turrets must not take up cargo space, cause they are limited to the turret hardpoints anyway. we had a video of FL:CE ( freelancer evolved ) around yesterday... and i watched the other trailers of it... and it appears to be capital ship based.
the capship combat "looks" MUCH more like i d love to see it. the combination of very fast projectiles and the slow yellow beams looks good. i don t know anything about the balance - and thats just a trailer, but it looks quite interesting.
so my idea is like..
- firstly - improve battleship armour by a lot. cap ships should survive much longer. if needed, "only" nerf shields to the cruiser class, i don t care - but tenfold the armour - even if its shaking like mad most of the time then. - but with todays weapons, i d rather like to see the shields of a battleship being shot down in seconds, but the armour to withstand the enemy for minutes ( literally minutes of sustained heavy bombardement - so i d rather give them 10 times the current armour while giving cruisers and battleships only gunboat shields )
- secondly - nerf battleship turn rate and agility down to 50% of what its atm. i know they allready turn like a turtle, but some can still be used like a fighter. i d like it if they slowly drifted around each other like 16th century sails; practicly immobile from the point of view of fighter classes.
- main turret: 500 ms, 10000 damage, 6k range ( irrelevant, cause it won t hit at that range ), 2.0 refire, 10.000 energy - if the armour was multiplied by 10 - such a damage output would be 50% of what its now. ships would survive twice as long when shot with only main turrets, but they could rip smaller vessels apart more easily ... provided they hit.
main target: other battleship, cruisers
weakness: fighter / bomber
- secondary turret - 2100 ms, 4000 damage, 3k range, 4.0 refire, 15.000 energy - a quick firing compromise between a new main turret and a small craft defense turret. - the projectile speed is much faster of course, making hits easier, the damage is less than 50% of the main turret while the energy consumtion is still 150% of the main turret. - such a turret should be an alternative, but should eat through the energy of a battleship quickly.
main target: gunboats
weakness: none
- point defense turrets - 6000 ms, 300 damage, 1k range, 1.0 refire, 1000 energy - an allmost instant beam that deals not much more damage than a fighter. if we look at it from a fighters point of view, a battleship would have to mount at least 12 of those to match the DPS of a fighter. ( refire is very low and the damage is low ) - but the chance to hit is good. those turrets have basicly no energy use but due to the low damage would be useless against even gunboats.
a battleship had to mount at least 6 to be a real threat to a fighter ( still not matching a fighter escort that deals more damage / shot and fires at least twice as quickly ) - but it helps against overzealous pilots that think they can attack a battleship without taking any damage at all. a fighter should get hit - not like now, that its destroyed in two lucky salvos, but it should be hit.
main target: fighter / bomber
weakness: all capital class ships
- missile turret basic - 350 ms, 1200 damage, 4500 range ( or 120 seconds longevity of the missile ), 0.2 refire ( once every 5 seconds ), 50.000 energy. ( and if possible - lock the turret twist, so the turret can really only fire into the original direction [ doesn t affect missiles too much, cause they launch when the missile has the target in the line-of-sight ] )
the blast radius should be as big as a cannonball - the line of sight of the missile should be at least 120 degrees and the turn rate should be as good as a bomber ( good enough, but not good enough to outturn a VHF when its activly dodging ) - such a weapon wouldn t be a fighter killer, but a weapon to keep them busy. a fighter won t be insta killed, especially not at that low fire rate, but the pilot won t have a second to relax while he is in the vicincy of a hostile battleship.
main target: fighter / bomber
weakness: all capital class ships
- missile turret torpedo - 50 ms, 500.000 damage, 6k range, 0.05 refire ( once every 20 seconds ), 100.000 energy. this missile should give a torpedo warning - and it should replace mortars. the missile itself should be the size of a light fighter and be targettable and being able to destroy of course. the damage wouldn t be off too much, cause battleships with such weapons had 10 times the armour. these would be very slow moving projectiles that are passed from one battleship to another. - fighter could shoot them down or the battleships could target them and take them down themselves ( but it would require more work from the BB captains, too )
not to give vanilla caps a disadvantage, these torpedos should not be missiles at all, but energy weapons with a missile model projectile and a smoke trail. ( don t know - can you shoot energy projectiles down? ) from what i know, supernovas have a torpedo projectile, but are energy weapons, but i never managed to actually shoot one down... .
main target: all capital class ships
weakness: fighter / bomber
these are the main weapons i d like to see. - that d be some extreme changes, especially upgrading BB armour and decreasing the shields. - i know the shaking IS a problem, but if battleships are mainly build to counter other battleships, they can hit those even while shaking - against fighters, they d have batteries of 6k ms turrets - thats still allmost impossible to hit a fighter while you re shaking around, but thats something one gotto learn to live with.
i think it would improve the longevity of battleships while not unbalancing the game much. the battleships would have less weapons to counter bombers, who on their turn take much longer to take a battleship down ( due to the higher armour ) - if a battleship wants to be strong vs. fighters, it would have to give up a lot of its firepower for antifighter turrets leaving it vulnerable to other capital ships with more anti cap turrets.
this concept has no universal turrets ( except for the secondary turret that is meant to be a compromise but drain the energy quickly ) - the energy of battleships could stay like it is now, but i d rather like to see the base amount being something like 14 million while at the same time decreasing the replenishment by 50%. that way - decissions would have to be made. energy lost = a longer time to replenish. but you d have more energy to make decissions with. ( like cannons on medieval ships. - you fire them and then you have a long time to reload )
edit: oh, and one more thought. - i d get rid of bats / bots from all capital ships ( gunboats - battleships ) completely and reduce bats bots on fighters by 50%. anyway - i think only fighter / bomber classes should be able to use bats/bots.
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