Well... I've caused quite a stir already this patch, however, it was in the hopes of stirring up capital ship users a little. Note: this thread is to discuss the currently available capital ships in game, please do not suggest new ones here.

So:


PBF

• Speed addition: good or bad?
• Shield / Energy bank reduction: I feel that with extra speed this needs to be reduced somewhat; the terms of this is the % reduction, really
• Locking the travel capital fields to only the EF Capital types & adding T21 Red Photon only ones; this would prevent abuse by PBFs
• Hull: not changing never ~ don't bother suggesting it!
• Resists: again, this is a tough one. There's no way that it can have the potential to have x3 Rock Troll or Sup. Resists shoved on it.
• I gave it +7% critical chance & some thrust to support the weapon users in them; turning is not a problem if you invest in bar skills, *gyroscopic gear and so on (yes, I've tested this)

EF Capital Line

• Capital travel fields: no, you're not supposed to be DGing with them equipped. They could be given huge -RoF mods but I understand the issue of regening huge shield / energy banks on unequipping them ~ not so fun. So, potential solutions: 1) -RoF aura while equipped to prevent DGing; 2) Cool-off period to equip / unequip (say, 30- 60 seconds between each); 3) On unequip large short-term + regen/elec to help fill banks
• Inbuilt items: at the moment they have their engine. There's potential for 2 more: suggestions please. Thoughts: emergency long cool-down warper (5+ minutes); AoE push warhead; make the Capital field into an internal device instead of an item
• Class specific stuff: any suggestions / thoughts on these

Red Photon Capital Line

• Why do people, even FCs, not use these? Barring the obvious "2 augs, durrr"
• Thoughts by people who have them / have attempted to use them
• Thoughts on inbuilts etc

Zeus Throne

• Was slightly buffed in this patch: fighter gen > 12 fighters, 30 second spawn time
• Issues? Again, "2 augs" is a known one
• Gunner missile gen: used?
• Who uses one? At 100bilish build, it's one of the most expensive ships in game - people with them are going to be listened to.

Floor open: again, this is only for current Capital ships. Everything else will be pruned off.

@Red Photon Carrier

I believe the original reason behind the RP Line not being used much by FC was the fact the bp seemed to have the same droprate as an item form Zeus Throne with a 7 day lockout.

I am curious to why all 4 RP ships have the same inbuilt, though. Even though I do not have one, the "Red Photon Doomsday Device" thing sounds more like a heavy duty radiation cannon. Do Shield Monkeys and Engineer Capships even need such thing?


@EF Capital Line

I find them perfect, for what they are. Slow, fat, lots of shields, limited firepower. Perfect tank ships for blocking Achilles Mags.

Yeah, as far as they have been so far(?) the EF ships are essentially perfect at what they do. Which isn't really firepower, at least from their main guns.

As for RP, they also seem very cool and quite balanced as far as I know, though I haven't seen many of them. Yugioh, before he left, was one of the most badass FC's I had seen in my gameplay lifespan, and he used a RP ship.

I would like a status update on the pax battle frigate as of the current moment, however. From what I can tell, my speed has increased without any loss of shield bank, which is awesome, but I don't know if it's intentional or I'm just being stupid(15k bank shield, no capacitor, and 150k total shield bank).

The zeus throne suffers from a fundamental lack of focus. It's a speedy capship without any inbuilts that let it capitalize on it's speed, and it's a tanky ship without anything to help it tank. It has the same number of aug slots as a dread, but without any of the really cool inbuilts of the RP line(Like the doomsday device, or the engineer drone, or whatever).

The missiles are fine, but anyone can have missiles, and giving the ship a new kind of missile isn't that impactful; even worse, it's unimpressive. Shooting a massive ball of death at your target is impressive(that reduces their resists to boot!). Getting +1000 elec regen for a minute is impressive. Launching a missile that you really can't tell from another missile is...not impressive.

It would be interesting if PBF's were given a launcher that doesn't launch missiles, and instead boosted damage and rof.

I guess I will try contribute here a bit. I have used a Zeus Throne Fleet Commander for a long time, and I had a Red Photon Carrier Blueprint that I meant to use when only yugioh was the only person in game with a built Red Photon Carrier.

The issue with the Red Photon Carrier is that the drop rate on the blueprints was too low and the lockout was too long. Now that it has changed it will get better, and I guess you will see a lot of Red Photon Carriers around if Fleet Commanders gets taken to Red Photon at all. The inbuilt items on the Red Photon Carrier are awesome. A simple augmenter setup like Capital Defensive Augmenter and Dark Thorn Augmenter makes this a perfectly suited all-round Fleet Commander T21 ship.

The issue I had with the Zeus Throne was that I never got a proper use for the inbuilt items. The fighters are just pointless in squad play and you are way better off using Cerberus fighters. What this ship needs for me to find it really useful as a T21 FC ship is to give it a super special that is an FC Aura that is super original and lasts for quite some time. The issue isn't really in the augmenter slots, it is in the lack of proper T21 fighters (Wait, there are no T21 fighters...), and the lack of T21 Auras (The only one is on the Prawn...) I enjoyed using my FC Zeus Throne for a long time as a support and tractor ship, but it would never be any really useful as a solo play ship with as powerful attributes as the Red Photon Carrier.

I hope that helps.

Yes, thank you.


I guess the next question about RP Capitals is a leading one: I presume from the comments that only the FC one is useful?

Far from. I have a Red Photon Logistics Cruiser, and it is perfect. The same goes for the Red Photon Support Cruiser. The Red Photon Warship I haven't tried, and I don't think anyone has built it yet, but based on the stats it looks great.

Now that the drop rate on the Red Photon Unfinished Blueprint is upped and the lockout is lowered then Red Photon is perfect in my opinion. The only issue I ever had was the Zeus Throne but if that one gets tweaked then I think we will see a lot more Zeus Thrones and Red Photon ships around.

What Thermal said, there's no RPW's (that I know of) that have been built yet, but as soon as I get my hands on a bp you'll see me piloting one. What if the PBF was given a speed inbuilt aura with a 30s cooldown and leave the speed as it was? It also feels it needs another inbuilt that does some sort of large damage. The EF line seems perfectly fine to me, it'd be cool if there was some sort of offensive inbuilt, maybe a slowly regaining bunk buster missile producer that only makes a max of like 15 missiles and they're attached to the ship like carcass missiles. That way the new players who finally get their dread don't then straight away have to fork out 25b to get some useful missiles. Obviously it can't be too good because then the obtaining of those factories becomes unnecessary. From what I've heard about the Zeus Throne, the missile launcher is more of a nuisance than an inbuilt. But that was before the gunner patch so it may have changed.

The speed addition is good, it makes the PBF different from other capital ships and not just an EFDread with 300 less hull and terrible resistances in exchange for an almost trivial speed boost, up to 20k more shields, up to 50k more energy, and only a few hundred extra DPS.

Shield/energy bank reduction should probably be a balanced reduction instead of halving the shield bonus. Terrible resists along with low shields and the lack of agility that comes with the hull type is simply a bad idea. I'd suggest that if the shield bonus were to be halved, at least give a 10% resist bonus across the board. In addition, sacrifice some of the energy bank bonus to help offset this or something else.

The travel aura isn't exactly broken. Even if I were to use my AoG 2 GMast setup I'd only reach a little over 300 speed with the speed buff. The thing is that I'd probably never be able to put that to my advantage in combat seeing as how the ship takes so long to speed up and slow down, not to mention how it decimates the little defenses the ship has. However, perhaps the travel field could be disabled by giving the PBF an SSS that disables the aura slot.

Hull is fine as is.

Resists already talked about and blahblahblah.

+7% critical chance is largely useless. Either increase it through nerfing the energy like I said, or put it into something else like taking away both thrust and turning and simply decrease the weight. Another thing that could be done is putting that crit chance into extra damage or rate of fire so there's a predictable boost to DPS.

Also, I thought about this while writing: would the Pax, a race known for their high resistance ships, and the humans, known for their largely defensive capital ships, be making a light, speedy, and low resist ship? If anything the PBF should be of Kalthi design, but whatever.

Concept of missile, could be inbuilt on some ship

• Huge Tank ability
• No Weapon
• Aura generator with low range and nice debuffs on the missile

So it would fly to the target and debuff it till its killed

This isn't a thread about missiles. Besides, AEM already put in missiles that gave debuffs, but the effect was changed because debuffs don't stack.

To correct you:

-Radar missiles: Super Green
-Speed missiles: Super Green
-Shield Regen missiles: Super Green


The only ones that got changed were the -resist ones; it's now a very tasty DoT.

The inbuilt Launcher on Zeus Throne+ is great (I save hull ). I can do some DGs in it with no trouble because of the speed.

However I do think the Jovian Fighters are terrible and something more exciting and unique should replace them for FC purpose. The Zeus Bolt of Lightning missiles seem okay, since they're fast, but I only have 2 of them (Although it is going to be increased to 12, I am aware) But I am not sure if any beef to them is required/useful.

One thing that should be improved though, on BOTH Zeus Throne and Zeus Throne+ is the inbuilt mods. Why should it have a smaller shield and energy bonus than something that costs 400m to build and a tech level behind it? (Earthforce Dreadnought). I think this is what should be improved to make the ship better!

Using my ZT I have to agree with Thermal on a lot of points. And also with Laptop Boy.

The fighters are eh.. personally id like to see capital ships move from high shield tanks to being more capable of dealing damage.

FC has a bonus to rad weapons and I see no reason FCs couldnt utilize weapons like gunners do. Not multi-fire em but use weapons in a more offensive role.

Iv heard several ways the ships could be tweaked. Some being SSS effects like the pos tsunami. Another that was suggested (I cannot remember if it was me or not so im not going to take credit) was an aura you could turn on or off that gave an additional stacking bonus with other FC auras.

y'all already know about the 3rd aug slot that many would love to see. But I think that more RadX weapons would be nice too. Gunner has mining and FC has radiation. It just needs more gear. Not to mention more capital ship only items just for it.

3rd aug slot would fix all problems in my book.

The tables show that this would put it just under the power of an HM so not sure what the fuss would be, it does not even sound broken, just good.