Seleuceia i take it you dont play online much

"mass produce capital ships'...lawl

I like seeing people experiment more with different caps ships and building more than 1. The timing is tricky sometimes though. I feel like in suicide spot with good feed is actually a good place to build more than 1 as you'll have repair right on hand and lots of XP fodder coming through the door. I saw Hiroge do that recently (and he built a Rankulas of all things - I thought of this thread in that game lol). Late game is also another time when people start to add cap ships - sometimes to help deal with Titans. Vasari, since they don't rely on spamming frigates as much, will often grab a second cap ship. In general, early game is risky as large swarms of corvettes or light frigates are usually dominating.

Errr...I mean...Seleucia...do you even know how2ICO bro?!?!

There was a time however when the kol was a viable capital ship.

The time of the carrier caps. Esp the skirantra.

2,3 sometimes even 4 carrier cap starts. Bomber swarms were prevalent and difficult to counter. If you could get a kol to level 5 it was very usefull. However even then, the dunov was better. EMP + mappulse = dead sc and no AM or shields for the skirantras...not to mention sheild restore keeping each other alive. The only thing the kol could do was kill SC, nothing else. Whereas the dunov was very versatile, albeit requiring a good bit of micro.

But that time has passed.

I have easily played more than 1000 online competitive games of sins, going back to the beginning of the game. More than half probably 5v5s, almost all 3v3, 4v4 or 5v5. In all that time i have never seen capital ships massed produced in a competitive game. Even during the carrier cap era you would rarely see more than 5 capital ships per player, and a quick LRM rush would usually wipe clean a less than skilled player attempting a 3 carrier cap start.

Grimms guide speaks of late game bomber swarms, well i can tell you those used to be a problem. As were LRM masses. The corvette has changed everything, couple that with the LF buffs. And gone are both LRM masses and bomber swarms. Replaced with even larger masses of LF and/or corvette.

This makes the Marza one of the most powerfull late game units there is. Level 2 MB will wipe hundreds of LFs/corvettes in seconds. Couple that marza with an akkan and now its unkillable. The marza is also superb at clearing nuetral gravwells for colonizing, one of the best. Also is the best at bombing enemy planets.

The kol is completely useless cap, its good at killing large amounts of SC late game, problem is there isnt much of that anymore.

Early LF battles between equally skilled players will often come down to the capital ship. I have a marza you have a kol, i win. It is literally that simple.

I have seen Auqia play with an emormous amount of capital ships once. He was playing Advent.

Has it been buffed yet? Just give it some phase cannonz and call it a day...

I have never seen a revelation in a skilled game, not even as a troll strategy...I have heard stories of skilled people trolling with them, but I have never seen it...

I have only seen one person use a rapture in recent memory, and that was Undefeated Turtle (who would lead with it on a regular basis)....of course, he also spammed scouts in Rebellion, so take it as you will...this ship is discussed as a good late game compliment to SC heavy fleets, but in practice I can't recall seeing it in rebellion beyond that one player's use...

Ever since a certain patch (don't remember which one), I have yet to see the Corsev...now to be fair, it was not uncommon to see them in the early days of rebellion, but for the past several months I have never seen that ship built, not even in the early game...

Those are 3 ships that I see less than the Kol, which occasionally I see in the late game...the problem with the kol is not that it is useless, it's just that it is only useful late game and most skilled games don't get to the point where Kol/Halcyon/Kortul spam becomes necessary...

For whatever reason, the Rankulas has been used quite a bit as a starting cap as of late....whether this is just a phase or a legit strategy, I do not know...it still is way behind the egg though in terms of popularity...it can be really good at extremely close range (HWs 1 or 2 jumps), just like the Sova, to the point of OP in that particular setup...but that setup is rare, and beyond that I don't see much use for it...

Yes.

The problem with the Revelation is Guidance. All of its other abilities are fine but none make the Revelation worth it. Having no actual fleet firepower at all and no real bombing potential below level 6 kills the viability of this cap. Guidance needs to do something radically different (e.g buff friendly ship firepower) so that this ship can make a big difference in early game fleet battles.

Rather than increasing the chance to hit targets as a replacement for the Guidance ability on the Revelation class battlecruiser, I'd propose an increased rate of fire as a positive AoE fleet buff. I believe I have seen that idea somewhere before, and I know many people were greatly in favor of such a revamp.

If Rankulas was about to be buffed, why not increase his regular weapon DPS instead of touching his abilities? Its the largest capship in the vasari fleet by some margin. Personally i would love to see him turned into "Lucifer" like superdestroyer of Vasari fleet (since Vasari ships in their red and black combo sort of remind me of Shivans) and i would not even mind possible price increase to get there. All the capships in Sins are universally important cause of their abilities, so why not make one, which relies more on its regular firepower, to make things bit more varied?

Well the point of my suggestion is to buff the DPS of Rankulas to the point, where its not cost-ineffective DPS-wise compared to bunch of frigates. I realize this is not how the game is designed, when it comes to capships, but i propose it in spite of that fact - to make Rankulas somewhat unique, not as much reliant on its abilities as the other capships, since its particular abilities are not on par with them - apparently.

I know right?  I mean damn, who would spam bombers or caps or LRFs or anything when they could instead just spam....flak....

That, actually, was the first story that came to mind...and yes, he does actually like that ship, or at least he did when he played a lot...