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[BillyRueben]

First, a request: When you make a post, could your content be at least comparable to what you are quoting? It gets a little crazy when what you are quoting takes up 90% of the space of your post. If you really need to quote somthing that huge, try something like this:

...snip...

...snip...

Second, massively changing the game balance right now just isn't practical. There are so many things that we really can't take in to account yet: the logistics of fielding a large ship over a small ship, the cost of fuel, the amount of time it takes to get a capital ship, future ship hulls that specialize in taking down capital ships, enemy captain skills. Hell, later on we could have "hero" pilots that could take down capital ships with a single wing of bombers or something.

Yes, it is really easy at the moment to rofl stomp anything in the game once you have a good capital ship or two, but you can do the same thing with a lot of different fleet makeups as well.

[DJ Die]

In the state of the current game , bigger is better , and this means that once you get past a class of ship , you never use it again (atleast if you want to fight in the optimal way) and in the end you just have a few fighters sized things ( the hyperion too , which is a frigate , but that's due to the mobility.) that capture the point for the capital ships which will wreck anything smaller than them (only balanced when fighting other capital ships , and even then you win because the ai doesnt to use concentrated fire.)

There are plenty of game where the AI is able to fight the player , if you teach it to react accordingly to what the player does it would become much more competent.
Simple additions like the use of focus fire , not spreading your forces too thin would be a great start.

Yes i kwow about blitzkrieg , it was a tactic that involved  a force of tanks , artillery , infantry and aircrafts and using them in coordination for concentrated , high speed attacks meant to destabilize the enemy and prevent them from recovering. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzkrieg) It was still a tactic that involved different types of unit supporting each other. Which is not what we have currently with capital ships. (As Gaizokubanou said , it's off topic though , so please don't just throw historical comparisons around unless it is to support an argument )

except bigger IS better in this case and why shouldnt it be? sure people would invest so much resources into something so big because its a waste right?
for example my fleet almost always contains an Omen because its such a great support ship

yes there are games where the AI cheats or has some other non-human aids simple as that.....creating really smart AI now thats a different matter entirely....

its not off-topic you said throwing a lot of stuff at the enemy isnt smart and i just wanted to show you it can be if done right....

capital ships can be killed if alone but thats the point anyone having a lone capital is doing it wrong....

the only reason navies didnt/dont use capital ship only fleets is because capitals are expensive to build and run and they are only good for fighting stuff

also if you run capital only fleet its going to be so slow you wont be able to catch anything that doesnt want to fight you

and FINALLY: youre ignoring one thing this game isnt done yet once we get a complete campaign capital ships will be MUCH harder to obtain and you will most likely face much more powerful fleets at the end so they will be necessary anyway....

this is one thing i always hated about EVE Online......large ships couldnt hit the smaller one if the got too close because nothing had any kind of point defence except its own drones....well look at capital ships the wet navies have built......or hell even heavy cruisers always had secondary or even tertiary batteries against smaller ships.....

[Gaizokubanou]

Second, massively changing the game balance right now just isn't practical. There are so many things that we really can't take in to account yet: the logistics of fielding a large ship over a small ship, the cost of fuel, the amount of time it takes to get a capital ship, future ship hulls that specialize in taking down capital ships, enemy captain skills. Hell, later on we could have "hero" pilots that could take down capital ships with a single wing of bombers or something.

Yes, it is really easy at the moment to rofl stomp anything in the game once you have a good capital ship or two, but you can do the same thing with a lot of different fleet makeups as well.

Although I agree with OP's sentiment about oddity of capital ship spam's usefulness compared to more balanced fleet composition (it just trumps anything else when it comes to raw power to FP ratio), this is what I would ultimately stick by because so much of the game just isn't finished yet.

Two additional things to consider... right now fighters/bombers get almost nothing about of the character talents.  Once that is fixed (I assume it would be fixed because right now fighters/bombers are just too weak in later phase of the game) even destroyer sized carriers should be packing a whole lot more punch and could threaten capital ships with deadly wings, which would give frigates/destroyers/cruisers a clear role in defending/hunting down these vulnerable carriers.

Second is the affordability and upkeep of ships in grand scheme of things.  In a single player game, IMO it's completely ok to have an uber weapon as a 'bonus' to players as long as it comes in obscenely late into the game to not destroy the pacing of the game.  We have very little idea about how the overall campaign will pace itself out since what we got right now is really just a single bare bone system with everything tossed in it for sake of showcasing what's in the game.

@DJ Die, The idea behind battleships only made sense when big guns were the primary naval weapons and the size of the ship directly translated into bigger guns (you really couldn't mount a 16" guns on a destroyer, it would wreck the small ship's frame after few shots), which meant better range = more shooting before getting shot at.  Even during their prime, battleships were vulnerable to cheaper weapons like submarines and torpedo boats.  Then they just got completely phased out with introduction to aircraft/carriers/missiles, with one exception as a source of cost efficient naval fire support.  Nobody builds 'battleships' anymore, it's all just missile cruisers, destroyers and aircraft carriers if you can afford one.  Last remnant of capital ships that we have are supercarriers, and even those are under debate as to their practicality because while they are very useful for force projection, they are incredibly vulnerable and require entire fleet dedicated to protecting it.

We don't have that in Starsector.  Here, battleships are the best tank, best dps, and their only weakness in mobility is largely ignored by the small map size.  They don't need any escort.

its not off-topic you said throwing a lot of stuff at the enemy isnt smart and i just wanted to show you it can be if done right....

It's off topic because blitzkrieg or any other form of modern land mobile warfare is anything but throwing lot of stuff at the enemy.  It's not about "throwing a lot of stuff at the enemy... done right", it's about moving the limited resources you have in the right spot to have numerical superiority on that spot even if you actually have less numbers overall.  It's about creating local numerical superiority through mobility, achieving breakthrough (which is not done by "throwing stuff at the enemy", but rather done through careful coordination between difference branch/aspects of the military), and following that up with encirclement.  That has no relevance to the effectiveness of capital ships in this game, which if anything has more similarity to naval warfare, not ground/air.

[DJ Die]

well OP said throwing 10 wings of bombers against an unprotected capital is just spamming stuff at the enemy.....it isnt....its using the right tool for the right job in this case using amassed bomber wings against a capital ship which, while having some PD capacity, CANNOT defend itself enough to survive on its own...it just cant.....and its the same with any land or naval tactics....you wont use fewer units and hope for the best

yes missiles had the upper hand for long time but PD weapons are also improving....in Starfar....sorry Starsector we have very effective PD weapons and while missiles can be powerful and deadly they have to be used in situation that will not allow PD weapons to kill them or at least not all of them

of course they have to be protected because they are prime target for everyone main problem is carries is they operating cost which is significant despite their nuclear power....
in current environment every ship tank or plane is vulnerable because right now offensive weapons are ahead of defensive measures but thats changing as well

anyway battleship should have the best tank and DPS why else would you use one? to be an expensive paper weight? also the fleets you often fight in the current "campaign" are rather weak unless you attack SDF fleets but i highly doubt thats how it will be in the final game

It's about creating local numerical superiority through mobility, achieving breakthrough

thats still throwing stuff at the enemy the way OP put it

[Lucian Greymark]

I think a major balance fix to the game could be these steps:

Pd weapons on capital ships only exist on engine defensive mounts.

The ship you pilot on battle start does not contribute to the total fleet score.

All fleets may only have one capital ship (Including npc fleets)

This would level the playing field for almost all of the game. Hegemony fleets would be much less terrifying (Although I have 4 Oddessy class capitals in my fleet and they decimate those system defense fleets now. Auto pulse and plasma cannon ftw) Your own fleet would have access to a single capital ship that is much easier for fighters and bombers as well as missile boats to kill. Making fighter/destroyer/frigate/cruiser escorts all but mandatory. The guardian pd system should be removed and replaced with a beam that focuses on overwhelming shields quickly, 9I.e the large weapon version of the graviton beam)

Discuss:

[DJ Die]

and why exactly would you remove PDs from capital ships?

also why limit them to only one capital? capitals should be expensive as hell but not really limited in any other way except obtaining them

[ValkyriaL]

and why exactly would you remove PDs from capital ships?

also why limit them to only one capital? capitals should be expensive as hell but not really limited in any other way except obtaining them

Removing PD or even weakening it on capital ships is stupid beyond reasoning, as of now, they barely have any to begin with unless you outfit them yourself at the cost of overall firepower, if this is done however, you might as well remove capital ships, because nobody will use them, and i don't need to explain why, its rather obvious.

Limit capital ships will be done anyway later in the game because they will be near impossible to acquire due to the state of the sector, limiting them by numbers however makes no sense at all.

[Gaizokubanou]

well OP said throwing 10 wings of bombers against an unprotected capital is just spamming stuff at the enemy.....it isnt....its using the right tool for the right job in this case using amassed bomber wings against a capital ship which, while having some PD capacity, CANNOT defend itself enough to survive on its own...it just cant.....and its the same with any land or naval tactics....you wont use fewer units and hope for the best

Throw 10 wings against level 1 captain on default loadout, sure.  Throw 10 wings against custom variant (no I'm not talking about spamming PD, just something more refined and focused than default variants which just tends to have awful weapons) with integrated targeting and those 10 wings are toasts and the funny thing is, those 10 wings would've costed 2x the value of Onslaught in FP.  I want to emphasize this because I see no problems with default setting capital ship on lvl 1 character.  Where I see the issue is just how much better capital ships scale with modifications and character traits than anything else in game.  This is why I haven't sided with OP on making any changes yet because I believe Alex will buff fighters and bombers through character talent, mainly the command section because right now fighter/bomber buffs are so rare and fleet/command talents are overall lacking compared to combat and engineering.

in current environment every ship tank or plane is vulnerable because right now offensive weapons are ahead of defensive measures but thats changing as well

It was always easier to kill/destroy than protect.  It always will be because action > reaction.  And you are forgetting the strategic weapons, which are just decades, if not centuries ahead of any defensive tools we have right now or will have in near future.  But this is so damn off topic so if you want to discuss this I say we take this over to PM or create another topic in discussion section.

anyway battleship should have the best tank and DPS why else would you use one? to be an expensive paper weight? also the fleets you often fight in the current "campaign" are rather weak unless you attack SDF fleets but i highly doubt thats how it will be in the final game

Ok let me put it this way, it's exponentially better in tanking and dishing out damaging than anything else.  Capital ships in this game just scale too well with character talents and hull mods because with certain buffs they reach a threshold where no similar cost combination of lesser ships (minus something like player controlled hyperion) can match them because in order for smaller ships to match its firepower, the number of smaller ships would be too many and ends up being bottle necked and taken apart piece by piece by the capital ship.  But this is very much unfinished aspect of the game so again, I'm sticking to "let's wait and observe" camp.

Even though it's absurd that I can take a single Onslaught and wipe out carrier fleets that are 2 ~ 4 times in FP value all day long with most "skilled" use afterburner (I just press it until I get in range)

It's about creating local numerical superiority through mobility, achieving breakthrough

thats still throwing stuff at the enemy the way OP put it

Not really, since that maneuver of achieving numerical superiority through mobility isn't done in some hapless method of "throwing stuff at the enemy" because enemy can also "throw lot of stuff" at you.  There is planning and complicated resource management required to attempt such breakthrough.  Also I don't see where OP talked about "throwing stuff at the enemy".  I only see where you started to use that phrase.  And once again, off topic, let's take this particular segment of dicussion elsewhere.

[Histidine]

No offense intended (and I know words are cheap, but I really don't want to start a flame war or anything), but what's with the obviously nonsensical statements and stacked comparisons in this thread? o_O

yeah against 3 dominators the onslaught doesn't have a chance

That's... 45 FP of Dominators to the Onslaught's 20 FP. I could get a second Onslaught and a frigate for that difference!

Removal of PD reduces the defensive capabilities of a capship to it's armour and shields, neither of which are useful to them as they are so slow.

What... what makes you think armor and shields are not useful to slow ships? Especially when fast ships can rely on evasion in place of armor/shields and slow ships can't?

No they can't, a cruiser can stand up very well to a capital and even kill it

Which vanilla cruiser can beat a vanilla capital in a one-on-one?

a destroyer with strike weapons can turn a overloaded capital in to a pile of scraps in seconds

It's going to take more than a couple of Reaper hits or a few shots from a Heavy Blaster/Plasma Cannon to get through a typical capital's armor and inflict significant hull damage (anything smaller isn't even worth mentioning in the vast majority of cases). Not to mention you need something to get the capital to overload in the first place...

and you are only given enough objectives to deploy max 2 - 3 capital ships overall, which will easily be destroyer by the massive number of fighters/frigates/destroyers and missiles coming their way at the same deployment cost.

... really?

We've all played Forlorn Hope, yes? We all know that unless you screw up by the numbers, there's exactly one ship in the massive opposing fleet (160 FP, not counting the Onslaught or Condors) that actually poses a threat to your Paragon, yes?
To be sure, none of the enemy ships are optimized for the strike role (though neither is the Paragon for the antiswarm role) the Paragon's 360° omni shield and Fortress Shield system make it particularly well suited to dealing with such a situation. Still, in the hands of any competent player it swats everything smaller than itself out of the way without even breaking a sweat.

Now, in the interest of fairness, I'd like to point out that small ships do have something else going for them besides everything already discussed: the granularity of the current deployment system. One Hammerhead or Medusa (10-11 FP) is a capable fighter; half an Onslaught for the same FP cost, well, does nothing.

Anyway, I guess BillyRueben's post kind of settles it:

...massively changing the game balance right now just isn't practical. There are so many things that we really can't take in to account yet: the logistics of fielding a large ship over a small ship, the cost of fuel, the amount of time it takes to get a capital ship, future ship hulls that specialize in taking down capital ships, enemy captain skills. Hell, later on we could have "hero" pilots that could take down capital ships with a single wing of bombers or something.

[DJ Die]

ok so youre a shipbuilder and youre going to build a capital ship....and to be fair youre going to built it without PD so bombers have chance......yeah right  

its not just about FP in the final game getting 2 Onslaughts is probably going to be much harder than getting 3 Dominators

and hes right you dont want to get by missiles too often because even if you have shields its going to drain your flux....if you dont have shields youre taking dmg you cant regenerate during the fight and that might kill you later...

i just got hit by a reaper fired by my own hyperion because the fool missed his target....and boy did it hurt my capital ship....now imagine all youd have to do was to arm all your frigates with torpedoes because large ships just dont defend themselves.....

[Lucian Greymark]

*Shrug* at the moment a single Oddessy can decimate every fighter and bomber the simulator can throw at it if you fill all of it's small energy turrets with burst pd lasers. I personally think that that is a bit op.

[Gothars]

What does "remove PD" mean? There are no special PD mounts. There is now way to forbid PD on capital ships without messing up the whole refit system.

First, a request: When you make a post, could your content be at least comparable to what you are quoting? It gets a little crazy when what you are quoting takes up 90% of the space of your post.

I endorse this message.

[Lucian Greymark]

You have a good point there :/

[Dr. Death[Lexx]]

You are missing the point here...speaking tactically, you will never send fighters and bombers alone onto a paragon, onslaught or conquest because you know for sure that they will be decimated if not being supported by other, larger ships that you will send onto the cap ship beforehand to distract it, tank some damage...at this point you will send in your bombers and other fighters in to possibly lock down and overwhelm any cap ship. Its logical that sending some bomber or torpedo wings alone will result in their termination.

[harrumph]

Which vanilla cruiser can beat a vanilla capital in a one-on-one?

AI vs. AI? An Aurora or Apogee (perhaps a Falcon or Eagle, depending on loadout) can probably beat a Conquest, maybe an Odyssey too. In the player's hands, pretty much anything goes.

But one-on-one isn't really a sensible way to think about this stuff. The Onslaught is an absolute monster on-one-on, but it's quite vulnerable to being flanked. Nav buoy bonuses and the zero-flux engine boost do allow capitals to move around at great speed, but they require smaller ships to take and defend those buoys and keep harassers from slowing them down. It takes a battleship a long, long time to kill just a couple Tempests or phase frigates—and, of course, three high-tech frigates can take (and defend) three buoys before an Onslaught or Paragon can take one.

I expect that with the metagame in place, it'll be much more difficult to obtain and maintain capital ships—for the latter, you'll need to spend FP on tankers and freighters. If it's very difficult, expensive, and time-consuming to repair them, too, that'll be an important weakness.