LQ:
you don't seem to be very keen on comprehensive battle tactics. Yes, a turbo-pass would help a cap ship to deal quick damage to another cap while exposing them to minimal figher damage, HOWEVER, it would open them up afterward to MAJOR damage, and make them almost indefensibe as well as they turn around for a second pass. The inertia of a ship of that size is ENORMOUS. You have to account for it in both acceleration/deceleration and turning. A center-axis roll would be the most responsive maneuver a capitol ship could perform, and also the most tactical in battle (exposing new, undamaged armor plates to the other capitol ship, while bringing fully charged weapon systems to bear on it) In the end, with even fighter escorts and armaments, the HAC using sub-turbo speed and tactics would come out on top.

Turboing would be effective only as a travel-method, ESPECIALLY if the range of the HAc's most powerful turrets were limited. Not to mention, even a turboing HAC could not outrun fighters, so it's not an effective evasive maneuver either.

Heh... well.. I don't want to get as emotional as Cunjo over this... but he's right about inertia and all that, obviously. Either the cap ships should be slower, or the fighters way faster, and making fighters faster would really mess up combat. And another thing about all this realism: since we don't really know much about how the VO universe works in relation to things like starship size drive systems, arguing from realism is pointless. Even inertia can be countered, at least in many sci-fi plots and novels. Inertialess drives, etc. Reading all the earlier posts, I do see that slowing capships down also sucks though-especially when they'll soon become player controlled. Soon. Ahem.

Perhaps we could just free them from the 3000m restraint completely and give them a 30second-1minute "cap-ship jump drive" charging type of limitation. After that time they could jump anywhere in system. Oh-something similar with wh's too.

Heh, this would also make ion storms particularly deadly to cap ships, as they would have to travel using normal drives to reach the ion storm exit point. This would be good for RP value, allowing players in fighters to act as storm scouts, etc.

Cunjo, I hope you're being sarcastically angry at people, because if not, you need several chill pills taken with a glass of nice warm "be quiet". See, It's not hard to be nice and argue at the same time. :)

T-Dawg LeChatelier

personaly i think cap ships should have top speeds similar to the sub turbo speeds of most fighters, and no turbo.

But..then it would take ages for it to get out to 3000m!

Maybe they would not have to go to the 3km mark? Assuming that the 3000km are necessary to allow the shipboard navcomp to calculate a flight path, a capital ship with more room for computing power should be able to do that much sooner and more accurately, since they could rule out the effect of the surrounding objects (or most of it, at least). Perhaps have the ships have differing warp distances, depending on size.

^^^^
exactly, that's what i said in my first posts in this thread

What is the cap ship warps when touching and facing the station?

Pretty Scary Sight!

=D

In general here is how everything should relate:

fighters: having power problems, highest top speed, HIGHEST ACCELERATION and low attack power.

bombers: average power output, average speed, AVERAGE ACCELERATION, and average attack power.

cap ship: pretty much no power problems, low top speed, low acceleration, over kill on attack power.

fighter are fighters after all and have a high thrust/mass ratio

Bombers are bombers after all and have an average thrust/mass ratio

cap ship are cap ship and can be used for multi funtions. Some of them have to have docking bays or even repair facilities. Since the ship is not dedicated fighting only like the other two, it will have a low thrust/mass ratio

For balancing issues, if a fighter installs a bombers battery or uses heavy weapons, then that will kill its acceleration but it will seem like it has more power to use then a bomber has(because of the battery).

Between bombers and fighters, fighters should have the infi-boost. After all, without a fighters speed they become helpless. Bombers have more powerfull weapons and armor for their protection, fighters just have speed. Also fighter should have a higher non-turbing.

By power problems for fighters, I mean that they can quickly chew through their energy while machinge gunning their target.(Though not to quickly)

This is how everything should be balanced

personaly i'd lay it out more like this:

FIGHTERS/SHUTTLES/BOMBERS

interceptors: light highest top speeds, high turbo drain, limited weapons capacity (S only and no more than 1 or 2 ports)

Space superiority: heavier craft, high top speeds low turbo drain medium weapons capacity (3S, 1L+1S, etc)

Long Range fighter/bombers: hevy craft, lowe top speeds, low turbo drain, heavy weapons (2S+1L, 2L, etc)

Gunboats: lowest top speeds, heavy armor, reasonably manuverable, very lor top speed and high turbo drain, but excpetional weapons capability (the prom should be the smallest of these craft)

SMALL CAP SHIPS:

Corvets: just barely larger than a cap ship's docking bay, comprable speed to a gunboat, or space superiority fighter, large armor, may carry turrets. weapons range is comprable to fighters.

Destroyers: large warships, no turbo, but sub turbo speeds comprable to fighters. weapons range averages around 1-2km

Frigats: as destroyer, but with wepons that are designed to destroy capitle ships optimal engagment range of 2-3km, with a maximum range around 6km.

LARGE CAP SHIPS

Crusers: as frigats but with more armor, a larger hull, and more and longer range weapons optimum range os 2-3km, with maximums around 10km). top speed of around 40-50m/s

Battleshipsa: as crusers but with a larger hull, more armor, and a secondary turret net carying anti-fighter weapons.

Carriers: ships with several large docking bays, and an extensive anti-fighter turret network. some limited anti cap ship weapons, tops speeds vary depending on size, but highest should be 60 m/s with larger ones being as slow as 30 m/s.

The top speed should increase for bigger ships.
The effective combat speed should be lower because of the amount of time it takes to change direction and maneuver on the fly.

Therefore it would appear as the light ships are faster.
Just not in going in a straight line.

There should be a top speed cap for CapShips that's definitely UNDER the top speed of any light intercepter and even a midrange fighter. Caps are BIG ships and have lots of mass that needs to be moved. It anything, they should be given in-sector FTL drives for large manuvers or repositioning. 100mps would be more then enough for max speed (no turbo) for any combat manuver they might make.

I agree that they don't need turbo.
And their forward thrust should be exponentially greater than their side to side/up and down.
This way its easier to predict where they are moving and dock with them.

I disagree on the side to side vs up down comment. These are space ships, when being designed, I'm sure the designers are taking into consideration that they have all 6 directions to work with. It should be up to the style of the ship to determine what is best and what is weakest. Perhaps a ship comes with engines specifically designed for making them move up and down faster then side to side (like a tall skinny ship vs a wide flat ship).

Just make sure that fighters have a higher acceleration then cap or mid ships. Currently fighters have worse acceleration.