Revert cruiser slots changes

[Corvo Gotti]

In a nutshell, I think Discovery suffers from treating its capital ships like oversized smallcraft. Primarily forward facing guns, some restricted arcs here and there, with slower fire rates and projectile speeds to balance out their loadouts against smallcraft, but ultimately just bulky smallcraft with restrictive turn rates. The problem with this is that it creates the aforementioned stale gameplay of "fly straight at enemy and hold right click". This is okay to have, to a degree, with smallcraft because the goal is to strike hard and fast and then quickly get away. Capital ships do not have this maneuverability nor should they have it. Discovery's attempts to change this do not actually change it, because you have positioned the weapon arcs all over the ship, making the gameplay loop the same - fly at enemy (to fire mortars, etc.), turn (maybe fire a few broadside shots), then kite and try to out-range as much as possible.

I'm just gonna quote this instead of quoting your entire post, as it makes a better tldr in my opinion, and say that you clearly aren't "back into the game" enough. The stuff that you list that should be done to cap ships and everything you list as what discovery does wrong are all things already realized by Haste.

It makes reading your post really funny when you make all those remarks about how broadside combat with powerful broadside guns is what capships need - and not powerful front guns to reinforce a chasing playstyle - when that's literally how the game is already played. Try Battlecruisers if you haven't already and you'll see all those things in effect.

Rotational turrets =/= broadside weaponry. The majority of said turrets can fire in all directions, leading to - as Haste put it: "very large snubcraft with turretsteer (and -zoom)"

The current design is effectively just this with a few quirks such as BC's having a backwards facing heavy with abysmal turret turn speed, effectively making it a rear-gun in most situations, leading to the kiting and ranging meta. Those "things" I mentioned in the post you clearly skimmed while rolling your eyes are absolutely not in effect, though the vestiges of a process to get nearer to there seem to be happening. The problem is that this weird half-transition takes away the strengths Disco's caps had before while pushing caps more into the territory of "very large snubcraft with turretsteer (and -zoom)" because the arcs and ranges continue to reinforce snub-like piloting. Dive, turn, kite, dive again or chase.

Forward firing weaponry, whether they be fixed like on snubs, etc. or from turrets should only be on ship classes expected to either be primarily firing forwards, or firing all weapons in all directions (such as transports, whose weapons are designed with maximum coverage because the intent isn't to dogfight, it's to keep moving while firing).

Backwards firing weaponry, whether they be fixed, turrets, or mines, should only be on ship classes expected to be primarily or regularly retreating. (Great for transports and Gunboats, as transports will likely be fleeing a battle and gunboats will likely be in the thick of a battle with hostiles on their tail, especially given they lack the maneuverability to handle hostiles by out-maneuvering).

Large capitals should not be either of these in my opinion. Their weapons, with few exceptions, should never fire in a movement direction because these large vessels should never be diving or retreating.

When dealing with large, lumbering ship types I find that naval-style combat and control just feels better. Heavy cannons that only fire to the side, utility weapons and specialty weapons that only fire forwards (these weapons should always be niche, such as chaser weapons designed to disable or a single heavy weapon such as the iconic Liberty cannon) and a small number of 360* weapons for things like point defense, with said point defense being designed primarily to strip shields and suppress smallcraft rather than outright kill.