I've always wanted a mobile frigate factory.  It doesn't seem glamorous, but for those who have played the game you'd know that's something worth spending a capital ship on.

Starbases and capital ships would be damaged, but not stunned.  Keep in mind this is an area of effect ability (looking back, that AoE is way too big... probably 1500 would be more reasonable), so there's really no concept of a single target.

Having not played Rebellion, I can't say.  I designed these ships specifically to fill the roles of capital ships that I've wanted to build but could not because they don't exist.  In that sense, they would fit very well into the game that exists right now, and that's really the best model we have for the game that Rebellion will be.

It occurs to me that nano-leech has to go.  It can allow the Rakul to defeat a virtually limitless number of militia singlehandedly.  Once it has 5 or 6 units "leeched" its repairing so quickly that it's never going to die.  I think I'm going to redesign nano-leech as a level 6 ability and retool nano-assemblers as a regular ability...

I don't think I can get it to a state where it's strong against players without being too strong against militia without losing its flavour and concept.  Besides, the more I think about it, the "lovecraftian tenticle horror" aspect of this skill would make a better ultimate than nano-assemblers.  Actually, after having rewritten nano-assemblers as a non-ultimate, I quite like it, so I'm making the swap.

Nano-Assemblers:

The Rakul dispatches nano assembler bots towards the target. This causes the target to regenerate hull points and increases strike craft replacement rate. If the target is capable of building frigates, cruisers, or capital ships, its build rate is boosted for the duration. If the target is an incomplete structure (not starbase) it will cause it to build and an accelerated rate, even if there are no constructors working on the job. At the first level, this ability requires you to face forward. At the second level, it can be targeted in any direction.  At the third level, it can target yourself.

Build Rate Bonus: +50%
Strike Craft Replacement Bonus: +50%
Antimatter Cost: 75
Duration: 20 / 30 / 40 seconds
Hull Repaired: 20 / 30 / 40 per second
Cooldown: 20 seconds

Nano-Leech:
A tentacle lashes out from the Rakul and attaches to the target. This tentacle is made of nano-bots, and will drain the target of hull and antimatter to fuel the Rakul. The ability remains active until the target moves out of range. There is no limit to the number of nano-leeches a Rakul can have simultaneously. The Rakul does not need to face the target to activate this ability.

Activation Range: 4000
Maximum Range: 6000

Hull Damage: 10 / second
Antimatter Damage: 4 / second
Hull Regenerated: 10 / second
Antimatter Regenerated: 2 / second

Antimatter Cost: 70
Cooldown: 8

At first glance, nano-leech hasn't changed.  I've made one subtle change:  it no longer requires you to face the target.  This will actually allow it to function better as an auto-cast skill and is more practical as a late-game ability as a result.

 I totally agree. I've tested the Donov and compared it to other caps. It is far more effective at capturing a planet if it does not  use the EMP blast which is supposed to be its best offensive ability.

And now for something completely different:

I'd like to see some way to interdict ships. basically, take the phase jump inhibitors and mobilize them and strength them. park them in the middle of a phase lane and it yanks ships out of phase space. Might be a good place to implement mines as well. I'd suggest making it an area affect so that vasari can get caught in it too instead of being immune as long as they make their own phase lane.

And once again, I'd like some new starbases. just 1 doesnt cut it for me. heck, we could combine my 2 ideas here and make a starbase that interdicts. I kinda see the current sb as a jack-of-all-trades, and you have to invest heavily to make it specialize. Why dont we get some specialized starbases that have less upgrade possiblities but better out of the box effectiveness? For instance, I find that the meteor control ability, used to bomb a planet, is very hard to pull off. either by the time you've built the starbase and upgraded to meteor control you have the battle won and can do it without the sb, or your sb is destoyed. I'd suggest that when you research the meteor control ability it unlocks a new starbase that assembles quick, and has the meteor control built into it. Obviously, we'd want some new things too that you would have to buy, not just the built-in stuff we already have and not as well-rounded. maybe more specialized use of these abilities? I'm sure theres other things you can do if you can telekinetically rain down asteroids.... Maybe some of these starbases will be mobile for advent and tec.

On another note, seeing as how one of the listed features is new victory conditions, I'd wager that they will have to do something about the AI. They will have to edit them to go for the new victory conditions, so along the way, hopefully they will make the AI better.

hm how about frigate captains that survive battles gain veterancy? It doesnt make much sence to train greenhorns and then put them in an expensive capital ship. maybe u could have frigates hold on to EXP, and then have them transfer their crew and earn their place in a capital ship, and allow them to begin higher leveled, or join an existing capship to add exp?

Corvettes for capital ship escorts concept.

Build system:

Corvettes are built from a new production facility, lets call them Dry-docks for now, which can only be built after researching. Best implementation of the build system for corvette would be for a corvette build menu to be added to capital ships and purchase the corvettes from there. You cannot order corvettes from the dry-dock it self. The dry-dock complete the corvettes and they then set out to fly to their intended capital ship. If while in route to it's intended capital ship the cap is destroyed the corvette will then remain in the current gravity well. Further details about what happens to corvettes with no assign capital ship later on. So far for Corvettes I predict them to be 33% to 60% the purchased price of the current frigates and cruisers and have an average supply point consumption going from 2-5 supply.

Research system:

Dry-Dock is unlocked as a tier 2 research in a new research tree specifically for Corvettes. To unlock some of the corvette hulls and/or abilities the corvettes have could require some prerequisite research to first have been completed from the regular military tree first. For example to unlock “anti-bomber” corvettes you would first have has to research Flak frigates in the standard tree. The new Tree branch should be named something like Capital support and have the 3 following branches in it, Corvette Support, Capital Upgrades, Titans, Sub-Capitals (Destroyer, My dream add on)

• Corvette Support will unlock all corvette frames and abilities and might also provide corvette only offensive/defensive technologies, Like special armour places that would increase only the armour of corvettes while still benefiting from the regular armour upgrades.

• Capital Upgrades strays a bit away from corvettes when you take into account that this could be used to fix and/or the capital ship balance by booting abilities that are good int he early game but weak in the late game and by nerfing abilities that are to strong int he early game only to reinstate them to their full glory int he late game. These would also provide ship specific only upgrades, for example the TEC Kol always had a problem with AM amount and regeneration vs it's consumption by have upgrade to AM reactors available only for the Kol. But most importantly it would provide Some caps to have some of their abilities that traditionally only affected them selves to now affect their corvette escort group only. Example again from the Kol is the ability Adaptive Force-Field which with research lvl 1 could provide only 50% of the effect boost and with lvl 2 provide 100%. It would also allow capital to research higher levels of synergy links it can cold. (Synergy links would be the equivalent to corvettes what command points are to Strike-craft. More on this further down.) Although I will not develop this idea further right now one must note that upgrades like the AM reactor upgrade for the Kol should only become unlock-able after doing a certain amount of research int he normal tree.

• Titans will provide all research pertaining to titans from being able to construct it to unlocking special abilities and powers for titans only. Kinda like Starbases. Since I believe Titans and SBs will be on a similar foot hold that some SB research should be needed to be completed to unlock some Titan tech as well as some tech from the new Capital Upgrade tree.

• Sub-Capitals will provide research to that fan-boy idea of mine which is still it the works and Darvin3 after your incredible build with the 3 new caps expect me to requisition your help.

Synergy system:

As mentioned before this is the equivalent to corvettes to what is command points to strike-craft. As for each Synergy point a capital ship has will allow it to have 1 corvette assign to it. Synergy point system should not be driven by the capital's ship current level but rather driven by the base starting amount for that particular cap plus the extra points unlocked by research in the Capital ship upgrade tree for each individual cap type. Reason for this is simply because the main reason for corvettes to exist in this idea is for them to boost caps especially low level caps in late game situations for them to be more useful then they currently are. So having it be controlled by the type of the capital it is, IE a Dunov could start with 6 synergy points and unlock to research up to 12 while a Sova would start with only 3 and research up to 8. This once again being done to help balance the super strong caps out with the lesser powerful caps.

Combat functionality:

• Capital ships and their corvette escorts will have to be viewed as single entities by enemy aggressive targeting. What I mean by that if you take your group of 20 LRFs and order to fire on the enemy capital ship the corvettes that meat the requirement under a % chance formula to attract fire on them selves come into play and damage from the 20 LRFs will be separated accordingly. If the player chooses to target a corvette of the Capital Ship group than that attack order is treated and performed as if the player had chosen to attack the capital ship it self, damage distribution then follows the same pattern. I believe it is better for corvettes them selves to not be directly target-able by direct enemy fire for since they are supposed to be weaker in general in total HP then their frigates counterparts it would be simply to easy to cripple and eliminate the corvettes and strip the caps of their badly needed support while under mass focused fire. It would make the whole system almost worthless. At-least I know I would be able to do it.

• Now should you use an ability to do damage like Gauss cannon from the Kol or the Nano-Dissabler from the Evacuator will target and do harm only to the Cap ship in question. AoE abilities Such as EMP blast Dunov, Radiation bomb Marza should all work as they normally do doing damage to all target within their AoE. Abilities like Malice and and Phase Missile swarm with Limited number of targets should view the whole Capital group as 1 entity and only count as 1 in the total number of target. This would make the effect applies be applied to all ships but for Malice it would only take in input from the damage done tot he Cap it's self during the duration period and not from the damage received by the corvettes as to not turn it into a cataclysmic power once again.

• Friendly forces how ever should be able to target individual corvettes to provide assistance. IE a hoshiko can cast repair bots on corvettes individually just like it would with another ship or structure int he game. If repair abilities where applied to the whole group with only 1 cast then it would be insanely powerful. So for that reason it must be done individually.

• All Corvette abilities will only be casted on Capital Ship group member and only affect the group it's self and the attached parties. Attached parties in this refers to the SCs of the cap it's self as well as object it may spawn, IE Missile Batteries and Siege Platforms for as long as the boosting corvette is still present in the gravity well.

Dry-docks:

• They are the specialized structures tasked with building the small but yet highly versatile and highly advanced corvette frames used to escort that capital ships. They do not have a build queue per say from them selves since orders for corvettes are done with a buy menu on the capitals them selves. It only receives build orders, produces the ship at the right cost and then launches it into space for it to now then make it's way to it's assign Capital Via the shortest route available. Only the Dry-dock that is nearest in number of jumps to the assign cap will begin production. Dry-docks that are further away will remain inactive, and should their be more then one Dry-dock be located at the exact same number of jumps away then booth docks will receive shared build orders to speed up production. So commanders are advise to keep track of their currents fleet position versus the location that their replacement corvettes are being built at.

• Dry-docks them selves initially can only produce one corvette at a time with research and upgrade it is how ever possible to increase that number to a maximum of 3.

Corvette frames and ability ideas: (Copy paste of my previous text and thus doesn't change.)

• Standard combat corvettes (bases of LFs) would have good hit point base and decent short range dps. They would be the type that would put them selves in hard way to defend their cap the most and thus could be given a self defence ability like variations of Adaptive forcefield, reintegration and whatnot can be imagine in this sense. Very Good damage absorbers.

• Long range corvettes (Based of LRFs) would have long range weapons only their damage type would be anti-light so they would offer killing solution to help defend your cap from hordes of LRFs. Their range should how ever be inferior to that of the standard LRFs. Poor at absorbing damage.

• Flak corvettes ( you guessed it) all thou flaks them selves should be more effective vs Bombers should be there to defend the caps from bombers. They could also be given a special ability they would have a positive effect on their group and cap, like maybe reduction of damage received from SC or Long range weapons. They would also be good damage absorbers.

• Logistical Support (based off support cruisers) would carry repair support equipment like repair bot instead it would only repair 10HP p.s instead of 20. It's there to provide additional support for the cap and the corvettes. Medium to Poor damage absorbers.

• Combat Support (More support cruisers) Would provide combat boosts to the group like range increase of weapons, RoF increase, Dmg increase, boost the effectiveness of other abilities of the group. The possibilities are enormous. Medium to Poor damage absorbers.

• Seige Corvettes (Bases on siege frigates) would essentially increase a caps power to bomb worlds either by directly bombing them selves or by boosting the cap. Medium to Good damage absorbers. (still unsure if these should be added)

• SC support Corvettes (not based of carriers since they do not have any Actual SC) These would only provide additional support to the SC of their capital ship that are assign to only. What support could they provide? I'll only name a few ideas, heavy strike-craft, rapid manufacture, adept drone anima, concentration aura, repair cloud, as well as others that have yet to be imagined. They would be Good at absorbing damage. (unsure if this should be added either)

• Colonization Corvette (Based of colony frigates) General idea would be to have them boost the colonize ability of the colonization caps. In a way shape or form. Should the corvette been consumed upon colonization or not? Should they be allowed to colonize by them selves? If so then the rate or growffe should be inferior to that of a colony frigate. Poor damage Absorbers. (Still unsure of the usefulness of this class since it would be very limited in use.)

I must point out that I do believe however that each individual corvette should be a one trick pony each they are after all small ships that are cheap to build and replace and I think that giving them multi-powers would make them to strong. Single ability concept also forces commander to more carefully pick which corvettes to add to their groups. Not to mention that under this concept corvettes will benefit from abilities that where normally only reserved for their parent capital only. All this should alleviate that current situation where more fleet was always batter late game over more caps. This should give capitals a good fighting chance where before they mostly considered free kills. I personally think this would be the best role for the corvettes and would add a ton of flavor to the game and would also keep the way clean open for them to create the faction versions of the current frigates and cruisers they have mentioned without having any conflicts of having 2 ships performing identical roles.

Heh, I modded a lot more complex stuff when I was creating Warcraft III maps.  Anyways, I'd agree they've probably prototyped what they're going to do, but I still had an urge to brainstorm, and I liked what I wrote down so I posted it.  As I said earlier, these are the kinds of capital ships I've wanted to build but couldn't because they don't exist.  A protector/disruptor for TEC, a brute-force tank for Advent, and a mobile factory.

I am a Star Wars fan, so I might try it out. But: can you interdict between planets? or is it mostly like pji, but mobile? Regardless, I'd still like it to be introduced natively to sins.

I have been hoping for super capital ships for years!!!

Now we have the titans!! THANK YOU

Since i have been thinking about this for a while my mind has come to the conclusion that each race needs a very different approach. For capital ships the mains themes come to mind are:

• Super Firepower
• Ultimate Defense
• Super Carrier
• Fleet Killer
• Planet Killer
• Culture spreader

Taking on board those ideas and ignoring detailed specs.

Race One Tec: Super ship that can destroy 1000 - 1500 ship slots with one blow, has some secondary weapons to shoot ships, bombers and structures.

(please note i play TEC all the time so not sure which way round to put the other two)

Race two: Super ship thata can destoy planet with one shot - planet with shield could just survive maybe, has a weak hull compared to the other super ships but has much higher shield output that extends round other ships so could protect fleet from damage - maybe 500 - 1000 ships slots could fit in it - but as shield is extended round more ships it weakens. The only other weapons is ffights and bombers - 50 number?

Race Three: Culture killer - could push culture from the planet its at in seconds and could even overwhelm that planet with culture and push through that planet to the next. Also could colonise planet even over culture is to high for colonise or even if to much radiation and could have abilities to help upgrade the planet quickly.

So the first is just a fleet killer and has limited anti bomber and structure ability(if the main gun didnt destroy them), no culture, no strike craft.

Number two is a super carrier and planet bomber and could even make a small fleet win against one 50% bigger(?) due to protective shield.

Number three makes culture not an issue and helps taking and expanding planets easy weak against fleets and no real planet bombing (just uses hostal culture to take over)

Thats three very different ways and each way would give a game ending option maybe - please take this idea sins ( or sumthing like it)

DarkKnight0

My thanks to IC and stardock for doing another exp!!!

I can already hear the gears turning in modders' heads, hehe... "Are we going to make the Battlestars into Titans?" "Are we going to make the ISDs into Titans?" "Are we going to make the Scimitar into a Titan?" "Rebels are PERFECT for the Galactic Civil War!"

My idea (or shall we say, dream ) of a Titan is basically the idea of infinite (or near infinite) forward momentum, like a snowball rolling down an infinitely large slope.

Key to my concept of Titans would be two new citizens of the Sins universe: modules, and crewmen.

A module is a structural component of the titan that provides one specialized function, and also always provides two things: added mass, and increased hitpoints.

Modules are built at capital ship factories, and have to be towed by a construction frigate to dock with a titan, and then be welded into the hull (which has an animation and a short "build time" about equivalent to creating a light cruiser).

Modules can be detached at any time, resulting in a loss of the hitpoints and module function, and the detached module just drifts aimlessly in space unless scuttled for resources or picked up by another titan. Detaching costs a small amount of metal and credits, and takes about as long as building an Arcova. The rest of the Titan can continue to function, but without propulsion, meanwhile. Enemy titans can pick up modules detached by their foes, or blow them to smithereens as they please.

The standard module types would include: one module type for each type of weapon (anti-capship, anti-structure, anti-frigate, anti-fighter, anti-planet); crew modules for additional crew supply; shielding modules (which provide shields in addition to the standard hitpoints); hangar modules for fighters; command modules (which unlock ability points to spend on activated abilities). On top of that, you can have specialized race or faction-specific modules that come at extra cost, for instance TEC would get armor modules, and Vasari could build a module for performing a phase jump on the interior of a gravity well.

Each additional module attached to a Titan reduces its overall speed and maneuverability, as well as increasing the time required to charge a phase jump. For balance, titans are always immune to phase jump debuffs and inhibitors, and system-disabling abilities only affect modules, not the engines. This is to give titans a fighting chance to jump; with many modules, it will take a titan perhaps minutes to charge its phase jump, and having it reset by one ability is a bit unfair.

Another dynamic aspect is that, while ordinary weapons fire damages the hitpoints of the ship as a whole, individual modules can be targeted by all activated abilities. This allows you to use disabling abilities (such as the Ion Cannon) to knock out a shield emitter or weapons module for a time. Activated abilities that deal damage will "incapacitate" a module: its hull will breach if the weapon is powerful enough, requiring the ship to sacrifice some crew to repair the damaged module over time. While the module is incapacitated, its hitpoints are removed from the ship's total, and its functions are disabled, but it still contributes to the titan's mass, and thus continues to slow it down. Directly targeting and disabling modules will be a primary way to start to bring down a titan.

Crewmen are acquired when inside a friendly or allied planet's gravity well, and they steadily come in until all modules are fully crewed. A module that is not fully crewed operates with an efficiency decrease equal to the proportion of lost crew versus the crew capacity. The rate at which crew are replenished from the planet depends on the population of the planet, but even a dead asteroid will provide some degree of re-crewing. Other than time invested, crewmen come for free any time your titan is within a friendly gravity well.

The base ship is the primary module of the titan, which contains a very large amount of crew, moderate defenses and good armor. The base ship does not use crew to perform its own functions; they are there to crew the modules. It is just slightly more powerful offensively than a level 10 battleship, but it costs much more money. However, without any modules, it is no match for a starbase, a swarm of bombers, or a fleet of heavy cruisers. The base ship contains minor anti-strike craft defenses, strong anti-heavy defenses (good at engaging capital ships), several large anti-planet torpedo bays, and 360 degree autocannon coverage against frigates (notably, no anti-structure weapons).

When modules are incapacitated or damaged by activated weapons, crew are channeled from the base ship's reserves to the module, eventually restoring it to capability. During the repairs, some crew will die due to the hazards of the job.

The last aspect of crew is that every Titan is capable of sending its crew down to an enemy planet for a hostile takeover attempt. While this is almost always quicker than a planetary siege, some crew die during the takeover, and takeover may fail if the titan commits too few crew to the mission -- the titan would then have to retreat to a friendly planet to acquire more crew. Hostile takeover maintains most of the existing planet occupant's population level, but accrues a temporary drop in productivity (build speed).

Each module, once welded into a titan, consumes a constant stream of credits and metal, which must be supplied by trade ships. The trade ships are willing to jump no more than three jumps from a friendly outpost to supply the titan, expandable to five via research. Modules that go unsupplied have three states of degradation. When trade ships drop off supplies, the modules in the most degraded state get priority. One trade ship making a delivery is enough to fully supply, say, three or four modules (depending on trade ship upgrades) for several minutes of game time.

The first state is a grace period, where the module can not be repaired if it is damaged or destroyed, but otherwise operates normally. This state lasts for 60 seconds of game time.

The second state is a degrading period, where the crew of the module will start to retreat from the module into the base ship, until only half the module's crew remain. The restrictions of the first state remain. This state lasts a further 120 seconds of game time.

In the last state, the module will be disabled. This is just like incapacitation, except that there is no repair time. The module simply shuts down and becomes dead weight. As soon as resources are available, the module will come back online as crew pour in, with no repair cost (unless the module was subsequently incapacitated while disabled).

The way this system works, the other major way of shutting down a Titan, aside from blowing up its modules, is to cut off its supply route. Empires deploying Titans will have to guard the entire phase jump path from the nearest outpost (where trade ships depart directly from the planet surface) to the Titan, to make sure that incoming trade ships are not destroyed. If an entire wave of trade ships is lost, a majority of the Titan's modules could be dead weight in minutes.

When first built, a titan would be about twice as large as a capital ship, and travel at about the same speed. Starting abilities and firepower would put it at a monetary disadvantage versus building capital ships or cruisers with the same amount of resources. The base ship, whether attached to modules or not, performs relatively like a capital ship, with activated abilities, experience levels, and its own propulsion and firepower.

A key aspect of my design here is that there is no limit to the number of modules, short of practicality. After a very large number of modules, the titan's speed would be so onerously slow as to make it basically a starbase. Its upkeep costs would be so prohibitively large as to shut down even a vast empire's limit on supply. The only other limit I can think of is that the base ship should cost more than one capital ship slot and a large amount of fleet supply.

A few miscellaneous mechanics:

*All factions can research an ability that makes all titans permanently visible on the map, regardless of game settings or otherwise. A small area around the titan is also visible, but not the whole gravity well it's in.

*Superweapons can target titans with their projectiles, but the fired projectile must actually hit the titan: a base ship with no modules (or a small number of them) could easily avoid a Novalith cannon fired from several jumps away. The advent culture bomb weapon will disable several of the titan's modules and cause a crew revolt (resulting in crew deaths); the Novalith cannon will utterly obliterate a number of modules, or shoot an unprotected base ship straight out of the sky if it doesn't evade the shot.

*Other than the total hitpoints counter for the entire ship, the primary module (base ship) is not vulnerable to direct attack unless it is the last module remaining. So you can destroy a titan with modules attached if you bring its hitpoints to 0, but you can't disable e.g. the weapons or propulsion of the base ship unless the other modules are destroyed or incapacitated.

*Titans with 20 modules attached become so big that the titan can construct its own modules inside a module building factory, which is (in principle) the last module that would have to be built from a shipyard for the titan.

*Each module comes out of the factory with a full crew complement needed for that module. The crew on the base ship and in crew modules are, effectively, spare crew -- in case existing crew are spent doing planet takeovers, lost in fights, etc.

*Although the most effective way to kill crew is to directly attack modules with offensive abilities, some crew will slowly die over time using a new stat called "Armor Mitigation". Armor mitigation is conceptually the opposite of shield mitigation; think of it like this: if the ship takes a large amount of damage in a short time, this is likely to rupture hulls and damage modules, killing crew. But if the ship takes an even larger amount of damage over a very long time, there will be time to repair damage and bring shields back online, before the damage can really penetrate the ship's defenses.

So here is a summary:

1. Titans start out as nothing special, and if you have no plans to module up, you may as well just build capital ships with your money.

2. Titans grow larger and larger over time as you add more modules, but they don't get faster; they can only get slower. The weight of committing a titan to a battle bears down heavily on your shoulders as you wait for its phase jump charge, knowing that it will likely be unable to retreat due to its speed if the enemy gets the best of it.

3. Titans with many modules are extraordinarily difficult to destroy using conventional weaponry: their extreme durability can survive sustained anti-structure, anti-capship and bomber fire in large quantities. Damaging them requires surgical strikes on the individual modules with powerful ship-mounted abilities, or cutting off its supply route. You could also run the hosting empire out of funds by capturing important economic planets, depriving them of the income needed at a strategic level to maintain the titan. This gets easier and easier the more modules they add.

Side note: I'm going to recommend that the final battleship type for each race be a dedicated offensive ability powerhouse: all of its abilities should in some way provide a targeted direct damage weapon. These can be used to effectively incapacitate titan modules, though at grave risk to any capital ship brave enough to stand toe to toe with a moduled-out titan!

Interesting ideas nonetheless.