Capital Ship Point Defense

[darthbeck]

Point defence are NOT secondarys. Solaris is point defence, secondarys are just more agile guns for hitting faster caps such as gb's at close range. Currently the bomber has a weapon that cannot be shot down or easily dodged. however, the caps have no such thing, as the missles can be CD'd, and the main guns are easy to doge. the solaris are also too short ranged to pose a threat to even a single bomber if he knows what hes doing, since with the range its impossible to fully cover even ONE side of the ship with a full "point defence" loadout. Cap point D needs some boost, or the bombers a nerf. Those of you who think bombers are balanced, and bringing up the ww2 point... it took flights of 20 or so torpedo bombers to sink a cruiser or upwards, many of them got blown outa the air by flak and machine guns, and not always did they win without fighter escort. If someone is going to use a example, please state the correct situation, in ww2 3 torp bombers could NOT kill battleships. people need to come to the fact that a 210m ship compared to a 7 mil ship, the larger ship SHOULD mount punishing weaponry. We arent asking for WTFPWN guns, we just want somthing that we can actually SPECALISE in Anti fighter, since missles are no longer AF/AB, solaris is all we have left besides the big guns. Either give our close in guns a boost, or give us AF/AB style missle turrets.

if you want good defense. fly a gunboat. or small cruiser. battleships are anti cap. not anti fighter/bomber. while you might get destroyed by a handful of good bomber pilot, i get destroyed by a cruiser evcen when i have 3 bombers on my side. really. go get in a gunboat and fight corsairs untill you can kill anyone who flys a bomber/fighter.

but yeah. stop wasting forum space and go play on a capwhore server or something.

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<span style="font-family:Century Gothic">Violence is Golden</span>

[Camtheman Of Freelancer4Ever]

Its people like you who kill this mod.

Its called FREELANCER for a reason.
If you want to make an all AF/AB (I would say Anti Small Ship, but try to find the achronym for that...)
battleship, then you can, just you fail against Caps, if you want to make a multiloadout, go ahead, thats the whole reason i played freelancer, and you people are stepping on it...

[Lunaphase]

@ darthbeck. 1, i do not currently own anything larger than a transport. 2, i have no desire for a battleship now. 3, not everyone likes to "grab a gb and go kill corsairs" what if i was a corsair? hm? and dont tell me to "stop wasting forum space" this thread is FOR discussing the shortfalls and possible fixes. if you are going to refute what i said, please give me a logical argument in return, as all i can see from your post is that you die alot even with escorts.

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[Jinx]

comparisons are made where no comarison is possible...

ppl like to say "but your big capital ship can blow up a bomber in less than a second" - and that is correct, because the bombers main defense vs. a capital ship is only 1% its armour and 99% its size and agility. - so a sitting duck is blown to pieces in less than a second.

the difference is - when we get both the opponents to activly dodge. - the capital ships defense grows a little, depending on the capital ship by maybe 1% to 80% easily ( like 1% for a juggernaut, 80% for a BHG GS ) - while the bombers defense goes up 99% ( hypothetical numbers - but you get the drift )

so - a bomber can NOT be blown up by even a battleship in a second ... unless its sitting still. mind, a still sitting fighter can be blown up by pretty much everything in seconds, cause weapon DPS is MUCH greater than the passive defense of ships ( armour / shields ) - as it must be. - dodging makes such a huge deal of defense, that weapons MUST be powerful or a fighter vs. fighter fight would never end.


so, now that its cleared up that a capital ship cannot blow up a bomber in such a fraction of a second. we can look at comparing skills you need.

hitting half the capital ships is not too easy when they move. - your hit rate would be 50% maybe which makes it not possible to really solo such a ship, 10% of the ships are "large" - so that even a blind person hits them 90% of the time, the rest is tiny enough to be relatively safe - unless they behave like fighters and joust.

the real problem here is that a capital ship starts with a size like a BHG GS and goes up to the size of a zoner juggernaut ( roughly 500 times larger [ volume ] ) - you don t get that much of a size difference in any other shipclass. - yet, the "supernova" is THE universal weapon vs. them all... and it NEEDS to be ( in the current state ) able to hit both, the BHG GS and the juggernaut and also produce sufficient effects.


to compare that to a fighter. - its having a ship with 4 lvl 10 guns fighting both... a starflier with lvl1 shields and a nomad fighter with lvl10 shields. - and for both, you ll only have ONE type of gun. - the difference is to get a gun that is both.... not unfair towards the starflier AND the nomad fighter - and thats where the trouble starts.

logical ideas that can prevent a lower number of bombers from "raping" larger ships are.
- revise the point defense. - it might not kill a bomber, but it should jolly well make the bomber work as hard as the capital ship player. a bomber should pay heavily for a mistake ( "should" yes, that is a subjective term )
- revise the shields ( they are currently the best defense vs. bombers ) so that they regen fast enough to make it only possible for 2 very well coordinated bombers to take it down - or 3 that are working together casually. ( 2 bombers working VERY well together should be rewarded indeed... but it isn t required at the moment. - right now, 2 bombers vs. 1 cruiser have a fairly easy life )
- swap nova / supernova roles ( that fixes the anti-fighter role, too ) - even a good SN gunner fails like 50% vs. a fighter ( or more ) when firing his SN. if every SN shot cost 10.000 it would make such behaviour less attractive. - and 70 SN are still enough not to run dry. - the nova would then become the main anti-cap weapon, without ammo, but significantly more torpedo like.
- increase bombers roll / reaction delay - but thats such a global effect that its hard to predict what it does to the bombers as such ( might well go from the best ship down to the worst )
- decrease bomber thrusters to 140 instead of 200 - that would also be a HUGE nerf that yields unpredictable results.
- turn the supernova into a huge pulse gun ( so that the "gun" type is more logical anyway ) - so it can be used to kill capship shields like before - but a REAL bomber would NEED guns and nova torps to hurt the caps. ( no more universal weapon ) - that would also make SNing fighters pointless, cause if its only a shield gun... they don t kill fighters.

most of those things are huge changes that would not be considered, but they can be used to see that the situation is not trapped in a dead end. - we have still ways to balance into every direction.


edit: oh, @darthbeck: saying something like that is very disrespectful towards those that like to fly capital ships. - its lke saying "your ship is crap! and right so, if you want a better one, fly a different kind. - thats not balance and thats not what we try to do. we want every ship to be good - yes. bombers ought to be good vs. capital ships. - but capital ships ought to be good vs. bombers, too. its not like ppl making capital ships say "oh, yes, bombers the ultimate weapons... lets just pack, cause we have no idea how to counter such a shipclass with our multimillion units powerplant, our huge guns and crews of 2000+ people.

if we take RP seroiusly. the bomber would be the more efficient ship even if it took 10 of them to take down a single cruiser. - cause it would be 5 HUMANS vs. a crew of hundreds. - that is what i call efficient. what we have now is 1 human vs. hundreds. - only cause the crew of the capital ship is imagined doesn t mean its not there - anything else are pvp thoughts.

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Shipdesigns made for DiscoveryGC

[NonSequitor]

As a BS pilot (amongst other things), some thoughts on point defense.

Currently, capships can efficiently destroy other caps. As it should be.

The challenge a large capship pilot has is creating a workable weapons' configuration. All the heavy-hitting weaponry is long-range and high-damage, while at the same time having a low-refire rate and low-muzzle velocity.

The anti-aircraft weapons are an odd group: Solaris turrets are high-refire, high muzzle velocity and short-range. The BS razors have a longer range and high muzzle velocity, but a very slow refire rate. Flak turrets I don't have any experience with but word is is that they are nigh useless.

One of the ideas behind the variety of weaponry is to make the player decide what he wants to emphasize. And choices have serious repercussions. That's my guess, anyway.

I'm beginning to believe that this current potpourri of BS weapons also has something to do with a fear of larger capships "owning" all, chasing single fighters, etc. Apparently, the old BS turrents were too "all-purpose" - long-range and high-muzzle velocity guns. A bogus fear in my opinion, but I could understand this from a bomber's point of view.

In 4.84 I could kill or hold off up to 3 bombers by myself. Sometimes I made it to a friendly base, sometimes not. But in any case, the bombers were often in bad shape themselves or dead. BSes and other large cap ships were certainly not Swiss Army knives by any stretch of the imagination.

Now, if I want to achieve a similar level of defensive integrity, I should put Solaris turrets on. However, any bomber pilot worth his salt can hit a BS from a 1 km.

Escorts, you say? Yes, they are very handy. When they are around and their connections are stable. Last night in Delta my escort tried to courageously fight off poor connections and 3 bombers who showed up to "own" the BS.

Another thing, this idea of what point defenses (anti-aircraft) should and shouldn't do. Way, way, way back when I was in the RL military, our anti-aircraft systems were dedication to shooting down enemy aircraft, not simply deterring them or scaring them off. Modern AA is meant to kill other planes. Sure, AA does make it difficult for the enemy pilot to do his job - because he knows he will be ejecting from his burning wreck of a plane if that missile / cannon / vulcan fire hits him.

Right now I'm rethinking my loadout and going with 6 secondaries and 7 primaries. I may drop the number of primaries to 5 or 4 if the BS is still viable against other big caps.

It's still beta folks - so everyone still has chance to make adjustment suggestions for ships and weapons.

[mjolnir]

so - a bomber can NOT be blown up by even a battleship in a second ... unless its sitting still.

I saw an Osiris killing some 3 bombers yesterday that were not sitting still. One of them even died in under a second yes (since he ate 2 Razors) and the pilot was no noob. *winks to ***** *)

the real problem here is that a capital ship starts with a size like a BHG GS and goes up to the size of a zoner juggernaut ( roughly 500 times larger [ volume ] ) - you don t get that much of a size difference in any other shipclass. - yet, the "supernova" is THE universal weapon vs. them all... and it NEEDS to be ( in the current state ) able to hit both, the BHG GS and the juggernaut and also produce sufficient effects.
to compare that to a fighter. - its having a ship with 4 lvl 10 guns fighting both... a starflier with lvl1 shields and a nomad fighter with lvl10 shields. - and for both, you ll only have ONE type of gun. - the difference is to get a gun that is both.... not unfair towards the starflier AND the nomad fighter - and thats where the trouble starts.

Yes the size differences are what make it messy, obviously an Osiris/BHG BS can dodnge more than half SN shots from 1k, Zone juggy close to none.

- revise the point defense. - it might not kill a bomber, but it should jolly well make the bomber work as hard as the capital ship player. a bomber should pay heavily for a mistake ( "should" yes, that is a subjective term )

I think it does that now (with new flaks)

- revise the shields ( they are currently the best defense vs. bombers ) so that they regen fast enough to make it only possible for 2 very well coordinated bombers to take it down - or 3 that are working together casually. ( 2 bombers working VERY well together should be rewarded indeed... but it isn t required at the moment. - right now, 2 bombers vs. 1 cruiser have a fairly easy life )

Bombers are the main counter to cruisers, so yes 2 bombers have an "easy" life vs cruiser.

- swap nova / supernova roles ( that fixes the anti-fighter role, too ) - even a good SN gunner fails like 50% vs. a fighter ( or more ) when firing his SN. if every SN shot cost 10.000 it would make such behaviour less attractive. - and 70 SN are still enough not to run dry. - the nova would then become the main anti-cap weapon, without ammo, but significantly more torpedo like.

How would you down shields then? Projectiles need "explosion" which then needs to be very large to move BS shield. So this is not possible.

- increase bombers roll / reaction delay - but thats such a global effect that its hard to predict what it does to the bombers as such ( might well go from the best ship down to the worst )

You answered yourself there

- decrease bomber thrusters to 140 instead of 200 - that would also be a HUGE nerf that yields unpredictable results.

Yes exactly as you said.

- turn the supernova into a huge pulse gun ( so that the "gun" type is more logical anyway ) - so it can be used to kill capship shields like before - but a REAL bomber would NEED guns and nova torps to hurt the caps. ( no more universal weapon ) - that would also make SNing fighters pointless, cause if its only a shield gun... they don t kill fighters.

Keeping current SN shield damage and lowering hull one to be the same or just some 90k would be an option. But again this does change the balance vs cruisers and gbs a lot.

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Flak turrets I don't have any experience with but word is is that they are nigh useless.

Try the new changed ones. And try to learn how to use them. I have heard a of people with same commets like this or loadouts that you point in the end of your post.

Generally: "I need to be able to kill caps, so I use only anti-cap guns, anti-fighter guns suck anyway".
Then people come and post how the caps suck vs fighter/bombers.

Escorts, you say? Yes, they are very handy. When they are around and their connections are stable. Last night in Delta my escort tried to courageously fight off poor connections and 3 bombers who showed up to "own" the BS.

1. How did it go?

2. It's close to impossible to take into account laggy connections when balancing, since they can be on both sides



Nice comparison with RL. As posted before even a Ticonderoga class anti-aircraft cruiser uses missile which have shorter range than those fired by bombers in the other direction.

But yes at that range most of the bomber missiles will be destroyer or miss due to countermeasures. Just like when firing SN from over 1k the BS can dodge some 50% of them. (depending on which bs off course).

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Igiss says: Martin, you give them a finger, they bite off your arm.

[El Nino]

I agree with Mjolnir 100%...

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Donate to the Poor Pilot's Fundation via Sirius Bank /givecash GreenHawk 1000000 now, and support poor pilots sirius wide!
Skype: jure.grbec
My primary char: Jose El Nino - Corsair Elder captain of the SS Greenhawk

Currently Inactive due to pursuit of life long dreams, will be back...*edited* As promised am back.

[hribek]

I agree/disagree with Sungi 50% ...

but I definitely agree with Mjolnir 100% regarding this...

[Eternal]

Experience is a very important factor when it comes to Capital ships going against bombers or smaller ship in general ( small GB's , fighters etc ) , perhaps the most important one of them all. In the previous mod , even with experience on your side , there was very little you could do against 2-3 bombers , even if they where rookies.

In simple terms , Capital ship pilots had the experience , but lacked the tools needed to serve their role.

Now , however , Capital ships DO have the tools but I'm afraid that most players lack the experience to use them to their ... how should I say ... full potential. When you don't want something to work , it usually wont work. New players , to capital ships , should spend more time testing the weaknesses and strong sides of their ships more.

Eternal

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[mjolnir]

I can only agree with that.... though in 4.84 BS had the tools, yet most pilots didn't had the experience/skill either.

With the 4.84 straffing small and medium bs could strafe from almost all sns over 500ms, as was proven numerous times by Virus in Hellbound. Yet 95% of BS captains never strafed when fighting bombers.

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Igiss says: Martin, you give them a finger, they bite off your arm.