How about a rapid-fire uber gauss that can destroy both fighters and missles?

Give us Levi Gauss!!!

One of the problems is fighters, if they want to have a purpose in taking down capships then make them close range fighters, perhaps even deployed from another capship. why?

1)fighters are the fastest smallest ships in the game and from their specs its easy to hit a huge capship like the hac without being hit your self(as long flying fast and very very close to the ship.

2)pretty much all capships will have some anti fighter weponaryto take out fighters but its pretty much useless if the turret cant turn around fast enough to hit the fighters.so youwant to take them out at long range.

3)fighters cant just hit anywhere on the capship and do a whole load of damage to it, they have to take out there weak spots to do any decent damage to it.

^^ that's kinda the point. A capship can't take out fighters by itself, it needs fighters of its own. If Side A has 5x the fighters of Side B, the capship power's significance diminishes.

Capship>Fighters>Bombers>Capship

Isn't that how it's supposed to work?

No, cuz that would lead to relatively uninteresting fighting of the form:

Sides A and B meet on the field of battle in fighters
A loses, recoups and brings a capship
B loses, recoups and brings bombers
A loses, recoups and brings fighters

these ships need to mean more than just their ability to defeat eachother.

a well equipped and well crewed cap ship should be able to engagge and destroy any number of fighters and/or bombers provided the fighters and bombers never have sufficent numbers to overwhelm the defences (excatly how many ships it should take to overwhelm a cap ship is another debate).

Shapenaji,
how is that less interesting than: Player A and B meet
A loses, and comes back in same ship
B loses, and comes back in same ship
A loses, and comes back in same ship
(the curent model of fighter v fighter combat)

Well... any combat based rock/paper/scissors might work that way... but... it all depends on skill.

Side A and B both have a Capship, some bombers, and some fighters.
if A only has fighters and a Capship... whereas B has all 3... then the only thing A has which can damage a Cappy is its Capship. In the end... Both A and B will lose their smaller ships... and it'll come down to Capship v. Capship.

If A only has bombers... then it will lose... it will lose its bombers to B's fighters and then B's bombers will help B's capship take out A's capship.

Add in mini-cappies... and it gets much more messy.

I'm off to watch Serenity... :D

but this is thinking stereo-typed a fighter or bomber is only affective at close where its speed and manouverbilty are made affect, and of course light armour doesent realy matter any more.So lets say that A is an anti capship capship and B knows that, but B has a squadron of bombers.Now B is about 9000 meters away it hasn't deployed its bombers yet.Now for B's bombers to be any use at all they have to be deployed at close range otherwise the bombers cant realy get close enough to to confuse A's turrets and theyl get destroyed before firing a shot so B HAS to get in close to use them at all, so heres where the strategy and skill come in, you dont have to deploy the bombers imeadiatly (especialy if B has long range weapons) but if you do deploy your fighters (unless youre quick enough) you will get shot by A after all yourpractically right next to him.

I think the mistake that people make is to think of capships of tanks, easy to call upon at any time. I think of HAC's as bases or strongholds, or closer to, in medieval times, a castle.

To keep it in medieval times, bombers would be catapults and battering rams, siege weapons. Castles have plently of defenses against these, their own catapults, and fire and burning oil for rams, but eventually the castle will succumb. Then there's the castle's troops (fighters in VO) which absolutely destroy the siege weapons. That's why the attackers need their own troops to back up the siege weapons.

In VO, with two HAC's, it becomes a struggle over the space around the capships, secured by fighters. Once a side has control, it brings out the bombers. The capships don't actually have an active role, its power just gives an advantage to one side.

actualy cap ships are like:
battleships
aircraft cariers
crusers
destroyers
frigates
...

anyway the point is fooz is kinda' right, cariers act like fortreses or bases. crusers and battleships are mopre for assaulting stations or other cap ships, and then destroyers and frigats are for destroying smaller ships (fighters, bombers, other small cap ships, etc)

I guess quite a few people here have played Homeworld 1 or 2. So you should know how cap ship battles (usually) take place. Granted, in HW, the balance is probably very different from Vendetta. But you can still grasp the fundamentals of (space) fleet combat when playing it.

So, of course you would use combined arms. Nothing else would make sense in the long run (once penalties are in effect).

I've been in a few cap ship battles now, and have to say that I think homing missles and rockets, torpedoes... long range and short range, would all be really cool. in a realistic universe, who would ever have a big ship capable of holding other ships, goods, and people, and not have it armed to the hilt. cap ships should be something you stay away from, because they're deadly. attacking them should be risky.

I also was thinking about how it would be fun to have cap ships be able to launch targetable Aerna Seekers... potentially even to follow from sector to sector. maybe the cap ships can build seekers out of recovered scrap metal, or from plasteel or something, so you have to work to generate them.

oo, support fleets! That would make resource managing much more important. Every larger cap ship (read: one with a weapons/ship production facility) would need a tail of a few behemoths that would have to be protected as well...

Implementation would be tough, though.

If the avalon is to be returned to fight off capships, it should only be equippable on a special ship that has nothing but the avalon. It should have minimal armor but a lot of thrust to try and get in and drop the nuke, but be easy to destroy as well.
A small manuverable fast ship that has 1 large bay that already comes as a gov issue avalon nuke.. make it expensive..

One or two avalons in their original form would strip a cappy off its turrets in one or two hits ... erm .. not sure if that'S a good idea

My idea for a capital ships is this:

Captial ship can buy different types of gun. Anti small ships would be really effective against fighter at a short range. If there is enough of these on a capital ship, it will be a slaughter to use close range fighters. This could be a gun that shots a ton of mini missles that are homing. They lose their homing at a certain distance away from the cap ship that fired them. These gun however are terrible against other ranges and capital ships.
Then there can be guns great at fighting as smaller ships are coming to them or sniping them but it will only be effect if there is enough of them. They aren't strong enough to be an effective anti cap ship gun. Then there is slow powerfull guns(which will be long range). It could be a laser that has to charge or slow moving long range missles. As the laser is charging you can see the glow on the gun and it is draining the battery. They won't fire until fully charged. The only thing they could hit is another capital ship or someone not paying attention. This shot would be large.

These guns will fit on a capital ship port.

There could also be capital ships designed for these task. One type of cap ship could come with a power laser(ex: Nadesco or Gundam Wing). It will have few ports for its size because it is a specialized ship. this will make it weak against fighters.

Then there could be cap ship with a built in execellent mini-missle barrage. This will be even more of a slaughter then on regular cap ships. It will also have few other ports since it is a specilized ship. This makes it weak against cap ships

I am also thinging of haveing strong sheild with a huge drain on cap ships. It will make all of its weapons useless while its on. It will train every weapons power to keep the sheild running. the shields will be a certain distance for the cap ship so other ships can be inside the sheild. I am also imaging that later on you can open your sheild to a certain frequency of energy weapons. This will allow energy weapons only to shot through sheild and the opponent will have to keep on changing frequencies until he finds yours. Then you would have to change your frequency again or close it altogether.

For powering a cap ship, there can be a battery on every gun plus a main battery for the pilot. The pilot could also have a gun. The pilot can take power away from gun for other uses at any time. On the anti cap specialty ship, the pilot will be the one controling the huge front cannon or missles.

For capital ships in general, the individual guns(even specialty guns) can be taken out leaving the captal ship defenceless. Every gun will have its own HP. The docking bay will have its own hp as well. If someone has an army of fighters but there docking bay is destroyed, then nobody can enter or leave the ship. If the capital ship is destroyed, then all the ships inside are destroyed and the ships explosion will be a certain size, which might kill someone that is nearby(ex. someone trying to leave at the last second or a fighter fighting close.)

yeah, having to repair the ship with nanites would be cool... also, maybe the docking bay needs to be armed, and if a certain percentage of another guild is able to dock, they take over the ship?

hmm destroyable docking bays are an interesting idea, but i'm n ot sure if it will end up being doable (depends on how capitle ships interact with stations and/or repair vehicles)

@mellow

NO, absolutely NO capturing of player owned, or guild owned capital ships. Those are a HUUUUUGE investment, and if a CS gets captured, blood will flow, long and thick. Filling the sectors, between the guild that lost its cappy to another guild.

Basically, being able to capture player capital ships is a bad idea. People would be killing eachother in horrible blood feuds even worse than now. NO NO NO NO!

I know, if anyone took my cappy, I'd hunt them down to the end of the universe, and a) get my cappy back, or B) blow it up if I couldn't get it back.

Besides, if you have to have a set amount of people dock at the cappy to capture it, once you get to 3/4ths the required number, the capital ships pilot will just use /explode. And you'll all die!