Logical balance

[Lunaphase]

Right, we all know that capital ships are large, slow, and generally easy to hit, barring the tiny ones such as liberty dreadnought and the osirus.

However, with the larger ones, the solaris is useless, the secondaries are useless, and the main guns cant hit any small threats unless they happen to be standing still. (not likely.)

Therefore, i suggest this:

Give heavy battleships their own sheild type, with more hitpoints but same regen rate, due to the fact that they are usually twice the size of the small and medium battleships.

Second, make it so that BOMBERS require an escort just as much as a battleship. Both are supposed to, Lore wise, require them, however, the balance is so that the bombers are untouchable by the battleship, even with a pair of good escort pilots vs three bombers. (3v3)

Now, i would ask only CONSTRUCTIVE posts on how we can balance heavy warships properly, to their RP role, wile at the same time not making them the bane of all things. (that bombers have stayed as, but ill go into that next ver if things dont change for the balance.)

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[Bear]

This thread is being watched by me, any signs of flaming and off topic will be dealt with accordingly. This thread will not be locked, instead it will be cleaned. Let us see some healthy debate.

Bear

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[Crusader4]

Agreed, bigger ships need stronger shields.
take the Liberty Carrier for example, u can
shoot SNAC from 3.5k and he wont be able to dodge it.

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Hate will eat you up from the inside, so hurry up and give your heart to a girl before you get eaten up.

[Huhuh]

Rather than heavy battleship shields we have fighter defense and cap defense shields. So if a cap is using anti fighter (I should say bomber) shields it will be quite vulnerable to cap ship fire and a cap using anti cap shields will be very vulnerable to SNAC's. Also buff cap ship turrets in terms of speed and refire.

Or another idea is to rebalance capital ship weapons so that a jack of all trades loadout is not very useful. Say we buff Solaris turrets into turbo Gatling anti fighter death machines, but we also buff mortars and razors so that if a battleship does not use as many as possible it will be no match for another battleship using an anti cap ship loadout.
The problem with this is that it means cap ship weaponry will be narrowed down to razors, mortars and solarises.

I've never really been involved in a fleet battle involving battleships so I'm not to sure.

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[Lunaphase]

Frankly, Heavy mortars and such are only good if you have the enerrgy or are having a long-range battle, which is very rare. Most battleships are balanced around frontal assalts, which means, Close and hammer away with the guns, OR, if a light bs, kite the enemy one wile doging his salvos in return.

Bluntly, ill put this next bit.

Caps need to stop being balanced just because idiots can get them, for the simple reason it doesent work.
There are far more gunboats and bombers that are problem causers, and generally those problem causers arent in the heavy battleships, but bombers or other smallcraft.

Frankly, with a 1k range on solaris, the same as the range on a cruiser, for a ship 4x the size at minimum, reguarding the heavy battleships, unless you SIT on the broadside solaris bombardment, even that wont do much due to its range and low damage.

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[Lobster]

You could buff battleships and tipple the amount of armor and shield energy if they were restricted, but Disco already has a number of unneeded restrictions (Referring to the last tech chart related thread).

This is an Idea I have though about over past year I have been here.

If one increase a battleship's hull.. It actually wont do that much for solo survivability. Instead, It gives time for escorts to get to the location and for escorts to take down bombers..

It also makes cap fights last longer and more interesting, involving more tactics then just pew pew Boom.


What I would propose though, is that battleships, cruisers, and possibly GBs get the same amount of Bot to armor ratio as fighters and bombers...

Think about it.. When in a liberty cruiser, It's all you can do to bot once.. then that is it.. while ALL the fighters and bombers around you can bot about 5-6 times.

Even it out so that caps and smalls have the same (relatively same) number of bots to comparative armor.

[Jinx]

things that are - or have been attempted to give them more survivability - and the problems:

- armour:

in 4.85 we already trippled the armour ( more or less ) - well, actually doubled+a little bit. - with our CAU and UAU multipliers capships gain up to ~5.6 million hitpoint - which sounds much, but it isn t really.

however - the problem comes up that more armour to allow escorts to arrive is somewhat troublesome. fights are supposed to be exciting, not boring, and there is a limit on armour ( not a game related one ) that turns a fight from exciting to boring.

we currently experience that limit with light fighters or fighters in general. - they dodge so much, its rather rediculous. - so if - lets say... we multiplied ALL capship armour by 10 ( destroyer and bigger ) - we ended up with armour values up to 56 million ( just to give you an idea ) - something around 50 million still isn t too much actually, cause only if an escort really COMES - it makes a difference. when there is no escort coming, it only prolongs the fight into unbearable lengths.

- shields:

the battleship shields are strong - they really are. even two bombers need to line up their shots in order to score good results - however if they do ( its not much work, but they have to work together a little and cannot simply ignore each other ) - its not too hard. - improving the shield ( shield capacity ) doesn t do much, only prolong the time the shield is taken down.

improving the regeneration rate can do funny things to the balance. - just a little bit - and suddenly it becomes impossible for even 3 or 4 bombers to do the job.... and the problematic thing is - it cannot really be tested in a closed enviroment, but the REAL test is the public server, which means - that using the public server in a trial and error experiment can cause a lot of angry people.

for one - when its too good, taking it away is always considered a "nerf" and people hate getting things taken away from them, no matter what. - when its not good enough, and people call for another buff, the other side complains even more - either way, we end up with half the server being mad.

- capbalance in general:

caps are NOT balanced cause there are some idiots flying them. - and they are not going to get buffed, just cause only responsible people fly them!

caps are balanced to fit into the large scheme of balance.

- escorts ( again )

of course it is a failed concept. - currently ships that require escorts are transports and capital ships of destroyer size and greater ( except the kusari destroyer which can be used similar to a gunboat and can operate a little more on its own )

but if every ship that "ought" to have escorts actually HAS escorts, the server needs 300 slots - and then - there are still no slots left for pirates and general enemies or the police.

back then - when there still was the serverlist - it showed that there were around:

- 60-70 transports
- 10-15 capital warships
- 20-30 gunboat class vessels
- 30-40 bombers
- rest fighters

( estimate statistics from over a year back in 4.84 )

which means - that 70-85 ships require escorts by our "standards". - and we assume that an escort of 2 ships minimum is whats required. - so that makes a server of 210-255 players for ships+escorts alone.

thats impossible of course - so there we are. and one cannot really argue that 10-15 large capital warships in sirius is "too much" - nor can one say that 60-70 transports is "too much" - yet when one of those ships blows up to a pirate or enemy, we "blame" them for not having escorts. asking bombers to have escorts, too is "fair" - but increases the problem.

- the best defense:

is dodging - which is impossible for the larger ships. - so their best defense besides shield and armour is to hit the enemy before it does too much damage.

ther have been several ideas about it. - from quick firing but inaccurate ( higher dispersion angle ) weapons that create a continous shotgun effect - that may not do too much damage, but gives a bomber so much uncertainty that it has trouble lining up. ( homeworld 2 shows that on capital ship AA guns... you see countless shots being shot into the attacking squadrons. 90% of these shots miss, but when one of them hits by chance, it does great damage. - the greatest effect however is that bombers live in constant danger )


another idea was to make battleships invulnerable - only allowing subsystems to be destroyed. ( but instead of destroying subsystems alone - subtracting their hitpoints from a general pool - which destroys the ship when they re all destroyed .... like star wars: empires at war ) - the problem about that is that our hitboxes are not accurate enough ( technical problem ) and that some designs simply hide some vital parts too well.




the above is also to show that the dev team isn t blind about the problem of capital ship balance. - but its problematic.



for now - its really beneficial to wait for the upcoming capship-revision ( turret splitting ) and see how it works out. maybe it fixes some issues ( maybe it creates more, who knows )

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Shipdesigns made for DiscoveryGC

[Huhuh]

I've never flown a battleship but I see they can use flak turrets, which appear to be missile turrets that fire incredibly fast and agile missiles. If this is true then how do bombers manage to kill battleships that are toting these weapons?

If they are as good as they sound even starfleas should be easy kills.

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[Lobster]

I've never flown a battleship but I see they can use flak turrets, which appear to be missile turrets that fire incredibly fast and agile missiles. If this is true then how do bombers manage to kill battleships that are toting these weapons?

If they are as good as they sound even starfleas should be easy kills.

A) they are slow

B) they do not track

C) they have a pitiful range

D) they have a HUMONGOUS learning curve


But... if you manage to get over that hump and can lure a bomber within 1k, you can mess it up real good... takes FOREVER to learn how though.. so noone uses them

[Huhuh]

A) they are slow

B) they do not track

C) they have a pitiful range

D) they have a HUMONGOUS learning curve

Info card says speed of 350ms and a turn rate of 100 radians per second. I assume that info is false.

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