Capital Ships Rebalance Discussion

[Karlotta]

I'd make caps a bit more vulnerable to snubs, maybe by giving vhf weapons a range and/or dps boost, or an additional missile/torp slot besides the CD.

Also do something about large caps getting stuck in jump holes, lanes, and gates, by making the dock radius of those larger, if possible.

And maybe reduce the spinning from npcs by removing their collision hitboxes (someone said they are different from shot hhitboxes), if necessary be introducing a few new non-collision ship models for NPCs only, at least in the places where they are the most annoying. Also remove NPC spawns in many (not all) places, where all they do is annoy without serving an actual purpose.

Finally, make the dense asteroid fields less dense by removing the smaller asteroids in them (or the collision checks for those). The vanilla asteroids were not made with player caps in mind, so adapt them.

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[Severino]

1. Remove CDs from Cruisers/Battlecruisers to make snubs more valuable. or give them differnet type of CD like a unguided one, very limited ammo.

2. Cruisers needs Jump drives, to balance it, make its batteries very expensive or one time jump per load.

3. All capital ships cruise charging needs to increased by at least 5 times to make them not able to escape from fights easily or getting cruised catched by Battlecruisers/Battleships during fight.
edit forgot to add: but also increase their cruise speed to 520 Battleships, 525 Battlecruisers and Cruisers.
this will also make dockyards more viable for transporting for fleets in system maps

4.Cruisers need a bit extra speed to outmanovuer Battlecruisers, with their speed being 120, and yours 130, you waste that extra 10 speed to dodge stuff in fights and they will catch you anyways ( THIS does not count in 1v1 but it takes ages to get away)

5. @EisenSeele's idea of mixing gunboats with bombers(below post) is the best thing I ever heard, tho bomber ship models will be left to die. They could be used as a "close air support" class fighter, with new type of guns, @Pepe once gave idea of making fixed front/forward guns for snubs in Discord chat, example would be very high rate of fire(16.0 RoF, long range, strong damage with no arcs, also not like that damn Maxims spread!) fixed forward guns like a A-10 Thunderbolt fighter. or more closely, Starlancer style fighter.

6. @Pepe 's idea of super shields for heavy battleships(below post) another awesome idea that in my opinion would be good, but to add some flavour on it=
they should drain %70 of ship's powercore, when shield about to die, Cap players should manually deactivate them in order to fight with proper powercore regen, also they should not be invicible but insanely regenative with very very long rebuild time(Battleship missiles, mostly Nightmares will counter this shield)

7.If it is possible to write a plugin to give AI control to specific player weapons, It should be implented for Battleship secondaries, and It should be ONE TYPE default weapon that cant be sold or bought, mounted on all battleships. Players also able to give command to them like fire on these targets, cease fire etc.

8. @Karlotta and @Kauket mentioned removing collision hitboxes from npcs, maybe just remove Battleships/Battlecruisers/Cruisers collision boxes, and whoever try to abuse it to get inside otherships/stations in fights should be punished( it will be pain in the *** but seems the most current logical think I can think of.

9.(Again another coding idea) Capital ship dockyard, snubs should able to dock in fights with a delayed 10 second stationary docking sequence, if succesful, snubs are to not join fights for 10 minute. If the host dies, docked snubs will be forced to undock to die killer.)

10. Another @Pepe 's idea I would like to overhaul, He mentioned about snubs attacking sub-systems, Battleships-Battlecruisers-Cruisers everyone of them should get a thruster based on their model with a big hitbox size, easily targeted by CAS class I mentioned. this would make them prove useful to be immobilizers.

All ideas above are inspired by good people of this forum. ( mostly Pepe x) )

(I am a Cruiser player with being very easily tilted and crying, so no bias added my friends, joking... maybe a little bit bias.... )

[Groshyr]

Finally, make the dense asteroid fields less dense by removing the smaller asteroids in them (or the collision checks for those). The vanilla asteroids were not made with player caps in mind, so adapt them.

This is already in progress. Tau-31 field has been adapted for capship gameplay, and many other fields already are or will be adapted soon™.

[Arcana]

Remove NPC's ships bumping and turning you like a leaf all around

[Blake Wayne Van Leer]

Am I the only one that thinks caps are fine?
just remove flipping and asteroid fields and we good


And I mean yeah, everybody knows bombers have it too easy to just swarm caps without any risk of dying without a huge mistake - but do we really want to limit interactions?


EDIT: also EMP dissipation field should
- disrupt/destroy missiles in a radius
- act as a CD in a radius

Battlecruiser Breaker
- from Code to normal gun
it's just a BC hellbore, beginner friendy gun that should be freely buyable

Cultist engines
- more varieties, please also make Battleship Sci data engines buyable

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THE FIRST ARMADA (1st|)

The son of Denver: A Blake Wayne Van Leer Biography

[EisenSeele]

For gunboats:
Remove gunboat turret dispersion and turret splitting for normal turrets, split for dedicated anti-cap turrets

Merge the role of bombers with gunboats by removing bombers and giving gunboats neutralizers, scorchers, and nova torps.

Make Cruisers and larger immune to snub CDs (by restricting snubs to low radius CDs). Gunboats and larger able to CD other caps with a dedicated high-AOE CD - but remove solaris loadouts from caps.

Downgrade all gunboat shields to the current medium to make it squishy enough to for snubs but give gunboats 400 cruise to serve as interceptors.

TLDR: Gunboats serve as the interface between snubs and caps. Caps without solaris have had their ability to counter snubs nerfed, and snubs can no longer force caps into confrontations without a dedicated gunboat - and caps rely on gunboats with their current level of area denial against snubs (IE, they can only shoo them away, but snubs can indefinitely shieldrun swarm anyway).

Mixed fleet engagements would go somewhere along the lines of - Large caps will attempt to fight other large caps as well as kill gunboats - snubs will attempt to fight other snubs as well as killing gunboats.

For Cruisers:
Give them higher thrust speed and a 360 CD to be able to actually chase gunboats for longer (while still being slower), and to be able to more easily outrun battlecruisers - otherwise, change nothing except removing solaris turrets to make Mep happy.

For Battlecruisers:
A faster cruiser would make cruiser v bc a bit more balanced.
Remove their traditional CD, but give them a 5k radius generalized CD that disrupts everything in range.

For Battleships:
Decrease the size of all heavy battleships across the board for QOL.
Give them built in, and reworked docking modules to make them useful for gunship and snub repair/resupply (including ammo) so that they provide a strategic advantage to whichever team has them fielded.

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FEEDBACK

[Pepe]

About big caps:

- holding a ground
Turning rate we currently have is crazy. No crew would survive that forces. Caps should be able to dodge only long range fire and have heavy armor instead, that only huge long range cannons are able to damage. Snubs can't do that, so caps wouldn't need solaris.

- long range bombardment
That's slow huge long range cannons, like siege cannons and mortars. They should be exclusive for battleships, replacing secondaries. Use them to damage armor on bases and other battleships.

- super-shields
Shields for battleships can't be penetrated - from either side. You can't be damaged through shields, but you can't fire too. So battleships wouldn't have ones on sides, where cannons are. Shields only at stern and at bow. Wanna chase? Down your shields.


About smaller caps:

- sniping battleships
Battlecruisers should be able to carry one siege cannon and be able to damage battleships approaching from side. Those shots can be dodged however, so coming closer to a target would be a risk that pays off.

- assault role
Shields on smaller caps should be like tube enveloping them from all sides/up/down, so they can attack battleships straight forward, coming from sides and quickly turn protected side to sustain being fired back. Wanna TSZ? Drop your shields. But chasing and running can be done with shields up.

- covering and deshielding
That's why cruisers and gunboats should be able to lower shields on bigger caps, but from close range only. Pulses are energy weapons and their power drop by square. Trying to deshield a battleship should be very risky, so their main role would be covering your flagship from other small caps.


About snubs:

- damaging battleships
Nope. They can't.

- swarm smaller caps
That should be what bombers are for. For shields use EMPs and bomber screamer mines (stronger and no guidance). Snac should be fixed to hull, being bomber front gun. That would be only snub weapon able to damage a smaller cap. Come from back, or deshield and shoot. Small caps should drop shields to shoot in TSZ mode, as they are enveloped by shields on sides/up/down.

- kill bombers
That is what fighters do. They remove other fighters too. No need to touch them with more balancing. New smaller caps should be too heavy to chase them, being able only to defend from bombers coming close to place a snac.


Torpedos? For damaging sub-systems only, like guns, shields, scanners... But that's another story. We use missiles anyway only because CMs can't work.

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[Firewolfy]

Am I the only one that thinks caps are fine?
just remove flipping and asteroid fields and we good


And I mean yeah, everybody knows bombers have it too easy to just swarm caps without any risk of dying without a huge mistake - but do we really want to limit interactions?

This indeed

[Maltz]

Remove NPC's ships bumping and turning you like a leaf all around

Fix this first before screwing up anything else.

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[Reno]

Am I the only one that thinks caps are fine?
just remove flipping and asteroid fields and we good


And I mean yeah, everybody knows bombers have it too easy to just swarm caps without any risk of dying without a huge mistake - but do we really want to limit interactions?

You are not the only one

[quote='Arcana' pid='2202493' dateline='1606676422']
Remove NPC's ships bumping and turning you like a leaf all around

Fix this first before screwing up anything else.

This

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