Capital ship destruction...

[-splosives-]

I voted no.
Yes they are relatively easy to destroy for some experimented pilots playing together

What do you mean playing together?
I eat cap ships for breakfast.
All stacked together in a bowl with milk.
It's just pathetic how weak they are, you don't even have to move sometimes.

The fact that I manage to kill vonari cap ships with a Scorpion frame
(tier 2 civ ship equipped with an icespear and a bad beam weapon and only a C5 shield)
by just staying in one position, repeatedly firing at the cap ship proves that something is wrong.

[Maarschalk]

I voted no.
Yes they are relatively easy to destroy for some experimented pilots playing together

What do you mean playing together?
I eat cap ships for breakfast.
All stacked together in a bowl with milk.
It's just pathetic how weak they are, you don't even have to move sometimes.

The fact that I manage to kill vonari cap ships with a Scorpion frame
(tier 2 civ ship equipped with an icespear and a bad beam weapon and only a C5 shield)
by just staying in one position, repeatedly firing at the cap ship proves that something is wrong.

I think he means some experienced pilots playing together!...:P

[Maarschalk]

Real life missiles have far more range than EM missiles

Relatively speaking.

Hey!, that is my line, relatively speaking that is!......:P

[Marvin]

When ya snooze, ya lose.

[Maarschalk]

When ya snooze, ya lose.

That is easy to say for Robots, they relatively do not need to snooze so they don't lose....:P

[Munshine]

The side effect of increasing shield resistance and armor is that everyone would be forced to use the FTs if the cap ship couldn't be destroyed at its weak spot making combat even more easy.

As the moment the Fulcrum Torpedo isn't a dedicated weapon for cap ships but a mass destruction weapon.
The dogfighting would transform in a enemy sweep. That 's ridiculous !

I agree with Nubarus that making a cap ship defenseless before destroying it would be interesting. That means
1) firstly a player has to get rid of its weapons (missiles launchers aka turrets)
2) secondly he must disable its shield generator
3) And once the cap ship is vulnerable then it could be destroyed

But I understand that would be a lot of work for Vice.

[-splosives-]

The side effect of increasing shield resistance and armor is that everyone would be forced to use the FTs if the cap ship couldn't be destroyed at its weak spot making combat even more easy.

That's why I think not their armor, but rather their guns should be upgraded.

[Nubarus]

The side effect of increasing shield resistance and armor is that everyone would be forced to use the FTs if the cap ship couldn't be destroyed at its weak spot making combat even more easy.

That's why I think not their armor, but rather their guns should be upgraded.

That's what I said too. If you just make it take longer of static blasting people will just FT it to get it over with.

[Cato]

^
|

What they said.

[DennyMala]

Shields and armour should be able to stand the punishment of fighters weapons (as a real life navy ship would with machine gun strafing run an small missiles) while a dedicated weapon suite will close the gap allowing us to avoid the FT abuse (and in reality too a well placed bomb or torpedo could blast or severely damage a ship).

Those should be readily available in warzones so that a player can kit up to fill the bomber role and add something to the game instead of removing from it.

Another easier solution would be of creating an AI entity that will destroy the cap ship and that needs our escort....but that would completely void us of the cap ship engagement. I'm entirely against it.

[Nubarus]

I would love to see more different tactical weapons in this game, like dumbfire rocket pods and precesion torpedoes that don't blow everything to smithereens.

[Rubber Chicken]

I 'm with Nubarus with the dumbfire type weapons.

I don't know if this works for all cap ships, but it seems to me that the Von-C has a 'sweet spot' on the nose. Get face-to-face with it and pound with particle fire and it goes down pretty fast. I've found I can nearly park right there until the job is done.

Cap ships also have superstructure elements that the current collision system for them won't allow a fighter to fly through, in spite of some of the openings appearing to be large enough.

Perhaps if the anti-fighter defenses where improved, and the 'sweet spots' on cap ships where buried in the superstructure with an improved collision system, then it would be less easy. There would be quick-kill points but you would have to get into the openings after getting past heavy defenses to attack them. Even then you should have to make your attack quickly as just parking and pounding would leave you too vulnerable to the defense elements of the Cap.

I'd say increase the Cap ship scale even more as well.

[stch]

I voted no.

[Nubarus]

I voted nothing since keeping them the same is not an option for me and increasing armor and shields is not the solution for me.

[kb5ixd]

In as much as it seems that a change is going to happen:

Solutions: Assign Capitol Ships a random variable 0 to 7

Solution #1
0 = how they are now
7 = so tough 20 Mercenaries can’t kill it

Solution #2
0 = 1 Capitol Ship
7 = 8 Capitol Ships working together

Solution #3
Both Solution #1 and Solution #2 together

Let’em Guess Vice - lol


[Edited on 2-12-2013 by kb5ixd]

[Edited on 2-12-2013 by kb5ixd]

[Nubarus]

In as much as it seems that a change is going to happen:

Solutions: Assign Capitol Ships a random variable 0 to 7

Solution #1
0 = how they are now
7 = so tough 20 Mercenaries can’t kill it

Solution #2
0 = 1 Capitol Ship
7 = 8 Capitol Ships working together

Solution #3
Both Solution #1 and Solution #2 together

Let’em Guess Vice - lol


[Edited on 2-12-2013 by kb5ixd]

[Edited on 2-12-2013 by kb5ixd]

That made no sense what so ever.

[jeremyhak2]

In as much as it seems that a change is going to happen:

Solutions: Assign Capitol Ships a random variable 0 to 7

Solution #1
0 = how they are now
7 = so tough 20 Mercenaries can’t kill it

Solution #2
0 = 1 Capitol Ship
7 = 8 Capitol Ships working together

Solution #3
Both Solution #1 and Solution #2 together

Let’em Guess Vice - lol


[Edited on 2-12-2013 by kb5ixd]

[Edited on 2-12-2013 by kb5ixd]

That made no sense what so ever.

lol I think what he meant was he wanted the capital ships to spawn with radomized difficulty. In one contract the capital ship may be the easy peasy lemon squeezy type to destroy as the ships are now, and another capital ship spawning with extreme difficulty (all chosen by a random integer)

Ffrankly I don't like this idea, the difficulty for all capital ships should be the same, especially due to the fact that we see the same capital ship model.

I don't agree with increasing the shield and hull armor, I find it fine just the way it is. Instead I agree with others who state that the cap ship's weapon loadout should be upgraded. Increasing the shield and hull armor is just going to make it take a little longer to destroy, but won't make it harder at all.

Capital ships should have a variety of weapon systems protecting the ship itself, including missiles, particle cannons and perhaps even lasers. The point is we need to make the battles harder, not stall the time it takes to destroy. This also clears any "sweet spots" that Rubber Chicken noted and encourages the player to be constantly moving while attacking.

Although this may be concerning for new players. it encourages the use of having a fleet/multiplayer co-op and creates a new challenge in defeating it (feeling more rewarding in the end). We want the capital ship to be something formidable, not an easy to kill target as we have now.

[Edited on 2-13-2013 by jeremyhak2]

[Hemlet]

I voted no to increasing the armour and shields of the capital ships because frankly they already have plenty of shields and armour, and increasing the amount of time it takes to murder one would only make them tedious.

I am on the other hand all for boosting the weapons on capital ships slightly. Slightly being the operative word there. In fact you would have to give the capital ships very little in the way of extra firepower to make them legitimately threatening. Placing laser and particle turrets over the top, bottom, sides, and especially the rear of the cap ship and slightly increasing their flak cannon range would make them a force to be reckoned with due to their sudden ability to pound away at the shields and hulls of fighters that get past the initial flak defenses.

The barrage of multiple particle and laser blasts would force players into adopting tactics that would require at least a small amount of skill before they could successfully take on a capital ship, or alternatively entice them into actually using the fleet-command feature. This would also help prevent players from simply sitting at a weak point and holding down the trigger until they won, since each former weak point would be covered at least partially by a laser and particle turret.

[Marvin]

Problem is, if you add more weapons, they will be invulnerable (the weapons, not the cap ships). In most games, you can take out the weapons ... pulling the ship's teeth, as it were.

[Rubber Chicken]

.... This would also help prevent players from simply sitting at a weak point and holding down the trigger until they won, since each former weak point would be covered at least partially by a laser and particle turret.

From all of this discussion, that would be the point I'd be most for.


I'm still for having the different Caps ship types having 'critical hit' areas, but IMO they should be well protected and possibly in places that are protected by superstructure that needs to be navigated. If you want to drop a Cap ship by 30% in one pass, you'll have to do some fancy flying to do it, and you'll surely die if you try to attack for longer than a few seconds before breaking off.

[jeremyhak2]

Problem is, if you add more weapons, they will be invulnerable (the weapons, not the cap ships). In most games, you can take out the weapons ... pulling the ship's teeth, as it were.

How will they be invulnerable? Can't we just use the current targeting system to disable the capital ship's weapons?

Once we target the ship's weapon subsystem's, after one side of the shields go down the weapons from that side of the ship will progressively become disabled (probably one by one) until all weapons become completely disabled. We repeat for the remaining sides until all weapons around the cap ship are destroyed.

From then on we can finish off the cap ship's hull and destroy it.

[Rubber Chicken]

Part of the difficulty is that the Weapon's System subtarget is just one node, and the overall hull of the ship has to sustain heavy damage to begin registering subsystem damage. If there were specific points at strategic areas, like Marvin said, and subsystem damage didn't nessecarily have the heavy hull damage as a prerequisite, it would work out rather well IMO.

[Nubarus]

In freespace games if the weapon system was destroyed the result was that the weapons are less accurate because the crew had to do the targetting manually.

If you have the ship with destroyable weapon turrets it would just increase the fun to take one on and making it more rewarding to be able to attack a capital ship with surgical strikes to created a soft spot instead of already having one by default.

If we can, like in freespace games order friendly AI like the Navy ships in the warzones and hired wingmen in single player to attack weapon turrets and ships subsystems this would eliminate the capital ship destruction from being impossible in single player mode and would create more teamwork in multiplayer mode.

I am already looking forward to seeing players online fly ship / gunner mode to take on capital ships to get an edge.

This may also be the point to decide to have capital ships opperate in battle groups instead of just 1 single ship.
If you can make this dynamic by the number of players showing up on a contract in multiplayer and on the number of hired wingmen in single player it would make it that much more epic in the end.

Give the capital ships in this game a real place in the game instead of background filling and pretty things to look at from time to time.

[Edited on 2-13-2013 by Nubarus]

[Munshine]

Problem is, if you add more weapons, they will be invulnerable (the weapons, not the cap ships). In most games, you can take out the weapons ... pulling the ship's teeth, as it were.

Just to be curious and I don't want to sound rude but is there some specific reason in the first place that there aren't some destructable elements on cap ships in Evochron since it's pretty common on most space sims ? Was it the case in previous Starwraith games ?

[Maarschalk]

The Capital ships do not have weak spots!, The weak spots only become weak spots after the Caps ship Shield and Hull is breached. You have to remember in most cases when you attack a Cap ship your in most cases not the only one attacking it. There is a Battle cruiser also attacking the Cap Ship and some times other friendlies.

1. So in a fleet Battle I agree it should be easier to take out a Cap ship, since the Cap ship might already have some damage and might be more concentrating and busy on the biggest threath the enemy battle cruiser!

2. But taking out a single Cap ship by it's self with escort by a lone pilot should not be so easy as the Cap ship and fighter escort can fully concentrate on the lone pilot!.....