Just a quick thought for when capital ships get implementsd...

When a trader can buy a constellation class cargo vessel, with 100,000 armor PLUS shields or whatever, how will pirates bring them down?

They are not fast ships, but considering the fact that any trader is going to be preparing for his next jump while in-sector, the ship maybe has 30 seconds or a minute of in-sector time before its next jump?

I'm just wondering what danger there is for traders when they can ignore most player-ship attacks and just cruise right on through to their next destination, knowing that the players do not have enough time in-sector to kill them, even if there were 10 of them, all with chaos swarms.

Just sayin'.

Maybe we should make sure that the player-owned Connies do not have shields, or something.

perhaps a new weapon that disables jumping capability for X seconds

don't know what X is sufficient. 10? 20?

this weapon would use 18 grid, and require a heavy battery. you'd need to wait for a full recharge of the battery to use it again.

thing is, a single player in a rag can take down a trident using gems and swarms, so really i'm not sure i see how 10 pirates would have too much trouble.

We'll just WH camp in a pimped out Terradon of our own, Leebs, and blow that fat, slow piece of ship all over the sector if not paid promptly and politely.

Because guess what? The odds of either scenario ever happening are about even.

*Maybe we should make sure that the player-owned Connies have at least 200% shields, or something.

There,fixed that for you Leebs :-P

[PA Cncl]Ricker

The belts that surround most wormholes would really increase the amount of time you're out there moving at slow speed. Plus, if they act like normal ships they'll need to jump at full battery power. If the batteries are much much bigger for the cap ships than fighters, this could also slow down the time between jumps.

It only takes 2 bomber rags and organization to take out a connie's shields in a single stacked run. An additional two making bomb runs will quickly wear the ship down. It might not happen at a single wormhole, but I think a small organized group of pirates could easily take down the uncooperative connie.

Maybe the devs should start some connies or other cap ships on commerce missions through grey to see how it works?

"Attention unidentified constellation-class vessel. This is the CHRN Raven. We have our four 'Big honking ball of death' guns trained on your shield generator. Please hand over 50,000,000 credits immediately, or face imminent destruction."

Also, I imagine that threatening to several damage somebody's capship would be enough to get them to pay. I don't want to think about the repair bill on one of those things.

kihjin: My thoughts exactly. Some sort of EMP weapon would be cool, either the way yours works or in a very expensive, slow and heavy torpedo form.

10 ships? Leebs obviously you don't know how to take down shields/caps?

Give me 5 experienced bomber pilots and we'll have that ship bleeding before it makes it's first jump :)

Give me one taradon and I can do the same myself ;)

I expect this will be a whole different game once we get to a point where any of this is possible, and look forward to the day.

This is the VCS Copperhead to the CHRN Raven! Flee the sector or be destroyed!

Eat hot plasma, lolsnake goon!

*legendary viper/pirate battle*

Stacking should take out the shields. Probably a bit harder to do since it would be a player controlling the ship instead of the AI.

They could take evasive actions, or if there're gunners controlling the turrets they'd just use the shield gun thingy.

This is the ONE Manus Celer Dei to the VCS Copperhead and the CHRN Raven. Please cease and desist before I havta get my teradon gunz out!

In all seriousness, I think connies should keep their shields, as I have seen connies get ripped apart by a few good bombers or a teradon.

I cannot wait to see what Corvus turns out in the way of a stripped down pirate teradon.

You guys are still thinking like its a NPC capship, but it's a player controlling it.

If they get damaged, it's off to the nearest station to repair, launch and go to the next system.

My point is that you'll have at MAXIMUM 4 sectors to engage them in; if they know they are being targeted. These are: the departing station, the nearside wormhole, the farside wormhole, and the arriving station. If they make it, they repair and repeat until they hit their destination. I'm fairly certain that they could use the station guards to protect themselves (more or less) when they are in the station sectors, which leaves only the WH sectors to jump them in.

If the constellations have anything like a Fast-Charge battery that allows infiniboosting, then forget it, these ships will be pirate-proof.

I propose that any player-owned Constellation-class ships be made "vulnerable-enough" so that a group of pirate players has a chance to kill it when it's piloted by a skilled trading-type player.

Otherwise, all we'll see are indestructible [TGFT] and [PA] Connies going everywhere with impunity.

I dont think they'll be able to fit into a docking bay...or even inside a station for that matter. I mean, freaking things are larger than most, if not all, stations.

I guess the docking equivalent to these ships would be just staying still next to a station.

If there's a shipyard in Grey (as it now stands) that is capable of accepting a Cap, and is located somewhere other than Odia M14... someone did their job wrong.

Capital stations only for Cap docking/repair--solve the cargo offloading issue some other way.

being able to take out engines.

This is a non-issue. I'm sure it will take awhile to implement player-controlled cap ships, and there will be lots of testing and adjustments, and when it's all done, it will be workable and this won't be a problem. I doubt there will ever be an infiniboost cap ship, because that idea is just ridiculous. As far as adding another suggestion, though, it would be cool if the time it took to warp or open a wormhole was directly proportional to the mass of your ship. For example, a Vulture could maybe open a wormhole in a one second, a Behemoth would take three, a Trident would take seven and a HAC would take fifteen. That would be crucial time for smaller escort ships to be alert for pirates.

It would actually make sense for capital ships to have infiniboost, at least for HACs and Connies. Their size would allow entirely different power sources (E.g. nuclear powered submarines).
The obvious downside would be their low velocity.

"This is CHRN Raven to VCS Copperhead, you left your lights on in the parking lot. Also, I just took out the shield on that connie and my boarding parties are currently in the process of seizing its cargo."

being able to take out engines
Best fracking idea I've seen all thread. (Turbo) Engines and shield generators, along with turrets, should be destructible.

All capships should be infiniboost. It wouldn't make sense for them not to.

And Lecter is right about the capship docks. Connies are larger than most of the stations currently in Grayspace.

Also, I imagine that flying a capship through nation space would require special paperwork.

Finally, are the border turrets powerful enough to drop a Terradon's shields, or will I be able to just walk into Dau and farm laws off of the strike force with my anti-fighter turrets in L-10?

Incarnate mentioned somewhere that part of the reason for increasing texture resolution was to accommodate a larger cap ship docking station.