Capital Ships Rebalance Discussion

[Lythrilux]

Remove all solaris turrets from the game outright without further delay. Take the plunge and do it now. They are griefing tools.

Change all cap guns above gunboat to do 1% damage to fighter and bomber shields, thus creating a dynamic where a snub can safely dive a cap while it has shields up, but is vulnerable with shields down, making it imperative a cap ship have support from smaller ships to be able to reliably fight them off. This also reduces the impact of snubs hugging a friendly capship while still maintaining the effectiveness of this strategy to at least an extent.

I would rather snubs and caps are unable to touch each other outright.

When flying a fighter, it is very irritating having a good group fight going only for some drooling idiot to come along wanting easy kills in their cap disrupting the fun of all participants involved.

At the same time, it is also very irritating to have a either a Cap 1v1 or a big fight of lots of caps, only for several snubs to come along and be generally annoying and skew the balance, also doing things such as going to restock as they have an unparalleled running away ability and are theoretically invincible if they play as safe as possible.

Freelancer wasn't designed to accommodate Capital ships on the scale we have them now. I don't think that means they should be removed from the game or anything (I enjoy my Makos and my Tokus). But it seems quite clear to me that it is very hard to balance these ships in a way where they can interact with each other and still make things fun for people on both sides of the ship preference. If it's necessary - say they can't be balanced to be a suitable bridge between these class types - I'd say the place/importance of Bombers and Gunboats in Discovery may need to be reconsidered as well.

Going back to the topic at hand, I genuinely believe the state of Battlecruisers right now is incredibly boring after their rework. Flying a BCR is just a snoozefest. I preferred them much more before when they were a true hybrid between Battleships and Cruisers. I also think Gunboat shields and Gunboat heavies were a mistake, adding FORCED DIVERSITY to a class that left a handful of boats in a great position and many others just utterly terrible and completely non-viable. Light cruisers, although not necessarily bad, are a bit useless and often worse than mediums - especially for factions that have access to BCRs. The balance between Light and Heavy battleships is whack in 1v1s, not fun for Heavies and Lights are forced to play an extremely safe playstyle if they want to win.

Finally, revert the price of Hurricanes. They're absolutely ridiculous right now. It was a kneejerk change to missions outcry.

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