In the online community, some of the players actually made charts and calculated what ships are actually strong and which are bottom tier. Despite high costs utility cruisers, planet bombers and some capital ships were the underdogs no matter what and soon you would only see Marza or Akkan openers for TEC and usually only Progen and sometimes Radiance for the Advent. Making every ship viable (or at least excel at their role) would be important to make diverse fleet comps instead of spamming light frigates only. Most cruisers had little to no use and where only niche (except for repair cruisers usually or carriers)... a bit sad as their prices were so high.
I think I speak for every Soase fan that we are all very excited about this game! Please stick true to the roots of the game but also implement a few of our requests! Thank you so much!
Ah, this takes me back.
The issue with colony capital ships really comes down to the strategic advantage they offered that simply could not be obtained by any other means. While other capital ships offered unique abilities, none were so impactful or game-changing. Colonizing with regular colony ships meant clearing a path through the militia for them, clearing out the militia on the target planet, then bringing them in and letting them regenerate antimatter for a minute to colonize. Colony capital ships could just run past militia and colonize the planet while it was busy fighting. You could have a fully-operational forward position before you finished clearing out the militia. This could really only be fixed by completely overhauling the colonization mechanics or the way regular colony ships worked, which is why it never happened.
A big part of the problem was that level 1 capital ships kinda sucked. You needed to level them up quite a bit to make them good, and usually you needed immediate results because you were always potentially facing life-or-death battles. Many capital ships were actually really strong if they could reach level 5 or 6, but you just couldn't get there against a smart human opponent who wouldn't let you get that XP easily.
Support cruisers and battleships were quite good force multipliers, but you needed a pretty big fleet before the large expense of researching and building them made sense over just adding more basic combat units. A lot of games just never got past the early phase with weak economies and low tech levels. I think this is less of a balance issue, and more a pacing issue. Definitely hard to balance, as you want allow opportunity for front-line aggressors to grow and diversify without making pocket economizers too explosive.
In theory I certainly agree. However, the Vasari "micro phase jump" support cruiser for instance would have been an amazing ship but the ability was almost never to hit and too much of a glass canon and therefore rendered the ship more or less useless. In 5 v 5 games many people would reach the tech level to get the support cruisers but usually it is literally smarter to get the dmg or hull upgrade instead. The cruisers eat fleet supply, have almost no damage on their own and the buff they generate is often weaker for your overall fleet than just adding more ships or upgrade to it.
A lot of times you could make a cap go level 6, but if you compare a Sova for instance vs. a Marza, the latter basically outshines the Sova in almost any situation. I really liked the Sova and tried to implement it in many games but against a good player it would almost never succeed. It is simply too weak, hosts only 4 squadrons and the missile battery feeds the enemy XP. Even if you get it to embargo the enemy HW, they will chase it until its dead (and it dies very quickly).
Funnily enough, this actually was the opposite before Rebellion. It was the Sova that was largely outclassing the Marza. Back then corvettes didn't exist, so your options for countering bombers in the early-game were fighters or a critical mass of flaks. Running carrier cruisers or large numbers of flaks would just get you run down by LF, so that meant that the only good way to counter an enemy carrier capital ship lead was with your own carrier capital ship. If you opened Marza first you'd just be clobbered by bombers you couldn't counter; it didn't matter that the enemy carrier had to run away, it was killing you while it was running away.
This was essentially the crux of the problem: whatever capital ship was best in a one-on-one matchup in the early-game was your best pick. In the Trinity meta that was the Sova, in the Rebellion meta that was the Marza, but the principle was the same either way. At those early phases where fleets were small, your capital ship was a huge part of your overall combat power so you needed ones that matched up well against your opponent's capital ship choice. It wasn't until the late-game stages that the capital ship classes had distinct and useful roles that let them shine in spite of losing 1 on 1 against enemy capital ships.
I did not mean 1 on 1 but rather as part of a fleet. Lets take e.g. this scenario for instance (even before rebellion): You jump into enemy roid with 30 Cobalts and a Marza. Enemy has 30 Cobalts and a Sova. The 4 bombers would not be able to take down the Marza by themselves, but while you bomb you force the enemy to either engage the Marza or lose the planet. If they attack the Marza one could go for the kill on the Sova while the Marza survives (HP and Armour wise).
But thats the whole point, with a few balance tweaks the ships would both be viable. In the current meta people literally only build Marzas and Akkans, rarely Dunov or Corsev and almost never Kol or Sova. This needs to be addressed I believe also the fact that building 1 cap that hosts only 4 squadrons is pretty weak cost wise compared to light carriers. You get almost 3 Percheons for the price of a Sova later on which is kind of a bummer if you ask me.
My whole idea is that there are advantages and downsides to any starter cap ship and all of them could be viable against a skilled player on one way or another.
Well, yeah, the capital ships weren't alone. The point is that they were a massive part of your early fleet composition, so how two capital ships fared when directly facing off was very important to the outcome of early fights.
This was not the case in the late Trinity meta. The Marza had been dominant in the earliest versions of the game, but then this patch happened. All the carrier capital ships got heavily buffed, and the Marza was losing badly against the new carrier meta. This was not theory-craft, in fact at the time my theory-craft was that carrier rush would be a fun gimmick but wouldn't upset the best options. That was proven very wrong when carriers crushed the old meta and replaced it. The Marza was still a strong capital ship on paper, and did see occasional use as second capital ship, but the meta was hostile to it as first capital ship and it was rarely seen in that capacity.
The fragility of carrier capital ships was offset by the fact that they weren't beholden to weapon range. They could simply micro outside of your attack range and just kite you if you tried to chase them. Their fragility really wasn't a problem in practice in a meta where the only good way to fight their bombers was by going with a carrier yourself.
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