Capital ships

[Vladimir]

So, we all know the problem with the capships, their setups and battles between them.

Basically, we have only two types of battleships - heavy-hitters (90%) and solaris platforms (10%).

Heavy hitters are either big or small, if they are big, they are just loaded with all kinds of STOP ****ING MY CRAPS YOU AUTOCHANGE - but mostly the primaries, which actually do the job done. If they are small, they are either loaded with just primaries and one mortar, like the osirs, and tend to try and stay far and bombard from there using their superiour agility against other battleships.

Solaris platforms are solaris platforms, and also only small bses can be used as them, and you know why.

Carriers are not carriers, it's just fancy name.

Then, we have cruisers. It's the same again - with big and stupid battlecruisersght carriers who try to close up and wtfpwn other cruisers or bombard bses with light mortars, with small agile destroyers and usual cruiers. Again, primaries+lm or two or solaris+lm or two. Some people try to use missiles but they suck and you know it. Unless it's bs missile agaisnt a snub, ye. Mind, two cruisers kill a battleship usually, because they just stay out of range and spam light mortars, and they have lower profile and more agility. Sometimes there are two razors for instaing snubs.

And don't make me start on gunboats because i'm tired already.

How the big battles go? Horde of battleships go into another horde and just focus-primary ships one by one. Ye, that's it. KNF BAF GRN event anyone? And cruisers and gunboats just suck at engagements like this. Unless, of course, someone wants this to be a boring lm-fest for a few hours. LM+thruster*2=dead battleship. Or those are pulse-razor horde of tridentes.

So, is this how we want them to work?

Nobody said yes so no.

Ye, i know 4.86 is going to have different slots for battleships, with a few heavy slots for heavy things like mortars, some slots for four times buffed primaries and a lot of slots for four times nerfed solarises. Meaning, even less diversity, everyone will be flying pretty much the same ships.

Booooring!

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What i propose is this.

First, let's think of the role of carriers here. We could think for ages about implementing docking and all, we could wait it to happen in 4.87 (hahaha, right). By that time freelancer will probably be dead already. But i have a simpler solution.

Remember the suggestions about removing the bots and bats for caps? With buffing the hull at the same time so the result would be the same? Well, do it! And leave some bots for carriers. That way in a fight with carrier snubs would be able to resupply themselves at carrier. At the same time, being the carrier, it should probably be vulnerable to other caps, so it would be running around from battleships, cruisers, and other snubs, while shooting 345655464 solarises at snubs to keep caps useful.

That way it'd be interesting.

Then, the actual cap engagemets. Primaries are BORING! And the only forward cannon i've seen was on liberty siege cruiser and it didn't do anything valuable. I think there's another one somewhere, among blood dragons maybe, but that's kusari and nobody lives in kusari except anime and furries.

You can say it's stupid and BFGish, but in the game where we have aether instead of vacum, i don't think that'd be too bad. So.

How about actually splitting battleship weapons like this?



No, that's not a penis with tusks.

See, there are a few big bad cannons firing forward with really really low refire and high damage, two broadside battaries with slighty faster refire and lower damage, balanced in that way that it'd be a bit less powerful in just side-versus-nose fight, and frakton of point defense spamming everyone around. No big cannons firing backwards, too.

So that way battleships would HAVE to manuever, fly around, shoot from broadside, change the position, fire forward, fly around, try to position itself against enemy's ass, and by low refire i mean REALLY low one so that staying just one way and shooting from ons side would mean being stupid. Also, make them slower and less agile.

But capwhores must die, will say the majority of players. We want them to suffer! Well, ye, i love flying fighters myself, especially since i stopped sucking at them (relatively). But i have an idea on that too.

So, battleships didn't have shields back in vanilla. Why would the have them now? The only reason comes to mind is less annoying shaking.

Then, bombers aren't supposed to be a flying snac, right? I know i love snac, i even once shot 3 LPI LF's in a row with it, but hey, it's still overpowered uberweapon. Then bombers have novas, which suck because of shields. Seriously, i was once fighting corsair gb and bomber in a vidar, and bomber was dual nova. ONLY ONCE did he damage shields. Ye, hull damage would be big, but only gb could down it and it was stupid.

Soooo, how about... Bumping hull even more and making turrets bigger? And nerfing the nova's explosion range (so that they won't kill all the turrets in one shot, and stop killing allied snubs near bs or yourself with lag). And make battleships slower and less agile, remember? So that way SNAC would become a turret-killing weapon so that we snubwhores (i tend to be everything-whore) can still make lolwuts with big ships suffer. You know, i once shot off an LSF's VHF's shield with SNAC, so it won't be too hard with big turrets and slow battleships. And then, we have a solaris things. They shouldn't be TOO effective against snubs, but what else should they do? You know, buff the nova's damage and nerf it's turning rate to infinity so that you would need to actually aim it and . Also, make it both ammo-based and ~0.01 refire, and make it actually down-shootable by usual guns, but not cds. A hitpoint boost to projectile will be good enough. But make every hit hurt like hell!

So that way bombers vs battleships would look like this. Either bombers keel big bad turrets with snacs allowing allied caps to keel battleship, or they keel point defense and then launch novas, or they just launch novas and hope they won't be all shot down by point defense.

Then, give gunboats new roles. Make them torpedo boats! Make them point defense boats! Make them anything you want boats!

And cruisers, too. Do something to them. I dunno, really, maybe it'd be a smaller battleship with torpedoes instead of big bad forward cannons?

And ye, make different types of forward cannons, broadside cannons and PtD (like solarises, flaks - i know they suck, but maybe you'll think of something), and enjoy a complex battlefield with more tactics than either close down and wtfpwn or stay far and mortar!

YAY!

Yay?

Sorry for mistakes or anything, i didn't find the courage to read it again.

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