I've been thinking about the idea of player (or guild) owned capitle ships, and i've come to the conclusion (as have others) that before PC cap. ships are realy implemented there needs to be a line of patroleboat sized vessils, that have signifigantly more armore, firepower, and size than the curent fighter/bomber range of ships. In my minde the Bohemoth is the fist of these ships. Anyway, my sugestion is that there should be a ship (the idea was inspired by the Defiant from DS9) that was just barely small enough to fit into existing docking bays, and preferably too large to fit into the cap. ship's bay.

i envision this ship haveing 6 L port weapon slots, and around 3 times the srmor of the moth. I would also like to see it not have turbo and not require a battery. Or posably it should have a second and posably third battery slot. Agility wise, it should probably handle about as well as an overloaded Rag (one with all weapon and cargo space filled with reasonably heavy equipment). This ship would require lisences aproaching: 10/8/10/9/0 (posably a litle highter weapons and trade xp).

now before anyone says how uber powerfull this ship is, i'd like to explain that it is suposed to be uber powerfull. Due to its extreem size and less than uber manuverability it would have some trouble with the rev C and IBG. But other than that it should be superior to all fighters and bombers. It will however, be more vulnerable to attack by larger cap. ships.

Basicly this ship would be the boarder between single player combat ships and multi player comabt ships.

I like. But I would change one thing. Instead of 6L ports, I'd instead give two turrets, each of which was 2L ports. So you would get in with two of your friends, and each of them would have control of 3 of your weapons. What makes it balanced? No AI for the turrets, so if your friends don't show, they're locked into fowards-firing mode only.

6 L ports??? Are you serious? And no battery requirement?

The no turbo & bad maneuverability would be a drawback, but still.... 6 L ports could single hit kill almost everything in the game now. And if there's no battery requirement....

I really don't see what purpose this ship is supposed to serve. No turbo = no legs, nobody is going to travel anywhere in this. It would be an extremely uber defence ship for defending stations once that gets implemented - way too uber, in my mind, because due to the no turbo, only the defenders would have them (what attacker is going to want to spend the time to bring a ship with no turbo to attack a station?).

And at least against the current cap ships we have, it would NOT be vulnerable to them; a fully loaded Rag is still maneuverable enough to dodge the Cap Ship's turret fire. And with 6 L ports, it could take Cap Ships down by itself fairly quick.

I don't see it being as maneuverable as a rag. About as maneuverable as a 40000kg beh when loaded. And my version only had 4L ports. And I like his "2 batteries" (1 fore each turret!) idea better than the "no battery" idea.

I still don't see what purpose this is supposed to serve. Can't turbo means can't take itself to attack anywhere any distance away; can't dock with Cap Ships, so it can't be carried long distances... so it's pretty much limited to defending a single location, probably stations. Currently, there's no point to defending stations, but there will be soon(tm), so that might be a purpose it would serve. But it would also require some reworking of the faction standing system, specifically with the NFZ, so that if this ship attacks enemies in the NFZ it won't get a SF on it. But I'd like to see that changed, anyway.

So maybe once we get a reason to defend stations there might be a point to this ship, but as it is now I can't see what purpose it would serve. And even as a station-defender, I'd have to see it in action to form an opinion as to whether it's not good enough or too good, even for that.

I say give it turbo, but not much turbo thrust, so it could maybe hit 200 m/s, but most of the time, if it turbos, its going to be moving at around 100-120 m/s

Beolach: The point of my version is that it's immensely more powerful. A ship with 4L ports, meh, it'll have a hard time hitting anything. A ship with 2 turrets and mothlike maneuverability? >:D

I see this more as a way to defeat cap ships more than anything else. And don't think that by cap ships I mean the way the current cap ship is. By the time players can get cap ships there will be a few more models, weapon options for the ships, and health boosts for the current model and turrets. Unless they bring back the avalon (even then might be hard to hit a moving target with those) a ship with many L ports (perhaps L ports with limited weapon choices?) that focus on anti cap ship weapons rather than fighter defense. This could be a cap ship killer for guilds who cant afford cap ships to fight others with. You would need significantly more ships and fighter escort to take down a cap ship with a group of them.

the point of this ship idea was to mimic the defiant from deep space 9. It's primary use was to defend a station. However it's extreem firepower makes it an exelent cap ship killer. the reason i sugested 6 L ports and no turrets is that i wanted it to be the bigest ship that could be operated by a single player. As for the lack of turbo, the curent cap ships don't have turbo. and not having turbo is the only akilies heal of this oterwise powerfull ship. it can't run from the smaller bombers an fighters, it has to stay and fight. i would however recomend giving it a top speed of 70 m/s.

Additionaly i said an overloaded rag not a loaded rag, i can garantee that the loaded rag that is capable of esily dodging the cap ship's turrets isn't carying the heaviest weapons and cargo available. also this ship would be a lot larger than a rag, and as such would be an easier target even if it were as manuverable as a rag. I want it to be posable for it to dodge, but it will take more skill than the existing heavy ships due to it's extreem size.

Actually, the current Cap Ships do have turbo. It's not particularly noticable, but but they do turbo. See: http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/2/9956#114262

And I would say that even a Rag with massive weapons & cargo would still be able to dodge the Cap Ship turrets as they are now without too much trouble.

Err... the Defiant was provided so that the crew would have a way to get off of DS9. Those runabouts were getting killed far too easily. And in the Star Trek universe, wasn't the Defiant intended to fight the Borg?

Well anyway, in terms off Vendetta, there should probably be mid-sized ship batteries, with larger charges and higher recharge. BUT the caveat is that the ship's turbo drains more than fighter turbos anyway. It's just there to make it look like more.

As for turrets, maybe they should get their own fighter-sized batteries? Or something.... I like the idea that the ship has controllable turrets, and otherwise shoots straight forward if no one's there. Or if the turret is not controlled by a player, then that turret is locked, so theoretically you could have one player controlling a turret, and another turret uncontrolled.

The ship itself would have a slightly lower top speed, say 50-60m/s, and while it has 200m/s boost, it doesn't get there very quickly/

I'd be inclined to simply tweak the specs on the Rag. Increase it's thrust and turning and beef the armor up to, say, 25K (with appropriate mass additions, of course), and maybe substitute one of the S ports for another L port. This would be coupled with a new battery class (difficult to attain, of course) that would sufficiently meet the power requirements for such a heavy weapon load (say, a charge of 350 and a recharge rate of 55).

This thing would be rail fodder. Sit out of range at 700m, take potshots at the big turd. Also, with no turbo, it should probably cruise at around 100.

tram: then you stick rails on the turrets.

nah, cuz the ships carrying the rails are going to dodge a hell of a lot better than the turret is.

Enough with the tweaking of pre-existing models and making them stronger. We need new ship models, bigger, bader, stronger. They need to be minimum of twice the size of the largest ship in services now which would be either the rag or moth. Should have more guns and more armor then any current ship and should have a combat license requirement of a minimum of 10-12 to even see it. Now with that added armor and power there of course is a decrease in speed but that is made up for with support ships like players in rags and centaurs and cents and etc. blah blah blah.

@LordQ
The defient was not made to defend a station, it was designed to take out Borg ships during te whole wolf359 storyline. Was later transfered to the control of DS9 under Cisco for use in the defense of the Alpha quadrent from the Deminion. (But I don't watch Star Trek). It was never ment to be a station defender why else would it have huge engines and the firepower to destroy most anything in its path. If anything the Defient reminds me a lot of the SCProm as it is now, only with more manuverability.

[addition]
Just thought of it, but some of the axia or other transports used in the CtC script actually have very similar characteristics to the Defient, perhaps make that a player controlable/purchasable ship?

Fist off i can see how you people were confused, but i ment to say, not that the defiant was built to defend DS9, but rather that that became one of it's primary uses. This is an acnolegment of the opinilns that this ship would make an exelent station defender.

Additionaly, the idea behind giving it a speed of 70 m/s was that it should not be faster than every fighter in existance. Depending on your perspective it is either a heavy short range uber-bomber, or a tiny cap. ship with some teeth.

Everything i recomended (with the exception of the new model) could be done relatively esily by the dev's at this time. By adding things like turrets and newer batteries it makes more work for the devs (primarily more blance work).

Any new batery desined for this ship's energy consumption needs would be too Uber to allow it to be mounted on a fighter. As such i recomended that it not have energy drain issues. This however makes the ship too powerfull as it could use turbo continiously in tacticle manuvering situations while maintatining it's maximum rate of fire indefinately. Thus i said it should not have turbo. This makes the ship unable to catch fleeing fighters, and thus it's 6 L port ordanace seems a litle less overpowered.

As for the manuvering, i don't want this ship to be a helpless nearly motionless brick like the cap. ships often turn out to be. But rather i wanted it to have a dificult time dodgin, but it should still be posable. And i do think that a good gunner should be able to hit an overloaded rag, especialy if multiple turrets fire on the same target (and if as i recomended, it is as big as posable and still able to dock at a station).

And yes this ship would be vulnerable to certain types of attacks (rails for one). That is evedance that it is balanced. if it wasn't week against something than it would be too powerfull. I also oposed the tdea of turrets on this ship because if it can't fire behinde it then it is more vulnerable to attacks by squadrens of fighters. I would not be opposed to it having turrets as long as they are limited to the forward 90 degrees (45 degrees on either side of straight ahead) and if the could be fired without having to be operated by players.

I'd be more inclined to balance it with a power drain from weapons and allow it to have infiniboost. Infinite firepower is a hell of a lot more advantageous than infiniboost on a massive ship that's probably going to max out at around 150m/s anyway.

Aside from that, IIRC, one of the major sticking points for the Devs was that every playable ship in the came be theoretically capable of destroying every other playable ship in the game. This would throw that way out of whack.

i think that prety much any ship could take down the one i have peroposed here, at least in the same sence that any ship can take down the prom, or rev C. Basicly it comes down to using the right tactic.

Because all 6 L ports are forward facing, and it is slightly less manuverable than a Rag, the trick is to get behinde it. This would be easier than you may think due to the complete lack of turbo. Because it's absolute to speed is 70, any starfighter can keep out of range. Also it will be even larger than a moth, so it wouln't take musch to hit it.

Also i do think it is unreasonable to expect that any given two ships provided equaly skilled pilets would be matched. if that was realy the goal there would be only one class of ship.

I like the idea, but instead of handling like a overloaded rag, (which isn't ALL that unable to draw a bead for something that can kill as soon as it gets the bead,) have it handle like a SLIGHTLY lighter behemoth. Great idea though LQ!