Large ships dont scale well (medium are better)

[Demetori]

my entire empire economy (250+ ships) doesnt have a single large miner or freighter

assuming you keep the same prices:


Large miners storage needs to be like 3x the size

Large freighters need like 2x the storage



Now for military...

My carrier was by far the biggest waste of CR. I am extremely regretful of buying it.

* When you are in a fight, telling it to move somewhere will make it issue the command "Recall subordinates" that you cant disable before it moves. You might be stuck in place with your large fleet for 5 minutes before it moves. This makes me want to not have any ships actually assigned to the carrier.

* Ships will constantly try to dock on it if you issue commands to your fleet. There NEEDS to be a "DO NOT DOCK" command. This takes forever as AI takes way too long to path find or even begin to attempt to dock.

* What the hell is its use? It does not resupply ships, and docked ships do not get repaired. At best, it is a giant missile boat. Its missile capacity is by far its most useful feature.

* overall, I feel like im better off without a carrier at all. It slows the entire fleet down and doesnt provide anything useful short of its missile turrets.

Carriers should atleast be able to quickly rearm, and repair docked ships, or even use drones to do this for it.

Destroyer:

* I simply feel like its more effective to buy a few medium sized ships than one destroyer. Even a squad of S-size ships collectively cheaper completely eclipses a destroyer.

Destroyers main batteries are cool, but ultimately not worth the investment. Destroyers need more powerful guns and turrets that shoot longer ranges, and hit targets more often.

[Grifiths]

Yeah, it's a bit dissapointing when 4 Xenon K's and an I waltz into a sector with their fighter escorts and are basically done once the fighters are gone. As much as I love the surface element combat, capital ships need some serious adjustment to make them at all viable. It's not even a matter of needing fighter support, it's that they flat out cannot even fight back. They add nothing to the combat save damage sponging.

My suggestion: Remove the shield recharge delay on capital shields and surface elements. A single fighter with pulse lasers should not be able to burn through surface elements simply because it's too small to be shot. A torpedo run or something should be necessary.

EDIT: And give carriers something. Like repairing the docked fighters or something.

[radcapricorn]

My suggestion: Remove the shield recharge delay on capital shields and surface elements.

Nah, that's too harsh.

A single fighter with pulse lasers should not be able to burn through surface elements simply because it's too small to be shot. A torpedo run or something should be necessary.

That one is much better. Capital shields just should be impenetrable to fighter-based pea-shooters.

[Grifiths]

I like the idea of having your bombers target the shield generators and THEN you can go berserk on its turrets and engines.

[Warnoise]

My suggestion: Remove the shield recharge delay on capital shields and surface elements.

Nah, that's too harsh.

A single fighter with pulse lasers should not be able to burn through surface elements simply because it's too small to be shot. A torpedo run or something should be necessary.

That one is much better. Capital shields just should be impenetrable to fighter-based pea-shooters.

"That one is much better. Capital shields just should be impenetrable to fighter-based pea-shooters."

But surface elements should still get damaged by fighters. Let's not return to Xrebirth era where fighter were absolutely useless. Just make Capital ships tankier (buff shield/hull) but keep fighters as they are.

[Mavo Pi]

My suggestion: Remove the shield recharge delay on capital shields and surface elements.

Nah, that's too harsh.

A single fighter with pulse lasers should not be able to burn through surface elements simply because it's too small to be shot. A torpedo run or something should be necessary.

That one is much better. Capital shields just should be impenetrable to fighter-based pea-shooters.

But the fighters should still be able to destroy surface elements like Weapons,Shield Generator and Engines. So they can still disable the shields by destroying the generator (though the generator should be sturdy enough to hold some fire). Capitals should not be completely invincible to a large group of fighters because that would make fighters useless. It should belong to the role of fighters and bombers do disable the capitals before finishing them of with the bombers and other capitals. But the capitals should have a lot of hull to compensate. So you could disable capitals by using fighters+bombers but to completely destroy the capitals you would need bombers and/or capitals.

[radcapricorn]

Fighters aren't useless in Rebirth because they can't damage surface elements. They sure can, and do. A lot of them can do some serious damage, destroying drone bays, turrets, jumpdrives... They are useless because you can't efficiently transport them, is all.

But the fighters should still be able to destroy surface elements like Weapons,Shield Generator and Engines.

Yes, but not with pea-shooters. Either some special expensive/cumbersome weapon or missiles. Otherwise it's not much different from just riding the back of that K and chipping away at it.

[Grifiths]

I'm ok with small ships destroying surface elements but they should not be able to just gun them down slowly over time. What's the point of having the capital if it can't fight back and can't hope to absorb the damage? If the only purpose is being anti other capitals, why bother having them at all when a single fighter can do the job just as easily, albeit slower. I really think some innovative mechanics would bring some life to this, and I like the idea about using bombers or capital cannons to disable shields before fighters can begin disabling the surface stuff. I think it would make fights substantially more interesting.

[Warnoise]

I'm ok with small ships destroying surface elements but they should not be able to just gun them down slowly over time. What's the point of having the capital if it can't fight back and can't hope to absorb the damage? If the only purpose is being anti other capitals, why bother having them at all when a single fighter can do the job just as easily, albeit slower. I really think some innovative mechanics would bring some life to this, and I like the idea about using bombers or capital cannons to disable shields before fighters can begin disabling the surface stuff. I think it would make fights substantially more interesting.

If equipped with the right weapons, capital ships can defend itself from multiple fighters. there is no innovation needed here. The problem here, since there aren't "capital class" weapons, people get confused. A group of fighters should be able to destroy an unescorted capital fully equipped with anti-capital turrets (thus not able to aim at quick small fighters), also, the same goes for fighters, if they are equipped with pulse laser mk1, it should take 1 fighter ages to just drop the shields, but a big group should be able to take down the shields. However if the capital is equipped with anti-fighters weapons, then it should take out squads of fighters easily.

Ship loadout is very important here, now 4-5 M ships equipped with plasma MK2 can literally delete any L or XL class ship, why? because M class ships shouldnt be able to equip plasma MK2. A nemesis running with 5 torpedo launchers MK2 can solo an L class easy. That's absurd. That thing should be an L, XL class weapon OR for "bomber class" M ships.


Tl:dr it all goes down to weapon balance.

[Osbot]

The issue is turrets. Turrets are just bad, not only because they don't aim very well, but their damage is miniscule, even compared to small weapons.

Capital main batteries need more oompf. They shouldn't sound like pew pew either, but that's an aesthetic issue. The main batteries should be prob about 10km range, and do BIG damage. L Turrets should probably be about the same, and also do at least as much damage as M turrets. M turrets don't need the range bump, but they should have the same damage as an M gun. S turrets should have the same damage as an S gun. Currently turrets do something like 1/10th the damage of a same size weapon, so they basically do nothing.

Turrets just need to do more damage, period.

I also think Egosoft should really look into diverging away from "turrets = turreted weapon systems we already have" if they are reluctant to implement better aiming fixes. If they don't want to do that, they should introduce specific weapon systems for turrets, that will work better with the aiming system they are using. Higher velocity weapons with a smaller number of shots. In essence, converting turrets into small burst weapons, 2-3 rounds, with 4-5k+ velocity, will allow the turrets to function more like beam turrets, which are the only turrets that reliably hit.

[Grifiths]

If they wanted to rebalance all the weapons, that would work fine too. Watching the fights, most fighters are simply shooting while out of range of capital turrets, which just seems silly. The effective range of a beam (M) turret is 2Km. My nemesis shoots from 5. Adjusting the turrets to fix that would work out nicely too. The turrets can hit and do damage, it just seems like they never shoot.

[Demetori]

just to make it clear, this post isnt about turrets. theres another thread for that.

The large ships fail in other ways besides turrets and thats what im pointing out.

[LameFox]

I'm not even sure what freighters are for exactly. Certainly no use for trading as the AI makes the same small trades but more slowly, and at this rate I think player industry on the scale that would need such ships probably would never have to take place because no sufficiently powerful enemy exists to justify it.

[CaptainRAVE]

Disagree with large miners. When demand is there they can generate some huge profit in one run and don’t take long to do it either, especially if upgraded.

[Nikola515]

Perhaps they should make it more tactical ? For example only heavy weapons/missiles should be able to take down shields and destroy turrets. But if you want to expose those elements you need to target small shield generators (they are week points for light weapons). So basically heavy weapons can drain shields and do damage while light weapons can only damage shields generators and after they are disabled they can do damage to everything else.

[bubbabenali]

Turrets, turrets, turrets...
Capital ships need turrets to be able to be controlled, being able to be programmed with (working) priority control and they need to hit stuff for some numbers.
Remember in X3 where you could actually do that? And a small fleet of S ships where pulverized within seconds engaging a Destroyer, while it's main batteries and (X)L-Turrets didn't bother with the flies and keep on shooting their enemies bases/ carriers?
That's how it`s supposed to be not just hoping the Captain doesn't wastes the Plasma turrets on some Kestrels and circling for hours.