Ok, so I like many have had the nasty experience of being pasted by a capship.
( a Xeno owned Osiris in this case, if I had had time for screenies, Id file for sanction. who sells underfunded terrorists order battleships?!)
So, I want to discuss capships from the perspective of a Trekkie/Star Wars/Homeworld guy who has seen many different ways of balancing ships.
In star Trek fighters almost dont exist. Ships weighing 800,000 metic tons and sporting 40 decks all have the agility of Luke Skywalker in an X-wing, and so its all capships and their balancing, 'nough said, not going there.
Freelancer has a more 'naval' feel to it, like Star Wars or Homeworld.
So, lets discuss capships from that perspective.
First, I know its been said, I have to reiterate, Capships cost way, way, way, too little.
Anyone can get one after only a short time powertrading.
Capships are supposed to be rare, and far too many show up both from players and in terms of NPCs, though not as badly for the NPCs.
Also, OORP capships tend to show up alot. Especially the bigger ones.
That, and I have heard it said that a skilled player in a fighter will 'eat capital ships for breakfast'
Thats not true. pure and simple. :(
Maybe people who own bombers can do that, but the average fighter player stands ZILCH chance of fighting a capship in numbers less than 2 dozen, plus their own capship backup. and most of them will die for sure.
This engagement with the Xeno Osiris? I had backup in the form of multiple large fighters, three or more gunships, and an outcast destroyer, and there were about 2 dozen NPCs from both sides SWARMING the area.
I didnt even go for the Osiris, I concentrated on the NPCs and he was just throwing so much fire in all directions that I was pasted before I could even hit the nano bots or cruise.
This is plain ridiculous.
I think that something has to give.
Now, Capships are essentially invincible where everything but bombers and maybe the absolute most elite SHFs are concerned. No one can even begin to argue otherwise.
Their problems are these;
1; Already spoken of, OORP or too easily purchased capships. Gunboats are actually ok, but too many people have fast access really big ships.
2; energy based missile turrets. enough said. ludicrous.
3; their shield recharge rates are far far far far too high. Now, Id argue that due to the massive power core it has, a capital ship should have large shields, but I argue that they should have little to no recharge, and be able to mount no shield batteries whatsoever.
Think about it, if, say, even a gunboat engages me in a very heavy fighter, I should have a chance of taking him out if Im very skilled and well equipped. But I wouldnt stand a chance, he has dozens of nanos and shield bots, and a recharge rate so fast he wont even have to use either.
Essentially the only way to even dent a capship is to have a capship or a bomber, you have to be able to eliminate his shields in 4 shots or less.
In a system with no recharge rate, a capship can have its uber-shields, but a fighter could, by constant hammering, knock them out.
to summarize,I can think, offhand, of a dozen different ways to affect capship balance, but I want to sum up the goals first.
1; A mid to high level expensive and well equipped fighter should be an even match for any gunboat.
2; A high level super heavy fighter with outstanding equipment and a highly skilled pilot should be able to realisticly defeat lower/lowest end cruisers/destroyers after a long grueling fight.
3; bombers should be a toe to toe match for everything up to and including destroyers/cruisers.
4; a group of high level well equipped fighters, 5 to 10, should be an even match for even a battleship.
5; 4 bombers should be able to wipe even a battleship like a blackboard.
6; Something, somehow, on capships, destroyer and above, has got to be nerfed so that low level players in fast ships, or highly skilled LF pilots, are almost impossible to hit with turrets even when firing sprays or flack. make the fighter players impossible or close to impossible, to hit with turrets, but make a flack turret that does only the damage of a standard fighter class weapon but could easily hit players in fighters.
This could be done with slower camera/turret revolving in bugger ships, or by tightening their firing arcs to create blindspots.
Lastly, something that will help alot of things, regardless of balance changes, is to alter the rules.
Ive been told the rule Im referring to is under review, but I admonish yall to remove it.
The rule is that fleeing in PvP constitues a death. Thats very OORP from my perspective. In the FL universe a guy or fleet or anyone is free to attack and retreat, dock, cruise, and 'lane, and re-engage at will!
This would give players like me an option between 'commit to battle and 99% likely go down under capship guns' and 'sit out like a wimp'
I could fight till badly damaged or until the odds got bad, then attempt to bug out (nothing garuntees I would suceed) without having to log off my character, endure any rule lawyering, or leave the system.
This would, in conjunct with perhaps a nerf to capship shields and turret rotation speed, make things infinitely better for us little cannon fodder weenies, especially in cases like this;
here is the scenario....
I am using hacker ID engaging multiple weapons platforms and barracudas for a mission, when out of nowehere with no warning or demands for surrender, an LSF tagged gunboat opens up on me.
(Isnt attacking without announcement or surrender demands OORP?)
regardless, hes within rights to attack me, and I knew that when I mounted the ID. Not complaining about that part. I was also in a dagger, so I have no insane pretentions of being able to defeat him.
Now any smart freelancer, pirate, or pilot of any sort, would bug out, but now that he's engaged me, Im going to die, one way or another. thats not fun. at all.
So if nothing else, I beg you to remove the fleeing = death rule, and I do ask nicely but very adamandtly that capships, as powerful as I think they deserve to be, should be re-evaluated carefully by the mod creators to make them more balanced.
In parting, Ill mention that for example in the original single player you were expected to take on massive fleets with minimal fighter support... You effectively had to destroy a Rheinland fleet in the Taus with no one but Juni and Sinclair and a few stilletos. and on hard difficulty your support is no help at all.
Just a point to consider.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to several friends of mine, they like to keep a fixed distance from me most of the time, and they have a tendancy to spin and gyrate on multi-directional mounts faster than you can compensate for. They disgorge 75 isojoules of subatomic disruptive destructive energy. Fear the tachyon cannons"
Capships here are also nowhere near as powerful as they should be.
Ever seen a cap battle? It lasts seconds. Gunboat VS Gunboat, Cruiser VS Cruiser, Battleship VS Battleship, and everything inbetween you can think of.
Fighter battles, on the other hand, can last well over an hour.
The difference is that this game is built as a fighter game. Capships were never meant to be pilotable by players before mods came along. When you balance fighters against each other, manuverability is the biggest survivability factor - something that can dodge fire survives better than something which cant. Capital ships go against that very rule, they are large and cannot avoid fire, and therefor need ridiculously high armor/shielding to survive long enough to kill anything.
Sure, there are a few gunboats here that are manuverable enough to dodge fire from bombers and larger ships - the BHG gunship, the Kusari gunboat, etc. - but in large, caps are not designed to be able to dodge. They HAVE to take fire from the enemy, no way around it.
However... fighters and bombers are given more powerful weaponry than any capship in this mod. Why is it that a supernova cannon on a bomber - which takes 38k energy to fire but does 132k damage - does so much more damage for so much less energy than a light mortar - which takes 500k energy to fire and only does what... 60k damage? something along those lines.
Or compare fighter infernos/razors to gunboat and up infernos/razors. A mini razor takes 6400 energy to fire and does 19.4k hull damage, but a gunboat razor takes 60-70k energy to fire and does 9k damage?
Fighters/bombers have better weaponry, and despite having lower armor they have agility on their side. A fighter can 'regenerate' shields and hull a dozen times with the number of bats/bots available to it - a capship is lucky to get more than one regen out of his full bat/bot stores.
So, if you want to make capships so much more rare, you need to make them more powerful - because right now anything you can kill in a battleship you can also kill in a bomber that costs less than a tenth of the price.
You make an excellent point... I do see a solution however.
Make Capital class shields a new type... not graviton molecular etc but their own special type, and rebalance capship guns and this new shield type to make capship guns less effective on fighters (in relative terms), and effective enough on other capships to do damage, but not effective enough to end the battle so quickly.
Also by putting more blindspots on capships, their big factor becomes firing arcs, and it lends strategy to each of your movements in battle, and as long as it takes a capship to get a firing solution, this would lend time and difficulty to capship battles.
Sound good?
Also, I beg the admins to remember my views are biased towards fighters just as capship owners are biased towards capships, so neither of us knows best, the key is in making a balance between all our observations and suggestions.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to several friends of mine, they like to keep a fixed distance from me most of the time, and they have a tendancy to spin and gyrate on multi-directional mounts faster than you can compensate for. They disgorge 75 isojoules of subatomic disruptive destructive energy. Fear the tachyon cannons"
First of all the Osiris you faced belonged to the Coalition, they wear the Xeno tag as they dont have one of their own, what they do have is their own ID. I can't agree with much of your post as 5 to 10 well equpied fighters can take a BS down, 3 or 4 bombers can also do this.
I'm sorry you felt you had no chance but the truth is, battleship turrets are not good at aiming at fighters, you should be able to dodge their fire with relative ease.
Honestly? I know a smaller fighter stands no chance, and it shouldnt, but I have even run tests in Open SP, and I see both myself and NPCs get pasted. trouble is, while avoidance isnt impossible, one shot is enough to send you to dust....
And again, its good to hear opposite views, and this would be alot less of an issue if fleeing wasnt considered death, in which case I could do what any sane guy in a ship like mine would do; *run* very very fast.
Another thought to consider is not editing firing arcs, but the turrets themselves.
Make a turret class that does immense damage for intra-capship fights, but only make two at most equippable, then give the ship alot of turrets, but make them no stronger, or little stronger, than the average freighter turret.
Thus giving capships balanced tools for each of their needs.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to several friends of mine, they like to keep a fixed distance from me most of the time, and they have a tendancy to spin and gyrate on multi-directional mounts faster than you can compensate for. They disgorge 75 isojoules of subatomic disruptive destructive energy. Fear the tachyon cannons"
The problem with capital ships is their shield regeneration rate / maximum shield ratio. No one other person who isn't in a capship can break the shields of a capship no matter HOW hard he pounds on the thing.
I propose the following rebalance.
Increase capship maximum shield tenfold.
Decrease capship shield regen to a quarter of current rate.
' Wrote:The problem with capital ships is their shield regeneration rate / maximum shield ratio. No one other person who isn't in a capship can break the shields of a capship no matter HOW hard he pounds on the thing.
I propose the following rebalance.
Increase capship maximum shield tenfold.
Decrease capship shield regen to a quarter of current rate.
if this were true, fighters and bombers would not be capable of taking out caps.
Yet, last night, A blood dragon bomber I was flying duo with in sigma 13 engaged a bounty hunter battlecruiser (I did not engage, as I did not have supernovas or any other decent equipment at the time) and by himself took out the BHBC.
So apparently capship shields arent as good as you're saying.
Likewise, back when I flew bloodsail (rogue gunboat), a single LSF fighter (guardian I think) with two shieldbusters (imp debs) managed to burn my shield while I was unable to do a damn thing to him since he was easily dodging my shots. Without missiles, it's not easy in the least to take out even fighters with a cap - and cruiser/battleship missiles are much less effective than gunboat missiles at that.
' Wrote:if this were true, fighters and bombers would not be capable of taking out caps.
Not even. It would just take a few more hits. The reason caps are impossible for a lone fighter is because their shields regen damage faster than the fighter can dish it out.
' Wrote:Not even. It would just take a few more hits. The reason caps are impossible for a lone fighter is because their shields regen damage faster than the fighter can dish it out.
as it should be, fighters are not designed to take out large vessels or stations, that's what bombers are for.
' Wrote:Honestly? I know a smaller fighter stands no chance
A few things from my side.
I own three ships in game and all but a sabre are gunboats.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to buy one when you dont have a trader char? You say increase the cost and sure it will place a dent on mass spamage of large ships but..cmon...if, yes, indeed, my first ship, LH GS was me doing about 100 missions! Before a fellow chap in a OC dessie shook his head and lended me 10mil which i then returned in duble. My point is. Ruin the chances for those who have traders...but how about the rest of us who have no chances of getting a Avd Train and start doing diamond runs.
Another thing....quote related. WHY would you be engaging a capship in a small fighter....you dont spot a missleboat and then go charging it with your LF only to be blown off....you run...fast..and dont start meeping about CDing since the CMs are there to counter that.
What is this about shield regen...ever tried to do a lvl 42 mission in a GS against BHG NPCs? Your shield will go down instantly.
Missles....well beleive me that everyone but those few thick minds who joust a dragonfly bearing boat can evade them easally..the turnrate on those things arent as good as the, for example, Javelin (correct me if im wrong)
Ok rant over....you made me get on the pc in the morning just for this *yawns* goodnight.