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Capital Ships - the way they should be!?

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Capital Ships - the way they should be!?

from Sins Forums
As most of you know perhaps i love the game, i am not whining about anything and am extremly happy gamer who considers Sin as one of the best games ever created for any platform... So this isnt a whining post but lets just call it perhaps a "balancing" suggestion :)

Capital Ships - they are juicy big mudafukerz and i love them - however - i find it really silly to see them firing all their mega boom omfg pwnage weapons on ONE silly little frigate for 3 minutes struggling to kill it so here is my suggestion...

Make capital ships REALLY hard to get... Double their price... Double their fleet requiremenets... Double everything...

But please make them FEEL like they are CAPITAL SHIPS :) Meaning double their fire power and damage they inflict to the enemy...

My 2 cents anyway...


108,743 views 121 replies
Reply #76 from Sins Forums Top
Thanks man :)

Also, to add to previous statement with practical and very basic example...


Start of a game

It would be pretty much identical to what we got now - free Cap Ship plus the rest... In short - no change whatsoever...

However...

Early / Mid game

...things would start to get more interesting :) Spammer would be faced with choice to keep his one Cap Ship and spam light / medium units as he does now... But other player could have 2 Cap Ships and balanced force instead which in this case would indeed counter light unit spammage...

As we are now 2 Cap Ships and balanced smaller force will find it very hard to stop mass LRM spam...

Having this basic example in mind and logic - one could indeed argue that Cap Ships should stay the same but "shield factor" of lighter units should go down...

Fine with me!!! - since it really boils down to the same thing :)
Reply #77 from Sins Forums Top
Personally, I think it's awesome that it takes longer for Cap ships to take out Frigates, instead of doing 1 hit wonders, or maybe a few more hits.

Of course, I could be overly influenced by David Weber's Honor Harrington series, where battles between Battlecruisers and Dreadnaughts can last hours, with a proper balance of cunning and surprise, even though Dreadnaughts, while not as large and powerful as Superdreadnaughts, are vastly larger and more powerful than Battlecruisers. And where long range weapons are fired at ranges measured in millions of kilometers (later versions measured in light minutes, or tens of millions of kilometers). And where missiles can travel at c fractional speeds (that is, speeds measured in tens of thousands of kilometers a second), and missles, under power, may take as long as, oh, 12 minutes to reach attack range.

Bleh, I recently had a battle where I attacked a Pirate base that had been stocking up heavier ships for 13 hours. There were over 900 ships, with over 700 of them being Corsairs and Cutthroats. I attacked with a full fleet, 16 cap ships, heavy cruisers, carriers, and support frigates, so I had almost 300 ships, including my fighters/bombers. The battle was over in half an hour. Half an Hour!!! 1200 ships locked in an epic struggle, and it's over in just half an hour. And I was hoping for this epic struggle to last at least 2 hours!

Yes, I'm being serious. I'd rather have a long drawn out battle, than piddling small ones. It makes it feel like the battle is actually occuring in the immensity of space, instead of small battles fought on planets *hint, hint*

Oh, and I won that battle. Only lost a couple dozen frigates and 5 carrier cruisers. But man, I was hoping to see a nice long fight. Those battles look awesome. Thank you for Cinematic Mode :p
Siege of Centauri
Reply #78 from Sins Forums Top
I'm working on a mod which, among other things, rebalances the combat and places capital ships higher up in the tech tree, after cruisers. No starting capital ships, no leveling, no XP. Powerful capital ships, without fleet cap limits, are a force to be reckoned with. They can still die the death of a thousand cuts, however. A powerful capital ship's weakness is that it's a focal point for incoming fire, and too many targets to track individually will cause it problems in eliminating them all.

The OP is right: it does change the dynamic of the game dramatically. However, in my view, it makes the game more enjoyable and rewarding in the mid to late game, and removes one of the places where it's hard for me to suspend my disbelief: why do I get the most powerful ships at the beginning and have to struggle through the tech tree for middling cruisers?
Reply #79 from Sins Forums Top
I'm working on a mod which, among other things, rebalances the combat and places capital ships higher up in the tech tree, after cruisers. No starting capital ships, no leveling, no XP. Powerful capital ships, without fleet cap limits, are a force to be reckoned with. They can still die the death of a thousand cuts, however. A powerful capital ship's weakness is that it's a focal point for incoming fire, and too many targets to track individually will cause it problems in eliminating them all.The OP is right: it does change the dynamic of the game dramatically. However, in my view, it makes the game more enjoyable and rewarding in the mid to late game, and removes one of the places where it's hard for me to suspend my disbelief: why do I get the most powerful ships at the beginning and have to struggle through the tech tree for middling cruisers?
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Sounds like i will be trying your mod :)
Reply #80 from Sins Forums Top
why do I get the most powerful ships at the beginning and have to struggle through the tech tree for middling cruisers?
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That's definately something. When I first started playing (actually, that pirate base battle I mentioned was from my first game. I've only played 2 now. I'm new to the game), I kept searching through the military tech tree for the Cap Ship research. It wasn't till later that I found that Cap Ships could be had without any research, which is nuts. And further, to find that you can have a cap ship as your first vessel within minutes of starting a game, since the first one doesn't cost anything? What's with that? :SURPRISED:

It goes back to that epic struggle thing again. Why, when I want an epic struggle, should I have the opportunity to have a cap ship right at the opening lineup? Heck, if you're crazy enough, you could have 2 of them early on, without any fleet supply tech. Just command crew tech once, get the few resources you need for the second ship, and 50 seconds later, you've got 2 massive cap ships, which can easily clear any and all militias and pirates that you come across. Of course, going this route, you can't build any other ships, including colony ships, until you do research the 1st fleet supply tech. Than again, I did say you'd only do it if you were crazy enough :d 
Reply #81 from Sins Forums Top
This double post isn't supposed to be here. Forums are lagging so badly, and I'm getting those "Cannot view page" pages, so I can't see if the post was placed.

Requesting an edit option to delete posts.
Reply #82 from Sins Forums Top
Actually i think to answer this question refers a lot to how the players use different strategies.

I for example would like huge devestating, all into-oblivion-blowing cap ships which would fight each other for hours (not in-game ;) ).. and against them you use lots of bombers which decimate the systems of the cap ships and fighters to protect them against enemy fighters. just like star wars, B5, Freespace, Wing Commander etc.

The approach for having not so overpowered Cap Ships i guess would be much more an approach like Star Trek: as good as no fighters, lots of "Cap Ships" with different roles and functions but all good by themselves but much better when combined...
Reply #83 from Sins Forums Top
Another way of doing this would be to make Cap ships much more potent as they level up. We all agree Cap ships are only really reaching their potential at higher levels like 7 or 8 +

Why not make level 5 level 8 and have it so that each level they become extra evil exponentially. This would mean early game Cap ships can't go and rip there way through frigates like anyones business.

But by the time Spamming is coming into play, you have cap ships that can own a large fleet of ships, spammers will think twice, also combining that with my idea of fleet bonus, would mean Cap ships would be an asset and make the Cap ship a front runner of the fleet. It also makes the loss of a high level Cap ship Hurt so much more, and so also much juicier target when you see them, so the balance I believe would be better if anything.

Reply #84 from Sins Forums Top
I'll quote my thoughts on the cap ship issue from the "RT4X" thread:

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/304600/page/2

Sins is certainly a very epic game that focuses more on high level strategy and less on individual tactics than most competing strategy titles. However, I think one feature that detracts from the 'epic feel' of sins is the capital ship system. This, in my mind, brings the game closer to a traditional RTS.

In the interest of early game enjoyment, fun, and extra decision making, the game grants you access to capital ships when you do not have the technology to build more than a simple frigate.

While you progress up the tech tree, you unlock new and different types of frigates, but all throughout the game the backbone of your fleet are the capital ships that the game magically grants you. The capital ships are fun to level up and specialize in their abilities (and help keep players attached to their beloved ships), but by and large they represent the military pinnacle of your civilization... and you get them at the beginning. This leaves little power to be had at the upper ends of the economic and research development paths.

In addition, the fleet crew cap system, as well as capital ships that start out weak and magically increase in ability, ensures that players will never be able to use their economic advantage to both research and develop powerful weapons of war, and after producing them in large numbers, crush the enemy. Capital ships are granted early to make the early game much more compelling, at the cost of being a mid to late game reward and tool for victory.

As well, the combat system seems designed to prolong engagements (shield mitigation, complex armor vs. weapon type balancing, light armament on most ships), when the contrary and natural desire is for combat systems to be lethal (they're designed to kill, after all!). This tends to make ships across the board (especially the deliberately weakened capital ships) feel less than satisfying.

Combined, you have freebie capital ships that do not take effort by players to earn (but do take effort to babysit), and which can't be used to overwhelmingly crush an enemy (decreased combat usefulness from what you'd expect given their size, hard fleet cap limits, requirement to first level up the ships before they become viable in combat).

This would seem to make the research trees not as compelling as they could be (you get all the cool toys at the beginning of the game), and overwhelmingly focus the game on frigate sized ships, which would seem to skew gameplay towards 'rushing'.

I haven't played any 4X games in a long time, but from what I can remember powerful tech always tends to be at the upper echelons of the tech tree, and attaining it can very well lead to victory, as these systems and technologies are designed to fight and win, not to be fun to 'play with'. Part of the fun of expanding your epic civilization is enjoying and exploiting the rewards that come from fully developing it, economically, militarily, and scientifically. By giving us the fun stuff too early, you reduce the fun we might otherwise get in the late game. I think this detracts from what would otherwise feel like a much more epic game.
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Reply #85 from Sins Forums Top
Make cap ships ignore shield mitigation, for everything.

Most every cap ship maxes out the enemy mitigation after one salvo, so you will ALWAYS be doing half damage.

This also means abilities like Gauss are laughably worthless since they never do anywhere close to their full damage.

Problem solved.
Reply #86 from Sins Forums Top
Spammer would be faced with choice to keep his one Cap Ship and spam light / medium units as he does now... But other player could have 2 Cap Ships and balanced force instead which in this case would indeed counter light unit spammage
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That's pathetic. The guy with a shitton of spam units will have far greater fleet flexibility as he'll be able to more easily split it up into smaller groups to hit multiple targets, and the guy with cap ships is going to be hosed.

What's more, the horde of spam can just run from a cap ship.
Reply #87 from Sins Forums Top
Spammer would be faced with choice to keep his one Cap Ship and spam light / medium units as he does now... But other player could have 2 Cap Ships and balanced force instead which in this case would indeed counter light unit spammage

That's pathetic. The guy with a shitton of spam units will have far greater fleet flexibility as he'll be able to more easily split it up into smaller groups to hit multiple targets, and the guy with cap ships is going to be hosed.What's more, the horde of spam can just run from a cap ship.
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???

Thats far from pathetic, a balanced Fleet headed up by a capital ship should be the only way to counter a spam, if its not, something is wrong, either in balance, or in the players abilities, if he packs up and runs you have won, if he stays and fights you have won, either way you have won the engagement.

Even if he splits off into groups he will be spreading his firepower, which defeats the object of a spam, the whole point of a spam, is to overwhelm the opponent with numbers, if your fleet has moral bonuses in firepower due to capital ship being present in its ranks, you will deal more damage per shot then he will, and the cap ship has increased punch, and perhaps slightly more damage risk, then that will help cut through large groups of ships of the same type, then you hopefully will be equaling the field. Nobody wants to flatten a large fleet with one ship, unless its at the top of the food chain, costs a lot, and is late in the game.


Please think about what you are saying before you talk!

I do think your idea of bypassing shield mitigation would be a solution, but how would you explain that away as part of the Story/feel of the game world?

Reply #88 from Stardock Forums Top
And then the morale thing clicks in...

Disregard. As to the ideas, though, I think Uranium has a much better solution for the game as it is now. Tweaking existing values makes more sense to me (and is far more likely to happen) than adding completely new ones like morale and such.

That is, of course, assuming anything needs tweaking at all and aside from late-game surivability, I still don't think that's the case.
Reply #89 from Sins Forums Top
Well that is the point, we are suggesting that the cap ships at lower levels can't do such a thing, but as it gains in rank, to the stage of the game where spam and very large fleets can be a real issue, the caps fall away to the side lines.

Moral or supporting action buff for fleets is a big recode which I believe is a big job and I don't really expect it to be added in, but would add a new dynamic, and encourage fleets rather then just number grouping, it is mainly the increase of damage Caps ships deal as they increase in rank.

It is then they need a power boost, at the moment they almost seem impudent later on, make them stronger more centre pieces of battle, they are supposed to be like the Queen in a chess match after all, and then the loss of your biggest baddest Battleship would be a big deal, rather then oh well I have 4 more that can replace it.
Reply #90 from Sins Forums Top
Make cap ships ignore shield mitigation, for everything.Most every cap ship maxes out the enemy mitigation after one salvo, so you will ALWAYS be doing half damage. This also means abilities like Gauss are laughably worthless since they never do anywhere close to their full damage.Problem solved.
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I don't believe that Cap ships need to ignore shield mitigation. They just need more punch then they have now. That being said, the way around mitigation is to micro. If you want to get the full effect of the Gauss, make sure its the first weapon to hit a given target. In a sense use it as an opening salvo then follow up with autocannons/lasers.

BTW, my slightly modded Gauss puts out 1600hp at lvl 3. It is no longer laughable. Add in a Cielo with Designate Target and it gets down right ugly.

Reply #91 from Sins Forums Top
I think they are about right. After thinking about it I realize this game actually has ship classifications that draw parallels to Star Wars (and I'm surprised people have been comparing them to modern navies instead of other sci-fi fleets.) Fighters are of course the dynamic little ships that the movies focused on (including the Millennium Falcon.) Frigates and Cruisers were basically everything else, with some of them being labeled as Capital Ships. A Super Star Destroyer would probably be the only thing on the same scale as a Capital Ship in this game.

Considering that capital ships are too big to train all of their guns onto a single target, they shouldn't be able to easily take out other frigates. It sounds like you want every capital ship to have a Gauss Railgun, Missile Swarm, Volatile Nanites and Cleansing Brilliance. You need to accept that they are just platforms for a lot of normal guns with some special abilities.

I would like to see more levels though, it would be nice to have your starting capital ship stand out from the rest at end-game :).
Reply #92 from Sins Forums Top
IMHO the balance is pretty good. Think about how you would design a space faring vessel. The environment they operate in is hostil. You'd have redundancies everywhere to prevent loss of control to the ship and the crew. Automatic sealing bulk heads from pressure loss. Redundant power transfers to help offset damage to a system. Redundant shield emitters. The hull would be designed of course to withstand impacts, not only from enemy weapon systems, but debris in space as well. These ships would be rugged because of the environment they operate in. They aren't balloons that would take one strike and pop (unless it was a really really big pin).
Reply #93 from Sins Forums Top
I think they are about right. After thinking about it I realize this game actually has ship classifications that draw parallels to Star Wars (and I'm surprised people have been comparing them to modern navies instead of other sci-fi fleets.) Fighters are of course the dynamic little ships that the movies focused on (including the Millennium Falcon.) Frigates and Cruisers were basically everything else, with some of them being labeled as Capital Ships. A Super Star Destroyer would probably be the only thing on the same scale as a Capital Ship in this game. Considering that capital ships are too big to train all of their guns onto a single target, they shouldn't be able to easily take out other frigates. It sounds like you want every capital ship to have a Gauss Railgun, Missile Swarm, Volatile Nanites and Cleansing Brilliance. You need to accept that they are just platforms for a lot of normal guns with some special abilities.I would like to see more levels though, it would be nice to have your starting capital ship stand out from the rest at end-game .
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Lol, finally, someone who's thinking in terms of sci-fi space significants. And yeah, I can't believe I didn't think of it, but yeah, since Cap Ships (every ship, really) has weapons on various locations of the ship (Bow, Port, Starboard, and Aft) and Port weapons can't fire Starboard, nor can they really fire Fore or Aft, unless they are off-bore weapons like missiles, that travel under their own power, it's rediculous to think that a Cap ship can blow a Frigate away quickly, just because it's got more guns. Only lucky shots (on a power plant or something critical), or quick surprise shots against a target without defenses up, should lead to quick kills.

Looking at the ship details, even the heavily armed Battleships had, maybe, half a dozen weapons on a broadside (those being Port or Starboard, as the Bow and Aft are much too small to mount many weapons, although those are generally more powerful, to counter balance the smaller number of weapon ports). Sure, they're tough weapons, but there aren't enough to trash any ship quickly, even frigates.
Reply #94 from Sins Forums Top
(and I'm surprised people have been comparing them to modern navies instead of other sci-fi fleets.)
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I compared to both :P

There seemed to be more ppl posting that had a familiarity with modern warfare, so I tossed in the battleship reference along w/ the imperial class star destroyer, which would be about the level of a cap ship in this game(firepower wise anyways, its approx 5x the size of the next biggest ship down the chain). Super star destroyer would be another step up, and if there was something that big then I'd agree, it should fry frigates in a fraction of a second simply from the massive amount of guns it can bring to bear, cost a fortune(aka, if you actually did lose one, your screwed and likely not going to be able to replace it)


And to the person that said a carrier is the only cap ship still floating... go ask a navy man what he'd classify a destroyer as. the big carriers would be super star destroyer for our current tech level.

I also love the way the game is now... those changes to make caps cost more, take longer etc would kill a lot of the appeal the game has, and would have to be done specifically in a mod, or as an option. Even though it is massive, you can build up a pretty huge fleet for a really nice battle within a couple hours.

What killed HW2 for me was the fact that you needed to wait 3 hours to get 10 ships that wouldn't blow up as soon as they were sneezed on. Then if they got blown up, you were best off quitting the game rather than waiting the following hour or two for your opponent to finish the mop up.

Also for game pacing... research indicates about 60% of people don't hear a song after the first 3 minutes... waiting 30 mins for a cap ship to build? I don't think so. They make that change and I'd bring my copy back. Hell, I'll afk playing an RPG if theres an overly long cut scene up, unless its a real good one. In fact the game could do with a small speed up... the ships should move a bit faster, I don't like that it takes just as long to build a brand new frigate as it does to get one frigate from, say, the side of a planet, to the edge of the gravity well. Caps should get a HUGE speed up. mass has little to no effect on movement in space, theres no atmosphere to slow you down with friction and little to no gravity, so the bigger ship should technically move faster simply because its engines are bigger.
Reply #95 from Sins Forums Top
Caps should get a HUGE speed up. mass has little to no effect on movement in space, theres no atmosphere to slow you down with friction and little to no gravity, so the bigger ship should technically move faster simply because its engines are bigger.
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No gravity in space might make ships weight drop to zero, and no atmosphere might cut out friction, but neither of those do anything to mass and, more importantly Momentum. I'd recommend you learn a bit more about Newtonian Physics, Centrifuge, and Einstein's Theory of Relativity (well, minimally. I mainly just added this in to sound cool and smart, although time dialation can factor into what I'm about to explain). Particularly the effects of generated Gravity produced by high accelerations.

I'm sure that you know just how tight and heavy the feeling of accelerating to about 22 mph (35km/h) in 1 second may be. That, Ironhandx, is called 1 gravity, or 1 g of acceleration (Compare the average acceleration of about .3 g's or about 7 mph/s (11km/h/s)). Boost that by 9 gravities. 10 gravities of acceleration, or 220 mph (353 km/h) per second. Now, figure in a person's weight, and using an average weight of, oh, say 150 lbs (68kg). 10 gravities of acceleration turns that into 1,500 lbs (680kg) or 3/4 of a ton. Now, imagine yourself sitting in a chair, with a Sudan or SUV sitting on your chest. And I don't mean one wheel, with every other wheel anchored. I mean the whole vehicle balanced on your chest. Of course, to make it fair, there would have to be a sheet that conformed to your body, so that the weight is evenly distributed, but still, imagine 3/4 of a ton pressing on every inch of your body.

Now, imagine a massive space ship, or even a small space ship, that needs to accelerate at reasonable rates to travel across the huge expanse of space. These ships will probably want to hit about 100+ gravities for potentially several hours, just so that it wouldn't take many months or even years to travel to other planets or systems. Then, imagine that ship flipping over and accelerating in the opposite direction. Why? Why, to slow down, of course. More g force.

Now, it's not all doom and gloom. With sufficiently powerful artificial gravity generators, or inertial compensators, it's possible to counter the effects of the powerful acceleration needed to travel across millions of miles (or kilometers). But it takes a LOT of power to do so, especially at higher g's. Power that can't be wasted on ships that have to rely on power to run weapons, sensors, communications.... life support....

I hope this has helped you understand the full concept of acceleration, and just how important it would be to avoid turning your crews into messy paste on the bulkheads.

Now, I rest my case.
Reply #96 from Sins Forums Top
Why not rename the Cap ships to say "Flag Ship" or "Battleship" (I understand that there certain races have this type of ship) But thenmake another class of ship - Capital ship, where you can only have one, making it exactly like the OP stated, twice as big (visually) expensive and powerfull?
Reply #97 from Sins Forums Top
Funny. When I first showed my friend this game, he watched my Kol warp into a system, and when he saw it shoot the first pirate ship, I saw him grimmise a little, thinking it would explode. A while later, when the pirate finally poped, he said "was the small ship really strong, or was that big ship really weak?".

I think Caps are fine early game, but I really wish all their stats/defences/damage went up after lvl 3. I don't know, maybe 2-3% per level or something (with no level cap). That would make late game Caps far more durable, damaging, and hopefully even scarry. . .
Reply #98 from Sins Forums Top
Funny. When I first showed my friend this game, he watched my Kol warp into a system, and when he saw it shoot the first pirate ship, I saw him grimmise a little, thinking it would explode. A while later, when the pirate finally poped, he said "was the small ship really strong, or was that big ship really weak?".I think Caps are fine early game, but I really wish all their stats/defences/damage went up after lvl 3. I don't know, maybe 2-3% per level or something (with no level cap). That would make late game Caps far more durable, damaging, and hopefully even scarry. . .
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Exactly...

They just dont "feel" right... I know that they are fairly well balanced at the moment but it has nothing to do with "feeling"...

Just like your friend got confused about power of small ship and weakness of large ship - trust me many more are getting equally puzzled... Its like what guy in 2nd post in this thread said - its almost like seeing a Tank struggling to kill a jeep in face to face fight...

Also KoalaMeatPies idea isnt bad at all...

How about renaming all Cap Ships into BATTLE CRUISERS!

And then adding 1 or 2 REAL Cap Ships as well...

:)


Reply #99 from Sins Forums Top
This is one of those epic debates, that never will be resolved.

But let me weigh in, I do think the cruisers should have a little more punch. But not double. OR, OR, make specific upgrades for cruisers that greatly increase damage.

/two cents.
Reply #100 from Sins Forums Top
Why not rename the Cap ships to say "Flag Ship" or "Battleship" (I understand that there certain races have this type of ship) But thenmake another class of ship - Capital ship, where you can only have one, making it exactly like the OP stated, twice as big (visually) expensive and powerfull?
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Ech!! more people who don't understand the word "flagship". Flagships are the ship that the commanding officer of that particular fleet is on. It doesn't necessarily have to be a capital ship but it usually is (considering carriers are pretty much the only capital ships in modern navies.) So there it is in short. Commanding officer on ship = flagship (it doesn't even have to be HIS ship.)