Capital Ships should really have shield generators.

[DemiserofD]

It doesn't make much sense that Capital Ships don't have shield generators. This means it's 100% possible to just sit about 3.5km away and snipe down their weak points with cannons and it literally can't do anything about it.

I was thinking, what if they had some sort of huge bubble shield? If you get close, you can fly through it and shoot the weak points inside, but if you're further away, it blocks your damage completely(it being a capital ship and all, the shields really should be impenetrable to standard weapons).

This would also encourage smaller ships that can get inside the bubble more easily!

 

[ebbrell]

these need to be more difficult, we should be able to get inside parts of them with small ships and cut our way in for a on foot battle to take the core and make it offline

 

[HappyMoonMonkey]

It's also possible currently for me to sit right beside the capital ship in my vette and completely ignore the fire from it as a shoot all the bits on it. A bubble shield that I sit inside of changes nothing for me currently. If it were so small I couldn't get the vette in then you would also struggle with a small ship.

 

[DemiserofD]

It's also possible currently for me to sit right beside the capital ship in my vette and completely ignore the fire from it as a shoot all the bits on it. A bubble shield that I sit inside of changes nothing for me currently. If it were so small I couldn't get the vette in then you would also struggle with a small ship.

Ideally, it would be small enough that in order to move to the next heat relay, you probably need to move outside of it, then back in once you reach your target. Since larger ships are less maneuverable, that would encourage smaller ship use, which being more agile, can dart in and out more readily.

 

[HappyMoonMonkey]

I think it needs relocation of the heat relays to more inaccessible spots.

I also like the idea of on-foot assaults of capital ships via an airlock.

 

[Gordon Freeman IV]

It doesn't make much sense that Capital Ships don't have shield generators. This means it's 100% possible to just sit about 3.5km away and snipe down their weak points with cannons and it literally can't do anything about it.

I was thinking, what if they had some sort of huge bubble shield? If you get close, you can fly through it and shoot the weak points inside, but if you're further away, it blocks your damage completely(it being a capital ship and all, the shields really should be impenetrable to standard weapons).

This would also encourage smaller ships that can get inside the bubble more easily!

It evades me how huge death warships cant slap capital class gauss cannons on turrets to deal we with goid attacks. It has 20 capital class hardpoints. My unshielded chieftain can kill
A hydra and be fine but a giant death warship gets wrecked by a clops lol. Makes literally no sense

 

[Dushess74]

That may be achieveable with reconfigured shields, and like 5 small generators around the body. It gonna cover all sphere parts and not be too weak for all the surface of such big ship.

 

[Screemonster]

one of my favourite things in wing commander 3 was taking out enemy carriers by just flying into their own hangar and letting rip with whichever of my guns had the best damage-to-energy ratio.

Also how in those games torpedoes were specifically for taking out capital ships. In WC2 and Prophecy they were the only weapons that could damage a capship, with prophecy in particular requiring you to take out multiple locations on the bigger ships like the engines and bridge.

I'd love for torpedoes to have some specific anti-capital use (and for capships to be big enough of a threat) for them to be actually worth bringing a couple to a high-CZ.

 

[Dushess74]

Instantly gonna be parried by 2 PD turrets nearby, you can install such thing to be safe from enemy's missles.

 

[[VR] Bulbulunufus]

Misread the title at a glance as shield regeneration for friendlies. Which I think would make a lot of sense actually, from a gameplay point of view, that the cap ship is a support vessel that helps friendlies, rather than solely a pinata to make the progress bar go faster by retreating it. I.e. have some of the hardpoints be heal beams of one kind or another.

I'm actually fairly happy with the retreat mechanism, where an enemy carrier dropping in is a potential benefit that you jump on to end the CZ faster. But there should be a price to pay, and an incentive to remove it faster to avoid negative, as well as earn positive outcomes would make things more interesting.

Re: the OP, not sure about a bubble shield as such, but making the retreat mechanic a bit more tactical one way or another might be good, and forcing ships to get inside the fire zone of the carrier makes sense. Although ideally that would be done with placement of the weak points. E.g. they could be obscured by simple physical structures on the surface of the ship to only give line of sight from a close approach.

So basically, a la Star Wars - to blow up the death star you have to be in the trench.

 

[Fake Newts]

Why would you snipe their modules when you can just sit right next to them and do it at point blank without risk? Their weapon systems should be rebalanced before additional systems are introduced, IMO, not that I'm opposed to your suggestion in particular. These things have so many areas that need attention.

 

[DemiserofD]

one of my favourite things in wing commander 3 was taking out enemy carriers by just flying into their own hangar and letting rip with whichever of my guns had the best damage-to-energy ratio.

Also how in those games torpedoes were specifically for taking out capital ships. In WC2 and Prophecy they were the only weapons that could damage a capship, with prophecy in particular requiring you to take out multiple locations on the bigger ships like the engines and bridge.

I'd love for torpedoes to have some specific anti-capital use (and for capships to be big enough of a threat) for them to be actually worth bringing a couple to a high-CZ.

This would be surprisingly easy to achieve. Give capital ships armor hardness 10000. Suddenly normal weapons do virtually nothing, while torpedoes do full damage, because they have 10k AP for some reason.

Why would you snipe their modules when you can just sit right next to them and do it at point blank without risk? Their weapon systems should be rebalanced before additional systems are introduced, IMO, not that I'm opposed to your suggestion in particular. These things have so many areas that need attention.

Oh yeah, for sure. I really like the Star Wars Battlefront approach, where there are destroyable autoturrets, and then mannable heavy turrets. The autoturrets are just constant trickle damage, while the heavy turrets actually do meaningful damage but need a player inside.

 

[Screemonster]

This would be surprisingly easy to achieve. Give capital ships armor hardness 10000. Suddenly normal weapons do virtually nothing, while torpedoes do full damage, because they have 10k AP for some reason.

The problem is that you'd have to give the capships a frankly terrible health pool to go with it since torpedoes still do hilariously pathetic damage for sacrificing an entire hardpoint.
Hell, they were pathetic even without engineering on other weapons being taken into account. A torpedo in the water should be a dangerous thing, a reason to pack an ECM, something that regardless of engineering gives you cause to break off your attack and get the hell out of there when you see the "incoming torpedo" warning.
You know, the way people do with thargoid caustic missiles.

But I guess "make torpedoes actually worth having as something other than a counter to the ridiculous state of the shield meta" is a topic for another thread.