Capships, increasingly slower fighters? Or strategic weapons?

[Dusty Lens]

The recent conversation on factionalized capships sparked a rare show on my behalf: That of the consummate fighter jock lobbying on behalf of capships.

At the moment there's a system in place best described as one of diminishing returns. Battleships can dish out some punishment, but are exceptionally less effective than their lesser cousin the gunboat in resilience, firepower and maneuverability.

That's basically it. Some capships vary in balance and size, such as the BHG Gunship versus the Corsair handbag, or the Kusari Destroyer versus, well, anything. Or some battleships being a might sexier than others. But long story short there's not much to it. They just get bigger, slower, tougher.

Long story even shorter, there's no "rock, paper, cup of tea" type balance. It's simply a game of rock rock rock.

So how to alleviate this? Make cruisers artillary boats? How to safeguard Battleships from being impudently raped by three gunboats? What should gunboats be doing with their time?

In other words, how do you make some ships mean something without making them overwhelming?

I've ideas, naturally. But they'll also be all wrong, naturally, so let's hear Chopper and Mjolner talk at each other while the rest of us throw in horrible ideas in between!

[Tenacity]

Simple:

Battleships:
-Give them some really heavy armor, and enough turrets and energy to mount both flak cannons (when flak cannons are re-made to be worthwhile) as well as decent anti-cap guns.
Battleships should be the toughest ships around, but not invincible.

Cruisers:
-Give them more artillery-focused weaponry. They should be able to out-range a battleship, but be very weak to bombers due to no anti-fighter weaponry.
Cruisers should be semi-fast, heavy-hitting caps but with a weakness at close range.

Gunboats:
-Change them to anti-bomber (and fighter) ships. Focus them on weak but fast-firing (and high projectile speed) short-range weapons, and enough manuverability to keep up with the bombers but not out-turn them entirely.
Gunboats should be anti-bomber support for larger ships, aka cruisers/battleships.

That makes each cap have a very distinct role:
-Battleships beat cruisers and gunboats at close range.
-Cruisers beat battleships at long range.
-Gunboats dont have a leg up on either of the larger ships, but are great for anti-fighter/bomber support.


EDIT:
elaborating more, with that kind of setup-

No nation would focus entirely on battleships because they have a weakness to cruisers which can pelt them with artillery fire at long range. Similarly, no nation would focus entirely on gunboats or cruisers, because they'd be opening a weakness. All three ships have their 'niche', but they all also compliment each other when used together.

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[Dusty Lens]

Hmm, that's a good start and somewhere along the lines of what I was mulling over.

Gunboats already fill that role nicely, or so I've observed from my multitude of encounters with them, both in the cockpit and facing off against them. Many of the generic gunboat turrets offer a less than substantial return against smaller craft such as enemy bombers, but Solaris turrets and missiles make for exceptional anti fighter craft weaponry while offering limited capabilities against heavier ships.

But let's use a vessel that I fought against the night before last. A pair of gunboats, both rogue (my own armed with three solaris cannons, a cerb and two missiles and the other with what appeared to be... Uh... A full rack of Cerbs) were able to wear down a Liberty battle cruiser and ultimately destroy it without necessitating the use of a single bat.

Truthfully the only real use that his ship provided was to serve as a distraction of the enemy ship's fire on occasion as he wasn't able to sustain his loadout long enough to provide much real use, but upon reflection I'm fairly certain that I could have bested him solo based simply on the fact that my ship was able to easily absord the damage he could dish out at closer ranges and then fall back beyond 1k where he was unable to land appreciable hits on my craft.

So let's recap how he might have been able to more effectively carry the fight.

1) If the weapons on my rogue gunboat had their ranges greatly reduced to be in line with an anti-fighter role. Say to 750 meters to keep at odds with the maximum capabilities of current fighter weapons. This would have demanded that I remain within his appreciable kill zone to net out damage. The gunboat cannons on lawful house ships would provide a longer range to fall in line with their emphasis of being ships of war as opposed to piracy, but my own rogue vessel would have been hard pressed to carry on the fight while sitting within a battlecruiser's turret smackdown zone.

2) A greater emphasis on weaponry designed to strip my shields, such as pulse weaponry other than the inferno, would have made it much more difficult for me to rely on my greatest strength as a gunboat: My shields. A gunboat stripped of its shields is in a very difficult spot indeed, and the vulnerability of my powerplant makes heavy pulse weapons that much more effective when used to reduce the power available to me.

Gunboats can very easily swarm and destroy larger craft because there are few options available to put them out of the fight. Cruisers and Battleships have few options available to neutralize such craft and are forced into a battle of attrition, which the gunboats will simply win as the one can retreat a short distance while the others carry on unheeded, only to return when target priorities have been switched.

The trick would be enabling these tactics against Ultra Heavy fighters such as gunboats (as that is largely the best way to view them) but not granting them overwhelming potency against smaller craft such as bombers and fighters.

Ergo, I have contributed nothing save a bit of reflection. Dangit.

[Jinx]

the original question - battleships are large, slow, heavily armoured and armed fighters indeed. - that is not cause we re bitches about balancing and favouring fighters - its cause the engine does not allow anything else.

capitalships must focus all their weapons on one target which cripples their purpose greatly ( what the should be able to do ) - they are forced to use the turret mode, cause they are not able to keep up with the enemies movements otherwise.

their weaponry is aweful, cause its a balance issue - thats why a supernova for a fighter does 140.000 damage for something like 40.000 energy - and a heavy mortar on a battleship does 170.000 damage for around 3.000.000 energy - turned around ratio.

game mechanics disallow making real capital ships though - so the improvements are limited.

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Shipdesigns made for DiscoveryGC

[Unseelie]

About Tenacity's idea, that leaves out fighters...both BS and GB are strong against them, so a well balanced combat fleet will not include fighters. Fighters, here, just get pwnt.

I would make GB anti fighter, as tenacity suggested, the BS the artillery platforms with great range (2000-3000), and the cruisers something designed to get inside the BS's guard and tear it to shreds, with short(0-800) and deep medium range weapons(1000-2000). To secure the Cruiser position, the GB should be fragile, easily eaten by a Battleship at short range(0-800) and strong themselves at medium range (600-1400)

This would make cruisers efective against fighters in dogfights, but gunboats and battleships not...fighters would easily get inside a battleship's guard, and the strength of a Gunboat against a fighter would be just outside of a fighter's weapon range...


The problem I see with this is that I personally have no idea how to make minimum effective ranges for weapons...

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[Dusty Lens]

About Tenacity's idea, that leaves out fighters...both BS and GB are strong against them, so a well balanced combat fleet will not include fighters. Fighters, here, just get pwnt.

I would make GB anti fighter, as tenacity suggested, the BS the artillery platforms with great range (2000-3000), and the cruisers something designed to get inside the BS's guard and tear it to shreds, with short(0-800) and deep medium range weapons(1000-2000). To secure the Cruiser position, the GB should be fragile, easily eaten by a Battleship at short range(0-800) and strong themselves at medium range (600-1400)

This would make cruisers efective against fighters in dogfights, but gunboats and battleships not...fighters would easily get inside a battleship's guard, and the strength of a Gunboat against a fighter would be just outside of a fighter's weapon range...
The problem I see with this is that I personally have no idea how to make minimum effective ranges for weapons...

Indeed. Without the ability to manage turret tracking a weapon designed to be effective at 3000 meters is just as effective at 30. Doubly so, really, as one would need to make such a weapon fire exceptionally fast in order to reach the target before it has dodged the imminent shot.

*thinks* Though I suppose the tracking could be solved on our end, by reducing the firing archs of such a weapon. Heavy artillery with high firing speed and high damage/range that relies upon ship positioning would be balanced nicely on a vessel with extremely limited maneuverability. Turret slots could be added that provide for anti-fighter capabilities, while gunslots provide for cannons much like those featured on gunboats.

Ergo you could have a cruiser/battleship with actual artillery cannons that can make long range mincemeat of enemy targets but would have an effective zone where such weaponry would be rendered useless.

[Tenacity]

you can limit firing arcs, that pretty much reduces the ability of weapons to be effective at close ranges.

And no, i didnt leave out fighters - fighters are designed to be anti-bomber, and most fleets that want to take out enemy caps will be bringing bombers along.

The problem is that none of this can be done without a character wipe. We'd have to change all of the turrets currently available, and remove many of them, to createa a rock/paper/scissors setup, and you cant do that without forcing a wipe.

Basically the way I see things:

Battleships > everything at close ranges (Defense cannons + flak cannons)
Cruisers > battleships and gunboats at long range (artillery)
Gunboats > Fighters/bombers
Bombers > Cruisers at short range, and > battleships at long range
Fighters > Bombers

Fighters have their own heirarchy as well - Heavy fighters (including VHF's) have the higher firepower but are outmanuvered by light fighters.

basically you just have to focus each ship on a specific type of weapon-

Battleships would have two weapon types - flak turrets for anti-fighter (extremely high projectile speed and decent damage, medium refire rate, easy aiming with 360degree firing arcs; but short range), and defense turrets for anti-capship (decent projectile speed, high damage but somewhat restricted firing arcs, say 180degrees, and medium/short range).

Cruisers would focus entirely on artillery weapons - Extremely long range and extremely high projectile speed, but very limited firing arcs. A cruiser would thus be worthless at short ranges, because it wouldnt be able to turn to hit the target - think something along the lines of the liberty cruiser forward gun, but with a much higher projectile speed and higher damage. Ideally a cruiser should attempt to use it's speed (higher than a battleship) to keep at a good distance from the enemy, while pummeling it with heavy hitting guns. The counter is being weak at close range.

Gunboats would focus entirely on short-range anti-fighter weaponry like missile turrets and solaris turrets. These weapons wouldnt have enough firepower to take out larger ships unless several gunboats group up against a single enemy. They'd get torn to peices by battleship turrets, but would be able to swarm cruisers, avoiding the cruiser artillery cannons while using weak shots to wear him down over time.

Bombers would need to be rebalanced to have their primary weapons (supernovas, currently) more effective when fired from a longer range, so they could stay out of the flak turret range of battleships - they'd still need to be effective at close ranges as well to exploit the cruiser's 'deadzone' and get in close where the artillery guns cant hit them. All bombers would need agility reduced somewhat to make them more susceptible to fighters.

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[Muleo]

Ideally, battleships should be buffed.

So they're a definite force to reckon with. To make sure this doesn't cause huge balance issues, battleships should be admin-approved. Yea I know factionism and all that, but this way would make certain these goliaths couldn't be spammed/whored.
You could make the BS license droppable, which discourages people from carelessly throwing battleships about, but I'm not sure how that would work out.

My point is, BS should be buffed, but also made rarer. Either by admin-control of price-mechanics, who knows.

At the same time, I realise this is an idealistic way of thinking, and it won't work perfectly, but one can always wish...

[Jinx]

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 )

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Shipdesigns made for DiscoveryGC

[Dusty Lens]

Ideally, battleships should be buffed.

So they're a definite force to reckon with. To make sure this doesn't cause huge balance issues, battleships should be admin-approved. Yea I know factionism and all that, but this way would make certain these goliaths

Lets shy away from that discussion for the moment. Right now we're focusing on how to work with the current system to optimize the usefulness of these vessels.