I used to use that strategy, but it proves to be a fallacy, killing the cap ship first almost completely stops the enemy fleet's power, while killing the cobs only whittles it away slowly.

at least, thats what I've seen.

It's a function of experience. If you spend all your time trying to kill the enemy flagship and fail, you get zero. Skip it and go for the escorts unless it's a likely kill before the guy runs away to safety.

@Ron: I've won before with 3 bomber squads often. Not very many use Sovas for their starting flagship, and I've not once I think seen a fighter wing on another flagship before your Sova

That's how it is with strategies.. you stumble across one that works for you, then someone comes along and trashes it, and then you rethink

Usually, though, I do target support ships and leave my bombers to deal with the capital in the meantime. But since yours was so damaged I thought I could pull it off the other way

I support you on this one. its good that capships are as powerful as they are, but the leveling is too strong and leads to too much babysitting.

Sins has a heavy focus on combat, not just empire building, so having capital ships is far from an unnecessary RPG element.



It is possible to upgrade a capital to level 4 (level 3 without research) without going out to fight in it. Other than that, have you ever seen a level 10 capital in multiplayer? I haven't yet, I think the highest was 7? 8? And that was once.

Anyway, as I've already said, Sins isn't an empire building simulation. It focuses heavily on battles, as is pretty clear by lack of any non-military victory conditions. Thus it isn't unreasonable to expect players to pay attention to their fleets when it matters.

So you check on your ten+ capitals deided in four fleets in a fraction of a second? YOu must be one nerv-twitching guy...


Having them is cool! Making them from zero (comparing the levels, not to other ships) to hero is bad.

No, but it only takes a fraction of a second per capitol, generally.

I finished playing a great 1v1 game against Bobblhead the Great on the Close Encounters map. This is just another example of the uber power of capital ships.

In the early part of the game, we both lost our capital ships in the same battle. Bobblhead had spent his resources on civic research while I spent mine on getting the siege frigates and another capital ship slot (plus a couple of hull upgrades). Also during this time, Bobblehead was able to colonize BOTH ice worlds giving him a total of 4 planets versus my 2.

I had to stop his excess of resources before I was overwhelmed, so I attacked his nearest ice planet with a newly built KOL and my leftover Cobalts and Siege Frigates. He spammed a lot of frigates to try and defend the planet, eventually wiping out all my frigates....at the expense of a lot of his frigates and an extra level for my KOL.

I guess he didn't think building another capital ship was worth the expense. He probably didn't think I would invest ALL my resources and potential research into getting another cap ship so quickly. Sure, he had 2X the planets as me, trade ports and about 15 frigates....but all I needed was that single capital ship.

By the time he finally tried to lift the siege of his 1rst ice world with all those frigates, I had reinforced my KOL with a SOVA. Between them, they made short work of his spammed frigates AND the turrets/repair station combo defenders. Afterwards, my caps finally finished off the planet which I then colonized.

We later on had a 'who will blink first' moment where neither of us blinked. I lost my capital world and he lost his asteroid planet and his other ice world. But my capital ships continued to simply crush whatever he could assemble to send after me.

There is something wrong when ALL those frigates can't take down a single cap ship (with minor upgrades).

You know, if they simply reduced the power/toughness of capital ships a bit, there would be no need for this stupid hard cap research system for capital ships.

I am a bit late to the discussion but I find Paradoxnt's last suggestion to be interesting (start with an advanced cruiser rather than a cap ship).

In the first game that I played, it struck me as odd that we start the game with the "tech" needed to create any cap ship let alone a high level one and cap ship construction yard.

Paradoxnt, I would build on your suggestion by replacing the first cap ship crew tech with the tech needed to build a cap ship construction yard (i.e. you don't start with a cap ship yard nor the ability to build one).

I think that this creates a few results:
1. Loss of a cruiser flagship in the early game would be easier to recover from, as there would be a lower power delta lost
2. Getting into cap ship production becomes a tech decision perhaps promoting the use of cruisers in early - mid game
3. Opens the possibility of making cap ships require technology plans like other ships

DanS

Two capital ships cost about 6000 credits, 800 metal and 700 crystal.

15 Cobalts cost 15 * 300 = 4500 credits and 15 * 55 = 825 metal.

So no, it's no wonder he lost with that much less resource investment.

And yes, it's his fault for losing. Cause he didn't build a new capital ship. With a Kol or a Marza + frigates he could have killed your capital ships.

Btw. could you upload the replay of that match? Makes it easier to judge what exactly did happen.

Losing a cap-ship in a smaller map is very punishing. Chances are (at least the way I play) you'll barely rarely have enough resources for one. When you do, it doesn't matter because it's near the end of the game. The bigger problem is that you can't just run away in WC3, since they're hulking slow and huge, making them easy targets. however, they can also be used as tanks by taking damage while you destroy a bunch of frigates before jumping the cap-ship away.

On the subject, I think some abilities should be re-evaluated. Most abilities are pretty effective, but it would be nice to see more "aura" types of abilities, such as things that enhance, flight speed, damage, etc. At least damage or something.

Since we're arguing about more WC3 like, lets throw in town-portals and healing pots while at it! Let's also add agility hero's that can kill any other hero! OK I'm being sarcastic, but this game should be different, and losses should matter a lot more than some wasted time. I find the levels for cap-ships don't matter as much in this game as in WC3, but the overall damage/hp absorption is important.

I actually thought it would be worse... Lately I've been loosing some ships against the AI (because I'm not paying attention all the time) and I guess one CAN bounce back after you get sufficient credits BUT it may be far worse once the AI is better and can take advantage of your losses better (at all), as would a humna player.