Capital Ship Rebalancing Proposal

[Tenacity]

I dont expect many people to readily agree with many of the changes listed here, but most of these have been posted on these forums over the past several months, some even by the dev team.

Now, the biggest problem that cruiser and battleship class capital ships face right now is size. Weapons, particularly point defense weapons intended to protect a capital ship from fighters and bombers, are balanced to the smallest craft. Cruiser solaris work fine on the corvo or kusari destroyer, but they're poor on a rheinland cruiser or battlecruisers. Similarly, battleship solaris work fine on an osiri or makos, but are useless on a juggernaut or rheinland bs.

The only way to fix that is to give multiple weapon classes to these ship types, based on their size. Larger ships need weapons that are balanced to work on ships of their size, smaller ships similarly need weapons that are balanced to work on ships of their size. One of the sole reasons for refraining from buffing larger cruisers in terms of anti-bomber defense, from what I've been told, is the fact that the smaller cruisers, primarily the gunboat-sized kusari destroyer, would become overpowered if they could use those same weapons. The simplest solution, then, is to not allow them to use those same weapons.

First off, that means re-purposing each weapon class in order to provide more weapon classes to each capital ship type:

Class 10 Turrets: Heavy battleship turrets
Class 9 Turrets: Light battleship turrets
Class 8 Turrets: Heavy Cruiser/Battlecruiser turrets
Class 7 Turrets: Light cruiser/destroyer turrets
Class 6 Turrets: Gunboat turrets
Class 5 Turrets: Transport turrets
Class 4 Turrets: Bomber turrets
Class 3 Turrets: Fighter Turrets (equivalent to class 5 turrets)
Class 2 Turrets: Fighter Turrets (equivalent to class 4 turrets)
Class 1 Turrets: Fighter Turrets (equivalent to class 3 turrets)

While this post primarily relates to capital ships, it should be noted that something similar can be done for fighter weaponry:

Class 10 guns: VHF & Freighter guns/missiles
Class 9 guns: HF guns/missiles
Class 8 guns: LF guns/missiles
So on and so forth.

I actually think that it would be beneficial to the mod if many of the original vanilla ships and low-end ships were removed entirely. Replace patriots with liberators, dragons with chimaeras, etc. etc. - simply increase the ship class that new players start with and remove the need for those low end ships that currently only serve as pointless stepping stones to the 'real game'.

So, for the purposes of the capital ship turret types above, the ships would be split up in the following manner:

Heavy Battleships/Dreadnaughts
Zoner Juggernaut
Rheinland Battleship
GRN Battleship
Nomad Battleship
Kusari Battleship
Council Battleship
Lane Hacker Spyglass
Liberty Carrier
Corsair Dreadnought
Outcast Dreadnought
Battlestar II
Satsuma
Venator

Light Battleships
Zoner Carrier
Liberty Dreadnought
Outcast Battleship
Bretonia Battleship
Blood Dragon Battleship
Order Battleship
BHG Battleship
IMG Carrier

Heavy Cruisers/Battlecruisers
Liberty Assault Battlecruiser
Order Battlecruiser
IMG Battlecruiser
Bounty Hunter Battlecruiser
Necrosis

Red Hessian Cruiser
Corsair Cruiser
Phantom Cruiser
Rogue Destroyer
Council Cruiser
Bretonian Destroyer
Nomad Cruiser
GRN Cruiser
Rheinland Cruiser

Light Cruisers/Destroyers
Zoner Corvo
Kusari Destroyer
Rheinland Pirate Cruiser
Blood Dragon Cruiser
Zoner Fearless
Bounty Hunter Destroyer
AI Cruiser
Coalition Cruiser
Order Recon Cruiser
Outcast Destroyer
Liberty Seige Cruiser

All gunboats and transports would stay the same as far as the weaponry they're using, the class of that weaponry would be the only change. Current class 7 transport turrets would now become class 5 transport turrets, but no stats would change.

Battlecruisers
I'm also recommending a fundamental change in the way battlecruisers are balanced. Currently, there are two extremes: The LABC/IMGBC, both of which are useless sitting ducks due to the lack of a thruster, and the Order BC/Carrier which, similarly, is a battleship-sized target.

After speaking to quite a few BC pilots, most agree that thrusters are desperately needed on the LABC and IMGBC in order to make them effective, while most also agree that they would rather have better firing arcs and a larger number of turrets (a la the order bc) than their current battleship hardpoints.

Battlecruisers need to be streamlined (and I'm not talking aerodynamics) - they all need to be relatively similar in capability and purpose, balanced on the same plane, just as most other ship types are. There is currently too much difference between the BC's in the mod to make them a shipclass of their own, that needs to be rectified. So, the following changes need to be made to the battlecruiser class in particular:
-Battleship turret hardpoints removed, and replaced with 4 cruiser turret hardpoints (this gives all the bc's other than the order carrier 14 cruiser turrets, rather than 10 cruiser + 2 battleship turrets)
-All battlecruisers need thrusters, they currently need to be added to the LABC and IMGBC
-The Order Carrier needs to be remodelled with similar size and stats as the other battlecruisers, and dropped down to 14 turrets to match the others.
-To set them apart from simple heavy cruisers, BC's should all have a battleship shield hardpoint - another gain in exchange for the loss of battleship weapons

Thus, battlecruisers will become more effective fleet-leadership craft in place of battleships, and they'll become something more along the lines of an advanced heavy cruiser rather than a nerfed battleship. Note that in the listing of turrets above, battlecruisers (as well as heavy cruisers) are restricted to class 8 guns, and thus have no access to battleship weaponry any longer - however, the class 8 guns, being balanced around larger cruiser-class ships, would provide more defensive capability to these ship types than current cruiser-class weaponry does.

The Specifics of each Turret Class

Class 10 - Heavy Battleship/Dreadnaught Turrets
-Heavy Mortar (Unchanged)
-Battleship Cerberus Turret (Unchanged)
-Heavy Battle Razor (Speed reduced to 1500m/s, damage increased to 160k/80k)
-Heavy Battleship Pulse Turret (50% increased damage and 75% increased energy cost from current bs pulse turret)
-Heavy Battleship Solaris Turret (Range increase to 1750 meters, power requirement increased by 50%)

Class 9 - Light Battleship Turrets
-Mortar (unchanged)
-BS primary turrets (unchanged)
-BS secondary turrets (unchanged)
-Battle Razor (Power requirement reduced by 10%)
-Battleship Pulse Turret (unchanged)
-Battleship Solaris Turret (Range increased to 1200m)
-Battleship missile Turret (unchanged)

Note: As you can see, the heavy battleships lose their ability to equip primary/secondary turrets, and now can only equip cerberus turrets for primary weapons. Likewise, light battleships can no longer equip heavy cerberus loadouts. This focuses heavy battleships into a more anti-battleship role, while lighter battleships are geared towards fighting smaller or same-sized craft.

Class 8 - Heavy Cruiser/Battlecruiser Turrets
-Light Mortar (unchanged)
-Heavy Cruiser Razor (Damage increased by 50%, energy requirement increased by 50%)
-Heavy Cruiser Solaris Turret (Range increased to 1100m, Speed increased to 2000m/s from 1800m/s, energy requirement increased by 50%)
-Cerberus Cruiser Turret (Unchanged)
-Heavy Cruiser Pulse Turret (damage increased by 20%, power requirement increased by 25%)

Class 7 - Light Cruiser/Destroyer Turrets
-Cruiser Primary Turrets (unchanged)
-Cruiser Razor (speed increased to 1000m/s from 800, range increased to 2500m)
-Cruiser Solaris Turret (unchanged)
-Cruiser Pulse Turret (unchanged)
-Cruiser Missile Turret (unchanged)

Note: Similarly to the battleship change, light cruisers and destroyers no longer have access to the cerberus turrets or light mortars, instead they must rely on cruiser missiles for heavy firepower (as well as razors against similarly sized ships), and primary turrets. Heavy cruisers and battlecruisers keep the light mortar as a heavy weapon, but have slower weapons all around, making it more difficult for them to deal with gunboats/gunships and some light cruisers.

Class 6 - Gunboat Turrets
Unchanged

Class 5 - Transport Turrets
Unchanged



Now, these changes also emphasize something that was already done by the devs - focusing on varied weapon loadouts. Battleship weapons were given higher damage and higher power cost, so that fewer primary/cerberus turrets needed to be used, granting more slots for either heavy weapons or point defense weapons. With fewer turret types for each ship class, and the altered stats shown above, you can focus on a versatile loadout which allows you to counter a wide variety of enemies to varying degrees of effectiveness, though it is still possible for any of the ship classes to focus entirely on defeating one type of opponent.

Another semi-related change I'd like to see is the rebalancing of capship hull to shield strength. I realize that armor plays a large part in the survival of capital ships with a high base hull, but we all know how devastating the screen-shake can be for a de-shielded cap pilot. As most weapons deal less hull damage than shield damage, it seems to me that we could rebalance caps around having a very powerful shield and lower relevant hull strength, thus keeping a capital pilot from experiencing screen shake as much.

Example:

The Average hull strength of a battleship is 1,010,000 before armor. Add in a mk4 armor upgrade and most battleships hover around 4 million armor. A battleship shield offers 450,000 capacity, currently - now if you drop that armor to 25%, and make the shield strength half of what you have remaining, you'd end up with 250,000 base hull on most battleships (1 mil with armor) and the battleship shield would absorb 1,500,000 damage - recharge rates and power drain remain the same. This turns most of a battle into taking down an opponent's shield, with the target dying quickly after his shield is lost. Similar calculations can be done to find the shield strength necessary for cruisers. Gunboats should probably be left the way they are, as they're primarily fighter/bomber platforms.
Going off of that same equation, cruisers average 300k hull base, up to 1.2 mil average with 4.0 armor. With the change, cruisers would average 75,000 hull strength, but the cruiser shield would give 450,000 capacity, the equivalent of current battleship shields.

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