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[writeru]

No need to even create a new skill, just take one of the existing industry skills and add a elite version where the supply cost of capitals is halved. This could make capitals more interesting option in this meta.

I can suggest other ways to make it:


-Just halves the cost by 50%

-Halves the cost by 25% for each S mod on the capital (great synergy with tech skill tree, letting you have up to 75% discount on capital supplies.


All above options already synergize well with the industry skills.


-Instead of supply discount give DP discounts, make capitals cost 10 less (now the much more useless altas mk2 turn even more interesting)

[Megas]

How does this affect combat?  Your capitals may become cheaper to maintain, but does nothing to actual combat performance.

Capitals' problems are mostly in the combat layer, where they are hurt most by the new skills and new objectives/DP system.

[SCC]

Alternatively, Wolfpack Tactics and possibly other frigate-centric buffs might get nerfed instead. WT could be changed to give a maximum of +100% PPT and +20% damage against other ship sizes for ships of DP 4. A Lasher would get 100% of these buffs (double PPT and 20% more damage), a Tempest would get a half (+50% PPT, +10% dmg), a Hyperion would get just 27% (+27% PPT, +5,4% damage) and so on.
Failing that, it wouldn't hurt to bump the Hyperion from a frigate to a destroyer.

[writeru]

How does this affect combat?  Your capitals may become cheaper to maintain, but does nothing to actual combat performance.

Capitals' problems are mostly in the combat layer, where they are hurt most by the new skills and new objectives/DP system.

My reasoning is that capitals are already pretty poweful (there are the "bad ones and its's enthusiasts, but anyway...) making them marginally more powerful will not be the deciding factor here. The thing is that with relevant skills frigates get (making up a number here, it's just a example) 80% better in combat, the cost benefit of using frigates will always trump using capitals, because even if capitals were made 80% better it's still pricier to use and field them. So making capitals more powerful is not the answer.

However by making capitals much cheaper with certain skills, players will start to think about fielding more capitals. For many players money efficiency trumps battle efficiency. Even if they could, they wouldn't run a extremely pricy but powerful fleet, making capitals much cheaper will encourage adding them to fleets again, together with frigates.


But one of the alternatives I proposed was a skill that makes capitals cheaper to deploy, they are already pretty powerful, making them cheaper might be the answer, suddenly it might be worthy to field a onslaught if it's just 30 DP. (Edit: could be even a -20 OVERALL discount  to deploy FOR FLEET, so you want to run around using a single capital it can get extremely cheap, or maybe you did some math and it's more worthy to field 2 capitals for 30, or field an atlas mk2 free, etc)



OR IDK, maybe make the player flagships gain certains bonuses if it's capital, so it encourages piloting capitals again.

[Thaago]

It is true: at present capitals do just fine, but frigates also do just fine or even better with the high performance ones, while having a fraction of the logistics cost and higher speed.

[Arcagnello]

It is true: at present capitals do just fine, but frigates also do just fine or even better with the high performance ones, while having a fraction of the logistics cost and higher speed.

I don't think reducing supply cost solves anything really. You can make capitals as cheap to run as you want but you'll still want superfrigades endgame if the grossly obese ships still hit like a wet noodle by comparison and are made of molasse to frigades that do well above 100% extra damage to them in some cases.

I think the problem lies in both the current officer skills buffing damage over durability making glass cannons (i.e. Frigates and Destroyers) more useful than capitals and the fact Wolfpack tactics exist.

Personally speaking, nerfing the buffs Wolfpack Tactics applies to frigades with officers but also extend the buffs to non-officered frigades AND Destroyers would fix a lot of things.

As for the Hyperion, It could become a destroyer but that'd also require a PPT increase. I'll agree the Hyperion (especially when Overridden) is too much of a battlefield god but having a 120 Peak Performance Time Destroyer is not the way to fix it.

I mean, before we even mention ship class changes, bumping it up to 20 Deployment Points could make people consider actually picking other, officered endgame frigades/destroyers for a change; not to mention being the same DP as the Harbinger, therefore making the player choose between raw, uncensored bloody murder or a very powerful utility vehicle allowing other ships to do more damage.

[AcaMetis]

If it's necessary I think a better solution would be to introduce/put more focus on the kinds of fights that frigates, by default, are simply not suited for. For example my fleet of fifteen triple s-modded Tempests/Omens/Beta Glimmers have a hell of a time trying to break through a Pather Battlestation, and if there's even a small Pather fleet that joins the battle I need Hardened Subsystems to not run out of PPT (this with WPT, Reliability Engineering on everyone, etc.) before the station is taken down. I've yet to try a Star Fortress, let stand an Alpha Cored one (not that you can fight one of those in vanilla as far as I know, and not that I'd ever try), but I imagine the results wouldn't be as pretty as they would be if I took some Paragons and Eagles instead.

(Alternatively I'm a horrible commander and have no idea what I'm doing, but I prefer to believe that there simply are some fights that frigates are less suited for than larger ships.)

Another option would be fights against very large/multiple fleets at once, since those would run down the PPT of a Frigate even if it's focussed on it, but given that the whole PPT mechanic was added to avoid excessively long fights in the first place that would be a somewhat backwards way to solve a completely different problem...

[Thaago]

Right, frigates are really bad against stations compared to larger ships. Its not that they can't win, its that they tend to need a heck of a lot more forces to fight the same threat. Rewards like 50k for a 2 module pirate station are quite reasonable for destroyers as thats the kind of fight where you need 2 of them, maybe 1 with a bit of frigate support if its a good destroyer. I did the same fight with 3 tempests + 3 other lower performance frigs, with officers and wolfpack, and it took forever and lost me one of the worse ships. For pather battlestations, thats the kind of thing that a single Paragon or an Onslaught + Dominator buddy can just roll up and pop.

Boosted frigate swarms are amazing for taking out small and medium enemies though - watching a pair of tempests race across the map and pounce on isolated ships one after the other is wonderful.

[Megas]

Harbinger with high combat is no slouch.  It cannot cheese like Doom, and fighters give it a hard time, but with combat skills, it can do some sick things.

Hyperion is a royal pain to use.  In order to teleport and use three guns without overloading, it needs Safety Override.  Its PPT without Safety Override is annoyingly short, but even worse with Safety Override.  I consider Safety Override mandatory on Hyperion just so that it is not a pain to control.  Unfortunately, Hyperion needs all of the PPT boosts which include (UGH!) Wolfpack Tactics, which I cannot get if I go for a Combat/Tech/Industry build.

If Hyperion costs 20 DP, I would never use it.  Then again, I do not think I would use it as it is unless I have Wolfpack Tactics.  Its PPT is way too short.

Making capitals cheaper to deploy could be useful.  The player deploys three or four capitals, and... that's it because he hit DP budget, and three normal battleships would be ripped apart.

Personally speaking, nerfing the buffs Wolfpack Tactics applies to frigades with officers but also extend the buffs to non-officered frigades AND Destroyers would fix a lot of things.

Only if player takes the skill.  It would be nice if Wolfpack Tactics was not required to make frigates useful.  Right now, I do not take Wolfpack Tactics because I do not want to give up Industry (or Combat 4 and 5).  This is why I really dislike the frigate meta.  I am punished for not taking Wolfpack Tactics, or at least I would be punished if I did not exploit Doom cheese.

I would sooner quit playing the game than force myself to take Leadership skills I need instead of other more fun skills I want.

[Arcagnello]

Personally speaking, nerfing the buffs Wolfpack Tactics applies to frigades with officers but also extend the buffs to non-officered frigades AND Destroyers would fix a lot of things.

Only if player takes the skill.  It would be nice if Wolfpack Tactics was not required to make frigates useful.  Right now, I do not take Wolfpack Tactics because I do not want to give up Industry (or Combat 4 and 5).  This is why I really dislike the frigate meta.  I am punished for not taking Wolfpack Tactics, or at least I would be punished if I did not exploit Doom cheese.

I would sooner quit playing the game than force myself to take Leadership skills I need instead of other more fun skills I want.

The fact wolfpack tactics is the only door to access Frigade Nirvana is, in itself, a problem.

It seems we have almost opposite way to play by the way, I think I've never seriously invested in a single point of either combat or industry, aside from the easy, occasional "Bulk Transport" pick.

Having to choose is the name of the game of the new skill tree, but only taking 5 Combat skills being worth a third of your total skill points is rather controversial.

I'd be an avvocate for skills costing different amounts of skill points while of course adding more skill points overall and tonig down some...admittedly ridicolous skills (or just making them cost more than the one skill point).