Forums » General

So what is the Capella suppose to be/do?

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Feb 05, 2017 aaronund link
Instead of formulating an opinion based on the players demand for either a large battleship or ship manufacturing carrier. I thought that it would be far more sensible to ask the developers what the Capella is.

So GS what is it?
Feb 05, 2017 Faille Corvelle link
It is the ship to end all ships!

One ship to rule them all, one ship to find them, one ship to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them!
Feb 05, 2017 myacumen link
It is another used car salesman distraction tactic. Look it is new and big and shiney but as equally useless as other capships a.k.a. Cargo haulers.

Some day there may be viable capship battles but that is a long wait on a train that never gonna come.
Feb 05, 2017 CrazySpence link
^ never been in a battle
Feb 05, 2017 Pizzasgood link
Feb 05, 2017 VikingRanger link
We don't have capship battles right now because there's nothing to fight over and people don't want the hassle of going to M-7 and paying 500k. In order to have great battles there must be scarcity of something or territory to control that offers more than just bragging rights.
Feb 05, 2017 PaKettle link
Ranger you are correct. Until there is a goal worth fighting for large battles are not likely to happen.

This is however a step in the direction VO needs to go to make that day arrive.
Eventually VO will have large online groups fighting each other over actual resources and territories.

See you there.
Feb 06, 2017 Sieger link
Eventually VO will have large online groups fighting each other over actual resources and territories.

Looking forward to this day!
Feb 06, 2017 S0n_G0ku link
Prehaps the capella can be a guild-ship, and require a dozen or so times the effort of a dent. This could shake things up, if the finished product can be used by anyone given permission in-guild
Feb 06, 2017 S0n_G0ku link
Prehaps the capella can be a guild-ship, and require a dozen or so times the effort of a dent. This could shake things up, if the finished product can be used by anyone given permission in-guild
Feb 06, 2017 Stylezmaster link
I would cry for the players that manufacture this ship.
Feb 06, 2017 incarnate link
The Capella will probably have multiple roles and variants, depending on configuration and other factors, much like the rest of the ships.

You'll probably see a number of them in convoys in a freighter role, but I expect there will be military variants as well.

I'm not making any specific promises right now on what configuration may initially be available to players. We're still testing a lot of things.

I don't intend to make it 10x harder to manufacture than the Trident. The idea of endgame content that takes a player 2+ years to assemble seems a little over the top.

There's also no reason to assume the worst that capships will never have combat involvement, and all the other grumpy BS that keeps getting posted in various threads. I've spent almost 20 years building a game substantially around combat, with the premise of large battles. I'm not interested in stupidly breaking that game, by pushing features before they have other mechanics to reasonably balance them; but the notion that capship combat isn't a major goal for us is pretty ridiculous.
Feb 06, 2017 Dr. Lecter link
the notion that capship combat isn't a major goal for us is pretty ridiculous

Inc, I'm sure gold-plated toilets are "a major goal" for y'all, too...just not one that's going to occur any time soon [edited for clearly, lest the Devs get discouraged] or has been prioritized in any way, shape, or form.

In similar vein, assuming you DGAF about capship combat is eminently reasonable in light of the length of time capships have been in the game and the utter absence of capship-to-capship weaponry that's been implemented. The BGTWKOAs are an arguable exception, but given the fact they've been around almost as long as NPC HACs have and NOT A SINGLE ONE has ever been useable in any form by any PC cappie...I'd say they prove the point rather than provide an exception.
Feb 06, 2017 myacumen link
Ok but if it has been planned around substantial combat wouldn't/shouldn't those balance items have been already planned out and the groundwork for them already in place?

We get that you have to spend a ton of time keeping things running and putting out fires and such but it is hard to have faith that your goals are going to happen with capship combat when you are telling us you don't have balancing options already in place.

It seems a case of ok heres a capship now wait till we have time to figure out how we will let you fight with it. It's like we should put on our Nikes and then drink the kool-aid.

Also as a side note building a trident is a ridculous task. I get you wanted it to be hard but it is still a drudgery task only to find out it is only good for hauling. It's not a frigate please chNge the name to something more appropriate as frigate leads most people with any sense to assume you can do combat with it.
Feb 06, 2017 bojansplash link
The use of a word "Frigate" is maybe a bit too much. By comparison to real frigates - current Capella could maybe be classified as a frigate military vessel if it was equipped with adequate armaments and at least 12 docking/launch bays.

Just take a quick look how a real frigate should look here:



VO Trident Light Frigate should be renamed to Trident light cargo hauler.
Feb 06, 2017 incarnate link
Inc, I'm sure gold-plated toilets are "a major goal" for y'all, too...just not one that's going to occur or has been prioritized in any way, shape, or form.

Lecter, if I had the time right now, it would be easy for me to assemble a list of half a dozen major game features you claimed were "never going to happen", that then happened. Sometimes immediately after you proclaimed it was impossible. You're a terrible barometer for this kind of thing.

And that's my point. Yes, things take longer than expected, and sometimes priorities shift significantly and certain items fall way down the list. But, that is not the case here, and there's never a specific reason to assume the worst and claim that nothing is ever going to happen.

Ok but if it has been planned around substantial combat wouldn't/shouldn't those balance items have been already planned out and the groundwork for them already in place?

Yeah, like with a schedule? Wouldn't that be a great idea? But then, of course, everything goes to hell in a handbasket, largely due to issues far outside your control or expectation, and one is shifting on the fly to try and still reach goals at all.

Dwight Eisenhower said: "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."

And that's about how it works in game development too. Development plans go to hell even if you have 300 people and hundreds of millions of dollars, like Star Citizen. They sure aren't any easier when you don't have those things.

We get that you have to spend a ton of time keeping things running and putting out fires and such but it is hard to have faith that your goals are going to happen with capship combat when you are telling us you don't have balancing options already in place.

Here's the thing, man. There are lots of reasons to not have faith in us. We're small, our project is insanely huge, by most standards we shouldn't even exist (which is why we're pretty much the.. only company like us, ever). The game and development progress "are what they are", and have never gone to plan.

I don't expect anyone to drink my particular cool-aid, or have some kind of pathologically sunny disposition about everything we ever do. I do not crap rainbows. I expect people to be cautious and have their own opinions of our plans. But outright worst-case pessimism and bitterness are poisonous, they're bad for the community and empirically bad for the developers.

If the dev says something is an important goal, and you want to say "that'll never happen!", please go away and play something else. We would rather not have your money, at all, than deal with you dumping on our hard work.

Hell, you might even be proven right! But that doesn't matter. We still have to get up in the morning and try to do this every day, and your proclaiming to us, the rest of our players, and the world in general, that any interesting goal will never happen..? That's a self-fulfilling prophecy we don't need.

You can either have faith, and not post super embittered, pessimistic stuff. Or, you can not-have-faith, and go play some other game. I hear EVE is nice?

By comparison to real frigates - current Capella could maybe be classified as a frigate military vessel if it was equipped with adequate armaments and at least 12 docking/launch bays.

That's a pretty strange definition. If you look at actual frigates, you will see they are lighter fleet-escort vessels that are usually not-carriers to any meaningful degree. So, what you're describing as a Capella with 12 docking/launch bays is something else entirely.

Note: Frigate: "a warship with a mixed armament, generally heavier than a destroyer (in the US Navy) and of a kind originally introduced for convoy escort work."

So, I called it a Light Frigate, and not a Destroyer? If we rolled back to age-of-sail napoleonic navies it might have been a brigantine or a three-masted-schooner? Keep in mind, when we rolled out the Trident, it was way in advance of the intended launch of capships and something we put in specifically because the player-base clamored for it.

The Trident is not incapable of being a pretty devastating warship, at least in theory, and it is sized explicitly to be a light escort vessel. We had to name it something, and I don't think my name was that far off. These days I avoid the entire discussion, because role-based naming seems to really narrow the community perceptions of a ship, where I'm far more open to a lot of different roles emerging for variants of the same hull. Which I think would also be true in a future-reality along the lines of what we've presented.

Just take a quick look how a real frigate should look here:

Who cares what some other sci-fi game thinks? I certainly do not.
Feb 06, 2017 bojansplash link
That's a pretty strange definition. If you look at actual frigates, you will see they are lighter fleet-escort vessels that are usually not-carriers to any meaningful degree. So, what you're describing as a Capella with 12 docking/launch bays is something else entirely.

People discussing spaceships in space games usually draw their inspiration from real life examples, I agree.
I also checked the frigate definition and all available actual variants today before posting my comment.
For instance if you put this 21st century F125 Baden-Württemberg Class Frigate into space - it would blow up any existing ship and cap ship in vo to smithereens from 23 km away.

VO Trident Light Frigate, in its current state is incapable to do just about anything except haul more cargo then a behemoth xc. It is a bit safer to use because it has shields and lots of armor but that's about it.

Who cares what some other sci-fi game thinks? I certainly do not.

Actually your players/community does. Majority of people play other games too, they all like to pull some comparisons between our age naval ships and spaceships they see and use in games they play.
Do you think players who play Halo or EVE or Elite: Dangerous would not compare frigates from those other games to VO frigate?
Well, hate to tell you - but they do and having Trident Light Frigate to compare to others is a bit of a disappointment.

Why is it so hard to accept that naming it a "frigate" was a bit far fetched and just change the freaking name?

On one thing we can be in a complete agreement - VO is not ready for big strong caphsips and capships battles.
Most enjoyable part of VO for some players like me is light fighters combat. VO excels in it.
So, maybe a wild idea but... how about visually improving the immediately available and affordable light/medium ships and slowly moving towards introducing gunships, corvettes and other smaller sub capital class ships before introducing combat worthy capital ships like frigates, destroyers, cruisers, battleships and carriers?
Feb 06, 2017 Dr. Lecter link
Way to dodge my point, which was not "NEVAH!" but rather, "the state of affairs over the course of many, many years shows cap-to-cap combat HAS NOT BEEN any kind of a priority."

Not ONE cap-to-cap weapon for PC cappies. Not. One.

Priorities do not equate to 'this will never happen in VO', but people are reasonably well-informed by looking to what has/has not been even attempted w/r/t implementation of such a basic concept over such a long period of time.
Feb 06, 2017 incarnate link
What? My post was originally responding to:

Some day there may be viable capship battles but that is a long wait on a train that never gonna come.

"NEVAH" was exactly the point. My point.

I'm not intentionally dodging your point, it just seems.. lacking in value? I think you're implying that lack of previous PC cap-to-cap weapons somehow justifies the assumption that such things will never exist.

Of course, I've written various newsletters and posts about how I explicitly do want this to happen. You can read every post I've written about torpedoes, for instance, and my desire for balanced gameplay that allows meaningful skill-driven defense in cap-vs-cap battles.

But, hey, if we assume that "if it has never existed in the game, then it will never exist", we can basically say that nothing will ever happen. That's just dumb.

Anyone who thinks they're "reasonably well-informed by looking to what has/has not been even attempted" is.. misinformed. Assumptions are a bad idea. They're like the one thing that's almost certainly less accurate than my own development predictions.

Well, hate to tell you - but they do and having Trident Light Frigate to compare to others is a bit of a disappointment.

That's fine, I don't hate to hear it. I don't really care.

I'm not really opposed to changing the name, either? Roll a Suggestions post about that. But then don't complain when a Trident variant shows up that violates all your closely held arbitrary assumptions.

Because this stuff is pretty vague and arbitrary. When I rolled the military rank structure RFC, someone was really against my using the Commodore rank. He wanted Rear Admiral or something, I dunno.

I no longer spend hours pouring over Janes Fighting Ships, as I did as a kid, but if you look over the historical usage and context of the words "Frigate", "Destroyer" and "Cruiser", you'll find a pretty varied set of interpretations.. especially by era. Like, say, the 657 ton Surprise, versus the 2200 ton Constitution. And yet, both were frigates (Surprise was clearly classified as such by the Royal Navy), laid down almost the same year.

Feb 06, 2017 myacumen link
I'm not dumping on your work. You guys do a hell of ajob keep this whole thing running.

We are saying that the lack of any progressin cap to cap battles and weapons is disheartening.

We are not asking for Super weapons that kill with 1 shot but something that at least has a fair chance to deshield another trident and then damage it.

Does the fact that 2 hounds with HX and UC can deshield a trident but another trident can not seem a bit ridculous?