Thoughts on battleships

[Shagohad]

I think battleships need to be more resiliant against fighter-based weapons. I can bring a capship's shields down quickly with my fighter's weapons. The real thing that cripples BSs in this game is one thing:

MULTI-TASKING!

These poor ships can only shoot what you point at when in fact it should shoot anything that gets close. I believe we need NPC turrets. AI controlled turrets will pick targets on their own that get close. These turrets should be able to be turned off to avoid shooting at ships you don't intend to hurt. But I don't think this can be done.

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"THE HULL HAS BEEN BREACHED AND THE SCIENCE IS LEAKING OUT!"

[Qunitinius~Verginix]

This is how a capital ship should be. It should all be about getting the right angles to your opponent, not just flying and shooting. Capital ship combat is about tactics as well as burte force.



Verg

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[Jinx]

npc turrets - that would be awesome, and not only for battleships !

think of all those small little fighters with useless back firering turrets - those are hardly ever used for any real purpose much. if they were npc controlled, even if it was a poor npc, it would simply rock.

i liked those ... i think its the wolfhound, those bigger rogue fighters which have a small turret in its back. the npc ones make good use of it. the wolfhound can t really fly as quickly as a patriot - but a patriot chasing it on its six will still take damage from the little turret, - not much, but sometimes enough to break off from chasing.

if now battleship turrets had a smaller angle of attack, but each turret that was NOT able to fire at the curser target would fire freely at any other hostile target, that would make battleships much nicer. ( and not much more powerful at all, cause they would not bring their full power to one target - like 100k damage to one point )

if it was possible, there could even be different AIs maybe - like low AI turrets that can just hit - well, other cap ships or transporters, up to highest AI turrets that "might" even track light fighters circling around. ( but would then have to balance the turrets spin speed, so it won t get "immune" to smalll craft attacks )

anyway - i still think that a single bomber, fighter, whatever - that attacks a battleship simply deserves to die, no matter how reality says that a single fighter can take out an entire city. the game penelizes cap ships vs. fighters anyway. there is the crappy phyiscs - and it allways takes at least 2 salvos ( not even hits, but full salvos ) to take down a fighter. even if you hit all weapons - it usually just takes down the fighters shield. if it regens only a little shield power back, its again immune to the weapons, no matter how many of them hit.

to balance it out, i d like to see more distiction between : anti cap ship weapons, and anti fighter weapons.

there were concerns about missiles, but in my opinion, they are one of the very few VERY well balanced weapons. they are anti fighter weapons, and useless vs. other cap ships.

i d like a battleship captain to decide what is his greatest thread, a fighter/bomber? - then he would equip more anti fighter weapons, leaving his ship vulnerable to other capital ships. Or does he fear other capital ships more - then he would equip more heavy - but damn slow weapons.

so far - we have too many good allround weapons. most beam weapon turrest are just too good vs. fighers and other cap ships. ( and i think a battleship should have a greater choice in anti capship weapons - and rather only very few anti fighter weapons, cause in the end, i m allways amused how cruiser captains go to quite an efford to chase a single fighter )

my wish is:
- leave missiles as they are, maybe completely replace them with fighter versions of missiles that do a maximum of like 500-1200 damage, no ammo ( on cap ships ), lower enegy usage, and maybe 0.5 refire so that the missiels provide GOOD cover from fighters when the space around the ship is spammed with them - but a single gunboat could easily withstand that fire, cause in the end, its just small missiles.

- convert flak cannons into allmost instant beam weapons, slow refire rate maybe 0.5 but at a good damage, maybe 3000, medium energy usage. whatever, limit the range to like 500, so they are really only useful when a fighter starts to circle the battleship.

- make cap ship missiles, VERY slow projectiles that might even be shot down ( easier ) by a fighter escort, but that really do a lot of damage to other cap ships. i d like to see an awesome tracking on those "torpedos" allmost granting a hit at a very long range, but a speed of only 30 or so. ( and the size of a kadesh light fighter or something ) refire rate LOW, like 0.2 and high energy useage.

beam weapons, rather cap ship only - i d just slow down the turret spin speed on most. so they can t easily track fighters.

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Shipdesigns made for DiscoveryGC

[Treewyrm]

Yea, Shagohad got the point. It's quite unfortunate that you can't say assign some turrets to some targets, it would allow a navigator to move ship around to avoid fire and align the ship to deal more damage to the enemy while the battleship goes on firing, and with weapon groups you can control energy consumption. Oh well, dreams and dreams...

@Jinx: that reminds me of something, reminds me a lot... oh yes, that's Freespace 2. I was saying about interceptable missiles/torpedoes a while ago. Massive damage, but slow as hell and can be blown by fighters before they hit the target.

[GlyphStorm]

Yea, Shagohad got the point. It's quite unfortunate that you can't say assign some turrets to some targets, it would allow a navigator to move ship around to avoid fire and align the ship to deal more damage to the enemy while the battleship goes on firing, and with weapon groups you can control energy consumption. Oh well, dreams and dreams...

Play some other space sim for that...:PIt would be cool, but I think that's impossible to do...:(

Glyph

[pipsqueak]

Are there no commodities that can be purchased which will never drop if the ship is destroyed? Seems like there could be a flag like that for commodities.

Here is an idea. make the commodity dropable. If you lose in a fight, fly a fighter for a little while. That is Battle ships without liscence are KOS (defecting pilots).

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[alance]

...
i d like to see more distiction between : anti cap ship weapons, and anti fighter weapons.

there were concerns about missiles, but in my opinion, they are one of the very few VERY well balanced weapons. they are anti fighter weapons, and useless vs. other cap ships.

i d like a battleship captain to decide what is his greatest thread, a fighter/bomber? - then he would equip more anti fighter weapons, leaving his ship vulnerable to other capital ships. Or does he fear other capital ships more - then he would equip more heavy - but damn slow weapons.

so far - we have too many good allround weapons. most beam weapon turrest are just too good vs. fighers and other cap ships. ( and i think a battleship should have a greater choice in anti capship weapons - and rather only very few anti fighter weapons, cause in the end, i m allways amused how cruiser captains go to quite an efford to chase a single fighter )

my wish is:
- leave missiles as they are, maybe completely replace them with fighter versions of missiles that do a maximum of like 500-1200 damage, no ammo ( on cap ships ), lower enegy usage, and maybe 0.5 refire so that the missiels provide GOOD cover from fighters when the space around the ship is spammed with them - but a single gunboat could easily withstand that fire, cause in the end, its just small missiles.

- convert flak cannons into allmost instant beam weapons, slow refire rate maybe 0.5 but at a good damage, maybe 3000, medium energy usage. whatever, limit the range to like 500, so they are really only useful when a fighter starts to circle the battleship.

- make cap ship missiles, VERY slow projectiles that might even be shot down ( easier ) by a fighter escort, but that really do a lot of damage to other cap ships. i d like to see an awesome tracking on those "torpedos" allmost granting a hit at a very long range, but a speed of only 30 or so. ( and the size of a kadesh light fighter or something ) refire rate LOW, like 0.2 and high energy useage.

beam weapons, rather cap ship only - i d just slow down the turret spin speed on most. so they can t easily track fighters.

I love these ideas. If your cruiser's job is to be fighter-defense for the fleet, then you mount more anti-fighter weaponry. If you need anti-cap then go refit to the right guns for the job. Anti-capship weapons should be the only way to scratch a cruiser or BS. Anti-fighter weapons should pretty much bounce off of a capship.

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"To gain a hundred victories in a hundred battles is not the highest excellence;
to subjugate the enemy's army without doing battle is the highest of excellence."

[Tortured_Soul]

Note to all:

I ignored this topic when it first came up, because I've already put my ideas into a similar discussion. I have NOT read anything that other have posted up until this point, and I'm not going to.

There are two ways at looking at how battleships should operate.

The first, is the more obvious:


[color=#ff0000]*** ADDENDUM #1: LF's should have a [color=#99ff99]WELL rating against Bombers ***

The chart is my take on it. The charts set up so that the vessels in the first COLUMN are firing upon the vessels listed in the top ROW.

This is very basic, and very VERY boring.



The second, is the slightly less obvious but much superior method.

Weapons should be split into the two aforementioned categories.

Anti-Fighter and Anti-Capital, perhaps with the addition of an Intermediate listing, tinker of all trades but master of none.

Anti-Fighter weapons should:

- Have a high rate of fire, obvious reasons
- Have a high rotational velocity, again obvious
- Have a low energy and damage, obvious
- Have proximity detection, see next point
- Have an explosive radius, roughly 5 meters larger than the proximity detection so that the vanilla ships aren't too greatly disadvantaged, but reasonable damage is still inflicted.
- Have a short range, this is a Close Support weapon class, note the word CLOSE! For example 1 Km.
- Have a high muzzle velocity, obvious

Anti-Capital Weapons should:
- Have a low rate of fire, obvious reason
- Have a low rotational velocity, capital ships are large difficult to handle ships, you shouldn't have to worry too much about the target dodging incoming fire
- Have high energy consumption and damage, obvious
- Have NO proximity detection, see next point
- Have NO explosive radius, this is so there's no disadvantage to fighters flying too close to the target vessel (EG, being destroyed by friendly fire)
- Have a long range, for example 4 Km, I'd like to see more in the way of large fleet battles over huge distances.
- Have a high muzzle velocity, High Velocity = More energy to impact with target AND Greater accuracy (or less time to dodge incoming fire)

Intermediate weapons should be intermediaries of the two.

Further additions,

Not concerning weapon load-outs, I'd like to to see the cruise warm-up time of LF's decreased slightly. If something has a low mass, it doesn't need as much force applied to accelerate it, thus there's less energy required, thus less time needed to warm-up the engines.

Vica Versa with regards to battleships.



That my contribution, if you're going to quote me on anything, only quote what concerns your immediate point. The posts too long to be repeated (that's Hoodlum's job but what the hay!)

EDIT: AI turrets, to my knowledge, can't be made. Hard coding and such like. I could be wrong though.

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Initial Biography ; Running Story

[Treewyrm]

You make a light fighter into total crap. Technically they should play a role similar to those of interceptors in Freespace 2: to destroy incoming anticap warheads and kill slow bombers. They can evade enemy fire because of the superior maneuverability but their damage is limited so it makes slow and bulky bombers their primary target. But as it stands now interceptable projectiles are rare and not used widely which makes existence of light fighter very limited inside massive combats, strictly reconnaissance vessel, which isn't enough my opinion.

[Tortured_Soul]

Actually I see your point, I was getting bored towards then end of the five seconds it took me to put that together...

Rather than re-do it, I'll simply add an addendum to original post.

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Initial Biography ; Running Story