Don't insult the Kol too much; I have used it to great effect on many occasions as a combat ship.  It's shield regeneration combined with repair centers or Hoshikos can allow it to take a truly impressive ammount of damage before dying -- I remember one game (pre 1.1 when carriers were buffed!) where I effectively stalemated my opponent by defending with a Kol (to 'tank') and a number of carriers (to actually kill his LRM/light frigates) while my team mate and I built up for the 'telling blow'.

Useful cap ship list

Advent

Radience: Eat antimatter, taunt fleet (force focuse fire on itself, useful when you want to save something), more armor and last but not least - cleansing briliance.

This ship is thoug, somewhat obsoleat, comparing the usefulnes of other advent ships.

Progenitor: Colonise, shield regen. Most useful advent ship ever. I  usualy got 3 or more of these in my end MP game fleet. Constantly pumpping shields into the guardians, keping ships alive.

Halycon: one of the second most useful fleet ship. This is ship that i also get 3 or more at the late game. Its ability to repell fighters while damaging them and passive RoF for all energy based wepons, incuding planet bombing, makes it must have fleet ship.

Rapture: Good to have ship lategame. It'sabilities are somewhat useless untill you get massive ball rolling.

The vengeance is still somewhat nexst to useless ability that i use only when i got nothing beter to do. The vertigo is however must have when fghting toe to toe with fleet the size of yours or bigger. Its not so grate when the forces are small, but in 100+ ship swarm, 30%- to accuracy and RoF is the thing that will win you the fights.

The capture ship ability is actualy useful now, since carriers are worth spending antimatter on to caputre.

Also, the passive damagebuff aura for strike crafts is sexy.

Vasari got the egg and marauder, but other than them, i find it rarely useful to go caps over fleet.

The TEC have tha ability to runn Dunnov/Marza battleball that constantly pumps the shields to caps. And marzas on lvl 6 are realy nasty flet killers. But the inability to benefit the rest of the fleet makes it hard to use.

In short, nothing can realy compare to the advent capital fleet.

Well, except maybe the Radiance, I find combat caps questionable (each race has one) but some special abilities are too much benefit for a fleet to ignore. When you consider the amount of resources that an Advent drone cruiser costs, the Halcyon Carrier with the ability to ultimately carry a lot more strike craft, bring some decent attack power of its own to the field, boost the ROF of your entire fleet, and push enemy fighter craft out of the way while doing massive damage to all of them at once in a wide radius, seems like a bargain, even if you factor in the extra research/infrastructure cost.

Im not a 100% sure, but I think the Kol has the highest armor out of any ship in game. Please dont quote me yet Ive only had it a short time but Ive maxed the armor upgrades and lvled it to 10 and I have a very strong ship. Not unstopple, but a great addtion to my fleet.

Yes they are big slow expensive targets. Any Cap ship by itself will lose to any average/small frigate fleet. Caps are ment to agument your frigates and cruisers. As exampled above, Kol are can be crazy damage absobers. Carriers are ment to add unique fighter/bomber to the mix. Example: Sova has heavy Fighters. Helps with DPS and give bomber/fighters better chance surviving more than 1 or 2 runs. You can argue back and forth about how good or bad the unit or Cap ship is by itself. No ship was made to be great at everything. Its all about how you use them.

When playing competitive games online, unless the game goes VERY long, the person who spends money on a second capital ship will almost always lose to the person who used that money for more frigates and cruisers. I wish it weren't the case, but it's true.

Advent is the only raece, where you can afford the luxury of  going 6+ caps and still win fights.

The illuminators as core, makes advent dish more damage even with uneven odds. And ability to remove nearlt 44% of enemy damage by applying vertigo, among other stuff, makes advent fleet with cap/illu/guardian backbone nothing to laught at.

But, it take intence miro to do. If you are not confident in your skills, then going 100 illus and assorted 20+++ load of aeras will work out beter than going 40 illus,6 aeras, 15 guardians, 10 dominas and 6 or more caps (usualy 3 prog 3 halcyons)

I'm not trying to be a jerk here but which frigates and cruiser combos can this be done with for 3000/400/250? Especially considering Caps can be built in about 65 secs (on normal build times) and cost 50 fleet space? What ships give you that much firepower and/or defense?

I understand your point and have used that tactic many times against the AI (i don't play against people, only teamed with them against AI) but i wouldn't consider the cap ship to be "too expensive". I think them of a part of the puzzle towards a well balanced fleet.

Agreed, and there's a reason for this. A typical WWII battleship by itself would probably lose to a small swarm of torpedo boats who could aim half decent, or at least be crippled by them. However, only an idiot would send an extremely expensive captial ship out on its own like that. The only one I can think of is the Szent Istvan, and perhaps Bismarck.

Which is why you make sure they have at least two destroyers screening them. The can form a barrier that should stop or at least interfere with the torpedo run, allowing your battlehship's big guns to takeout pretty much anything it can hit at a much safer range. The reason that this doesn't work in Sins is A. Their are alot more firgates and cruisers And B. Ships really can't block each others movement at all, meaning if your opponents decides to send all of his cobalts in massive blob towards your precious Kol or Sova, your escorting frigates can't stop a single one from getting into range (unless you have guardians). Thus, the caps not extremely great firepower advantage is mostly wasted, which makes the abilities by far the most important thing.

Gunfire wise probably, but no vessel to this day has developed a hull strong enough to take a ton of torpedo hits. (Musashi holds the record with 20, but she was probably disabled well before that.) By the logic of conventional sins tactics that resources are better spent on small ships, if you had the equivalent of $2 billion today's dollars, you would be able to buy one Iowa class or well over a 100 PT boats. PT's get the Iowa in visual, and then its all over. Submarines and airplanes were the main threat because they could get closer easier as they could sort of bypass the escorts the battleship had. (of course, buying 2 billion in either airplanes or submarines should also be enough to sink a battleship on its own also.)

We can argue all we want about if battleships in the days of olde were effective tanks, but the thing is they always had escort fleets. Alone a battleship will not stand a chance against a sub, bombers, PT boats, ect. PT boats alone will not stand against fighters, other PT boats, ect. Subs alone will not stand against destroyers. The thing is a mixed fleet brings out the best of each class while minimising their weaknesses. We should implement this into Sins.

What if it were possible for ships to get "caught in the crossfire?" What if my Enforcers at the front of the fleet could take hits for my caps, like gigantic metal bodyguards? This would let your fleet take less damage while letting your other ships concentrate on killing the enemy agaisnt which they are the most effective.

I always build a combat cap. Its not my first but it definitely isnt my last. Whenever I assault a heavily defended planet, thats the first ship in to draw aggro. All combat caps have abilities which grant them improved survivablilty. There is more to the game than hull/shield points, Cool Jets. I dare you to find any combination of frigates that takes up only 50 supply that can take the same beating and dish the same damage of a high level Kol, Kortul, or Radiance. I agree at lower levels they are not great bargains, but thats whats great about them. They get better as time goes on.

Blowing up my Kortul will take longer than blowing up 4 Enforcers. For the fleet supply they take up they are good at getting beat up. Caps have different purposes. Some heal your fleet, some increase damage, some wreak havok with the enemy, and combat ships take attention away from the rest of your fleet. So by you focusing on my combat cap it has served its purpose, the longer you shoot at it the more damage I do to your preoccupied ships.

Combat caps are more meat shields than anything. I do play on ICO, and thats a good place to have good caps. Phasing into the enemy's heartland and eating his worlds provides a humgeous resource boost and guess what? You need 2 caps to do it!

I was think more on the lines of giving a bonus to certain weapons at really close range (lasers, autocannons, anything on heavy cruisers), so that forces will take more damage attacking units at the end of a formation that at the front, but your idea would give the same effect (and would be more realistic). It would allow frigates to actually escort Cap ships, instead of them firing helplessly while the enemy focuses on the caps. The reason that I brought up the whole WWII thing was to show that in real naval tactics, escorts are not just more AA guns or cruise missiles on a smaller, faster ship. They can prevent enemy forces from focusing on a particular target. Unless sins corrects this, keep carrier/LRM/HC/Frigate spamming, you'll be alot better off in the long run.