while i wholeheartedly support ... umm.. the support you give there agmen ( rare thing that there is support for the capital ships - well not soo rare anymore but still )
i do wonder if there isn t an alternative way to increasing the duration of a battle. ( armour / hitpoints )
the fact that warships are irrelevant in fleet battles and go down first ( still ) is well known. - the fact that they are hopelessly underpowered for what they "stand for" is also well known ( although some like it that way - others don t )
alternatives to simply increasing the duration of the battle might be:
- multiple shield bubbles of weaker but faster regenerating shields ... resulting in the need for single vector attack angles, instead of firing from wherever you stand at a capship. - drain one shield ... and you should better stick to that side - or you end up draining the other shields while the first one regenerates
- add a HELL lot of armour to capital ships - but give them specific vulnerable spots ( if that could just be coded.... *sigh* ) - resulting in either trying to shoot down - e.g. 50.000.000 hitpoints ( *yawn* ) or actually skilling up to AIM at smaller spots and subtargets.
that would FORCE a bomber to either get dangerously close ( battleship point defenses kicking in ) - or stay at its safe distance of around 2.5-3k and snipe for an eternity - however if you bring lots of friends sniping with you - even 50 million hitpoints are but a push-over.
- make explosives work vs. capital ships ( properly ) - and get rid of the supernova - and balance the nova and maybe an ammoless shieldbuster for bombers - that way - a bomber needs to have its shots actually hit. ( make them slow, but give them an almost perfect tracking - the capship cannot shoot them down ( no CD ) but might spin them away ( flak ) or have its escorts shoot them down )
the problem i have with increasing the armor or in general increasing the time is: its good when there are escorts no doubt - but might turn rather dull when waiting for the inevitable just takes longer now.
on that note - funny thing really.... the supernova wasn t changed when we increased the capital ships hitpoints by around 2.5 times - yet it hasn t changed much about the capships vs. bomber problem.
bombers are a necessity - but destroying a capship should require more skill than hitting a huge lump of metal in space - if it required hitting special subtargets - things would change dramaticly - and highly skilled bombers would still be able to take out a capship.
' Wrote:Regarding the comment about barges - when a dev says that a ship is considered a joke, you're in trouble. Players put the time and energy into gathering the credits to buy one of these things so that they can role-play with them, and to use them in game. What is a joke is when the player base isn't respected that way.
Barge was added as "joke" yes. Meant to be a very rare sight with 2-3 in the game max, acting as bases never seeing any combat. It was requested to be added by Junkers to sit in their Guard System as far as I remember, never getting from there. Lot of effort was put to make trading with it extremely difficult to impossible, even so people still do it.
Now a rather a large (6+) number of people get it (from admins) and suddenly those people who bought it for the 500 mil (less than a BS) complain that it is useless in combat as it was meant to be so they can't move it trough hostile space? Tough luck.
Ohh and a quote that sums up the situation:
"if it didn't suck in combat the monthly sighting of a junker barge hauling 25k cardi to ny through all sirius wouldn't be monthly"
Though maybe making it invincible would fix the disconnect bug it suffers.
' Wrote:Why is this relevant to cap ships? Because the SAME thing applies to battleships and you'll have the same result - escorts against a multiple bomber attack are useless. Even taking into consideration the differences between the Mako and the Osiris, the caps end up being irrelevant to the battles we used to stage in Lost. If a battle was restricted to caps only - then the battleships came into their own, standing off at 2 or 3K, shooting at each other.
But throw two or 3 bombers in on either (or both) sides, and it was quickly a case of which side would run out of caps first so that the bombers would end up shooting at each other. And even with a mixed force - 2 battleships, 3 bombers, and 3 fighters or gunboats per side - the defending fighters can't kill the bombers fast enough to protect the battleships.
There are notable differences between a Barge and say a Mako... apart from the 1/10 or smaller size... it's the shield. The BS shield at least doubles BS lifespan compared with barge.
Anyway the fights in lost yes.. interesting indeed. Some observations from there:
1. The caps there had 99% of the time one-purpose anticap loadouts. Event the slightest loadout mixes produced incredible results - example: lone Mako (think it was Tic's) with a single Battlerazor got 5 bomber kills and survived without much damage. Can you imagine what a full solaris one would do? Well I can as I have seen some of those Osiris/LN dreads in combat more than enough times.
2. Most damage in short time done to caps was done by other caps, a few shots added from bombers resulted in the very quick capship destruction and bombers remaining. Note that the primary reason for quick cap death wasn't the bombers alone, it was capship firepower. Check dps rating for a BS or even cruiser compared with bomber to see what I mean. This was also clearly seen in the events done so far, there was little reason to come with bomber as it could die before doing enough damage. While coming with a BS always resulted in a huge amount of damage getting delivered.
The reason why mostly one-purpose anticap loadouts were seen in Lost is simply that without them the caps would go down just as fast to enemy caps, without hurting them.. so they won't survive the cap shooting to actually make difference to bombers.
This issue of defense guns taking place from offensive guns is addressed by the turret split.
Quote:So if you're going to say that escorts are a viable option for a battleship, then it has to live long enough for the escorts to do their job. The quickest and easiest answer I've seen for that is a simple one - increase the number of bots and bats available to a cap ship.
What changed from 4.84 to 4.85? Bomber dps stayed same.... capship armor AND dps got increased. Result is as mentioned above.... Capships do damage to each other so fast that they both die before fighting bombers can make a difference.
So if you increase bots/bats on caps, you'd need to keep their guns the same... which would prolong both mixed and capship vs bomber fights.
Quote:(What's really sad is how much empirical evidence I gathered when I did my Happy Admin Day event for this back in April. The Venator lasted about 5 minutes against a combined fleet. The Sea Serpent lasted for the whole hour, and wouldn't have died then if I hadn't of lagged. They both had Cap VIII armor and battleship shields - just the Sea Serpent is a MUCH smaller and more manuverable target - like the guys said earlier, Voidrunner against 10 regular ships is a nightmare.)
Actually you are misunderstanding the reasons there. The Sea Serpent can survive very long [b] because of the lag [/]. Any added lag helps a fighter and hurts a battleship. In an environment without any lag, sea serpent can't survive 1-2 firestalker spamming ighters, not to mention some thing like 2 missile spamming gbs taking turns in cruising up for more than 5 mins.
Igiss says: Martin, you give them a finger, they bite off your arm.
Jinx, so what you're saying is that Battleships should be good against any class, any ship just because they are big bad battleships with crews of I don't know how many.
And this makes sense to you? Battleships CAN kill bombers, Battleships CAN kill gunboats, Battleships CAN kill even some stupid fighter pilots. As Poltergeist already said, its all about knowledge. If Battleships would be good against anything, then everyone would fly one. There are some awesome BS pilots out there, that can pretty much out-gun a lot of stuff. It takes practice, but you want to buff BS's so people can just jump in one and start blasting everything.
Well I'm sorry to burst your little bubble, but it doesn't work that way. Fighters are in my opinion the primary ships on Freelancer. But you can't just buy a fighter, jump in and automatically be good in it. It takes a lot of time and practice, hell it took me a lot of time.
But people want to buff BS's because they can't stand up to 2-3 Bombers (2 very good bombers would be needed, and a lot of time)? Well guess what, its possible. Train until you improve. Try putting 3-4 Bombers up against, say...Tic, in his BS, and we'll see what happens.
Battleships are in my opinion very balanced. They aren't supposed to take out hordes of Bombers and God knows what just because they are big bad ships in RP. It doesn't work that way.
I'm sorry, but I'm not one to talk about my experience in ships with words on the forums. If you want to see my experience, take a fighter or bomber and see me in Conn.
Then you'll see my experience.
Yes, 2-3 bombers are a horde, they can do a lot of damage if the right pilots are flying them. If you have sooo much experience, I wonder how you do not know this. And as you said it yourself, its always what the capships owners want, and what the non-capship owners want. The capships want a compromise so they can kill bombers, the bombers want to kill capships. Only difference is, that the bombers are meant to kill the capships, not the other way around.
You're basically spinning in circles trying to prove that its the capships pilots that want a change. Well we can see that ourselves, can't we? Someone always wants a change because they can't do something they want. The capship pilots are the ones that offer alternatives, but have you noticed that those alternatives only include them having it their way, because all those alternatives spin around the same thing. How to blast a small ship with a big ship.
Think about that.
' Wrote:anyway - i have wrote what i believe in
' Wrote:at least you added that its your opinion that time. you can have your opinion, keep it - spread it, enjoy it... leave others their opinion without "bursting the little bubble".
First off, I would like to say that I am the most uneducated person here to know about bombers or cap ships . .
I have read many opinions in this thread on both sides of the discussion, and I have great respect to all the members here on their knowledge of this topic; but, it seems to have a bit of a conflict of what is true . .
From what I have read so far, it seems that there are some unique variables to this scenario: . . .
1. The type of Cap ship, load out, etc . .
2. The skill of the pilot (on both sides of the equation)
3. Lag
4. Miscellaneous (as mentioned in this thread)
After reading the posts here, I am still undecided in the fact of the Cap ship being balanced or not . .
My question is, could testing be conducted either on this server or another that can honestly show the performance of said ships based on the conditions mentioned above to prove the hypotheses in one way or another to finally come to a conclusion to this argument?
Granted, there are many variables that needs tested, and this would take some time to do. But I feel that if the testing is done in an unbiased way, it would show the results to all members here and give them all the information needed for them to make their own decision on this matter . .
*PS* One last thing to add: I want to thank all the members in this thread to contributing to one the most well mannered, thought out discussions that I have read here in a long time . . Kudos to all of you.
--- " I might not be much help, but by God, I'm all the help you got" ---
EFFIN' ROLEPLAY GUYS ... off to flood we go for that - Hoodlum
Ohh this has gone from discussing combat "capabilities" of barge over sea serpent dodging to "no u".....
let's turn back to the start and the first post:
' Wrote: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.
1. The issue with big vs small bs is being adressed by the turret split, no reason to try adding something else before that one is tested for real.
Quote: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)
Don't get this part much...
2. If bombers fly alone by itself and are intercepted by fighters then they get killed = they do need escort and are vulnerable when flying alone. When those bombers are escorted by a few fighters, say 2 bombers escorted by 2 fighters... they get killed by 4 fighters.
The second part talks about how battleship escorts work/not work vs bombers attacking the BS. Problem is that it puts all BS into one group.
LN dread/Bret BS with some solaris and 2 fighter escorts can easily defend itself from 3 bombers. RH BS will have harder time with it... => back to point 1.
Igiss says: Martin, you give them a finger, they bite off your arm.
I also don't understand the escort part much. If a battleship has 2 fighters as escorts, good fighters even, as you put it. How can the bombers stay untouchable? They have to dodge both the BS and fighters at this point.
If the 2 fighters concentrate on 1 bomber, there is no way that the bomber can survive for long. If the fighters are good, and you said that they would be.
Well big battleship will have problem with that...... which is why the turret classes are getting split... which again is why I don't like people throwing all BS into same group.
Igiss says: Martin, you give them a finger, they bite off your arm.
But Mjolnir, even the big battleships. Do you think that the 3 bombers can take out the battleship in-time, before they get picked off by the 2 fighters? And they still have to count on the bs shooting as well.
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