I don't think anyone has tested all of the Capitals, but it just so greatly depends on the experience level and abilities chosen (even Level 1 abilities can sway battles). A Radiance with Animosity won't be that great a threat, but put that into Detonate Antimatter and suddenly it's dealing more damage and preventing whatever damage the enemy has from it's special abilities from coming to it. From what I've seen, the Radiance and the Kol seem to be the best Capital sluggers.

The Radiance can employ Detonate Antimatter in a 1 vs 1 fight, which damages the enemy Capital, drains antimatter, and disable it's abilities, all of which are great in a 1 vs 1 fight. Energy Absorptive Armor allows the Radiance to improve on the Advent's traditional weakpoint, their low armor levels (as well as gain some antimatter from being attacked). Animosity has no effect on 1 vs 1 battles. Cleansing Brilliance, at least on paper, looks very good, but it is affected by shield mitigation, and because it is not a single burst of damage (250 damage a second, for 8 seconds) the target tends to max out it's mitigation before ability is even done firing, resulting in the target often taking much less damage than it should. Cleansing Brilliance is awesome against a clustered fleet, but on a 1 vs 1 fight with mitigation and it's long cool-down, it isn't that great an asset.

The Kol can have the Gauss Rail Gun, which like Cleansing Brilliance is affected by Shield Mitigation. However, due to the very short cool down and decent damage at level 3 (some 800 before mitigation) the Gauss has the potential to do much more damage to a single target in a set period than Cleansing Brilliance, assuming the Kol has the Antimatter to do so. Adaptive Forcefield is more effective than Energy Absorptive Armor, but unlike Energy Absorptive Armor isn't passive, at high levels it can be simply chained constantly, but it does drain antimatter for each use. Flak burst would have little substantive impact on a 1 vs 1 fight, except if they both were at higher levels and deploying bombers. If it's a high level fight and the Kol has Finest Hour, that ability alone gives a substantial boost to the Kol's survivability, since Kol's with that just become very hard to kill and even harder hitting. I have no idea if Detonate Antimatter can get in the way of Finest Hour once it is cast, though.

Most of this is just "on paper" and in theory. I've never had Capitals alone slug it out without support of some kind also in the battle, and testing with an AI is impossible. If anyone would like to get on ICO and test the level 1 Capitals, 1 vs 1 with various abilities (which I expect would be very time consuming) just say so, I love this stuff...

Siege caps are the 1v1 front damage kings, battleship caps are the 1v50 kings, as they normally have 360 gun coverage.

I had 2 caps, a level 1 progenitor and a level 1 radiance, fighting a marza.
The marza forced both of them to flee. This is without ANY support units.

In the Revelation vs Marza I was going to use Reverie right before the Revelation being destroyed but I underestimated the Marza's firepower and did not make it in time.

I didn't want to use it earlier because last I tried using Reverie on a fleeing cap it did not work out at all. I just could not fire at the ship at all while Reverie was in effect. After stopping its jump 5 times, doing minimal damage between halting it I just gave up and decided to jump and chase it instead.

In a 1 on 1 Reverie would stall the fight and let the Revelation regenerate hull and shields while keeping the other cap on ice. So it would be useful but it would also make the fight a whole lot longer, being a bit impractical in a real game. That's not to say Reverie wouldn't be an amazing ability in fleet vs fleet with one cap on both sides.

It was one of the first things I discovered about TEC caps when I got the game, quite by accident. I was playing against a co worker and he was using a Kol, but wasn't using Adaptive Forcefield. My Marza mopped the floor with his Kol. Might not have if he'd been using adaptive forcefield, but the Marza's frontal arc is a dangerous thing to find yourself in front of.

The Kol is more about engaging lots of smaller ships and surviveability against those smaller ships. A level Kol with Finest Hour is nigh impossible to destroy. It's there to soak up fire and smack frigates while doing it. The Marza is all about reaching out and crushing someone as fast as possible.

You don't get a sense of what the weapon arcs are. Consider that a Marza at level 1 has pretty much the same DPS as the Kol at level 1 (in fact, IIRC, the Marza has the Kol beat by maybe 3 dps at level 1). However, a Kol's weapons are spread to fire in many directions whereas with a Marza it can fire almost all of its weapons forward.

I don't know about this.. a Siege cap totally dominating a Battleship cap just seems wrong.

The fights were not even close with the Marza having 1360 HP left after destroying a Battleship capital.

A single Marza forcing a Progenitor AND Radiance to flee sounds like a bad joke.

And the Battleship caps all having flashy front arc beam weapons is very misleading if Siege caps actually have bigger front arc DPS.

This sounds a little like a science experiment, because your fight with your opponent should never come down to cap vs. cap unless both of you destroyed the other's fleet.

If you are looking for that magic ship that wins 1 v 1, however, it's the Devastator. Every ship has weapons all around it, but the Devastator, provided the proper abilities are chosen in the right order, will beat any other cap.

It has most of it's guns in the front unlike the Kol and can sap antimatter with it's passive ability. Add in the ability to up it's own production 75%, you get the idea. The key thing that makes it win is that it saps the other caps antimatter supply, so whatever ability that other ship had is gone.

Ok now this is really turning into science. I just calculated the total DPS of the 4 level 1 caps in question.

Radiance 51.5 DPS
Kol 51.25 DPS
Revelation 47 DPS
Marza 54.5 DPS

Marza wins. And the front arc is the most important anyway for the same reason focus fire is important, to lower the DPS output of the enemy fleet or destroy a key structure faster.

Not counting abilities or levels, it looks like Marza would also wipe out a fleet of frigates faster than the actual Battleships.

I'm starting to feel like the overall DPS of capital ships and their spread deserves some more attention from Ironclad.

That's really fascinating.

As a practical matter it makes sense that the Kol and Radiance are blistering with weaponry for all sides, and the Siege Capial has it all front loaded. But aside from combating militias, how often do you bury your Capitals in an enemy fleet? So long as they're close enough they can get the side banks going, but it reduces their ability to really focus the hurt.

Does anyone want to get on ICO and see how the balance goes with higher level caps? I'm curious is the Battleships make up for it when they level up and get their meaner abilities, or if the dps and armor increases of the Bombardiers still lets them put down the Battleships...

Is it possible to "circle-strafe" the marza to avoid its frontal guns? The Kol has three banks of autocannon on its right from what I can remember so it can out-gun the marza firing broadsides. Or maybe using the Vasari Marauder which is supposed to be real fast we can circle it indefinitely and negate the marzas strong front dps, or not let it shoot at all, which would be a humiliating demise for the so called dps king.
On a different note and for extra humiliation, has anyone considered using carriers? One might hide it on the opposite side of a planet and let the other cap chase it around in circles without firing once. It might take five minutes to peck it to death with bombers but they can't scratch the carrier for all the dps in the world.
It's fun to think of what you can pull off without pesky frigates in the picture, now actual use of manoeuvres are needed to win the day like any real admiral.
carriers ftw!

I told you guys so on Marza long ago.

But it's not a balance issue. It has extremely weak side coverage and stuff.

Their dps is all about the same, it's the spread of it.
And that was a lvl 1 cap test.. Try lvl 3 kortul.
Try Mothership when it has illums+malice against marza+lrms.

Also, IIRC battleships get far more armor and dps PER LEVEL than siege caps do.


WHy does the name battleship mean it should win 1vs1 against caps?

As far as sieing goes though, the marza is hands down the best in the game. Well, aside from the evac, but for that you need to get it to level 6 and then make sure it doesn't die. And it sucks other than it's level six ability.

A marza with level 2 raze planet can crush any planet with ease. It might not seem like much but it's very effective at stealing planets from your enemy.

Sadly though TEC are currently crushed by vassari (quicker assailants, nuetral resources, a superior heavy cruiser, and subverters) and advent (best LRF, great synergies with cap ships, guardians). It is still fun to marza rush someone though.