Shaklu
Relentless Terrorism
Already Disbanded
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Posted - 2015.03.31 17:20:18 -
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WarFireV wrote: (...)Dreadnaughts: Oh dreads  . Their primary function is going to be phased out. They do have two fall back functions that will need to be amplified, the ability to kill other capitals and the ability to kill subcap. I purpose that they are given two different siege types. One more suited for attacking capitals the other more suited for attack subcaps. It would also be a good idea to lower their manufacturing cost. (...)
Dreads could keep mostly the same role that they have now, just dialed towards capital and Battleship engagements. Give them slightly better tracking, perhaps a capital combat mode and a sub-capital combat mode. Give them more agility to be able to maneuver on field, but keep carriers as slow cumbersome things.
If you boost up the Battleship EHP and dps by 2x, then the counter to battleship fleets instead of fast cruisers (that have equivalent tank and dps right now, but are smaller and faster) would be either another battleship fleet, or dreads. It would be a basic escalation tactic, but in smaller numbers theoretically. If Battleships were boosted up to be something like 15-20% of a dread as far as EHP and DPS, then they would still have issues with cruisers as far as dps projection using large guns, but their tanks would be able to hold unless you had BS/Dread gang fall on them.
Right now, it seems that there is a more or less linear projection of ship power from frigate to cruiser, but then it stops.
This is what I see in fleets and videos:
Frigate < T2 Frigate < Destroyer < T3 Destroyer < Cruiser < T2 Cruiser = T3 cruiser = Battlecruiser = Battleship
and then WAAAAY up above and beyond, you have Dread > Carrier > Supercarrier > Titan
There's a huge gap between Battleships and capitals that could be filled if you simply made battlecruisers and battleships more resilient and harder hitting, and brought dreads down a bit (especially in price)
Cruisers (T2 mostly), battlecruisers and battleships are all basically identical as far as DPS and tank, except obviously smaller, faster, cheaper ships are better. If they re-balanced the curve more linearly from frigate to dread, possibly reducing the cost of dreads to be closer to 1.5-2 bil fully fitted, then you would see them as a viable option on field against battleships.
The modes you could give dreads could make them fun and specialized
Anti-Capital Mode
- Increase weapon damage by 200%
- Decrease Tracking speed of weapons by 50%
- Decrease max velocity by 80%
- Increase armor/shield resists by 2%/lvl
Sub-Capital mode
- Increase Tracking Speed of weapons by 100%
- Increase Scan Resolution by 50%
- Increase Ship Agility and Velocity by 100%
- Decrease Shield/Armor boosting by 20%
And then you could have EWAR Mode, a Tank Mode, and some other ones that could be cool.. perhaps AOE Neuts, or Targeted AOE Neuts so that fleets wouldn't be able to just anchor up on 1 pilot, they would need to spread out a bit. Lots of options. Right now dreads are just too expensive and fragile to plop on the field with an enemy fleet unless you have lots and lots of them and you are either fighting capitals, or like.. dominixes.
I came up with that targeted aoe neuts idea while I was typing, and I think I should elaborate on how awesome that would be. Dread-only modules of different EWAR types that hit a ship and all ships within, say, 3k - 5k of that ship. This would make dreads suuuper powerful, and make pilots actually have to... pilot while in larger fleet fights. You could just keep at range ~10k or whatever, but then you could just web the leader and the rest come to a standstill, or target the following blob.. or perhaps dreads could even have a ship tractor beam module that would simply drag ships forcefully towards them. Having AOE modules that do ECM, Neut, Sensor Dampening or some others but only allowing say 2 modules per dread.. maybe just keep it at 1 so more dreads will drop, would kill the blob fleets and spread out the combat much more. Logistics would still be okay because there are usually few of them and they can orbit the fleet or whatever, but combat pilots will need to be significantly more spatially aware.
Anyway, went on a tangent there, but yeah, if you evened out the EHP and DPS of battlecruisers-dreads and gave dreads a bit more maneuverability and some unique ewar modules, they would get used frequently. Oh, and make dreads cheaper!
Increasing scan res on both carriers and dreads and putting them in a support/combat role against fleets and not specific targets like structures or capitals would also be a perfect platform for fleet commanders to sit in the middle of a battle and direct the troops. Like someone said before, the ships are so huge, it doesn't make sense that they wouldn't have fantastic computer and scanning equipment on-board. |