Kol Battleship  50 logistics points

16 Kol Battleships   800 logistics points

Bunch of Frigate factories cranking out Hoshikos/Cielos/Kodiaks  1200 logistics points

Smashing an empire with a fleet of Kol Battleships...priceless.

See this post:  https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/337682

I generally agree with you, however I think I build far less capital ships than you do (only 1 per game, ha ha).  The only cap that is automatically worth its weight in gold is the marza with the ridiculously OP missle barrage.

can't i nova the shit outa him instead?

Capital ships are very powerful early on, and lose a lot of appeal the larger your empire grows.

I think this is okay. It is about a Solar Empire, and not about about a battle of cap ships with some frigates and cruisers mixed in to provide some flavor.

Enjoy finding the right mix of frigates, cruisers and cap ships. This is part of the fun, too.

The only faction that can get away with cap ship spam (and even then you want some other ship types in support) is Advent.  Mass transcendance means you get level 4 for free, plus more experience to go around.  It's actually feasible to get a full fleet of 16 caps all higher than level 6 as Advent in a two-three hour game.  However, you really can only start building them in such large numbers after researching mass transcendance, and will always need units like guardians, illuminators, and drone hosts to round out your army.  Oh, and disciples, can't forget transfer anti-matter.

Even if you're going cap heavy, you're always better off mixing it up.  Caps are great, but they aren't the best at everything.  Although once you get them to higher levels, they get pretty amazing

cap ships make frigates good. frigates make fleets good. 

cap ships offer strategic weight to a fleet in a way that frigates are almost incapable of. you'd have to bring a wrecking crew of like 10 siege frigs and 1 or 2 colony frigs with a fleet to simulate the strategic effects of bringing some cap ships along. 

still, you reach a limit on the usefulness of caps pretty quickly. there's rarely much of a point to having more than 3 or 4 cap ships in a single fleet. if its a really big map and i've got 2 fleets i'll sometimes have 4 caps in fleet 1 and 2 caps in fleet 2. its extremely rare to require more than that. 

i agree with the OP though, which is that building caps just for the sake of having them is not a good idea. frigates are the bulk of the fleet and do most of the fighting. caps support them and make the fleet stategically potent. it doesn't take all that many cap ships to achieve this. 

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

I agree with most of your comments but I have noticed one thing. It seems we forget that fleet capacity sucks up your funds the larger the fleet gets and capital ships suck up WAY too much to be useful to your economic objectives.

Today I played a game and decided to make 16 capital ships at the end of the game. When I did I noticed that it sucked up all my funds through support costs and my economy actually dropped by 20-30% through crystal,metal, and credits for the last hour of my game. Even though I was expanding my empire and upgrading my planets to the fullest I never had as good of an economy as I did at the lower levels of support. So my high point was when I had 7-8 capital ships with around 70 frigets and support vessals.

So basicly those capital ships just dragged my economy down to the dirt. Does this really make since? Shouldn't capital ships be nearly self supporting? Like I guess a battlestar galactica sort of thing where each capital ship can take care of itself and not need additional supplys would make these ships FAR FAR FAR more valuable.

What do you guys and gals think?

Also the support = to economy brings home the idea of war footing. In other words, how much are you willing to spend to defeat your enemy.

If it is a small skirmish your eco will barely take a tap from the battle.

If it is a whole scale war your eco will take a huge hit.

This allows for strategic thinking to be brought in. Each increase of support makes you think, should I hold back and turtle and develop myself better or go for broke and hit him with the biggest hammer I have.

So having 16 caps with supporting vessels does create a lot of stress on your eco but you get to bring a much bigger hammer.

Actually I dont agree with you that it takes 5 heavy crusiers to = a capital ship level 6. I know for a fact that I could win that fight.

Also to get to level 6 for a capital ship is VERY hard. Even if you dish out all that money to upgrade and get the civilian upgrades for the level 4 upgrade. Although I do agree that it costs less support all the other factors I beleve its still too much of a stress. Also when you lose a lot of capital ships all that money you spent for capital ship command is worthless unless you rebuild the entire fleet.

I lose 20 frigets BIG WOOP!

I lose two level 4-5 capital ships. ...

Wow, so many of you look at capital ships for the simple DPS factor they bring to a fleet...they bring more to it than that...

Abilities, for one. Who doesn't find it important to grab the colonizer cap in those huge, multi-system games? Sure, the frigates are available...but they're slow to travel, slow to act, and slow to recharge. A colonizer cap-ship can single handedly net you three planets by the time you've cleared the way for the frigate to take its first. Aside from the obvious Marza Missile Barrage, a Kol with flak burst can cripple an opponent who relies on swarms of Strike Craft. The Akkan's Targetting uplink can drastically empower all the support ships within range (accuracy and damage). And a pair of Dunovs recharging shields is usually considered crucial for TEC when fending off Advent players. The Radiance's Cleansing Brilliance...or maybe the Advent's "shield recharge" bubble...the Vasari Marauder's speed-up ability... if you turn off autocast and manage those abilities, you'll find out why a few capital ships backing a smaller fleet will rape a huge-number fleet.

Tanking/meat-shielding. Even though your heavy cruisers are the first things in the line of fire, a capital ship becomes an instant target due to its abilities and firepower. If you have a capital ship backed by repair ships, then the enemy fleet must choose whether they sacrifice a chunk of their fleet taking on the repair ships while the capital ships take them out (if possible...the Advent's Telekenetic Push is quite aggrivating about this) or you just pound away at the cap ship and hope you can pull off a high enough DPS while the rest of his fleet is engaging you. Cap ships are SUPPOSED to be targets. They're the psychological backbone of any fleet.

Now that doesn't mean capships are the be-all, end-all. Just because you can have 16 doesn't mean you should...but I will invariably prefer an Akkan/Marza pair as opposed to the ridiculous amounts of seige frigates and that almost-useless colony frigate. They can both withstand much more abuse and will get the job done so much faster. Don't believe me? Watch your planetary assault fail when strike craft effortlessly eat your seige frigates alive.