Apart from minor changes to gunboats, turret splitting and the implemention of cloaks, cap ship combat remains unchanged.
Especially battleships. Even with turret steering, it still comes down to strafing in most cases.
Kiting for cruisers.
And apart from tactical opportunities that cloaks and JDs give, there is really nothing new.
You added so much stuff to fighters these days, including the whole missile revamp and modding guns to deal more damage and such, why not fiddle around with caps a tad?
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You say "aside of" and then bring a hefty list that brought tremendous changes to cap battles, each time such a change was added.
It's like saying "snubs combat hadn't changed since vanilla. Except for changing missiles, adding armors, insta kill weapons and making the diversion between the different fighter types"
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The problem is, I think, that nobody really has a clue how to make caps interesting within the Freelancer engine's limitations.
You can't make maneuvering in them an incredibly skill-based thing, unlike snubs, because they move so very slowly. You can't make them move much faster as that'd simply be - and look - ridiculous.
I'd personally suggest redoing the weapons and adding many more options to efficiently deal with other ships. Having to choose, during combat, between slow and efficient versus fast and inefficient, that kind of thing.
'Skill' in caps would then depend on how well you judge which kind of weapon you need at what time.
And let's be honest, we need to choose between caps that can kill snubs and caps that can't touch them at all. The current balance there is a little of both.
hmm i maybe can throw an idea here.How about some equipment/weapons that have a specific role. Just a few from the top of my head. I dont really know if this can be implemented, just throwing ideas.
1) Self Destruct: Ship self destructs causing a wide area of damage. Instant kill for fighters, bombers and Gunboats(lighter cruisers perhaps?), very heavy damage to cruisers and battlecruisers, heavy damage to battleships.
2) Emp ray: Empties enemy's energy core at expense of self( not shield and hull)
3) Raming : Would it be possible to implement this?
4) Repulsor wave: Somewhat like the dreadnought in homeworld cataclysm. Would affect Allies as well
5) Capital ship mines : A bigger badder version of fighter and bomber mines. Just too slow to catch the snubs but enough to hit capital ships.
6) Missle Barrage turret: A bigger version of the hellfire missle pods(non tracking)
7) Heavy Artillery: A non tracking projectile(slower version of hellfire missle)
(03-19-2014, 10:33 AM)Zayne Carrick Wrote: I summon Curios here to say "DELETE ALL CAPS NOW!!!"
Blah Blah, here I am
Anyway apart from this I already gave some insight on caps a while ago.
Now caps are just punching each others in some quiet hilarious manner. My suggestion was to change the primary turrets into the following:
Range - 10 - 12k
Reload speed - around 20 seconds
Mortarlike damage
Turret turn speed - very very very very very slow.
Big energy use.
Thus - remove mortars and swap Heavy slot for special weapon slot (BR, Missiles) with ability to simply put anything into it - solaris or so.
Result:
Cap battle range will be increased a lot. New prims will be devastating but not effective against anything that have half a brain to move a bit. Or it's small. Or it's far enough to evade.
I would like to see changes to the capital ships too. Right now they are of no interest to me, the only thing i find them useful for is base killing. There are many things that could be changed: Increased mass, or something that would make them invulnerable to the annoying little fighters that spin them around with a gentle nudge. Better weapons, increased range of the guns. A drop in manoeuvrability but that's just a personal preference, i see capital ship combat in a very different way that it is today. Anyway, this is all just useless banter, i don't believe a real change is possible right now, no offence devs, i like a lot of what you did but there is a lack of vision and coordination in your work.