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[Reshy]

Anyone else feel like trying to pilot a cruiser or capital ship is boring or ineffectual next to piloting a destroyer or frigate?  They move so slow and feel in effective next to faster more efficient destroyers and frigates.  In the campaign I pretty much never use them due to how pathetic they are.  I mean they're cool when in battle, but they're terribly inefficient when I can just put a bunch of frigates/fighters and capture all the control points before the ships could even reach the center.  It just seems like they're built to intimidate rather than be effective.  Anyone else feel like this when using them, or have you guys had better results?

[MidnightSun]

I've had much better results. I usually leave destroyers and frigates to the AI and take control of capital ships myself, since I find that the AI can micromanage frigates far better than I can and can control destroyers a bit better than me. But with capital ships, I can use them far more effectively and aggressively while simultaneously keeping the hull safe.

Play the Last Hurrah, for example. With my fighters and capital ship, I can essentially control the entire map.

Bottom line: yeah, cap ships are useless for capping points (pun intended), but that's not what you should be doing with them.

EDIT: Another note--Alex has said he's considering removing the mechanic that prevents deployment when you don't control any points, making the tactic of simply seizing all the points with frigates and fighters far less powerful.

[Trigerhappi]

Try using a Paragon with 4 Tachyon Lances. Kill frigates without shields in one shot and pretty much everything else except capital ships in about 4-5 volleys at most.

It is all playstyle. If you prefer the fast ships int he thick of it, then you will probably love the Tempest. If you like slow, lumbering long range missile support, try the Onslaught or Conquest.

[Plasmatic]

I like the Medusa myself, Fast and nimble, yet powerful enough to make any lonely cruiser tremble

[Nori]

I don't mind flying caps, but I see where you are coming from. I think the problem is cap ships are so slow and un-maneverable that the short range of their weapons (outside of the lance) makes them very hard to use...

Personally I think capital ship should have increase range over their smaller counterparts.

[Simberto]

I don't mind flying caps, but I see where you are coming from. I think the problem is cap ships are so slow and un-maneverable that the short range of their weapons (outside of the lance) makes them very hard to use...

Personally I think capital ship should have increase range over their smaller counterparts.

I agree with this. Or at least have the possibility to get it, or have large weaponry in general have a far longer range. You instantly notice the difference between a paragon with 4 tachyon lances and a different capital ship, but that might just be because that paragon is slightly overpowered. But a capital should be able to be pretty deadly to anything in it's surroundings in my opinion, and that means that it needs to outrange other ships to avoid being kited by frigates. That does not mean that it should be impossible to outmaneuver them, they can still have weaker spots vulnerable to hit and runs, but at the moment it often feels like you have an about 300° arc of weak spots where you can not kill stuff that just dances in and out while shooting at you. I think the area around a capital ship should be pretty dangerous to most ships so they can provide a pretty deadly zone around them, but of course they are still slow and the rest of the objectives would still be easy to capture for smaller ships, to then overwhelm the enemy capital with superior numbers.

The problem is that i find the pilum launchers horribly inefficient against pretty much anything. They don't even hit frigates basically ever, and everything that has shields or flak cannons is in no danger from the either. This makes the lower tech capitals completely unable to provide any fire support to anything outside of their direct vicinity. Especially when you compare them to the tachyon lances which decimate half the enemy fleet as soon as one of your fighters detects them.

This also ties in to why the "No deploy when everything captured" mechanic is completely irrelevant for this discussion. When you have captured all objective, you will still be able to field about double the fleet your enemy has, with superior speed and range from buoys, so you should really have little problems beating whatever ships they deploy in small segments.

[Nori]

Good points Simberto. I too feel that cruisers or capital ships should have a very felt and real presence and shouldn't be so easy to kite in a frigate. Increased weapon range would help a lot, maybe 25%.. Possibly 50%. One of the big issues for them is that they are so large that at least some of the range it taken up just crossing the ship, so a PD weapon can effectively have a range of 0 when the shield bubble is taken into account.

Yeah, Pilums are pretty easy to shoot down, maybe they should have increase hitpoints.. I still see ships get hit with them, mainly destroyer and up sizes, but it usually isn't too big of a deal. MIRVs are so much better though (using starfarer extended, so they have medium size MIRVs).

[Reshy]

The no deploy mechanic is important because once you achieve that you basically win if you control all the points.  Your ships move faster, field more, and have greater range at that point.


Also about range, there's a way to upgrade it, but it costs so many points that you pretty much cannot get it on anything but a paragon and still have reasonable enough fire power to justify it.  It costs 40 OP just to add the range increase which is A LOT.  Same does with a lot of the upgrades to capital ships, some are really good but most just cost too much for what little benefit they give.  45 OP for a measly 20 speed?  So that bumps my out of combat speed from 70 to 90, at the cost of a weapon and the integrated targeting unit.  It's pretty outrageous in my opinion.  If it was maybe '50' speed that might be worth it, as you make it about as fast as a destroyer.

[Simberto]

It also nearly doubles your in-combat ship. I build those things into every of my capitals, because they barely move without them. But i agree that subsystems are a bit too expensive in general. I think a good system would make you usually have 1-3 subsystems of your choice in your ships. They should not be a no-brainer, but they should also not force you to leave half your weapon slots empty. Empty weapon slots are generally not very cool, so these subsystems should conflict with flux vents and capacitators for excess capacity which should usually exist after you are filled up with weapons, and allow you to take a small amount of subsystems. I think that not filling weapon slots should almost never be a good idea.

 And you can get any subsystem you can get on a capital on smaller ships too, so you still basically have the same range as them.

And your point about the no deploy mechanic is exactly my point why it is not very relevant. If you control all of the objectives, you have won anyways. Your ships are faster, shoot further, and you have far more then the enemy, so even if they deploy the rest of their fleet a few ships at a time, you should still not have a lot of problems killing them off. Which means that it is not important if they can deploy those ships a few at a time or not, because you have already won anyways.

[Nori]

Hmm, maybe there should be a more complex OP system. You have points for weapons, points for hull mods and general points for both. That way you don't feel like you are missing out on a weapon by putting a hull mod on. Because quite honestly, most of the time the extra weapon alpha or the extra vents is worth a lot more than what hull mods provide...

Or maybe something easier would be that you get a certain amount of OP credit per ship class, that is applied towards your hull mods. For instance, lets say for a destroyer, you can get reinforced bulkheads for 15 OP, if destroyers get a 10 credit, then you could get bulkheads for 5, though any other hull mod would be full price...

Just a idea that I think would add some more variety to ships.

[icepick37]

Anyone else feel like trying to pilot a cruiser or capital ship is boring or ineffectual next to piloting a destroyer or frigate?

Boring? Sometimes. Ineffectual? Never. They are butt-kicking mission. Especially if you refit them properly.

I can just put a bunch of frigates/fighters and capture all the control points before the ships could even reach the center.

Yeah this is the real problem. Something I'm sure will get sorted. It's just too incredibly overpowered to field fast stuff and deny the big guns.

Maybe if it just slowed deployment to control all points?

[Kahabut]

I spent a long time thinking that piloting a cruiser/cap ship is boring and a waste of my time/skills.  In fact, that's still true, but now I enjoy it. 

See, I originally played this game using Medussa/ Hyperion / wolf fleets.  Nothing but those ships and maybe a tempest.  It's a lot of fun, and very challenging against the larger fleets.  But it's eventually boring.  So I upgraded to a Cruiser, and I shortly decided the speed loss wasn't worth the firepower increase.  So I went to a cap ship.  (the high tech arrow shaped one, aurora?)  I put a couple tach lances on it, and I have a grand old time destroying fighter wings and frigates. 

Now I'm using the TTmod/Gun Runners/ Starwars / Junk Pirates (all at the same time, it's a busy system).  I find the SW cap ships to be a dream come true.  Slowish, heavy, with massive flux capacity and fairly slow venting.  Even with the shields down you can take a very serious pounding and still be in the fight.  It is, in short, what I think cap ships should be aiming for in StarFarer. 

I really like the dynamic the stock game has going, what with cap ships being bad mofo's and strike craft being their obvious counterpoint.  I just would like to see cap ships be a little more... capital.  They require very serious resources to build/outfit/fly... they should require very serious firepower to be threatened. 

In the stock game, 5 wings of bombers (daggers) can take on any single capital ship in the game, and have a good chance of winning.  Those are the cheapest bombers, and they generally won't all come home.  But any chump can field 5 wings against a paragon and win.  That seems a little off if you ask me.  Now obviously this is speculation in vacuum, literally.  I say that because if the paragon has proper escorts (as they often do not), it'll eat your bombers for lunch and then come after you.  Also, a ballistic cruiser with flaks is pretty much 100% strike craft proof.  There is no energy weapon equivalent. 

[ArthropodOfDoom]

Despite how ineffective some of the capital ships seem now, they are getting a speed boost in the next update, not to mention the fact that the Odyssey is *** AMAZING. PD to the right, all-out nuclear warfare to the left. Not to mention the speed, which helps with repairing a fighter wing or two on the frontlines. Four of those babies loaded up with Assault weaponry and PD that makes a Broadsword cry, you can literally destroy anything. I want to note that in big enough numbers, I have seen Broadswords damn near vaporize an Onslaught.

[ArthropodOfDoom]

Oh and by the way, the Paragon is so OP because it will cost quite a bit to keep the beastie running when we can start traveling between systems. This means multiple Dram-class frigates when traveling between systems.

[Reshy]

Despite how ineffective some of the capital ships seem now, they are getting a speed boost in the next update, not to mention the fact that the Odyssey is *** AMAZING. PD to the right, all-out nuclear warfare to the left. Not to mention the speed, which helps with repairing a fighter wing or two on the frontlines. Four of those babies loaded up with Assault weaponry and PD that makes a Broadsword cry, you can literally destroy anything. I want to note that in big enough numbers, I have seen Broadswords damn near vaporize an Onslaught.

I wish the AI knew how to pilot the Odyssey.


Also, whenever an enemy fields a capital ship I just throw frigates/bombers/destroyers at it equipped with bomb bays.  A single bomb-bay does about 6000 damage if all hit, a paragon has only 18000 HP usually, so 4 bomb bays to an unshielded part of the ship destroys it near instantly.  Heck, a laser can be equipped easily with 5 bomb bays, that's 40,000 damage.  Sure it's a one shot deal, but who cares when it can destroy a capital ship single handedly.

In fact I made one, 3 cluster bombs, 2 standard bombs, 2 triple sabots, Augmented Engines, Stabilized Shields, Hardened Shields, and remove the flux vents since there's no flux generation on the weapons.  Or you could be boring and spam bombers and torpedo fighters at them.