Well, suppose you have late game, and you have a one or a couple of high level cap ships, (lvl 6+) with all of the nice abilities.
The problem is, you can't use them; the moment you bring your cap ships into the battle, they got insta-gibbed by insane firepower.
Let's a bit honest; how does long your typical lvl 6+ ship survive against 50+ LRMs, 20+ HCs, and now hordes of bombers in 1.09/1.1? It does not take that much good micro to click the capital ship (big size) to focus all the firepower.
Other than Kol, I usually see my capital ships VIRTUALLY VAPORITZED in the matter of a minute, if not seconds. In the end, the whole purpose of capital ships become like this....
1. Quickly use abilities and retreat to neighboring planet.
2. If a capital ship is very durable type (e.g Kol) you can distract enemy player for a while by circling around the planet, but it won't last long.
I suggest, at the level of 6, the total hp (including shields) of capital ship needs to be 10000+ at mininum, or even more.
i thinkjthe capitla ships arestrong enough but they should position themselves better in battle so that they use the most firepowere. I would be cool if you could designate a ship to be the leader of all fleetsand thatshipcould go to level 12 andreceive another ability at that level depending on which race your using notwhich kind of cap ship. this would give 5 different possiblities per race onwhat ship it can be making the fleet more customizable. Any ideas for the last ability per race?
wouldn't that make them even more of a target? what we are discussing is that capships cannot withstand the onslaught of dozens of frigates.
hm, iirc shield mitigation was introduced to discourage focused fire and in the late game it quite clearly does not succeed in that task. so, the question is: could a tweaked mitigation work? maybe capships could reach 70 or 80% mitigation, but with according tweaks it would take a lot of focused fire to reach that in the first place.
I'd agree that a max shield mitigation buff on capital ships by 5-15% could be both a good gameplay addition and fluff complement.
I mean, if we're paying large amounts of resources to construct these vessels, you'd think redundant shield generators and better weapon fire analysis would go into them to protect them.
I don't think shield mitigation is enough.
Espically when playing as Advent against Vasari.
Given the amount of time it takes in the current iteration of the beta to get a capital ship to level 8+ there needs to be SOME reward for one's effort. Their power needs to scale better as they get up in level.
maybe technological solutions. sort of like "improved superstructures" or "strengthened macro hull engineering" that only apply to capital ships, but give them vast benefit. since its more of a mid to late game problem, as you wont get that many frigates that fast ( at least not without concentrating your forces too much), it could work to include a tech or two designed to make capships more powerful dependent or independent from level.
I would love "add-ons" that you can buy (in addition to the extra skills) as your ship gains levels. These would be ridiculously expensive, but effective additions that would have a graphical change to the ships. For example, a new hangar for a carrier would add a blocky structure, while a Nova Cannon for a battleship would put a big gun on the ship. Missile platforms, enhanced shields, etc.
Perhaps also make these findable relics, similiar to artifacts, but floating in space, the first capital ship that gets to them can take it on board-but some of the ancients still protect these relics...You would also have to research the artifact before you could use it, and killing the cap carrying it wold allow you to take it away from that faction.
This would make exploration and risky travel with your cap's a useful thing, giving it a kinda Trekky vibe.
I would like to see more of a distinction between the caps. Example would be the main battleship cap would have much more armor/firepower then the colony version. I know they are different but it doesnt seem by much. The cap carriers dont carry that many more fighters imo. One idea would be to research a refit for cap ships once you have all 5 research stations. Refitting armor weapons ect.
I agree that caps could use a bit of a boost in the late game.
I, like most others, will not build more than 2. The exception to this is once I 2 cap ships that are at level 6 or higher, then I'll build a 3rd, and start leveling it. Then build a 4th similarly, etc.
And why is it so expensive to upgrade the number of capital ships you can support. It's mega expensive on the later levels.
What if caps didn't use up any command points? This would encourage people to actually research capital ship build slots and build the capital ship, rather than have their upkeep percentage go up. You would often face the choice, "Shall I build more HC's and start paying more in upkeep, or shall I build a cap ship first?"
I really like this idea actually. What do you think?
Not bad. And I do have to agree. Capital ships should exude an aura of "I am Death Incarnate". That is what they are (supposedly) built for. Caps are SUPPOSED to be your main offensive force, and the HC/frigs should only be used for escort duties. Caps certainly aren't worth it. They don't pack enough firepower, and they certainly don't have enough HP/SP. The Kol should be ripping through frigs like paper. Small fleets should barely scratch the shields at medium levels, and level 10 battleship capitals should be feared as unstoppable Juggernauts, especially because of the time put in to leveling them.
Capitals don't have much use, as even with the lost firepower due to mitigation it still doesn't change the fact that ALL ships have mitigation, and similar levels of it too. Having only capitals with mitigation would help them out too, as then doing FF on the cap would be a LOT of wasted damage, and his fleet would rip yours to shreds.
Mitigation makes all the difference in survivability. In 7 Deadly Sins DANMAN accidentally forgot to add mitigation to some of the Empire's ships. And this is a ship with capital-level shields/HP. It got absolutely DESTROYED by the fleet around an arctic planet as over 50% of all its damage went nowhere, and they delivered 100% damage 100% of the time.
Eliminating mitigation on frigates and making cruisers have much weaker mitigation would seriously stop LRF spamming as HC's would mitigate then rip through them. And HC's wouldn't be as useful against capitals as another capital since less mitigation = more damage taken. Like bigger ships have more armor, bigger ships should also have generators more capable of adapting to enemy fire.
Focus fire is the enemy, their durability is irrelevant.
Focus fire blows in RTS games, always has, always will. Mitigation could have fixed it, but when you remove focus fire as a tactical requirement, the tards that have convinced themselves it's a fun aspect of the game go bonkers.
To make capital ships live, move the mitigation cap up to 1% or so and make it a much smoother incremental increase. This starts at 20 and goes to 60 with just a couple guys shooting it crap is pointless for discouraging focus fire. This would have the added bonus of making tactics more relevant and versatile, as well as allow small defense fleets to engage and hold off larger ones while reinforcements arrived, instead of insta popping one by one regardless of the repair platforms.
Mitigation 1%? That means only 1% of all damage will be stopped and so makes it irrelevant.
However, ditching mitigation for all frigs except colony frigs, and halving max mitigation for all cruisers while leaving cap ship mitigation untouched would make massed frig fleets useless instead of the best damn tactic. Sending LRFs (even Ilums) against HC would be a massacre on your part. The mitigation + shields would negate any advantage the frigs had in damage, and their lack of mitigation would make them absolute tissue paper. Frigates should not be viable late-game, period. Late game should be the territory of cruisers and capitals, not whoever has more shipyards to spam LRF's.
And capitals need an all-around boost, considering the time/money/supply involved. Either leave them the way they are and remove command point requirements allowing infinte capitals, or make them worth the cost and limited quantities. A battleship capital should be FEARED, not focus fired and quickly destroyed. And a carrier capital should have like 10+ squads of fighters/bombers, especially with the boost carrier cruisers got. And planet sieging caps should eat planets for breakfast. As it is they are too similar to battleship caps.
A modern carrier (e.g. US carrier in the Gulf) is not that powerful. It basically has point defence weapons and that is about it. But it is the most protected ship in the fleet. Why? because it can be the most dangerous due to the fire power it can project via its planes. If 100 planes shoort air to surface missiles at it, its gonna have a bad day.
The most powerful ship in Star Wars (Super Star Destoyer) are overwhelmed by a large fleet and/or large amount of fighters firing missiles. No one says that they need a buff. its just accepted that they can be blown up, but at a cost to the attacker.
The same thing applies in Sins. Its a simple fact. More numbers wins. The Russians used it as a tactic for years - the Russian Steamroller.
I agree capital ships need amajor buff and here is why: They are call capital ships. You need to invest lots of time and resources to get them, and as a result they need to live up to their name. Otherwise why not just rename them support cruisers or something?
Please either gives us a capital ship buff or give us a new capital ship worhty of its title.
I'd have thought it was obvious based on the context of the post, but that 1% mitigation is a goof. It was 5am.
I was intending to say 1% damage left over after mitigation. As in one ship firing on one ship is just as good as 100 ships firing on one ship. Obviously somewhere closer to 5% would likely be sufficient. It just needs to scale in a reasonable manner so that this idiocy of force firing on single ships with hundreds, which would be impossible and never happen in reality, doesn't help you.
I am happy some one brought up a present day capital ship. the Nimitz Class Super Carrier is the most powerful warship that has ever been in service. It sports 3 SAM launchers and 4 Rapid fire chain guns, these weapons are only used to shoot down enemy air craft, its main weapon is its complimnet of 85 aircraft. A Nimitz Class can deal out death and distruction at ranges and rates that no ship can even begin to compare to. Unfortantly the Nimitz class has never really seen any fleet to fleet engagements, so i am going to jump back in time to WW2 and tallk about the Essex Class for a second.
The Essex Class aircraft carrier was the USA's main air craft carrier durring WW2 and various ships of this class saw active battle against the japanese, and a few were sunk. I assume almost every one has a general idea of how fleets were set up; the air craft carrier in the middle with some large battle ships and then smaller support ships the further out you get. The support ships were dangerous in their own right, but their primary job was to protect the carriers and battle ships, the capital ships. The carriers and battle ships are the heart of the fleet, when even a single one is sunk it can break the fleet, so its was of the upmost importance for these thips to keep them alive, and they did it in a way that no RTS i have ever played has done.
They are physicaly in the way.
Durring WW2 since there was no satalite guided weapons enemy ships would have to fire at the capital ships by fireing over the escort vessals and hopeing that the shell landed where it was ment, this is way harder then just fireing at the thing you want to hit. Air craft had to fly over the escort vessals before they could even begin to attack.
So the way to increase the effectiveness of capital ships in Sins would be to make it so enemy ships can't just fire through your ships, or the shield bubbles, and to make fleet formations actualy have your ships cluster around the lead ships. Assuming the 2 fleets are really large, and about the same size, if the enemy wanted to focus fire on your capital ship only a few ships would be able to hit it from their max ranges, the others would have to move in much closer.
you have to take the advent shield mitigation techs into accound as well. considering their combined culture and shield techs can lower then quite significantly, and that enemies should still be able to attack them purposefully after that, I'd say that 85% - 90% is pretty much the highest you can go there.
of course, you could make a separate technology just for that available for all races that increases it from 60% to these levels. only that the advent get more techs for that and are thus stronger at it. that way, it only really becomes available later in the game, when mass focus fire really becomes a problem. probably a very difficult balance issue, but entirely possible and very much needed.
If mitigation levels were changed, advent shield increases would need reworked anyway. Upping the max from 65 to 85 would also make a 1 point change as effective as a 3 point change used to be. Capship level bonuses could be halved, leaving them with level 10 mitigation of 90% before upgrades. As long as it was a nice, smooth scale that took a decent amount of damage to max out, that would discourage the hell out of focus fire. Just a few points up from culture would be very nice at that level.
Also, I'd assume every weapon has a minimum damage of one after mitigation. Don't see many people designing engines with fractional damage distribution.
I think CapShips are just fine as they are, and don't need any buffing.
See, a Kortul Devastator fresh out of the factory has 2650 Hull, 5 Armor and 1425 Shields. Adding it all up, this gives the Kortul 4737 hitpoints out of the box. It then has 12 Wave + 8 Pulse Beam + 6 Phase Missile DPS for it's front bank with 11 Pulse Beam DPS on each side, giving it a total of 48 DPS(ignoring Phase Missiles' penetration ability). On top of all this it's capable of sieging planets at 45 DPS.
So it has the toughness of 2 Enforcers put together, the firepower of 2 Enforcers and an Assailant put together, and the planet-killing power worth 2 Destructor siege frigates. If you add the costs of 2 Enforcers, 2 Destructors and 1 Assailant together, they cost 2900 cash, 545 metal, 405 crystal and 58 fleet supply. The Kortul weighs in at 3000 cash, 400 metal and 250 crystal, along with 50 fleet supply and 1 cap-ship slot. Although we're ignoring the hitpoint contributions of the Assailant and the 2 siege boats, we're also completely ignoring the Kortul's abilities and it's improvement potential through leveling up. For the price, I'd say the capital ship is worth it.
No it isn't. Leveling takes TIME. Time is quite important. Considering that you can get the 2 Enforcers, the Assailant, and the 2 Destructors faster than the capital, and they don't have same instant resource cost allowing you to spam them faster, the frigs/cruisers are worth it. Late-game you own everything already. Resources don't mean jack. Your trade ports are making you butt-loads of money which you can then sell off to compensate for what your volcanic/ice worlds aren't producing. You have researched everything already, so all you need to do is crank out the ships to crush the enemy.
And most people spam LRF's and HC's. Especially Advent with Ilums and the Destra's Ruthlessness for free DPS. Why do capitals? The cost won't let you spam LRF's and HC's and they are destroyed before they can use their abilities enough to make a difference. Also, with Advent carrier cruisers spamming 3 squads of strikecraft each, anyone who doesn't spam flak frigs is toast. And flak frigs can't fight in fleet battles. And if the Advent player spams Animas, Ilums and Destras, you are screwed, no matter what.
Late game is ship spam. That's the problem. With all the resources, people can just carrier cruiser, LRF, and HC spam to their heart's content.
I notice you didn't include fleet capacity used, nor the resourced needed to place that capital ship (assuming it's not your first one). If you're going to compare things in this way, let's do it right. I'm going to follow your lead and exclude secondary abilities for the sake of this discussion. I took the liberty of making your cruiser group match the 50 fleet capacity.
1x Kortul Devastator Ship Cost: 3000c 400m 200c | 50 supply| Hull: 2650 Armor: 5 Shields: 1425 |
1x upgrade to 1 Capital Ship Capacity: 1200c 0m 75c
_________________________________________________________
Total: 4200c 400m 275c | 50 supply | Hull: 2650 Armor: 5 Shields: 1425 | 48 damage
1x Karrastra Destructor= 625c 90m 70c | 14 supply| Hull: 420 Armor: 2 Shields: 255
1x Lasurak Transporter = 480c 85m 80c | 8 supply | Hull: 850 Armor: 2 Shields: 360
1x Kanrak Assailant= 400c 65m 45c | 6 supply | Hull: 600 Armor: 2 Shields: 360 _________________________________________________________
Total: 2610c 395m 345c | 50 supply | Hull: 3140 Armor: 2 Shields: 1590
I could have gone with 2 more Assailants and actually outdamaged the capital ship in leiu of the versalitity of the fighter/bombers from the transporter. I wanted to simulate accurately the capital ship's ability to have strike craft.
I'm confused as to how this is a good deal nonthless. You pay more in every resource but crystal in this particular scenario, and this isn't EVEN counting the later capital ship slot upgrades. You have to figure in the total cost of ownership. The only advantage to the capital ship buildtime v/s all the other ships (unless you have multiple frigate factories...but then we'd have to figure in their cost..etc).
Everyone knows capital ships are weak. I build fleet max on them during comp stomps every game and even I admit they're weak. Not enough thought has been given to their use in my opinion by the developers. They're currently treated like bigger versions of the cruisers. Given the cost at the upper end of their slot cycle they DEFINATELY need upgrades.
Consider this: For the privilege of using 800 fleet capacity you don't really have to use in SINS to win you pay 23,400 credits 3,790 metal and 6,175 crystal. Explain to me again how this is a good deal, because I'm not seeing it other than the "oh cool I got a big ol cap ship" factor. When they level'd a little faster it as *almost* worth it. Not now.
So I don't sound like a WoW player and do nothing but whine I'll make a suggestion.
Make capital ship fleet capacity completely seperate from normal fleet. Give some incentive for them to be used on the board. The cost is already there given that they're not really more powerful than their cruiser counterparts given the ability to spam. I'm sure it would cause a plethora of balance issues, but at least it would be a step in the right direction.
one thing that you missed with your fleet calculations, to the second above poster, is that if the enemy does 800 dmg or so, they kill the assailant, for example, and remove that DPS perminantly from the equation. 800 dmg to a capital ship just mars the shields a bit.Also, capital ships can purchase ugprades, which, although expensive, offer more unique abilities, armor, HP, shields, dmg, etc, on top of the weapon/hull ugprades in the tech tree.Another thing you aren't calculating for is the cost of the research of all those ships, the cost of the labs, etc etc etc.
They are talking about late game. if you can't make a Kanrak Assailant in the late game because you haven't researched it your doing something wrong.
However you did forget to include that the capital ship can attack planets.
one thing that you missed with your fleet calculations, to the second above poster, is that if the enemy does 800 dmg or so, they kill the assailant, for example, and remove that DPS perminantly from the equation. 800 dmg to a capital ship just mars the shields a bit.
But when you factor in it's cheaper just to replace the lost assailant than even build the capital ship in the first place, the point is moot. Fights aren't won or lost based on 800 damage. It's all about "the number of bullets in the air" when capital ships are basically "heavy heavy cruisers" such as they are in the current iteration.
No I didn't. Check the ships:
Karrastra Destructor - Planet Bombing Damage: 23
with two of them that's 46 damage versus the Kortul Devastator's 45.
Now I didn't include the research for the figate/cruisers because their cost is negligable....you're going to do that research regardless if you pop out a single capital ship or not (other than when you try to get "Go big or go home" nobody builds a capital ship only fleet). Furthermore I'm not including the logistical structures required for either set for the same reasons...you're going to build the requsite warfare research stations either way, so the cost is moot. And since we're talking mid/late game the requirements in the way of labs is the same for both situations.
But this is the issue...most people don't build capital ships because they're not worth it for what you invest.
But let's do include their research since it seems important to you.
Sub total from above: 2610c 395m 345c
Karrastra Destructor Research= 400c 0m 25c
Lasurak Transporter Research= 800c 100m 75c
Kanrak Assailant Research = 400c 0m 25c
__________________________________________________________
Total cost: 3810c 495m 470c
v/s the one capital ship's
Initial Cost: 4200c 400m 275c
It's still cheaper credit wise to research all three typs of ships AND build them versus building the one capital ship.
Sure the crystal costs are almost double (which through smart buying through the black market that's neglegable).
Thus, there is no value in the capital ship.
I challenge you to compare it to building that second 50 fleet capacity's worth of cruisers/frigates versus that second capital ship's cost. I'm proving my point, counter me.
The point of the thread is that capital ships are so weak they're superflous. I can consistantly take that CHEAPER 50 fleet's worth of frigates/cruisers and beat that capital ship.
What's more, if I don't use the destructors, and instead build 50 fleet's worth of Tansporters/Assailants I won't even lose a ship when fighting that capital ship. That alone speaks droves about the overall weakness of the capital ship. It should be at least the equalivent of the smaller ships provided it's cost is higher. It's logical to me if you match things on the smallest equlivent fleet capacity possible and the capital ship losing, it will only scale as fleets get larger. Gameplay experience has proven that hypothesis to me. Previous builds of the game it wasn't terribly difficult to level up capital ships to the point that they became more useful, right now it takes too long for that initial cost to become recouperated by the capital ship's ability to level. When I build my "luxury" capital ship fleets I don't even waste my time with level 1's...I spend the credits to make them 4 (which takes even MORE credits and research) because otherwise they're not worth the initial purchase.
I'm saying they're not only weak, but they're expensive for what little you get. Thus, nobody builds them.
My bad, i don't play Vasari, well ever and i thought that was their HC at first.
I still think that making it so ships can't fire through each others shield bubbles and better use of the fleet formations you could effectivly use the smaller ships to shield the capital ships.
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