Capships, increasingly slower fighters? Or strategic weapons?

[Dusty Lens]

Question - is it possible to remove the shaking effect on a Battleship when it is hit without any shields?

Nope, more's the pity. Once the shields are down anything with a gun can make the thing shake like a jello mold in an earthquake.

[mjolnir]

You know Dusty... everyone wants capships rebalanced. Problem is that you have as many ideas as many people there are discussing. Some ideas being vastly different than others.


About Flak, I really doubt it will get usable. It kind of depends if vanilla ships loose their damageable components. If they do then maybe it can be made useful at short range (under 600m?)

About Roles
You can't say that all GBs will be anti-fighter, all cruisers anti-gb etc. There are small and agile GBs/Cruisers and there are big ones with many turrets/armor.

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@Jinx, I need to think more about that idea before saying more, so just a short comment now:

I don't think there are going to be any radical changes done all at once. Simply because it's very difficult to balance things if a lot of them get changed at once. Sure we can set up a separate server for balancing/ideas only. Problem is that many issues are found/corrected/exploited first after some rather long time. I remember how I tested the new SN during all beta stages, playing almost daily yet I still thought it's so bad compared with old novas and should be changed. After 2 months I think it's much better. Out of the top of my head I can come with at least 8 other examples of issues found first afterwards. Now remember that there weren't any really big changes from 4.83-4.84 except the nova-sn.
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I can see some good points though:

1. GB gun range - yes that together with the recharge makes GBs uber
So
GB forward guns - 2000m range (can be dodged and are hard to aim)
Inferno/Razor - 1400 max.
Cerberus - some 1200m
Other turrets - 800m

2. Shield busting turrets (normal ones like Debilitators/Tizonas), for all cap classes, for GBs they will have same range as normal turrets (short)

As I said elsewhere both Cruiser and Battleships should get an energy and armor upgrade (some 50-100%).
More energy so that they are able to fire the high damage per hit weapons a lot more, for almost insta-killing GBs that come too close.

Normal turrets vs those guns needs some check as well (especially on BSs).

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

[Raekur]

Battleships ARE your artillery platforms. They stand off about 30 miles away and pummel things into the ground.

Cruisers - Primary role is anti-destroyer
Destroyer - Primary role is anti-fighter
Gunboats - Harasses anything that is not friendly.

get the picture.

If you make the cruisers long range artillery pieces, then you introduce a single cruiser being able to take out a battleship by itself. (cruisers are faster, thus can stay at long range and manuver. i.e. the battleship will never be able to hit it)

Battleships should have a EXTREAMLY long range, and very high damage. You hit a fighter or bomber with the main guns from a battleship, the F/B should be vaporized. The idea of using bombers was to present another capital ship to keep its attention while the bombers do their runs. Because the other capital ship DOES more damage then the bombers do.
Cruisers - Long range
Destroyers - Medium range - High Projectile speed.
GB - Short range

[dizbmikuni]

Battleships ARE your artillery platforms. They stand off about 30 miles away and pummel things into the ground.

Cruisers - Primary role is anti-destroyer
Destroyer - Primary role is anti-fighter
Gunboats - Harasses anything that is not friendly.

get the picture.

If you make the cruisers long range artillery pieces, then you introduce a single cruiser being able to take out a battleship by itself. (cruisers are faster, thus can stay at long range and manuver. i.e. the battleship will never be able to hit it)

Battleships should have a EXTREAMLY long range, and very high damage. You hit a fighter or bomber with the main guns from a battleship, the F/B should be vaporized. The idea of using bombers was to present another capital ship to keep its attention while the bombers do their runs. Because the other capital ship DOES more damage then the bombers do.
Cruisers - Long range
Destroyers - Medium range - High Projectile speed.
GB - Short range

That actually seems to make more sense to me. I also liked the idea of decreasing gunboat range to 1000 or increasing cap range to 2.5 or 3.5k or more. I am also attracted by the notion of huge capship broadsides while fighters/bombers/gunboats skirmish in the middle. Never understood why gunboats should be more effective than capital ships at ranges over 1k...

I'm definitely not a fan of making gunboats into purely anti fighter-bomber weapons. For the factions that don't regularly employ 2-3 capships (excluding GBs) on a regular basis...everyone would just end up flying gunboats....or if the other side wanted to use any fighters at all, they'd just get wiped. I mean fighters at the very least have to double team gunboats already. I think that lots of fighters should be used in these "huge fleet battles", mostly to keep other fighters/bombers occupied. I dont think that gunboats should just be able to rape them all.

[Muleo]

mule - admin approved has nothing to do with favouring factions. - it only does when you think that factions get a point blank approval - does it? ... a simple approval is no elitism at all... ( only a lot of work )

Sorry to go kinda off topic but..

Well thing is, factions are going to be able to get those battleships a lot easier than indies, even if both RP at the same level, sure factions shouldn't just be handed these beasts, but at the same time, an indie has to try especially hard in order to get one.. That's what I'd meant.

[worldstrider]

As people have done an excellent and thorough job here of proposing things I just wanted to mention my single contribution:

Regarding flak...make it have a good explosive diameter and have it really throw small ships about without doing seriously large amounts of damage.

So when a fighter or bomber come in close, flak could throw them like what happens when a battleship pivots and hits you with its tail end.

the damage can be scaled to anything that you like--just the inertial effect gets really pumped.

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[dizbmikuni]

ah, I had a thought and from what I can tell, fullproof reasoning why gunboats shouldn't be spec'd to just destroy fighters and bombers (or be able to destroy a huge number of them).

Wouldnt a perfect fleet then just consist of various big capships and gunboats? No weaknesses that I can see...

[Dantrithor]

GB's are not that good at fighting fighters/bombers which arent focused at they. You can evade more or less even an enemy full-missile gb (as extreme case, i have flown bombers against missile gb's, not only flown missile gb's against bombers) as long as you do not fight it, but choose another target (like another gb, or a cruisr or above better).

On the other hand, fighters are a real threat to the bomber, in the sense that they can force the bomber to engage the fighter and try to score an ocassional hit on the cap ship, but forcing them to disengage the cap ship once and again. So fighters are still needed.

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[dizbmikuni]

huh interesting.

however, I think I was talking about more people's calls to make the gunboat even stronger than it is now vs fighters and bombers and in turn make them weaker to BC's, BS's.

[Armageddon]

The way i see it gunboats should be able to do most jobs to a basic degree. They are the mainstay capital of any fleet, and so they must be able to act against all threats. Although as it does all jobs equally well, it should not be as good at each job as the actual specialized craft higher up the chain.

I see it as

Gunboats - Jack of all trades depending on weapon loadout they can do most jobs.
BattleCruiser - Anti Fighter craft, lacks the capability to do much damage to other caps (excluding gunboats of course)
Cruiser - Anti-Capital craft. Lacks any antifighter weaponry, turrets are extremely slow to turn to stop them from tracking fighters but do a lot of damage to capital craft especially with the heavy forward gun.
Battleship - Has heavy salvo guns for long range barrage (7-8k distance) These drain a severe amount of energy and are extremely slow turning 1minute to turn a full 360 degrees as a turret. Battleships also have the ability to use point defence guns (Not as good as BC anti fighter weapons but good enough to cause some damage). Also uses a flak screen (knocks the fighter/bomber off course. Extremely limited damage).