Don't forget that the Kol also has its rail gun which costs relatively little AM for its damage output and can be the edge in a cap to cap fight. Using the Kol (level 6) you can pop Finest Hour, Adaptive Forcefield and them spam Gauss Rail Gun until you wipe out almost any Cap Ship.

radiance can really do some nasty things with Detonate AM. they get one ability off adn tahts it. Stops even a marza.

unfortuneately, even at level 3 it still has a 5 second gap between cooldown and duration.

but cleansing brilliance is evil.

this is a bit off-topic but i giggled a little when i read it. hope you don't mind some friendly ribbing. 

Boni is not the plural of bonus. and it sounds funny when you say it out loud. please, bonuses. yes, i looked it up to make extra certain. 

anyway, back on topic.

in a 1on1 situation the combat abilities of a battleship will tend to make it beat any other ship. taking the example already used of Kol vs. Marza: the reactive shield makes a huge difference and more than makes up for the slightly higher dps of the Marza. generally there are no ships that can destroy a battleship before the battleship destroys them. 

that said, not all battleships are created equal. the Kol is probably the weakest in ship to ship combat because it has no counters to enemy abilities, its just a tank. A Kortul with Disruptive Strikes or a Radiance with Ignite Anti-Matter can totally neutralize the special abilities of enemy ships and then the fight comes down to guns+armor/shields vs. guns+armor/shields. Battleships tend to win these fights, even against dreadnaughts. The dread might have more DPS but it does not have even close to the survivability level of a battleship. It will surely die first. 

It depends on whether we're talking a pure capital duel or not. The Marza certainly has the edge early game thanks to higher damage output and the benefit of incendiary shells / radiation bomb. The limitation being that all that damage is pointed straight ahead. The Kol can't quite match in pure damage output, but it does have a much wider coverage of fire, making it pretty good at taking out swarms of cruisers or frigates. Late game they both round off nicely; the Kol getting Finest Hour and Railgun letting it pump out the high damage, and the Marza getting missile swarm allowing it to target multiple opponents.

Research would play a part too; again looking at things from a cross fleet perspective the Kol comes out on top - the laser and autocannon upgrades which give it a nice boost in damage also boost the majority of your ships, both capital and non-capital alike, while the missile upgrades the Marza needs to really pack a punch is limited to assisting only a select few.

i wouldn't say the ships stats have no bearing on their usefulness. the special abilities are more important, i agree, but Battleships have fantastic stat gains per level, which is a major appeal. they gain the most effective survivability (new hull and shield points, and more armor) and damage per level up than other types of ships. given that people often complain that the DPS of cap ships isn't that exciting i think its a big selling point that battleships (and the Marza and Vulkoras dreadnaughts as well) actually do have excellent damage from regular guns. 

I never said they didn't.  I said better stats are always a plus, but at the end of the day you pick for special abilities.  People always pick mothership first as Advent, and I can tell you it's not because of its DPS or armour.  Same goes for evacuator, it's picked for its special abilities and not base stats. 

I'll agree that battleships and dreadnaughts get great DPS and this is a plus, but if damage is all I'm after I'd have gotten five heavy cruisers rather than a Kol.  When I get a capital ship, it's for the special abilities first and direct combat power second.

you're mistaken, armor does not reduce damage from each shot. it is normalized to DPS like pretty much every other weapon and defense in this game. armor is just a percentage based increase to effective health. each point of armor is worth approximately +5% effective health. this is slightly better than just getting the hull points directly because it also serves to increase the effectiveness of hull regen and hull repairing special abilities. 

The Marza is the only capital with the word "dreadnaught" in its title, yes, but since the Marza specializes in planetary bombardment and offensive support (not quite a front line unit, however), it serves the same general purpose of the Desolator and (to a lesser extent, I might add) the Revelation.

You could say its an extremely appropriate title for the Marza, since "dreadnaught" means "dreads nothing" or "fears nothing" due mostly to Missile Barrage.

Alright, i stand corrected.

See, the problem is that Vulk's dps is low compared to Mazda.

Frontal dps of Mazda is 41.5.

Frontal dps of Vulk is 34.

ALL dps of Mazda is 54.5.

ALL dps of Vulk is 41.

Do you see massive difference? And you just can't rely on abilities for damage because you will be out of AM pretty soon.

Not to mention MS of Vulk is not that great.

And no, killing units are more important than bombing planets. Because you can't bomb planets when enemy units are around! (well, unless you want to play as 'pirate')

You'd have to compare Phase Missile Swarm to Radiation Bomb. Also, the Vulkoras' Phase Missile Swarm does not go through shields with phase missile research, however much I wish they would ;-;

Lol, what defines a dreadnought? (Except a british battleship built in 1906)