Capital Ships

from Sins Forums
I recently finished a game in which I finally used more than just a few capital ships. After this novel experience a few aspects of Capital Ships caught my eye. First they are all the same price. Second the Marza Dreadnaught isn't much of a Dreadnaught. Third the Sova has Missile turrets and yet it fires lasers.

The capital ships need to be more varied especially in price since they each have different strengths and weaknesses, and lets face it, a dreadnaught should cost a hell of a lot more than a Kol, not to mention be at least twice as combat effective. As the Marza stands now, its a "long-range" specialist that has less range that the LRM frigates and specializes in planetary bombardment, even though it deosn't seem to do much more damage than say six krosovs which cost a hell of a lot less.

As for the Carrier, not only does the artwork on the carrier seem to support missiles as opposed to lasers, missiles would fit the Carriers role much better since it is supposed to stand off and be the f/b's platform of operations, not go mix it up like a Kol.

Also, I know that all of the cap ships get strikecraft at some point depending on what ship it is. Since this is the case, could the textures/models have flight decks/hangars on them for all the capital ships. Preferably the hangar/flightdeck artwork would coincide with the max # of squadrons the cap ship could field. I.E. the Kol would only have two hangars instead of three since it can only field two squadrons, and the Marza, Akkan, and Dunov would have hangars showing as well.

Anyone else agree, or am I just being critical
28,640 views 12 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Also the carriers are unarmed ??

They should carry a complement of light guns or something...

In general the ships carry just 1 set of main guns that they turn to shoot...
This is a bit boring and doesn't make the combat look very cool. They should have turret batteries that fire on targets, so that the ships doesn't have to turn to face targets all the time.

Janster
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
The ships do get artwork to depict the hanger bay, although its usually where you don't look, like on the bottom of a marza, when it gets it's strike craft look at the bottom of it, a pop-out hanger will be there. as for the sova, those things on the "flight deck" that look like missile launchers are the hangers. look a little closer when you launch fighters from them. same goes for the Marza(as in the pop out hanger is like the zova's not the fighters launch from the really big missle bank). The Kol's is right on the side of it. as for the others, by the time i have 5 cap ships, I'm to busy conquering to look at them. Kol, Marza, Sova, that colonizer one, then the game is mine. AI needs to be more challenging... especially on hard.
Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
I still hope the hangers are automated to open close .....
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
The carrier in sins is not a traditional carrier. It is a battleship designed to support strike craft, not an aircraft carrier. And the dreadnought has the raze planet ability, and that does a hell of a lot more damage than siege frigates, you just can't use it all that often.

You'll see the dev team has taken many liberties with commonly used naval ship classifications, some of which don't match modern day classifications at all.

And the reason why all the cap ships are the same price is because they all have different but equally valuable uses in combat. The fleet AI is just still learning how to best implement them.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
@Advalary I'll grant you that each cap ship has various uses in combat and that they are all effective, but that doesn't change the fact that for gameplay reasons the cap ships need to be more differentiated in price and effectiveness. For example, I don't care how many liberties have been taken with ship classification, a Dreadnaught should still be able to take any cap ship in a one on one fight even if the other cap ship is a couple levels higher. AS it stands now, I don't even bother building Marzas because they die so damn quick.
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
I imagine that very soon we will be seeing the capital ships needing to be researched like the Cruisers.

They will also need to re balance the prices for these ships because they certainly are not equal in terms of usefulness. I only ever use the KOL, the Carrier and the Arkan Cruiser. I find the other 2 less useful.

Perhaps if the AI ever learns to focus fire and not run away from fights they can win, I'll reconsider my take on the 2 'less' useful capital ships.
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
The Capital ships do need varied costs and more defined roles. And I have been saying the same thing for a long time that the Marza dreadnought is not much of a Dread.
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
I take it you guys have never used the marza's missile barrage ability then. If you saw that in action, you would see how valuable they are. You also probably have never used the dunov's shield restore, or else you would see the usefulness in that.

And @ dai:

The whole point of my post was to explain that the devs aren't using current ship classifications to merit combat ability. I understand that a modern day dreadnought (which I don't think exists, carriers trump most other ships in naval combat these days) would easily win a fight with a battleship. However, the devs have already, through their misuse of the term "cruiser" shown that they don't care about modern day standards in ships. If your so offended by the marza being called a dreadnought, then mod it out and call it whatever you like.

What it sounds to me is that you guys want an endgame "end all be all" cap ship, which will ruin the game completely. I like the cap ships the way they are.
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
I don't want an endgame ship that trumps all else, I agree with you that that would kill the game, but what I would like is for the Marza to be able to stand up to more fire and deal more damage with its standard weapons.
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
Umm... Why does everyone think a dreadnought should beat a battleship?

H.M.S. Dreadnought essentially served as the prototype of what later became the battleships. Almost any WWII battleship would have beaten it to a pulp.

I see the Marza as a quickly cobbled-together stopgap from before the TEC developed the Kol. It's basically a bunch of guns strapped to a hull, rather than a ship designed from the ground up for fleet combat.

I think the biggest problem with the capital ships is that they all become available at the same time. I've been toying around for a while with modifying the tech tree and never came up with anything I really liked, but I'll put the general idea below.

Kodiak-->Dreadnought
Cielo--->Akkan
Hoshiko--->Dunov
Perchirien--->Sovo

2 of the above capital's-->Kol (It is supposed to be a recent development...)

One obvious problem with this is that we need a new flagship. The Akkan is the obvious choice, but it would probably make colony frigates completely useless.

Personally, I would like to see an unbuildable flagship class. It should be a bit weaker than other capital ships, but have powerful late-game abilities to make it worth taking care of. I'm partial to an ability that gives nearby friendlies a tiny dose of finest hour to make it useful even in long games. (It is the flagship after all, its presence should incite some heroics)
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
Angros, that is actually a really good idea for researching the cap ships. However, I do think that cap ships should be researchable early on in the game, other wise the first 1-2 hours of gameplay will consist of nothing but frigate battles, which will get boring. But I'm sure there is some way to implement that idea. Perhaps by reversing it. Making the cruisers come after the cap ships as a way of researching how to get the usefulness of cap ships cheaper and more abundant.
Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top
1-2 hours? If Cap ship research is up near the top 2/3 of the tech tree, it should only take a little over a half hour to get them.