Capital Ships 1 on 1

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...

The reason I brought this up was the unexpected result of the lvl 1 Marza forcing a lvl 1 Radiance (with Detonate Antimatter) to flee.

Caps are very situational with levels, abilities and other ships in the fleet to consider but purely 1 on 1, I would expect a battleship cap to wipe the floor with a siege cap at all levels. I can test the caps if I catch you online.

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

Got some test results now with level 1 caps. Ships tested were:

Radiance Battleship (Detonate Antimatter)
Kol Battleship (Gauss Rail Gun)
Marza Dreadnought (Radiation Bomb)
Revelation Battlecruiser (Reverie, Bomber Squadron)

1st match - Radiance vs Marza
Marza wipes the floor with Radiance with 1360 hull points left. Even though it only got to use Radiation bomb once because of the Radiance's AM burn. Absurd!

2nd match - Revelation vs Kol
Thought I'd see if the reverse would have the same result. Yes. Revelation defeats the Kol with 205 HP left. Would have lost if Bombers were Fighters. Did not use Reverie but it would have further tipped the balance in the Revelation's favor. Still even with the Bomber advantage it was a close fight unlike the first one.

3rd match - Radiance vs Kol
Battleship faceoff. Radiance has 300HP left when the Kol explodes. AM burn dominated. Kol would have won if Radiance had any other ability picked. This was an expected result and these two ships are equally powerful.

4th match - Revelation vs Marza
Even with the huge advantage of the Revelation having an unstoppable Bomber squadron, Marza disintegrates the Revelation and has 1550 HP left. Absurd!

Looking at these results, I would say the Marza has too much raw DPS.

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.

Wow, very interesting.

In the Revelation vs Marza battle, was the Revelation using Reverie?

I also wonder how these same battles would look at Level 6. I guess the raw frontal dps of the planet bombardiers matters much more at the early levels before the Battleships get their better ship-to-ship and defensive abilities. Although Reverie could likely tilt even that battle...

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.

I didn't know Marza packed so much of a frontal punch! I might have to try using it more often; it seems to be a ship that I often neglect.

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.

I'll make sure to get Marza first and give it a try next game!

Looking at the DPS charts and weapon charts are really misleading! Someone mentioned it in a recent post, but infocards with firing arcs and DPS values for different sides would be awesome.

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.

The Kortul Devastator becomes dangerous to other caps at level 2 when it has both the shield / damage boost ability and Disruptive Strikes.

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.

I suspect that a level 1 Jarrasul Evacuator with nano-disassembler and bombers is capable of defeating any other level 1 capital ship.

Anyone want to give it a shot?

I don't find it surprising that some ships are, 1 on 1, more powerful than battleships. The Marza may win, but how readily can it target enemies assaulting it from all sides? The Radiance and the Kortul certainly do not have that problem. They may not be more powerful one on one, but I suspect that versus frigates, they do much better.

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.

My hunch is that the Devastator's AM burning abilities are inferior to the Radiance and in that 1v1 it would be the Radiance who would be able to use its abilities, not the Devastator. Don't know which one would come up on top front DPS and everything considered.

My money would still be on the Marza because it has a passive damage enchancing ability to boost its already ridiculous DPS.

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.

Oh god, 3 dps! End of the world! The siege caps actually do great damage in general I never understood why people just assume the battleships were somehow superior.

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...

The Desolators can do some absurd damage with their phase missile swarm. Which, if you haven't tried it... couples very well with a Devastator's volatile nanites.

Take 1 Devastator and 2 Desolators, let them all do a lil bit of damage, then volatile nanite cloud the enemy fleet, unleash staggered phase missile swarms... when the explosions start - they dont stop! It has this lovely little domino effect. Each exploding ship affected by volatile nanites damages it's immeadiate neighbors .

Gives those god damned TEC repair/command cruiser spammers a good what-for!   

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 felt like i was having a bad joke played on me when it happened. Needless to say, that's the last time i ever rushed 2 caps.

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?

Oh i know. I'm not complaining at all. I know advent caps are meant to synergize.
Not complaining at all, I was just surprised that Marza was THAT much more powerful. I think it's pretty cool, but marza is no where near the cap that either the radiance or the progen are.

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.