light and manoverable, since it never went into combat and it had a shield.
@Jeff Randall It is no surprise that the braking on this thing is terrible; it is much like a modern day freighter, they don't stop on a dime either. Have you thought about making a "tug boat" vessel that accompanies this to do all the braking and thrusting? Also, the length of that hallway makes my inner super villain scream TRAM. It needs an HV tram set up, but it needs to be out of the way of other HVs so one suspended from the ceiling. Finally, my only other thought is verticality. Have you considered stacked modules to reduce the length? I presume one of your intentions of the flight deck is to dock other CVs to it, however having two flight decks one for SVs and one for CVs exclusively could be an option. A second set of modules stacked on top of this could allow for another flight deck between.
I've tinkered around with similar ideas to yours, but since I generally play alone the need for a 'craftworld' style ship doesn't jive with my minimalist self so they moulder unfinished in drydock.
I hope you find my input of some value.
i liked the landing space inside since dockted to ships gave trouble with docking with another ship
i used the 6 modules version for 3 month., but not enough thrusters, found a xeno helios with more thrusters, transfered into carbon, was a really good carrier.
no one needs storage,ore production cause everyone uses modules for, and things are safe if you put in module, not on carrier. shields i have put on the floor:) would be nice to have a decent place...more thrusters are a must. 4 bays are ok also, cause lategame have a station for farming modules. at least the cores should be a little bit more protected, but otherwise carbon is good if you put on shields.dont needed a fusion reactor but endetd with 6 adv. generators, so one would be nice.
A smaller lighter Helios would be ideal. Using all plastic allows you to carry as much as possible. Minimal storage dedicated to distributing ammunition amongst all of your ships.
Much smaller size would allow you to actually carry 3 or 4 modules plus a heavy warship and large scavenging vehicle. The original could not carry much with weights and volumes on.
Helios for me serves 2 purposes: 1. to move modules from X-change to X-change. 2. Early game to warp around with my warpless core-9. So production on the ship itself is a waste of CPU for me (production module does it better). And changing to carbon is a good idea, but sort of conflicts with purpose No 2. I think changing to carbon is probably still better.
Quite like the idea of a new layout. Storage is not bad idea, 1 640K is more than enough (now it has 320) - few boxes for armour etc would be nice. Like, 3-5 boxes. 6 bays is absolute minimum. I normally have 2 garden modules, one drop ship, one explorer and 1 dedicated miner and 1 POI assault CV and 1 storage. That's 6 + drop ship.
EDIT: forgot production. So 7 + dropship.
EDIT2: and it does not need to land at all, that's just stupid. Ship like that does not need to do that at all, that's a waste of fuel.
I think it's best to do the hull in steel. Whether hardened or not. And then do the interior blocks in carbon. Tried and true :)
i liked the landing space since dockted to ships gave trouble with docking with another ship
Hey Jeff, big fan of your work! As an avid user of the Janus ASV and HELIOS carriers (I have my own scout carrier with a single module), I really like the idea of compacting the driving space in favor of extra module bays. The new layout of the design is an excellent idea. You've removed a lot of empty space in favor of greatly increased efficiency. I love that you can get six bays into an even smaller space.
With your production module up front, I don't really feel that there's any need to have much production or farming. That CPU should be saved for thrusters or equipment. So maybe a single Advanced Constructor just in case you have some sort of catastrophe like losing your production module or something. Or the ability to make ammo or refine pentaxid.
Lastly, I think you should focus on using only Drive Thrusters. They provide more thrust per CPU than the clusters of smaller Advanced Thrusters (even though it looks awesome).
Really looking forward to your new ship coming out!
Since it's not a combat ship, you really should be making it out of plastic. Maybe steel for the armor around the shield generator, warp drive, and computer cores.
I also think it is important to increase the internal space so that smaller CVs can be attached, this would further increase the transport power linked to locomotion power. Of course it would be a big investment for the player, but for those who are already rich in the game it won't make a difference. When I say increase docking capacity, I mean in protected and undiscovered locations in space.
i WOULD LIKE FULL SM AND MED SHIELDS AND MAYBE 2 LARGE , GONNA NEED IT BEING CARBON AND STEEL HULL. ALSO 1 FUSION REACTOR. SIDE NOTE THE SENTRY GUNS WORK FOR DRONES BUT DON'T HAVE MUCH RANGE ... KEEP THAT IN MIND.
🎉
u should mostly do carbon hull and armor up the thrusters and other devices etc and using all drive thrusters on the ship would be better for turning later on. helios was annoyingly slow to turn
i would get everything else in place, and then see where it makes sense for the front thrusters
Yeah definitely change the hardened steel to carbon and bump shields up.
I already made a suggestion once but I don't know if it was read. I will suggest again: Build a Nemesis CV or update the existing one to the evolved standards of RE, with great capabilities. The ship is beautiful and deserves to be resurrected.
Thanks! I worry a lot on the Nemesis as the hull is very heavy to RE Standards. Well, on the current version. A new one would most likely be a different ship and need to have far less armor unless it was meant to run with a small shield. I will think on it. Maybe there is still a need for a more tanking combat CV. It just has become so hard to move that kind of CV as RE thrusters cost a lot of CPU and don't have a lot of power compared to vanilla. I typically find the CPU better spent on larger shield and less thrusters with a lighter hull. Again, I will think on it some. I would not mind doing and update or rebuild of the ship, but I feel like it would end up being something else mostly maybe besides the general shape. And thanks again!
I think it's important to improve the ship's power, as I myself carry several large and heavy ships. So it would be really good to increase your transportation power. Of course playing in single player mode, as the servers limit the amount of CPU used.
you can just switch thrusters off to stop
Hmm. I will try that. Seems like an easy way to do it. Thanks again!
Maybe an aircraft-carrier style control tower on the top deck? I built one mainly to house an emergency medbay, sometimes coming back from a mission in an SV you don't have a lot of time left to walk to a medbay when you're dying.
I like the idea of that, but at the same time it would make it potentially harder to dock big ships on the top. It would also add more to the size class and require an area below the control tower to connect it. I had the same thoughts on the original Helios but it just did make sense functionally although I thought it could look cool. I am kind of in the same boat now trying to optimize the design on the first to be a bit more upgradable, a little less costly, and more efficient. Someday I may do another "Carrier" type that would have control tower on one side of the flight deck. I guess a bit like the Skaar Megalodon. I will try to have a med bay close or just built in the hangar. And thanks again!
I customize my own Helios and one of the first things I did was change the entire thing to plastic, and specific areas to steel/hardened steel to protect expensive parts. Steel also makes almost no sense since it adds a mountain of weight for a tiny amount of protection. Given the way lighter plastic, I remove two of the forward drive thrusters which frees up a ton of CPU for shield parts and extra production. Generally I sacrifice the large bay and just copy/paste a huge production/storage area to that bay, but with space in the hallway I wouldn't have to.
I love the new layout though as it solves a lot of the running around problems, and the internal bay was always WAY too big IMHO. As for parking this on planet... that's crazy lol. Personally I think the Helios should be treated for what it basically is, a huge mobile base/space carrier.
I do want to emphasize that I think storage is hugely important in the main ship. The fact that you can't transfer/interact with attached ships while moving makes attached cargo/production an enormous pain. In my "copy/paste" plastic Helios I ended up with 8 320k and 4 640k. Probably overkill, but I would personally rather have 1 less bay than attach a production bay I have to stop moving to use.
That was my problem with the original storage setup as well.
Thanks Jeff, I always use the Helios and a upgraded version would be great. Also I like the idea of carbon or lighter hull material because if should never be in combat anyway.