Capital ships need rebalancing.

[ShinyDewott]

As it stands now, capital ships don't feel threatening enough. Sure, Fed cap ship is a big enough threat on its own if it has most of its guns trained on you, but both it, and especially the Imperial cap ship need to be fixed so both of them are actual threats. Just a few days ago I was in a CZ with a Majestic. It was focused on an AspX with all 3 rails and its plasma turrets hitting it. The rails were hardly doing any damage to the Asp's shields and most of the plasma shots weren't even hitting, doing laughable damage when they did hit.

What happened? Aren't these kinds of ships supposed to completely overpower all but the most heavily-armed ships? The Farragut's broadside cannons suffer the same issue, hardly doing anything to an FDL's shields.

I know this isn't that big of an issue, but it just makes them seem underpowered. I know most of the core gameplay elements are being improved in 3.0-3.4, so maybe FDev can address these.

I suggest making the Imp cap ships rails actually act like rails and not lasers, and make them do a lot more damage, and also make the interceptor guns do more damage, make the projectiles larger, and make them travel faster so they actually hit things. For the Fed ship, the lasers do good damage for now, maybe increase damage done by broadside cannons though.


TL;DR: Cap ships are really weak in-game compared to how powerful they're described in lore.
*insert "Muh Immershun" quote*

 

[Hossi]

If there are any core gameplay elements that needs massive improvement, then it is combat zones in general and especially captital ships. They are obviously a placeholder. They look really cool but are completly useless.
They just sit there, motionless, and wait for you to blow them up. Its super easy, but also super pointless (and pretty boring after a while).

They lack firepower so they are no threat.
They don't give relevant amounts of combat bonds, so they are useless for influencing the war.
They don't count as destroyed ship for massacre missions.
The dont drop materials.
The give no experience.

 

[DocPossible]

Aye, like a lot of stuff in Elite, they're all fur coat and no knickers.

It doesn't feel like it would take a lot to give them a bit more substance though - beefing up their weapons should be pretty easy. If they really want to impress, have them capable of launching swarms of SLFs, Battlestar Galactic style. That would be properly challenging..

 

[CMDR Dumbfries]

I might be mistaken, but I think the capital ships were nerfed at some point in the past. Players were sitting inside a friendly capital ship's firing arc and racking up kills in a cz too easily.

 

[Speedcuffs]

I might be mistaken, but I think the capital ships were nerfed at some point in the past. Players were sitting inside a friendly capital ship's firing arc and racking up kills in a cz too easily.

The impression I get now, is I do all the hard work then the capital ship steals My kills.
But yes, they seem a bit pathetic.[yesnod]

 

[CMDR Carbo]

Capital ships could be great mutiplayer content for Wings of 4 if they were buffed and gave some experience and loot.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

What happened? Engineers happened.

 

[Cervantes01]

If there are any core gameplay elements that needs massive improvement, then it is combat zones in general and especially captital ships. They are obviously a placeholder. They look really cool but are completly useless.
They just sit there, motionless, and wait for you to blow them up. Its super easy, but also super pointless (and pretty boring after a while).

They lack firepower so they are no threat.
They don't give relevant amounts of combat bonds, so they are useless for influencing the war.
They don't count as destroyed ship for massacre missions.
The dont drop materials.
The give no experience.

That's because FD has really no clue what their players want from ED, plus the cobra engine feels really limited.