Alright, after reading the the thread "Do cap ships suck or what" and from my own game experiences of roughly 70 full games or so I sincerely believe for the entrenchment patch or someday Stardock really needs to make the capital ships play a better role in the game.
I understand that during the design of SoaSE that Cap ships were never meant to be spammable battle winners but usually as support, but considering the huge cost and supply requirements of cap ships at this point unless you use the cap ship abilities very exceptionally in combat situations it almost best to just build your 1st starting cap ship then spam frigates or carriers for the rest of the game. Capital ships should really be the heart and soul of a fleet rather than "support" sidekicks, look at any science fiction: Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar...
Stardock if you're worried about cap ships being spammed, don't because the supply requirements simply make that impossible, I personally really want a ship that can last and stand its own. Also furthermore, Crusiers counter frigates and frigates counter Cap ships, but what do Cap ships counter? Nothing!!! Right now its really just a gimmick unit you use for the abilities, which is fine but they should be able to stand their ground too instead of going down to concentrated fire in a few seconds.
Simply cap ships go down way too fast, esp. from Carrier/strike craft spam that almost 90% of mid-late game turns into. I think free and instant-to-very fast replacable strike craft are a huge problem in and of themselves and needs to be nerfed, but that is just another matter that makes cap ships more of a liability. I propose
-all Cap ships should be given 15% more hp from regular fire, and 20 - 25% dmg resistance from strike craft, this is realistic as why would the guns and missles of strike craft do the same dmg as from large frigates/crusiers. This can be done thru the form of research so that cap ships become stronger significantly as time goes on.
-Cap ships should soft counter everything, usually you can only have 1-2 or 3-4 (at great expense) and they'll go down in concentrated fire easily without being able to do much dmg. Have 20 frigates vs. 3 Cap ships, and frigates will win, despite 3 caps costing more in build and research time.
-most cap ships should have the equalivant of the Flak Burst to reduce their vulnerability to strike. -OR-
-Make the flak frigate viable, there is another thread about this, against Strike Craft it is almost completely useless. Figther on Fighter combat really needs to be more devastating to each other, as right now a battle can last 10 minutes and I see 46/50 fighters still left fighting his 50 fighters. (I can rebuild these instantly)
In general, one of my criticisms of this game is that some units are way too spammable such making units more expendable, the one unit that ISN't Spammable the cap ship, will lose to spam everytime. Cap ships being force to run from hoards of fighters and frigates in almost every game makes it seem silly. They need to pull their weight.
I don't think anyone would object to a mere 15-20% increased in hp. That'll make a lot of ppl happy.
