Capital Ships

Grzegt · Post by **Grzegt** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 6:47 am

The most urgent change about shipyard is decreasing disruptor's damage against capships. SY is meant to be expensive and scary, rather than expensive Dis fodder.

CronoDroid · Post by **CronoDroid** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 8:14 am

Just make the ships cheaper and weaker and leave the rest alone. Battleships are 99% unstoppable regardless of team size I would say, it's the smaller stuff that gets owned quickly like Frigs. Ass ships, Attack Carriers and Corvettes should be exempt. So Cruisers and Frigs should be weakened and less costly.

And as far as non-basekilling ships go, only the Ass Ship, Corvette and Atk Carrier are useful. Devs are like giant galving ships that are otherwise a waste of money, Destroyers (aside from Rix ones) are fairly useless in escorting cap ships and Freighters are a colossal waste of $#@!ing time.

SY is going to be unbalanced in small games regardless, so you'll have to rely on people turning SY off in those situations and of course untying the cheesy tech from SY so they can be used.

The con should stay the same price. I often use SY cons as large generic rock builders as Exp and if they were 10K they would be too easily spammed.

As a note, SY is highly vunerable against BIOS Exp cuz of the HTTs. Or any HTT for that matter. So maybe getting rid of small SY doors would be wise.

Other fixes:
-Smaller caps so they're easier to dock.
-Fix the small Rix SY door (pending)

Adept · Post by **Adept** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 8:35 am

I'm mostly happy with SY myself, but Sup takes the ships down too fast, and Exp is a bit too screwed. The damage modifiers that dis & galv get vs. caps are just too high.

/edit: I also dislike gunships getting shipyard turrets, I'm 99% sure they used to be armed with ACs. Skycaps should be what you get with the SY (get a vette, not a GS if you need that kind of punch).

juckto · Post by **juckto** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 9:58 am

FYI, finished moving the academy info on capital ships to the wiki. More importantly, I updated it with information taken from CC03 (using ICE). So it'll be a lot easier to compare different ships capabilities.

Linky linky.

There shouldn't be too many mistakes, especially if pkk keeps up his good work of double checking me.

apochboi · Post by **apochboi** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 10:27 am

Nice work Juckto.

On Shipyard; My take on shipyard is kinda like EoR caps. Slower, stronger and more expensive. Although it would be extreamly hard to balance.

Dorjan · Post by **Dorjan** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 10:42 am

My recommendations:

1st) Make some really different turrets:

Anti-cap turrets: Good damage against heavy+ hulls but v.weak against figs etc
Normal skycaps etc: Great against figs, pretty weak vs heavy+ hulls

2nd) Make them cheeper but slightly weaker

Reason: as said above, make them more common. They will still tie up the team and be large targets but makes buying a SY more cost effective.

HSharp · Post by **HSharp** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 10:44 am

Bleugh slower stronger and more expensive all sound like bad ideas. I want cheaper and weaker. I want SY to be a viable choice as a techpath without being only really useful when you have a huge economy, I like juckto's idea's for SY for needing a techbase to up to med class and adv techbase for drydock. It would be nice to have multipe cap ships out because right now the tactic is get a frig and get everyone else to nan it instead of say get a frig and have a corvette or 2 to deal with light threats and possible a destroyer to deal with enemy caps.

The main problem though it because of alephs I suppose, cap's are supposed to be long-range weapons so a camped aleph is not ideal so juckto's idea of a mini-res might not be so bad either, perhaps have aleph res 1 researchable in garrison.

finki · Post by **finki** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 10:49 am

Send Gunships into shipyard. Auto-researched or at least cheap when it's up, same costs per piece, still launchable everywhere.
If you give gunships a little cost for research (lets say 5k) make the shipyard as expensive as techbases.

And let Giga get skycap3, large shield3, ...

Adept · Post by **Adept** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 10:56 am

finki wrote:QUOTE (finki @ Apr 22 2009, 01:49 PM) Send Gunships into shipyard. Auto-researched or at least cheap when it's up, same costs per piece, still launchable everywhere.
If you give gunships a little cost for research (lets say 5k) make the shipyard as expensive as techbases.

And let Giga get skycap3, large shield3, ...

If gunships would become awailable with SY, that would be ok. I'd still make them more different to vettes though. Maybe just one skycap, but no cost, or give corvettes the option to mount Hunterkillers (with a small rack size).

This thread also reminded me that there is a lot of stuff that isn't really used. The anti-cap and anti small ship caps are never used aside from the corvette. Hopefully we can balance the destroyer and devastator so that we'll actually see them in games.

Post by **Raveen** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 11:13 am

madpeople wrote:QUOTE (madpeople @ Jun 21 2007, 12:26 PM) [edit]
download links:
version :6 download (extract to your allegiance\artwork folder)
version 6 mirror: link
version: 7 download mirror
[/edit]

ok, so i'm on holiday so dont realy have time to explain everything properly.

the basic idea is to make each capship only good for one thing, and for them to be effective they need to be used together (TEAMWORK!)

firstly, flatten the sy tech tree
SY
-> LT class
-> Med class
-> Hvy class
-> Super hvy class?
-> Support class? (explain this later, an implimentation of the hvy sector support ship i mentioned else where, different to the MS one though (look for my post, if its on these boards)
-> ship speed
(corresponding techs in appropiate places, will expand it later)

lt class would be close range anti fighter ships (corvs, perhapse a new type of ship too).
they would be fast (top speed of 100)
quick turning
cost: 1000?
mounts lt Lrg shield
weakish, a single fig with galvs + dis could kill them fairly quickly if it was left alone (note here its an anti small ship cap so the lone fig wont be left allone), 3 figs with galvs could take one and win.
mounts 2 AC turrets (i'm changing what turrets are used for here)
driver can use hunters (maybe a mini AC?)

med class
medium speed (max 60, maybe 70?)
mounts med Lrg shield
cost: 3000?

dests are long range anti fighter caps,
mount hunter killers (that lock on in 1 sec / same as seekers, more cm resistant too)
no turrets
slow turning.
no turret
it should be able to kill a fig 5k away easily, but it can be killed by one close up since it cant turn round to lock missiles on (fighter can stay behind it) - needs either another dest further away to try and kill the fighter (provided the fig doesnt use the dest as cover, or a lt class ship to kill the fighter)
stronger hull

devs,
similar to now, but no turret. (can take a lt class ship easily, but need 5 to win vs a fully manned hvy class ship, 4 just looses)

hvy class
very slow (top speed of 40)
cost: 10k? (15k for super hvy class?)
turn slowly,
4 turrets,
sc turrets will fire slow moving high damage projectiles, about 1/sec - no use on fighters as they can dodge them (if you managed to hit a small ship with one its 1 hit kill), only things you can hit with these are other capships (lt class may be fast enough to get out the way, but not hvy class or med class) and bases (i'm thinking perhapse turrets are to be used for base killing)
perhapse one low damage, high speed, faster fire rate turret (1'st one so it gets taken first) for anti missile use, (only slightly effective vs fighters, really needs lt class for close support, to mop up what the dests didn't get at long range).
lots of hull

(cruisers are anti base caps, still get to use the missiles + use new sc turrets, battle ships are anti hvy class ships, use longtoms - which are sc turrets that do more damage and can damage bases, it can mount a lrm torpedo for use on other caps, med damage, xrm cruise speed (to supliment turrets, not for use by its self), doesn't mount anti base missiles)

roughly, i don't really have time to explain everything fully.

but for caps to be effective, you need to use different types, and to do that you need more people, so in small games caps would be weaker, in larger games they would be stronger.

in small games you might be able to use a lt class ship well, but if you got a hvy class one with no anti fighter support, a single fig could kill the cap in the time it takes to cross the sector (at 40m/s) (and note here the hvy class cap doesn't have anti fighter turrets, so it cant kill the fighter).

in large games you have the numbers to use lots of capships (now cheaper so you can afford to) and they will be effective, balanced by the fact the other team has lots of people to kill them.

you can still nan your cruiser, but without anti fighter caps (or fighters?), your nans are easy targets (following the 40m/s cap).

that's the general idea anyway

From - http://www.freeallegiance.org/forums/index...t=0&start=0 and http://www.freeallegiance.org/forums/index...p;showentry=491

Personally I like the idea of cheaper, weaker caps in the hope that we'll see SY stand up as a tech path in it's own right rather than as a support tech. The big, slow, powerful caps of EoR wored well too but I think you'd see them used less.