Is it Just Me or Are the Combat Cap Ships Dumb?

Yeah, basically. I lean more and more towards this over time. Only early on in the game are cap ships really useful for straight up fire-power. Overall, their function is to boost the fleet. The Kol's Flak ability is actually awesome; it will simply wipe out strike craft when maxed. But it's other abilities are more situational, which is why most people lean towards the Sova, Dunov, or Akken first. The Marza, likewise, is simply a BFG in space, but it's probably not the most tactical ship, and generally is saved for large assault fleets (it's ability to severely damage planets quickly is nice).

And yes, there is a reason that the Jarasul, the Vasari "Space Egg", is one of the most loved cap ships on this board.

Don't insult the Kol too much; I have used it to great effect on many occasions as a combat ship.  It's shield regeneration combined with repair centers or Hoshikos can allow it to take a truly impressive ammount of damage before dying -- I remember one game (pre 1.1 when carriers were buffed!) where I effectively stalemated my opponent by defending with a Kol (to 'tank') and a number of carriers (to actually kill his LRM/light frigates) while my team mate and I built up for the 'telling blow'.

Now, I'm not trying to bash the defensive power of the Kol, but how did you manage to hold fire on this one ship? I don't MP, and I probably wouldn't be great at it, but even I would have quickly skirted around it.

Useful cap ship list

Advent

Radience: Eat antimatter, taunt fleet (force focuse fire on itself, useful when you want to save something), more armor and last but not least - cleansing briliance.

This ship is thoug, somewhat obsoleat, comparing the usefulnes of other advent ships.

Progenitor: Colonise, shield regen. Most useful advent ship ever. I  usualy got 3 or more of these in my end MP game fleet. Constantly pumpping shields into the guardians, keping ships alive.

Halycon: one of the second most useful fleet ship. This is ship that i also get 3 or more at the late game. Its ability to repell fighters while damaging them and passive RoF for all energy based wepons, incuding planet bombing, makes it must have fleet ship.

Rapture: Good to have ship lategame. It'sabilities are somewhat useless untill you get massive ball rolling.

The vengeance is still somewhat nexst to useless ability that i use only when i got nothing beter to do. The vertigo is however must have when fghting toe to toe with fleet the size of yours or bigger. Its not so grate when the forces are small, but in 100+ ship swarm, 30%- to accuracy and RoF is the thing that will win you the fights.

The capture ship ability is actualy useful now, since carriers are worth spending antimatter on to caputre.

Also, the passive damagebuff aura for strike crafts is sexy.

Vasari got the egg and marauder, but other than them, i find it rarely useful to go caps over fleet.

The TEC have tha ability to runn Dunnov/Marza battleball that constantly pumps the shields to caps. And marzas on lvl 6 are realy nasty flet killers. But the inability to benefit the rest of the fleet makes it hard to use.

In short, nothing can realy compare to the advent capital fleet.

Capital ships are nothing more than expensive, big, slow targets. They're good for nothing besides clearing out planets to colonize and drawing fire from the enemy fleet before retreating. They're just too expensive, for the same amount of money you can make frigates and cruisers that dish out and take 10X as much punishment. I never make a second one after getting my original for free.

Well, except maybe the Radiance, I find combat caps questionable (each race has one) but some special abilities are too much benefit for a fleet to ignore. When you consider the amount of resources that an Advent drone cruiser costs, the Halcyon Carrier with the ability to ultimately carry a lot more strike craft, bring some decent attack power of its own to the field, boost the ROF of your entire fleet, and push enemy fighter craft out of the way while doing massive damage to all of them at once in a wide radius, seems like a bargain, even if you factor in the extra research/infrastructure cost.

When they tried to take out the carriers, the carriers would just jump out -- leaving the Kol and other planetary defenses.  When they turned around and came back, in came the carriers...

Im not a 100% sure, but I think the Kol has the highest armor out of any ship in game. Please dont quote me yet Ive only had it a short time but Ive maxed the armor upgrades and lvled it to 10 and I have a very strong ship. Not unstopple, but a great addtion to my fleet.

Yes they are big slow expensive targets. Any Cap ship by itself will lose to any average/small frigate fleet. Caps are ment to agument your frigates and cruisers. As exampled above, Kol are can be crazy damage absobers. Carriers are ment to add unique fighter/bomber to the mix. Example: Sova has heavy Fighters. Helps with DPS and give bomber/fighters better chance surviving more than 1 or 2 runs. You can argue back and forth about how good or bad the unit or Cap ship is by itself. No ship was made to be great at everything. Its all about how you use them.

At +.45 armor per level, it's got the highest level gain, as well as a base of 5 which is also the highest for any cap ship.  So yeah, it's got the most armor.  Add in its shield ability for extra mitigation, it's highest HP/SP combination, a reasonably high forward firepower, and it's level 6 ability (AOE, enhanced repair, and extra AM regen), and it's a monster of a vessel in combat.  It's gauss cannon isn't half bad, either -- its a bit of an AM hog, but if you have the AM (say because of the level 6 ability...) its short cooldown is devestating.

Edit:  www.clansofsin.com -- they have the ship stats there.

When playing competitive games online, unless the game goes VERY long, the person who spends money on a second capital ship will almost always lose to the person who used that money for more frigates and cruisers. I wish it weren't the case, but it's true.

I've yet to see a game like that...

Advent is the only raece, where you can afford the luxury of  going 6+ caps and still win fights.

The illuminators as core, makes advent dish more damage even with uneven odds. And ability to remove nearlt 44% of enemy damage by applying vertigo, among other stuff, makes advent fleet with cap/illu/guardian backbone nothing to laught at.

But, it take intence miro to do. If you are not confident in your skills, then going 100 illus and assorted 20+++ load of aeras will work out beter than going 40 illus,6 aeras, 15 guardians, 10 dominas and 6 or more caps (usualy 3 prog 3 halcyons)

Ah, well here I can see where you're coming from. I mostly play huge map games vs the AI as I can't afford the addiction of multiplayer right now. On a larger medium map though, I definitely think it could be worth your while.

I'm not trying to be a jerk here but which frigates and cruiser combos can this be done with for 3000/400/250? Especially considering Caps can be built in about 65 secs (on normal build times) and cost 50 fleet space? What ships give you that much firepower and/or defense?

I understand your point and have used that tactic many times against the AI (i don't play against people, only teamed with them against AI) but i wouldn't consider the cap ship to be "too expensive". I think them of a part of the puzzle towards a well balanced fleet.

dont forgt the stupid cap slot cost.

Add that and suddently you can double that cap cost :/

let say it this way, i am generaly player that favor caps allot, even in multiplayer.

Many peple dont know or dont bother with them, since its easier to swarm. But i can say i happen to know much abaut cap fighting since ive been using them in MP since early times. Hell, even got the go big or go home from MP...

Agreed, and there's a reason for this. A typical WWII battleship by itself would probably lose to a small swarm of torpedo boats who could aim half decent, or at least be crippled by them. However, only an idiot would send an extremely expensive captial ship out on its own like that. The only one I can think of is the Szent Istvan, and perhaps Bismarck.

Which is why you make sure they have at least two destroyers screening them. The can form a barrier that should stop or at least interfere with the torpedo run, allowing your battlehship's big guns to takeout pretty much anything it can hit at a much safer range. The reason that this doesn't work in Sins is A. Their are alot more firgates and cruisers And B. Ships really can't block each others movement at all, meaning if your opponents decides to send all of his cobalts in massive blob towards your precious Kol or Sova, your escorting frigates can't stop a single one from getting into range (unless you have guardians). Thus, the caps not extremely great firepower advantage is mostly wasted, which makes the abilities by far the most important thing.

Actualy, WW2 BB's like iowa and yamato can prettymuch take anything you can dish at them from surface, and then ask more.

The point was, they were wounerable to submarines and airplanes, not lightr surface floatters.

So By WW2 logick, Kol shuld rape all things that are smaller. And die only to bombers

Gunfire wise probably, but no vessel to this day has developed a hull strong enough to take a ton of torpedo hits. (Musashi holds the record with 20, but she was probably disabled well before that.) By the logic of conventional sins tactics that resources are better spent on small ships, if you had the equivalent of $2 billion today's dollars, you would be able to buy one Iowa class or well over a 100 PT boats. PT's get the Iowa in visual, and then its all over. Submarines and airplanes were the main threat because they could get closer easier as they could sort of bypass the escorts the battleship had. (of course, buying 2 billion in either airplanes or submarines should also be enough to sink a battleship on its own also.)

The problem that today we got smart wepons, back then we didint.

BB iowa was wepon at age where men were the controll system.

Nowdays, few antiship cruisemissiles make a short work of allmost any floating vessel.

The problem with big expensive ships is that they cant be in many plases at one time, but are hard to remove from the one plase even by lots of small ships back then.

get it ?

We can argue all we want about if battleships in the days of olde were effective tanks, but the thing is they always had escort fleets. Alone a battleship will not stand a chance against a sub, bombers, PT boats, ect. PT boats alone will not stand against fighters, other PT boats, ect. Subs alone will not stand against destroyers. The thing is a mixed fleet brings out the best of each class while minimising their weaknesses. We should implement this into Sins.

What if it were possible for ships to get "caught in the crossfire?" What if my Enforcers at the front of the fleet could take hits for my caps, like gigantic metal bodyguards? This would let your fleet take less damage while letting your other ships concentrate on killing the enemy agaisnt which they are the most effective.

I always build a combat cap. Its not my first but it definitely isnt my last. Whenever I assault a heavily defended planet, thats the first ship in to draw aggro. All combat caps have abilities which grant them improved survivablilty. There is more to the game than hull/shield points, Cool Jets. I dare you to find any combination of frigates that takes up only 50 supply that can take the same beating and dish the same damage of a high level Kol, Kortul, or Radiance. I agree at lower levels they are not great bargains, but thats whats great about them. They get better as time goes on.

Anything can be good if you're just playing the retardo AI. Play against real people and your Cap ships will get focused on and killed, or you'll be foreced to retreat them before the cooldown on your first set of abilities is even over. In 1.05 it was LRM's and now in 1.1 it's bombers that will just tear them to pieces while your fleet tries to chase down the carriers that are circling the grav well.

Blowing up my Kortul will take longer than blowing up 4 Enforcers. For the fleet supply they take up they are good at getting beat up. Caps have different purposes. Some heal your fleet, some increase damage, some wreak havok with the enemy, and combat ships take attention away from the rest of your fleet. So by you focusing on my combat cap it has served its purpose, the longer you shoot at it the more damage I do to your preoccupied ships.

Combat caps are more meat shields than anything. I do play on ICO, and thats a good place to have good caps. Phasing into the enemy's heartland and eating his worlds provides a humgeous resource boost and guess what? You need 2 caps to do it!

True, but to get anything above a scout, colonizer and a light frig, you need to build military research stations (IF your planets has the available slots, if not you're spending more cash) then spend more to research the ship you want. Plus, lose any of those stations an you have the possiblilty to lose the ability to build those ships until the station is replaced. You can't lose the cap ship slot once researched.

I was think more on the lines of giving a bonus to certain weapons at really close range (lasers, autocannons, anything on heavy cruisers), so that forces will take more damage attacking units at the end of a formation that at the front, but your idea would give the same effect (and would be more realistic). It would allow frigates to actually escort Cap ships, instead of them firing helplessly while the enemy focuses on the caps. The reason that I brought up the whole WWII thing was to show that in real naval tactics, escorts are not just more AA guns or cruise missiles on a smaller, faster ship. They can prevent enemy forces from focusing on a particular target. Unless sins corrects this, keep carrier/LRM/HC/Frigate spamming, you'll be alot better off in the long run.

Advent will usualy win game with 3 labs, thats what you need to get illuminators, guardinas and carrires.

If its small map, exstra caps are useless, if its big map, caps got its use.

So yes, caps are more expensive, since they need the same lab slot too. and also the fleet cap of 50...