I still don't see how this is relevant.

Some people (the OP) seemed to have the impression that frigates are tiny and frail. The point of the Star Wars comparison is more to give an appropriate sense of scale since everyone is familiar with it.

Just look at the weapon loadouts for the capital ships. For the most part they are the SAME guns that can be found on cruisers and frigates, just more of them or as a "heavy" version but fewer.
Tell that to the capital ships that have abilities for just that, and have "Support" listed as a primary role.
And also "...get the job done... are designed for heavy combat against enemy fleets."

"Instrumental" means it played a critical role, "capable" would mean that it could do it singlehandedly. Abilities like Finest Hour and Flak Burst can definitely be instrumental in winning a battle in-game. Also, the capital ships that DO have more advanced weapons have them as special abilities (like the gauss rail gun for the Kol.)

This is a flawed test.

It costs 3000 + 400 + 250 for 1 Kol Battleship, and only 300 + 55 for one Cobalt Frigate. So you really should be comparing the kill time of 10 or 11 Cobalts against that of one Kol, at least if your goal is to compare only kill times. The actual value of each is another matter all together. How many Cobalts does it take to kill a Kol? How many should it take based on resource cost? How does replacement cost of Cobalts factor into these numbers?

It is way more complicated than simple kill times.

Well after observing a bit more I think shield mitigation is the problem, especially for the main battleships of each race. These capital ships can often only focus its main guns on a single target and this easily maxes out the mitigation, making these ships weaker than they probably should be. So I think capital ships just need to contribute less to shield mitigation or simply ignore a fairly large portion of it.

As I mentioned in another thread... one way to change the game's focus on encouraging focus fire might be to remove mitigation and replace it with a critical hit system. I finished that for my own mod and it makes capital ships feel quite substantial. (hit the shields, they're fine, hit the hull, they might have a critical problem).

Without mitigation, and with powerful capital ships, they can definitely hurt other ships seriously, but can still be overwhelmed by superior numbers... the 'death of a thousand cuts'.

As an experiment you might try cutting mitigation out from your own games... if you make the increase rate zero and leave every ship with 15% mitigation, mitigation will simply act like extra armor and its effects on combat can be ignored. It certainly does change the game dynamic. Removing it is one way I was able to truly understand its effects on the combat and game balance.. I'd suggest trying it as an experiment of your own.

I can understand why the devs put it in, as combat can be *too* quick without it. It's not terribly fun to have ships pop like homeworld 2 frigates (the other extreme) when you're also busy managing an empire. To each his own. (Personally, I thought homeworld 1 frigates were a great middle ground between HW2 and Sins...)

Hi,

I have a question about levelling Capital Ships, perhaps I misread but it seems you can buy levels for Capital Ships besides the fact they gain experience when fighting.
Is it possible and where in the interface is this function?

Thanks a lot.

dual post.. srry ()()()

Alizeankryl:

this option can be found at the bottom left of the ability-pick screen
(the spot where u pick an ability when a capital levels up)

carefull tough.... its expensive.... just bringing him to level 2 cost 1250 credits
(not worth at start. but o.k. if ure a capital masser..... then again... if ure a capital masser take advent
(free exp 2 trainable level every 5 seconds or so tech.... geez what a word)

Thanks a lot Shadow_of_Light, I will have closer look even if I did look everywhere on the interface. It is a button I presume?

Thank you! Finally, someone who supports my idea. I made that same point about critical hits in reply #93. It's just realistic to figure in a possibility (base .5% and upgradable through tech/levels, or something like that) that a hit will be critical, doing more damage, and possibly knock out a weapon (lowering damage potential on that side), the antimatter containment (erasing a portion of the antimatter charge immediately, or slowing recharge), the engines (slowing the ship or even stoping it), etc. Heck, even Hegemonia: Legion of Iron had that feature.



Yup, a couple of us have mentioned stuff like that. I personally questioned the part where you don't do any research to aquire any cap ships. I agree that big gaps shouldn't be map between Frigates and Cap Ships, but Cap Ships should be researched, and the first one shouldn't be free. If anything, it should be more expensive. Actually the first ship of each class should be more expensive, since it takes time and money to lay down blueprints, prepare a supply train to get building materials, and to gather up and train the people to build the ship. After the first one is built, you just reactivate and reopen building slips to build more of that first ship of it's class. It's just realistic.

And I agree with your comment on hit chance. Missiles, even though they are under power and can aim themselves at a ship, can be stopped by passive and active defenses. ECM to trick a missile's "brain," decoy's to lure them away from a ship, and active counter missile weapons, like specialized short range interceptor missles, fast firing lasers or autocannon. And Solid shot or Energy weapons have to be aimed. Even though they don't have to deal with gravity or friction in space, they do have to deal with Recoil, which can effect aim, more so with distance. Also, space dust and debris can possibly block, weaken, or deflect shots before they reach the target. So, really, when you get down to it, that average damage shown on the ship info card is just the damage that can be caused by what shots actually hit the enemy. Of course, that damage potential needs to go up all around, including critical damage, the closer ships are to each other, for obvious reasons. Also, I think ships should naturally try to move closer to each other in a fight, for that same reason, instead of shooting at extreme range for their lowest range weapons.

Solaron, you can find details about how I implemented my critical system in this combat strategy thread: https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/305414 (it depends on damage received rather than outgoing shots, thus taking into account weapon vs. armor types; more damaging weapons are more likely to cause criticals) (In addition I also removed hero capital ships and placed them up the tech tree as normal researchable ships, without leveling/xp/etc)

(ot: re: shield balance: I removed shields from all vasari ships, all tec ships except capitals, and all advent ships and buildings have them.. so I'm ruining the existing balance anyway. )

In terms of hit chance, I experimented with a lower chance to hit (50% etc), but the main problem is that the shot displays the graphics of hitting but it does not cause any damage. Perhaps this is acceptable at a 20% or 100% level: the shots hit but fail to cause damage to the shields or hull. But when half the shots show the graphics of the ship taking damage but it's literally hit or miss whether the shot actually hits the hull and causes damage... I think it makes the game feel kludgy. It makes the game feel weak when half the time a capital ship's beams hit, but no damage is caused. I don't think chance to hit will improve cap v. ship balance.

I wish chance to hit had some bearing on distance to target as well. Gah. Technically, with buffs, you could have a different chance to hit depending on the weapon class itself, though this wouldn't take into consideration range... There might even be a way to make some classes more likely to be hit by different types of weapons, but this is abstracted in the armor vs. damage system as a damage percent system anyway. I don't know if it would add too much to capital ship combat besides uncertainty of whether your shots will hit (and without an effect to show the difference between a miss or a hit).


As was suggested in the combat strategy thread, I made each ships deceleration equal to its acceleration both linearly and angularly. This has a HUGE impact on how the game plays with capital ships, as they can no longer decelerate or change direction 'on a dime'. The game's normal values were 5:1 for deceleration (100 acceleration 500 deceleration), and 10 to 1 or so for turning (turn in one direction at 1 or 2, decelerate from turning at 9.99). The ships in the game are smart enough to start braking early to reach their destination. It's absurd that a ship can decelerate faster than it can accelerate, and I think this contributes to the clunky feel of capital ships. With the values equalized they feel much larger and massive, and maneuver becomes slightly more important (Once a really big ship commits to a turn it's hard to change direction). Of course, with weak capital ships, this would be a huge disadvantage, but with a subtle increase in power the balance feels restored (capital ships are slow to accelerate and change direction, but when they bring weapons to bear they cause some major hurt).

I can understand why the devs made deceleration faster, to make ships more responsive, but I really prefer the equalized values.

I think the idea is that if any of these races were to establish a new colony, it would not be done without some sort of capital ship being used as an escort to oversee the operation. Thus, the first capital ship is free. You could justify having to research different capital ships either way. Either the colonies got info on the other colonies and their respective capital ships, or they didn't . But if you had to research different types of capital ships, realistically the cost associated with the unique advanced technologies present on them would have to be VERY high.

Isn't that what the whole process of researching is for? The TEC even call them prototypes.

Even now fighting vehicles can effectively deal with recoil to make their shots consistently hit where they want. With technology as advanced as it is in-game (and the fact that it's in a vacuum) it would have even less of an impact. Energy weapons don't have to deal with recoil at all.

Thats why there IS some miss chance, and some locations lower your hit chance for exactly that reason. Theres absolutely no reason that a capital ship should have a harder time hitting a frigate than a frigate should have hitting a frigate as long as the weapon is able to engage the target.

The reasons aren't really that obvious. Since this is in a vacuum ballistic weapons will retain their energy over the length of their path, meaning the damage/penetration power will be equal for any distance at which your sensors are able to accurately pick up the target and calculate the aiming parameters. Energy weapons obviously aren't ballistic weapons so that doesn't apply to them, but again the presence of a vacuum means you don't need to deal with the effects of heating the air (although I think plasma weapons are basically like water balloons.)