The True power of the capital ships is realized when you combine multiple capital ships. If you have 3 or 4 capital ships grouped in a fleet, it is very difficult to stop them, particularly if you have some anti air frigates in the fleet as well. I think that the power is appropriate and the initial capital ship seems to indicate the strong ship that each race would send to support thier newly established colonies.

To prevent you from only building these too easily, the game also requires that you reasearch the ability to support more capital ships as well, which is appropriate. I do agree, however that it would make more sense to require research for the individual components used by the capital ships for any after the first one. It doesn't make a lot of sense that a group would be able to produce a capital ship with all of the components used by a lesser frigate or cruiser, but not be able to produce the frigate or cruiser.

Just my two cents.

my experience in many many (competitive) multiplayer games tells me a different story.
A game is decided by the time u get to build more than 2 caps.
Its maybe somewhat different on bigger maps where u have more time but still not good enough.
Also they are just powerfull cause of their Abilities not cause of their battle strength.
Sry but caps acting as support simply doesnt satisfy me. In my opinion support should be left to specialised ships. Abilities are for me a nice little extra for caps to give u an edge in smaller to medium engagements but they shouldnt be the main purpose of having caps.





u could easily balance it so that u wont "spam" caps early if thats ur fear.
Simply make caps vulnerable or just less effective vs smaller ships. Their real strength comes into play as soon as ur enemy goes higher up the tree.
On the other side cruisers should be more of a support against frigates for ur caps.
This way you could have a much better balance instead going up the tech tree just to have the super pwn units and abonding the basic units.

Well if you try something that gives captials a buff you can try my mod at WWW Link . It is still a work in progress and hopefully I can add more research to enable captials.

I had 3 Cap ships and 30+ LRMs, some flack frigates, and kodiaks but I got Decimated by an equal size fleet of nothing but LRMs and Kodiaks. If I had invested in Kodiaks like my enemy I would have stood a chance but I spent all my money on caps and increasing the number I can command. Think about it its just no economical to build caps in most cases.
Considering LRMs use rediculouse range and concentrate all fire on them.

(1) This isn't a problem. Capital ships are not weak because of this.

(2) Whether or not it satisfies you, capital ships are already in use in every single game and are very powerful. There's no need without some really good evidence to boost the power of something that everyone already uses. What should be boosted is the power of things that no one uses.

(3) Your wish has been granted.

(4) You obviously don't understand the power of abilities if they are just gravy to you. If it wasn't for the need for firepower early on in the game to colonize, cap ships would be mediocre without their abilities and might not even get built (in the shorter games). Their abilities are the reason you get them.

(5) If it's so easy, let's hear your proposal. The fact is that if you make them as powerful as the same supply of heavy cruisers at level 1, there is almost no reason to build ANY OTHER KIND of ship for damage, only support cruisers.

(6) This doesn't make any sense considering the rest of your post. Make capitals worse against smaller ships? (I'm going to assume that you know that every ship in the game is smaller than capitals and that you mean the smallest ships present in the game.) How does that fix your perceived problem with their damage? So capitals should rip right through heavy cruisers but not be able to fend off a fleet of Cobalts? What exactly are you proposing here?

(7) The uselessness of 'basic' units at the end of the game has nothing to do with how powerful capital ships are. The two issues are not related. The fact is, LRMs come in too early for Tier 0 units to get any play. Tier 0 units do get upgrades later in the tree, but they are not substantial when compared with the power of heavy cruisers.

I finally released my mod, Kreysons Battlewagons mod. 1.04 compatible.

WWW Link

Check it out and feedback is welcomed.

sure, a lot of them are.



sry but seriously if u have no clue about the game dont try to argue.
Caps are just used cause u get the first one free, a lot of others times they arent used at all.
I dont know any ship type which gets less used than some caps so wtf are u talking about?




sure someone as u with such a knowledge about the game might assume that...



What a load of bullshit.
They arent powerfull early because of their abilities, they are powerfull because u get them free.
Abilities are just the only thing to prevent that they are totaly useless.
So plz could u tell me what u are talking about?
Currently NOONE BUILDS ADDITIONAL CAPS IN THE EARLY GAME (except the obvious free one).





boy i have to seriously ask me if u fuckin read my posts at all.
I already told everyone one way (and there are more) how to solve this problem so how about reading my previous post properly?
Also could you pls realise that we NOW have a situation where everyone builds just HC's, is that better or what?



being pedantic and playing the stupid boy is not arguing.
I said that capitals need more damage but u need then to fix their damage vs very light/light and maybe medium so that they dont own too much, really simply to get.
And yes capitals should be strong against "big stuff", thats obvious isnt it?
I propose more distinction between the ship classes if u still didnt get it.




ofc it has to do with my proposal, u simply just dont get it.
If i need lower tech ships to somewhat counter caps then ill still keep building em in late game vs Caps and not those uber ships which dont have any counter at all.

Ironclad, he has a point - resource-for-resource, supply-point-for-supply-point (and remember the Fleet technologies on top of it), Cap Ships dramatically underperform compared to their more mundane brethren.



Capital ships with the only purpose to destroy capital ships is pretty stupid if you ask me.

Caps are mostly just bad because lrms eat them so easy. :/

Sorry away with a lot of work to do.

You are not getting my point Mettra. I'm not saying that we need to make the capital ships dps,hull point and everything else equal to that of there equal use in supply points, for HC.

I'm saying that the3 leveling system for the capital ships, need to be fixed.Look at the first line.

"You have a good point -CU-Raptor, but as I pointed out, in that last post about this very same problem it is not with the how powerful the ships is, but the leveling system."

I'm not saying to increase there firepower or any thing, but to make it easier for them to level up, nothing else.

My point, is that you need the higher levels, before you get a ship that is equal in power to its equal in supply points, of other ships.

You need a level 7 carrier to get an equal number of Squadrons. You can't even buy your way to level 7. While you can by 6 carrier cruiser and get them, the very second you build them.

You need a level 6 battleship or higher to equal the firepower, hullpoint and every thing else of the same supply use in HC.

The fact is that you can get even get these level unless, you send your capital ships,into a fight, have them win, and not lose the capital ship. While you can lose a HC or a CC(carrier cruiser), rebuild them, and get them to the same level as they come out of dry dock.

It easyer for me, to replace 4 HC, then a level 4 battleship, as well. Does this make sense to your?

My point is that form a non-fight, I just rebuild the fleet point of view, it is too easy for the person building HC and CC to get a edge over the person that is buidliung capital ships.

I think that what should be done, is that there should be more upgrades, to get your ships to level 6 at the late game part, or make it easyer for the capital ships to level up.

The problem is that the Captial Ships only fit, what we think they should be, at level 7(6). And the problem with that, is getting there. It taksd less time to build a fleet of HC and CC, then to level those ships up, with less risk(as HC and CC do not have to fight to get to there level of power, unlike that capital ships).

From LinkesAuge



(1) Yes, a lot of capital ships are weak, but they can be balanced to be stronger without using anything that you've said so far. In other words, it has nothing to do with your proposal.

(2) Saying 'you're a dummyhead' doesn't win an argument. You still have to make a real argument or people like me will do this.

(3) In smaller games, yes. In larger games, additional caps are almost always built. In smaller games there is no reason.

(4) Perhaps you should think about what it is that you're saying. No ship is less used than capital ships? So I should build more caps than heavy cruisers? What do you mean when you say this?

(5) See (2). If my knowledge is lacking why don't you do a proper job of informing me instead of just resorting to 'oh look a dummyhead.'

(6) You'll have to forgive me. I should have stated what I said a bit better. The first cap is always free, true. What I was talking about was that if someone is going to build a second cap it will be because of the abilities, not because of the battle strength.

(7) Thankfully, we can agree here.

(8) Depending on just how early you're talking about (like 1v1 and some 2v2 game length), you are correct. However, it's not because they wouldn't like to have a cap in their fleet, it's because the barrier of entry of a second cap is enormous. First you have to research fleet supply probably three times to have enough to make an additional cap, then you rebuild your cap factory, then there's the rather large price of a capital ship and the realization that it will make your first capital ship level slower if you pair them. It's a barrier of entry problem, not a 'capitals suck' problem.

(9) I read your previous posts perfectly and thought I was responding to all of them in one fell swoop. The only 'proposal' I can see that you made is the same one I responded to in that post of yours.

Caps -> HC -> everything

Other cruisers > nothing (no damage, support cruisers)

LRMs -> light frigates

with a note: caps suck vs. light frigates

So it looks like what I'm still gonna end up doing is spamming LRM and HC. Since caps suck at killing light frigates, you'll be unable to use them to colonize anything apart from asteroids without a fleet behind them, and it will be slower all around. Since caps are unable to kill light frigates with any authority you're gonna need lots of LRMs (which you've made caps weaker against). Heavies might not even be worth the while if they get torn up like light frigates do now, but you'll need them to kill the other guy's LRMs more efficiently. All you've done is practically removed the heavy cruiser from the game and instituted even more LRM spam than now exists. No one will use light frigates, especially late game.

So yes, I read your post, it's just that I happen to *gasp* disagree.

(10) It's better than what your proposal would lead us into. It doesn't even matter, though. You can fix the fleet balance problem without even thinking about capital ships. Damage types can be changed and a series of counters (even though it seems like Ironclad hates them [aside from strikecraft hate]) can be put in place. Even just giving light frigates 300% or so damage vs. heavies could give people a possible reason to use them (cheap counter to HCs which imply you need LRMs - add in support ships, and you've got a whole diverse fleet - maybe, there probably need to be a lot more complex changes). No I don't have a full proposal for this, which is why I'm not going around in threads evangelizing everyone.

(11) Being careful about the way you say things is important. Otherwise, you could get confusion like in (4).

(12) You're right, it is simple to get. See (9).

(13) No, it isn't obvious. If you're talking about an argument from realism, then LRMs should totally decimate everything.

(14) Not agreeing and not understanding are two different things.

(15) See (9). Try to consider fleet balance as a function of the existing non-capital ships. Encouraging more diverse unit mixes is not going to be done by tooling around with a hero unit. It's going to be done by tooling around with the existing regular units.




From homefleet



(1) You're right. I didn't fully grok what you were talking about. My apologies.

(2) There is an important subtlety here in that you can't buy the capital ships abilities without buying the capital ship. The abilities are really really good. There is also another subtlety which I will adress in a later point.

(3) Yes, in late game a new capital is a liability with all the heavy cruisers and researched upgrades. However, see (7).

(4) Yes, it does, and I agree with your sentiment a little bit .

(5) See (7).

(6) I definitely agree with this. The Advent research option comes to mind. There is a need for somehow levelling a cap to 5 or 6 (but not much higher) without fighting.

(7) The thing about it is that leveling caps is part of the strategy of the game. Unfortunately, your first high-level cap will always be a battlecruiser (this should perhaps be 'fixed' somehow [give colony caps lots of experience for colonizing? I could never make this work out satisfactorily]), and the second one will come out at lvl 1 when your first is probably lvl 5-7. Juggling your caps around in a longer game (> 1v1,2v2) is half the fun and strategy of the longer games.

Perhaps, but that doesn't stop it from being tedious and impractical.

The need to capital ships alive and success or failure of doing so in the long term adds a lot of strategy to the game in the larger games. I can understand why someone would think it's tedious if they just wanna build and reinforce caps late game, but if you could just 'build' a lvl 8 cap at the end, it takes all that work keeping your first cap alive away from you. The advantage you had from keeping your cap alive and leveling is basically gone when you can just 'build' a lvl 8 cap.

This is just my perspective as a competitive player (though not in this particular game). The late-game capital count is a skill differentiator between players, one of very few that exist in this game. This game really could use MORE skill differentiators instead of less, but that is another topic altogether.

I don't know how many long, big games you've played, but there's only two things a Cap Ship can really do in the huge fights that encompass as such.

Run, or die.

You can make up for this by having more than one cap, but now you're halving, quartering, how much experience they get, which makes it even harder.

What you're saying is that it's a good thing that:

1) I have to spend the absurd resources to increase capital cap.
2) I have to spend more resources to increase fleet cap.
3) I have to lose a chunk of my income to do so as well.
4) I have to spend the massive amounts of resources to build the ship.
5) I cannot actually use this ship for hours, and have to micromanage it before it's worth a damn.

So effectively Capital Ships have a 'build time' of several hours, cost tens of thousands of resources, and are simply a drain on my attention for an extremely long time before I can effectively use them? What a waste of time.

I'm not saying that the level system is bad, or that you're intrinsically wrong, but I am saying that it's a badly balanced, poorly implemented game mechanic. The 'skill' you're talking about is realistically, me just disabling attack on the ship and letting it sit in a gravity well while everything else does the fighting.

In the end, I have a ship that is BALANCED. It's not even overpowering. It's simply balanced. Except carriers, they still suck, no matter what.

(1) You don't have to. The fact that you do it says that capital ships are that good.

(2) This is only for fleet cap which you would increase with or without the presence of capital ships.

(3) See (1). Though I agree, they should be a bit cheaper AND levelling them should be a bit cheaper as well, but the economy isn't exactly linear throughout the game, and by the end of the game you have ridiculous amounts of money. But that's another topic altogether...

(4) No, you should be using it offensively the entire game, especially the first one you got for free. Using it offensively will put your opponent on the defense and he will have to respond. In essence, you determine how much experience his capital gets if you are first on the offensive. You dictate where the fighting goes on and whether or not it keeps going on. It's not like your capital is useless at the beginning of the game, far from it. If you lose your first cap early game, it's gg. You should be utilizing your first cap straight through to the victory screen in every single game you play.

I agree with you in principle, but you're really stretching towards hyperbole here.

(5) See (4).

(6) Where'd you get this number from? Of course an arbitrary amount of capital ships can have an arbitrarily high cost, but more than 10 is pushing it even in the biggest games possible.

(7) You should be using them throughout the entire game. When you're building your second one, your first is probably lvl 5-7 depending on how much action you've seen. As soon as that second one comes up, level it to 3/4 and put it into battle with the first one. If your opponent only has one capital ship at this point, he will be at a large disadvantage so the XP sharing won't even matter. This is basically done throughout the whole game.

The only real worry at the middle point is LRMs. But they're almost universally agreed to be overpowered. It does decrease their survivability a lot, but this isn't a problem with capital ships, it's a problem with LRMs.

When your highest lvl cap is 9 or 10, HCs will start showing up in large enough numbers to worry about. If you've been offensive enough, your macro will pay off in that you will have more HCs. The survivability of some caps at this point (the ones without personal survival skills) is bad, with the huge exception of the Advent. The thing about lvl 10 caps is that if the other guy is concentrating on your caps, you can retreat them AND they will live. If you get a lvl 10 cap retreated, your opponent will have wasted all that damage for almost literally nothing while you have been destroying the smaller ships.

(8) It could use some smoothing out and some of the weaker caps could use buffs, but it's not as bad as what you're making it out to be. They're still a good option despite the costs because of their powerful abilities and their potential to last a very long time. Admittedly, the amount of damage present in a larger game is utterly ridiculous and is a bad environment in general for caps, but pretty much everything at this point is utterly ridiculous. The problems with 'mid-game' LRMs is that LRMs just plain do too much damage. I haven't gotten to play the game much since the top speed nerf so I can't testify as to whether this made a difference, I'm gonna bet 'not really'.

(9) See (4) and (7).

(10) In a later game, the Advent carrier is nice, but yes. Carriers generally suck in pretty much any situation.

I agree with you on some points and I see where you're coming from, but there's no point in trying to make a case that caps aren't strong. They have minor problems with their progressions and their overall balance, but they are still worth the resources you spend. If we could somehow fix the LRM strength, caps would be less poppable over the course of a game without a major strategic blunder/victory (they're only weak at this stage because they are level 4-6 - at level 7+ they get really mean and are capable of holding off even the LRMs).

As to building a high level cap late game, I think a research option would be nice for leveling to 6 but anything beyond that would just be too much. Leveling a lvl 4 cap in fleets with huge numbers of ships is finicky, I agree, but being able to auto-level a cap past 6 would just be ridiculous. This is my view, and we can agree to disagree there because it's sort of a matter of taste. (I'd like to note that I think really late game Advent are totally ridiculous because they can pump out high level caps in no time. Advent at any other stage of the game... well ;))

Like a few others have mentioned, when I think of the capital ships, I think of battleships. Right now (aside from special abilities) they really just have the same weapons that the other smaller ships have. More of a large cruiser.

They need something like the big, bada$$ 16-inch guns that battleships have. Big, nasty, but mostly only useful against stationary or slow moving targets, since they take time to train out, aim, reload, etc.

Have the accuracy scale up with experience level, and down with smaller and speedier targets (you probably won't get lucky enough to tag a scout ship, but if you do, it's instant vapor). Also have each shot use some antimatter, so you can only keep up a barrage for a period of time, and you have to choose between abilities or damage. Two capital ships trading broadsides should shred each other in no time.

It would be nice if each Capship played a more distinct role.

Obviously, each plays a role of some sort. Each race has a planet killer, a carrier, a support, colony, and a battleship.

What I'd like to see would be drastic differences in these ships.

Make Capitol carriers weaker, but carry 4 squads to start. At level 10, they'll have 12.

Battleships would stay a tanks. They would have very hard armor, and be almost impossible to kill, but do little DPS for cost (Like now).

Planet killers would kill planets and enemy ships faster, but be weaker then battleships in the "tank" role. These would do more DPS, but die faster.

Support ships could be special for each race, and some of the specials could be buffed to compensate.

The colony ships would also be unique for each race. I'd make the Akkan like the Kol, with less firepower/HP. It would be a support ship, but the most DPS of them. The Advent ship could have a bonus to its culture suppression, and its specials would be boosted even more. The Vasari would be the strongest, with battleship like armor/hp, but less DPS. This way each is unique.

This way, it would be which counter is best, it would be which ship suits my play style. Do I get more carriers and use HCs to tank, or use Battleships to tank and fleet carriers. I'd also like to see more differences in the planet killing power of these ships. Battleships would be very weak in the role, while others were better at it. I think this would help make the races more varied, and the ships themselves feel less like numbers.

More variety of weapons would also be nice. Flak guns should be added, and each ship should have weapons to deal with a variety of threats. I can see frigates being specialized, but capships should be more multirole.

I see no problem with the current game design, but thats my opinion

I'm happy to see, that we are on the same page Mettra, but I think that you made my point, even thougth you think I'm wrong.



Yes, and I know that you are right, with the leveling of the capital ships. The leveling of the capital ships is a major part of the depth of the game. But you said that in you post numbered (7) that



which backs up my point that it should be easyer for capital ships, to gain levels. As a increase in the amount of exp, leads to an increase in the easy of going, to the next level.

The problem is that with making that strategy work. Most of the time, I use a comb arms fleet, with capital ship, cruisers and frigates. When the fleet wins, in a fleet to fleet battle, I have found, that most of the time, my level 4 ships do not increase a level, even if they win the fight?! Keeping the capital ships alive and wining or being destoryed IS a big part of the strategy of the game.

But the problem is wiht the leveling system, with more of the problem, being that you don't get that much of a reward, when your capital ship wins the fight.

Look, late game, you got a lot of money, right? So why not level them up when ever one else is running around with high level capital ships. This works well, until you you note, that your new level 4 battleship is very close to your first level 6 battleship. I'm all for not allowing you to buy a level 6, but a level 5 would be nice, or to have a level 7 or higher, when you role your last level 4 capital ship, onto the field.



The ture fixs, to this problem, is to give all the squadrons to the carriers, before they reach level 6. One of the things, that I never under stand, is why the last thing, that the carriers get, is that last squadron, while all other capital ships, last thing, is that level 6 abilitie.

This would be game changing. By tying capital ships upgrade to research, which in turn are tied to logistic slots. It would expedite the dominance anyone with more planets than you, at the same time hinder your own capital ship upgrades. Not so good.




It could happen. Sometimes technology advances by becoming smaller and cheaper. Example rockets engines, its big now and we still don't see craft smaller than than that could go to space. Maybe in the future we'd be able to see smaller & personally owned crafts going to space.

A won or lost battle is no evidence of something being weak. Of course you can loose with a cap heavy fleet.
It was meant to be the way that capital ships depend on a fleet to support them.
And there id the counter system. If you build the wrong ships the caps wont save you.
Also you need to take into account that HC need the most fleet logistics than any other battle frigate or cruiser. So even if you got the same number of ships, you fleet might be still inferior to a hc heavy fleet.

Of course you will hardly see alot of caps on small maps and in fast games. since you will have a rather small fleet anyway building more caps does not make sense either. You need to BALANCE your fleet to be effective. And saving a lot of recources for a cap might get you in trouble in a close game.
So there are a lot of reasons to not build another cap ship under certain conditions.
Does that make cap ships weak? Certainly not.
If you see the enemy targetting your cap ship should make you let you cap ship retreat.
Getting your capital ship in trouble or it being destroyed its your own faulth.

The cost of the logistics + the cost of supply + the cost of the ship + the cost of training, you can even add the cost of the research tech for more training to boot. And then, the incalculable cost of time. Depending on what point in the game it is, at the midpoint, it can cost you over a thousand crystal, a thousand metal, and well into ten thousand credits to get a single Level 3 capital ship. And what use is a level 3 capital ship? Frankly you're probably better off not buying the logistics, and spending the 10,000 credits / 1000 metal / 1500 crystal on something that won't cripple you if you lose it.

Which is another thing - it's a slippery slope. If capitals need to win to get better, and aren't "good" until Level 7, then whoever loses their capital ship first loses the game. A player who is on the defensive will never hope to fight back. That alone is reason to fix it.

Warcraft 3 had the same kind of 'hero' units, and resolved this by keeping your hero the same level, but still requiring an investment of cash to get him back.

There is a sort of problem with capital ships' armor. I think that most of it is fine (the often mentioned ability to build them immediately is baffling, though). However, my problem comes with the burst power of capital ships. They should do damage more like a large explosion to damage multiple frigates at once. While it may seem strange, most fleets will fall to precisely 150 of the Vasari scouts, which seems odd. I can take out 2 Cap ships with a reasonable support fleet and defenses without losing 100 ships. And these scouts cost almost nothing and have a quick build time. The damage type dealt seems very odd for such powerful ships. The damage is fine, but spread damage would make a little more sense, along with slightly stronger armor.

I agree with the OP regarding the general idea of making caps stronger and more expensive.

Here's an idea: Why give them away for free at the start? It ruins the whole sequential build order thing (frigates to cruisers, etc.).

Make capitol ships a bigger deal. Individual upgrades for ships is a good idea.

Marza, Sova, Malice, Radiance, Antorak, and Kortul are clearly useful..

If you make all the caps too good, wont' these be too good?


I think first all the caps need to be balanced on a cap-per-cap level.

And I still believe the main issue the xp sharing and that hc's and lrms kill caps too fast.