Capital class ship kinda weak??

[CMDR Correa]

The weapon systems on these are disappointingly weak aren't they? I was watching Youtube, a dude was attacking the Imperial capital ship on a T10, and, whilst being target by the three railguns at the top, plus another ship, his shields didn't go down one bit.
I always felt that the damage from these capital ships are surprisingly weak.
The railguns alone on the imperial ship, for instance, should at least disintegrate any shield systems with a well place volley.

 

[Fake Newts]

They haven't been balanced since engineering was introduced, or defensive module stacking became the norm. On top of that the Imperial variant was considered the weaker one since the beginning... So yeah, they suck.

The Fed one isn't much better, but can at least put pressure on vanilla shields sometimes.

It's part and parcel of a game-wide HP : DPS imbalance that's been pumping up for years now. See if you can also find two Vipers fighting in a CZ: follow them and you'll notice that they lack the firepower to do damage to each other, barely matching shield regen most of the time, so without the interference of a player or the focus of several other ships at once they will continue to poke each other forever.

It's kind of silly how bloated health got, but it'd also be complicated to rein in due to how modular the outfitting system is. This is a game where two players can be flying the same hull, one will have health so low you can instagib them with a single volley while the other can go make a coffee before losing their shield. How do you make the game fun for both camps? Awkward.

 

[Jmanis]

The big guns are pretty weak, and are meant to be employed against other capitals. It's the small flak cannons you have to worry about. There's some USS where you need to solo a capital. When there's no targets other than you, capital ships are a whole other story.

Also, were they fighting a federal or Imperial capship? If Imperial, then yeah, those are complete peashooters, and a big disadvantage for the empire in any conflict.

 

[metatheurgist]

It's a ridiculous as a handful of players deciding the fates of a system of billions. The game is consistent in not letting the players rescue princesses.

 

[DemiserofD]

The problem with capital ships is they need to be balanced for both large ships and small ships, so their guns simply can't be too strong.

I wish they'd give them some huge capital class broadside weapons. Way back in Starlancer, Capital Ships had destroyable turrets that mostly targeted fighters, and then a few massive plasma cannons that fired blasts of plasma significantly larger than a fighter, which killed fighters they hit instantly, but which moved so slowly and were so obvious it was almost impossible to get hit unless you were trying.

Capital Ships should shoot each other with these, and players with the turrets, unless the player sits still for too long. Then, the capital-class turrets would sloooowly swing around, and just absolutely obliterate the player sitting too still.

Another possibility would be making their turrets extremely powerful but also very inaccurate. A small ship would be too small to get hit very much, while a larger ship would get hit far more, and take accordingly more damage.

 

[Kerissimo]

I wish they'd give them some huge capital class broadside weapons. Way back in Starlancer, Capital Ships had destroyable turrets that mostly targeted fighters, and then a few massive plasma cannons that fired blasts of plasma significantly larger than a fighter, which killed fighters they hit instantly, but which moved so slowly and were so obvious it was almost impossible to get hit unless you were trying.

Capital Ships should shoot each other with these, and players with the turrets, unless the player sits still for too long. Then, the capital-class turrets would sloooowly swing around, and just absolutely obliterate the player sitting too still.

Another possibility would be making their turrets extremely powerful but also very inaccurate. A small ship would be too small to get hit very much, while a larger ship would get hit far more, and take accordingly more damage.

I agree on that ,but not on this part:

The problem with capital ships is they need to be balanced for both large ships and small ships, so their guns simply can't be too strong.

Why they should be balanced for all ships? As well there might be rule saying: no small ships would survive encounter with capital ship. Everyone would kow that, every npc would warn you if you would try to get close to cap ships range, along with COVAS warnings. But if you want to, you just could fly there and do that suicide attempt, like you should be able to fly into the sun, or black hole. We are able to kill ourselves with grenade or rocket after all.

And that could be third alternative for your first two. But personally i like slow and precise big guns, one-hitting almost every build.

 

[metatheurgist]

Yep, imagine if there was an interdiction like mini-game indicating lockon by one of the "Yep, I'm boned guns" (in addition to normal fire). You can then decided how long you want to risk it to continue trying to apply damage to the cap ship or fly defensively enough to not die. Realistically, you either do little damage or die and it then requires a whole lotta ships trying an attack run to route a cap ship. Rather than a T10 sitting in one spot shooting a heat valve or whatever.

 

[DemiserofD]

Why they should be balanced for all ships? As well there might be rule saying: no small ships would survive encounter with capital ship.

Just for enjoyability reasons, mostly. It wouldn't be very fun if you were basically forced to fly a large ship to survive near a capital ship. Small ships are already weak, there's really no reason to make capital ships especially good against them.

My ideal scenario is that Capital Ships have three layers of active defense. At the smallest level, fighters, which mainly deal with enemy fighters/small ships. At the next level, spray turrets, which do lots of damage but have a wide spread and turn slowly enough they have a hard time tracking smaller, faster ships, but which are capable of tracking medium ships, unless they put in a lot of effort to dodging.

Lastly, the capital weapons, which turn VERY slowly and fire huge, slow plasma rounds, slow enough they're dodgeable by even medium ships, but which cause extreme damage to either large player ships or enemy capital ships.

Oh, and lastly give them some pretty high Armor Hardness to make them especially resistant to small weapons.

So you've got small ships, which are largely ineffective at actually damaging the capital ship, but which are also hard enough to hit, the capital ship mostly leaves that duty to the fighters. Medium ships, capable of damaging the capital ship, but forced to do so defensively, reducing their DPS. And lastly, Large ships, with the weapon size and raw DPS to heavily damage capital ships, but which need all their defenses to tank the capital-class weapons, and if they also get attacked by the other defenses, are quickly overwhelmed.

Ideally, this would make all levels of ship size relatively equally important. The smalls need to go in and take out the fighters, so the mediums can move in and distract the medium turrets, so the Larges can move in and do the actual damage.

---

Yeah, that's a lot, but IMO capital ships really should be the 'boss monster' of human PVE. Right now they're honestly a lot easier than an Independent Captain. They should be seriously challenging, and give rewards to match.

 

[OldSchoolPlayer]

Buff Capital class ships! (Please...)

 

[Haradrim]

Capital ships are absolutely no where near where they should be in terms of power. They can't even solo a single engineered player ship which is very silly. The developers haven't looked at their balance in regard to the changing of engineering and other things over the years, so caps have just been there stagnating. It really kills immersion too which is huge in a game like this. This is actually a theme with combat in general for ED unfortunately. I really hope they have some big combat balance passes coming so more ships and weapons are viable, rather than just a very small handful, as well as moving past this bullet sponge fighting system.

I agree on that ,but not on this part:

Why they should be balanced for all ships? As well there might be rule saying: no small ships would survive encounter with capital ship. Everyone would kow that, every npc would warn you if you would try to get close to cap ships range, along with COVAS warnings. But if you want to, you just could fly there and do that suicide attempt, like you should be able to fly into the sun, or black hole. We are able to kill ourselves with grenade or rocket after all.

And that could be third alternative for your first two. But personally i like slow and precise big guns, one-hitting almost every build.

You've run into the longstanding conundrum within ED. The sim side of the game is at odds with the gamified side, always eating one another to leave it in an awkward state. It's especially visible in combat.

 

[MrShinyTorterra]

The thing is they have lore-wise the technology to place the heat things behind shields (or even the whole ship behind a giant shield) but yet none of that happens. No wonder the Thargoids destroy those ships (or rather cripple them) so easily!

 

[CMDR Correa]

It's kind of silly how bloated health got, but it'd also be complicated to rein in due to how modular the outfitting system is. This is a game where two players can be flying the same hull, one will have health so low you can instagib them with a single volley while the other can go make a coffee before losing their shield. How do you make the game fun for both camps?

Got me there buddy.

The problem with capital ships is they need to be balanced for both large ships and small ships, so their guns simply can't be too strong.

If you're talking about ships controlled by player and the enemy capital ship (as opposed to NPC pilots, as the game can always spawn more), I believe the combat could be more tactical and engaging (see reply below)

Why they should be balanced for all ships? As well there might be rule saying: no small ships would survive encounter with capital ship. Everyone would kow that, every npc would warn you if you would try to get close to cap ships range, along with COVAS warnings. But if you want to, you just could fly there and do that suicide attempt, like you should be able to fly into the sun, or black hole. We are able to kill ourselves with grenade or rocket after all.

And that could be third alternative for your first two. But personally i like slow and precise big guns, one-hitting almost every build.

I don't know about balancing for all ships, but I've got some opinions:

1. Maybe capital ships should have hull health (lots and lots and lots of it), allowing for long range combat. Maybe that could even be influenced by the more tactical way that it is now (e.g. destroying the heat relay would cause the hull to waste temporarily faster, similar to using a corrosive effect)
2. I love the idea of very powerful capital ship weapons (maybe not one hitting everything but close to that, maybe a little more than settlement level?), but that should be influenced by some kind of aggro mechanics (it'll shoot you if you dealt enough damage).
3. I'd love to see some expanded mechanics on these ships. For instance, have you noticed the Imperial ship has some kind of hangar access corridor (protected by a blue force field)? Maybe you could fly your ship in and it would repair/rearm your ship instantly (kind of like the Arwing could do on the Great Fox on Star Fox 64). I know the Fed ship has something similar, and it can fit at least a DBS (tested).
4. The way it is now is just underwhelming. Hell, it is harder to fight a targ than one of these, especially if you're going amped (engineered). If FDev could only change one thing I'd go for weapon dmg.
5. If life was perfect and everything I wished for became true, I'd say to treat them like actual battleships. I'm talking buyable by the players, manouverable and, of course, destroyable! But I know that's too far-fetched for this game...

 

[CMDR Correa]

The big guns are pretty weak, and are meant to be employed against other capitals. It's the small flak cannons you have to worry about. There's some USS where you need to solo a capital. When there's no targets other than you, capital ships are a whole other story.

Also, were they fighting a federal or Imperial capship? If Imperial, then yeah, those are complete peashooters, and a big disadvantage for the empire in any conflict.

They were fighting an Imp one. But I've seen other videos of a T10 taking up the Fed one and it's not much different.
Actually it was kinda funny when the Imp capital ship was shooting an enemy NPC Anaconda, barely damaging the ship's shields, then the dude (in another Anaconda) completely obliterates the shields in about 2 seconds. I was like "well, that's disproportionate..."

 

[Haradrim]

They were fighting an Imp one. But I've seen other videos of a T10 taking up the Fed one and it's not much different.
Actually it was kinda funny when the Imp capital ship was shooting an enemy NPC Anaconda, barely damaging the ship's shields, then the dude (in another Anaconda) completely obliterates the shields in about 2 seconds. I was like "well, that's disproportionate..."

Fed battlecruisers even take a long time to get through shields while focus firing CZ npcs.

 

[DemiserofD]

Got me there buddy.

If you're talking about ships controlled by player and the enemy capital ship (as opposed to NPC pilots, as the game can always spawn more), I believe the combat could be more tactical and engaging (see reply below)

I don't know about balancing for all ships, but I've got some opinions:

1. Maybe capital ships should have hull health (lots and lots and lots of it), allowing for long range combat. Maybe that could even be influenced by the more tactical way that it is now (e.g. destroying the heat relay would cause the hull to waste temporarily faster, similar to using a corrosive effect)
2. I love the idea of very powerful capital ship weapons (maybe not one hitting everything but close to that, maybe a little more than settlement level?), but that should be influenced by some kind of aggro mechanics (it'll shoot you if you dealt enough damage).
3. I'd love to see some expanded mechanics on these ships. For instance, have you noticed the Imperial ship has some kind of hangar access corridor (protected by a blue force field)? Maybe you could fly your ship in and it would repair/rearm your ship instantly (kind of like the Arwing could do on the Great Fox on Star Fox 64). I know the Fed ship has something similar, and it can fit at least a DBS (tested).
4. The way it is now is just underwhelming. Hell, it is harder to fight a targ than one of these, especially if you're going amped (engineered). If FDev could only change one thing I'd go for weapon dmg.
5. If life was perfect and everything I wished for became true, I'd say to treat them like actual battleships. I'm talking buyable by the players, manouverable and, of course, destroyable! But I know that's too far-fetched for this game...

Technically you can actually damage them, even take them down to 0% hull. Unfortunately, it doesn't actually do anything.

You may be interested in my Player-Owned Megaships idea, specifically the section on Destroyers. https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...-crazy-harrys-megaship-emporium-today.584406/

 

[Jmanis]

Technically you can actually damage them, even take them down to 0% hull. Unfortunately, it doesn't actually do anything.

Actually not quite true.

I don't know if this applies to all capitals now, but certainly all capitals which spawn in CZs will now retreat if they get below 50% hull integrity, regardless of the state of thermal conduits.

 

[DemiserofD]

Actually not quite true.

I don't know if this applies to all capitals now, but certainly all capitals which spawn in CZs will now retreat if they get below 50% hull integrity, regardless of the state of thermal conduits.

Really? That's interesting if true. I remember getting them down to 0% about a year ago, must have changed in the meantime.

It's honestly not even that hard. Maybe not as easy as doing the relays, but totally possible in a single reload.

 

[Jmanis]

Really? That's interesting if true. I remember getting them down to 0% about a year ago, must have changed in the meantime.

It's honestly not even that hard. Maybe not as easy as doing the relays, but totally possible in a single reload.

It makes them a substantial liability on the field these days... but yeah... unless it rolled back i observed this when specifically defending capitals on several occasions. I had been regularly checking the heatsinks in one situation, and almost all were intact... then suddenly the ship was retreating in an unreasonably quick timeframe... this happened multiple times and the capship was at 49% both times, having been wailed on by spec ops.

Ps. Entirely plausible that change got undone at some point too... like so many things.

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

At one time Imperial capital ships were lethal. Not so much with their guns, those have always been pretty but weak, but they used to lauch up to 12 or 13 G-97 fighters. If those ganged up on you, it was time to leave. You could try killing them one after another, but with how nimble they are and how ships need to be within 1km range to even hit them most of the time, the remaining ones would wear you down long before you got them all. A bit how ants defeat much larger prey. Yes, some will die in the attack, but the sheer amount of them wins.

 

[Jmanis]

At one time Imperial capital ships were lethal. Not so much with their guns, those have always been pretty but weak, but they used to lauch up to 12 or 13 G-97 fighters. If those ganged up on you, it was time to leave. You could try killing them one after another, but with how nimble they are and how ships need to be within 1km range to even hit them most of the time, the remaining ones would wear you down long before you got them all. A bit how ants defeat much larger prey. Yes, some will die in the attack, but the sheer amount of them wins.

Heh... I remember when there were wings of 8 pirate sidewinders in supercruise. That posed a genuine threat to your A-Rate Anaconda (peak ship + fitting at the time)