Why do the capital ship have to be so bad

[Fish]

There are more people who dislike caps than people who don't care + people who like them combined, probably won't help to talk about it. I loved the janky physics of the past, cruising a neph through a asteroid field and spamming strafe and turn keys randomly and making it through. Now you it takes 50% of your thrusters to get from 0 to 1m/s when strafing, and it runs out before you strafe half the ship's width.
BS were never any good against snubs to begin with, even in 4.8x a single Waran could nova a cap to death without getting hit a single time. Now BS aren't even good against other BS. It's like the facetanking we did pre-update but now the entire battle is long range tanking without dodging.
But I don't mind, they are supposed to be huge and heavy, and now they feel huge and heavy

---

[R.P.Curator]

There are more people who dislike caps than people who don't care + people who like them combined, probably won't help to talk about it. I loved the janky physics of the past, cruising a neph through a asteroid field and spamming strafe and turn keys randomly and making it through. Now you it takes 50% of your thrusters to get from 0 to 1m/s when strafing, and it runs out before you strafe half the ship's width.
BS were never any good against snubs to begin with, even in 4.8x a single Waran could nova a cap to death without getting hit a single time. Now BS aren't even good against other BS. It's like the facetanking we did pre-update but now the entire battle is long range tanking without dodging.
But I don't mind, they are supposed to be huge and heavy, and now they feel huge and heavy

Just wait until all the heavily armored spots in Battleships (i.e. the front for those battleships that don't carry a forward gun) are weak spots!
Who would think to ram a Lib Dread into the mid section of an OC Dread? Or an Inquisitor BG into an Atlantis carrier to drop troops?!
Who would ever conceive that the weak spots would ever be the reactor & engine exhaust in a space ship? Like bro, all the literature that uses space ships, they have the same weak spot: the front of the ship! Its like, the facing point which provides the least ship mass to get hit by an enemy would be the weak point! Who would've thought of that?! Like a ship flying through an asteroid field hits an asteroid and explodes! Why? Cause its flying forward and its weak spot is the front! Peak Discovery! Just wait for the patch! It will be glorious!

[Nodoka Hanamura]

Admittedly, save the shit changes to secondaries and Ass Blasters (and maybe the powercores being a bit too weak, same with thrusters), I do like the changes that have been done to capitals. However, I do have to side with Tenshi in all this. To those of you complaining about speed in a battleship/dreadnought, I have only one question for you, and this isn't even an arcade vs simulation question - this is a 'common sense' question:

What the fuck were you expecting, when you were flying second (maybe third) heaviest class of ship in the game, only bested by the flying whole-moon ass that is the Barge and possibly even 5Kers? No, seriously - what were you expecting? Capital ships *ANYWHERE* are massive, relatively slow vessels, that make up for their speed by being heavily fortified, and filled to the brim with guns! If you want speed, fly a friggin' Cruiser or battlecruiser - or hell, a frigate! The way we had it before the reworks was absolutely absurd, especially back in the day when my character ran FP11.

And as for fighting against snubs? Yes, I'll wholeheartedly admit, fighting off snubs in caps is a bit of a hassle - hence why I say we introduce secondary mounts and allow them to be used in a CIWS (read:point defense) role, to protect the ship against snubcraft and destructible munitions, across everything from cruisers and higher. There are some of us here who didn't like the way caps were back in the day, and yes, there are some who didn't like them when Haste came around and still don't like them now. I'm not gonna be bashful in saying it - Haste has done some pretty shit changes to the game when it comes to ship balance, but reworking capitals not to be an absolute circus and giving some proper depth to them, for the most part, isn't one of them.

Personally, I would keep movement mostly as is, but tune it somewhat to possibly appease those who want more of the older feel without completely throwing common sense out the window - and also complete rework cap mounts. No more of this ass-blaster nonsense - 6 heavies, 8 Prims and 10 secondaries across all BSes, balanced accordingly down the cap classes until you hit frigates where we leave it as is - and buff missiles to be what they really should be - standoff munitions that much like bomber torps should have been - fired at range to targets at least 2-3K away. Yes, it gives them a wide window, but as is, point defense, be it with prims or Solaris CIWS, covers around 1K.

If Haste wants realistic combat, then he should realize that engagements of naval ships and their escorts don't happen up the ass of a Nimitz, not since World War II - they're meticulously planned standoff attacks that give fighters a legitimate reason to be away from the fleet - to protect it by intercepting bombers, which encourages caps and those below cruisers to do what they're naturally good at in engagements.

It is my honest to god, firm belief that caps as they are in general are fine, but need tweaks in specific areas to address what I feel are unnecessary changes and outright dumb ideas (again, these ass-blasters) that never should have seen the light of the master branch of Discovery's git repo (now that we apparently have one).

Furthermore:

Who would ever conceive that the weak spots would ever be the reactor & engine exhaust in a space ship? Like bro, all the literature that uses space ships, they have the same weak spot: the front of the ship! Its like, the facing point which provides the least ship mass to get hit by an enemy would be the weak point! Who would've thought of that?! Like a ship flying through an asteroid field hits an asteroid and explodes! Why? Cause its flying forward and its weak spot is the front! Peak Discovery! Just wait for the patch! It will be glorious!

I hope to god you're being sarcastic.

---

[Haste]

Who would ever conceive that the weak spots would ever be the reactor & engine exhaust in a space ship?

Uh, Freelancer. The game from 2003. There's (a) voice line(s) -- which is a lie, as the vanilla game gives all collision groups the same health -- telling the player to target capital ships' engines to destroy them quicker, taking advantage of a weak point. It also kind of makes sense. You can slap heavy armor plating all across a ship but an exposed engine exhaust port, by definition, is exposed. It makes what I would call intuitive game sense for engines to be weak spots. This does not necessarily have to correlate to reality, as Freelancer in no way, shape or form is a realistic space game.

Like bro, all the literature that uses space ships, they have the same weak spot: the front of the ship!

Lucky for you, I agree with this, though primarily for gameplay reasons. Almost all capital ships are much longer than they are tall or wide. Their most advantageous profile, for that reason, is the front/back profile. In addition, the front profile is what any capital ship shows to enemy capital ships if it is charging at them, or gap-closing with said enemy. Similarly, engines are shown when you are attempting to increase distance against an enemy, or kiting. Both of these are things you are naturally incentivized to do in the game, because ships move far quicker forwards (and sometimes even backwards) than they do sideways.

If you want players to have to make choices during PvP, therefore, you want to incentivize them to sometimes do something else, like provide a nice fat broadside target. You can do this by making it so you cannot do nearly as much damage to enemies in front of-, or behind your ship, for example, but that requires significantly restricting arcs. Another way you could do this is by making it so that a ship's nose or tail is a weak spot, while the majority of a ship's side profile is not. Meaning that while you are more likely to get hit, you are less likely to get dealt significant/critical damage.

I can see two main reasons for players to be opposed to the above:

• They do not want to have to make choices mid-combat, preferring if the correct course of action is obvious at all times and mistakes (or "unusually good plays") are nearly impossible to make.
  
• They have a better way to increase player choice, skill expression and combat depth than arc restrictions and weak/armored spots.
  

I'm happy to hear the latter, and I will respectfully disagree with the former.

---

[Tenshi]

Personally, I would keep movement mostly as is, but tune it somewhat to possibly appease those who want more of the older feel without completely throwing common sense out the window - and also complete rework cap mounts. No more of this ass-blaster nonsense - 6 heavies, 8 Prims and 10 secondaries across all BSes, balanced accordingly down the cap classes until you hit frigates where we leave it as is - and buff missiles to be what they really should be - standoff munitions that much like bomber torps should have been - fired at range to targets at least 2-3K away. Yes, it gives them a wide window, but as is, point defense, be it with prims or Solaris CIWS, covers around 1K.

While I have to express my endless gratitude for there being at least one individual out here who shares my point of view that capital ships really are fine as they are, and I truly greatly appreciate it, I have to disagree with this paragraph.

My example might be flawed, but hear me out:

Take any battlecruiser as an example. The Akhetaten works, and so does any other ship of the same class in the mod, the only difference being an extra main battery mount in the loadout. You have main batteries, heavy turrets, and primary turrets. I will not dwell on the argument of codename primaries being far superior to their generic-tech counterparts as this is not the point of this post or this discussion in general, so please excuse that fact.

Your primaries are basically your "point defense". The Akhetaten itself has 3 PPACs and 2 Melters. The Melters with their 0 dispersion and fast turn-rate are excellent at taking down incoming projectiles, while the PPACs are a huge threat to snubs, and act as pulses against anything that is a gunboat or bigger, while at the same time having strong anti-torp capabilities, albeit not as strong as the Melters.

Your heavies are where your frontal firepower comes from. In my case, it's 2 Harpoons which are very useful when chainfired as they overwhelm the target and the chances of them failing to flak some of them are high. Subtargetted harpoons are deadly when hitting cruiser engines. The other 2 mounts are Stonebreakers, which basically oneshot any snubcraft that is approaching you from the front, can hurt gunboat hulls, and absolutely devastate anything that has subtargettable components.

The main batteries are your main source of DPS, and I don't think there's any point in talking about them. People are very well aware of the capabilities of BC main batteries.

The point of all this explanation is to now ask the question: Why do we need "6 heavies, 8 prims, 10 secondaries" on our capital ships? You give me one extra prim on any BC in the game and I don't know what to do with it. Five is enough. The same argument applies to every other battlecruiser out there.

We don't need ships that have 22 weapons on them, when those 22 weapons are all underpowered.

What we need is fewer weapon mounts that still maintain the same firing-arc coverage but are now equipped with turrets that are much more powerful. I, too, am very disappointed to see ships like the Overlord and the Osiris without their signature 4 and 5 prims respectively, but do you know what I dislike seeing even more than that? My weapons list on the bottom right of my screen having a scroll wheel on the right side.


TLDR: We don't need more guns, we need better and fewer guns.
TLDR No2: Certain generic-tech weapons really need to be brought up to their codename counterparts.

EDIT: One short discussion with Haste later and I realize I might very likely be delusional in thinking BC prims are really <so bad> and PPACs are just <too good>, so ughhh don't take my word for it???
im sorry, im literally this server's most biased pro-ppac individual

---

Information ≛ Recruitment ≛ After Action Reports ≛ Feedback

---

"Honour. Courage. Commitment."
Task Force Akhetaten - Information

Tenshi

Discord: kagetenshi

Liberty Navy 46th Fleet

[Nodoka Hanamura]

Personally, I would keep movement mostly as is, but tune it somewhat to possibly appease those who want more of the older feel without completely throwing common sense out the window - and also complete rework cap mounts. No more of this ass-blaster nonsense - 6 heavies, 8 Prims and 10 secondaries across all BSes, balanced accordingly down the cap classes until you hit frigates where we leave it as is - and buff missiles to be what they really should be - standoff munitions that much like bomber torps should have been - fired at range to targets at least 2-3K away. Yes, it gives them a wide window, but as is, point defense, be it with prims or Solaris CIWS, covers around 1K.

While I have to express my endless gratitude for there being at least one individual out here who shares my point of view that capital ships really are fine as they are, and I truly greatly appreciate it, I have to disagree with this paragraph.

My example might be flawed, but hear me out:

Take any battlecruiser as an example. The Akhetaten works, and so does any other ship of the same class in the mod, the only difference being an extra main battery mount in the loadout. You have main batteries, heavy turrets, and primary turrets. I will not dwell on the argument of codename primaries being far superior to their generic-tech counterparts as this is not the point of this post or this discussion in general, so please excuse that fact.

Your primaries are basically your "point defense". The Akhetaten itself has 3 PPACs and 2 Melters. The Melters with their 0 dispersion and fast turn-rate are excellent at taking down incoming projectiles, while the PPACs are a huge threat to snubs, and act as pulses against anything that is a gunboat or bigger, while at the same time having strong anti-torp capabilities, albeit not as strong as the Melters.

Your heavies are where your frontal firepower comes from. In my case, it's 2 Harpoons which are very useful when chainfired as they overwhelm the target and the chances of them failing to flak some of them are high. Subtargetted harpoons are deadly when hitting cruiser engines. The other 2 mounts are Stonebreakers, which basically oneshot any snubcraft that is approaching you from the front, can hurt gunboat hulls, and absolutely devastate anything that has subtargettable components.

The main batteries are your main source of DPS, and I don't think there's any point in talking about them. People are very well aware of the capabilities of BC main batteries.

The point of all this explanation is to now ask the question: Why do we need "6 heavies, 8 prims, 10 secondaries" on our capital ships? You give me one extra prim on any BC in the game and I don't know what to do with it. Five is enough. The same argument applies to every other battlecruiser out there.

We don't need ships that have 22 weapons on them, when those 22 weapons are all underpowered.

What we need is fewer weapon mounts that still maintain the same firing-arc coverage but are now equipped with turrets that are much more powerful. I, too, am very disappointed to see ships like the Overlord and the Osiris without their signature 4 and 5 prims respectively, but do you know what I dislike seeing even more than that? My weapons list on the bottom right of my screen having a scroll wheel on the right side.


TLDR: We don't need more guns, we need better and fewer guns.
TLDR No2: Certain generic-tech weapons really need to be brought up to their codename counterparts.

EDIT: One short discussion with Haste later and I realize I might very likely be delusional in thinking BC prims are really <so bad> and PPACs are just <too good>, so ughhh don't take my word for it???
im sorry, im literally this server's most biased pro-ppac individual

I'll admit that my mindset comes from a milsim background where in games like Nebulous (yes, I know, little similarity to freelancer) which is heavily based on real life naval concepts and systems, and that mentality does contribute to why I feel more prims/secs may be needed. That being said, I don't think you're wrong, I just think your approach is a different way of tanning the sheep as it were.

---

[Chronicron]

The issue with Heavy Battleships in particular, as it stands at the moment, is not the number of turrets you can place on one. It's their survivability, power core sustainability and the variety of tools to deal with smaller things that do better against them even at effective ranges - like battlecruisers and cruisers. And you absolutely cannot balance Heavy Battleships based on 1v1 interactions between competent players in Connecticut, be they both flying heavies or completely different ships.

Heavies need more meat, more power to afford shooting guns - whether through the means of buffing their powercore or through making said guns consume less (ideally, return to managing heavy weapons not through means of energy consumption, but through reload times, as they were before).

---

[Nodoka Hanamura]

The issue with Heavy Battleships in particular, as it stands at the moment, is not the number of turrets you can place on one. It's their survivability, power core sustainability and the variety of tools to deal with smaller things that do better against them even at effective ranges - like battlecruisers and cruisers. And you absolutely cannot balance Heavy Battleships based on 1v1 interactions between competent players in Connecticut, be they both flying heavies or completely different ships.

Heavies need more meat, more power to afford shooting guns - whether through the means of buffing their powercore or through making said guns consume less (ideally, return to managing heavy weapons not through means of energy consumption, but through reload times, as they were before).

I'd agree entirely with this sentiment. Again, different way of tanning the sheep and I feel honestly this is a more clearer addressing of the issue with caps.

---