I disagree. These ships are balanced in that the capship is offensively and defensively more powerful - but slow, while the fighter is fast and agile but is less powerful. The fighter can choose to engage or not. Multiple fighters pose a threat to the capship because it cannot escape their combined power easily.

If we're going to have a game where every ship can go 1 vs. 1 evenly , then we might as well have all the same ships and just vary them cosmetically.

The balance is in the advantages and disadvantages of each ship.

I think it's pretty balanced if the turrets used energy. Every other ship has to use energy to shoot and how do you justify that a cap ship can simply shoot forever with 0 energy? This is just wrong and shouldn't be in the game. And cap ships would still always have the advantage in a 1v1. First they have to get close enough alive and then shoot and hit for quite a long time while being fired at. When the fighter manages to drain the entire cell, all the cap ship pilot has to do is undock and fire at the fighter and force him to stop shooting the cap ship. The pilot could also use a Rag with Swarms and Flares and simply dock again to reload and repair, the fighter can't repair and has to leave the sector for that. It's still really easy to win for the cap ship and it's even easier because the fighter will have reduced firepower because of using PCBs.

Heini, plenty of weapons(Iceflare, Starflare, Sunflare,Xang Xi Self-Propelled Concussion Launcher, Jackhammer, Stingray, Prox mine, L-mine, Conc mine,drain mine, firefly, yellowjackets, geminis, chaos swarm, locust swarm, Conc rail gun) require zero energy to use. Do you propose removing those as well?

Heck mining beams use zero energy. (with the exception of grid) They are clearly some kind of energy, and they shoot forever.

those can't be fired infinitely due to ammo WAF

How did you forget that these use ammo? When was the last time you used one of them?

Where did I say they don't?

Please keep to the topic.

WAF: Per the OP, this all stems from a desire to limit the ability of capital ships to engage in unlimited defensive fire. One can limit this through ammo limitations, which then have to be manually replenished, or through energy, which then has to be recharged.

In the OP, Heini stated he was avoiding ammo due to the hassle of replenishing, and proposing energy as a limiting factor.

So, saying that other weapons (that do use/require ammo).. do not use energy, is not super relevant, because they do have the limiting factor of.. requiring ammo.

(I'm not advocating for any side here, just trying to clarify so the discussion is more useful)

I'll be very specific then.

-1 to the concept that ammo based turrets should have unlimited ammo AND use energy.

+1 to limited ammo (with capital ship cargo holds carrying expanded ammo supplies for turrets)

I'm also against ammo because you have no control over it since there aren't ammo stealing weapons. And WaF even went as far as suggesting that cap ships can carry even more ammo in the cargo which would change absolutely nothing and in the end you still have a cap ship which you can't defend against and spams swarms for a very long time, just not forever but still long enough to disrupt the gameplay of a sector for quite a while. And once you finally run out of ammo you can simply leave for a few minutes and come back with lots of ammo again.

What I want as the end product is to be able to defend and possibly chase away a cap ship without destroying or deshielding it as a solo player. Having turrets use energy would be the best way in my opinion. I think it's necessary because cap ships can usually do as they please because it takes a coordinated team to defend against one and it's hard to find players to do that and even harder to find capable players that can, for example, stack missiles or dodge swarms. Cap ships simply aren't balanced and are way too strong right now and need to be balanced to properly fit into the game.

I don't see the point of continuing this discussion. You repeatedly say that a trident has the capability of disrupting a sector and taking over it, when I have never seen that happen. You always have the ability to pass through it, or avoid it. I don't think capswarms can catch up to a hound, or a hog mk2.

If your only option is running it is clear that something isn't balanced correctly.

And when Defense isn't a good reason how about simple logic: All ships use resources to fire their weapon but cap ships don't, even if the description of turrets says it should. How do you justify them generating these resources out of thin air while everyone else has to use something to be able to shoot?

And just because YOU don't see it doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

I think our efforts are best directed toward gameplay, rather than reality (or consistency within a quasi-reality).

Incarnate wrote:
"It probably would go a long way to mitigating the seeming invulnerability of capital ships. If we did implement it, there would probably be some significant cooldown or "repair" process, to the respective turrets, so it's definitely a way to add another challenge to defense."

The balance in question is clearly a result of the lack of players in game. If there were an abundance of people flying around and attacking capital ships the balance would be much less of an issue, and whatever change proposed here would then be proposed to be changed back (like it has in the past when ammo limits were put in place).

Therefore it would make sense to implement something like this suggestion in a dynamically scaled manner such that capital ships would have less limitations dependent on how many players are in sector.

Honestly, I think the only turret weapon that should require energy is that overpowered 1-shot kill railgun.

Heini, can you describe some specific situations where you're encountering this kind of "system takeover" issue? Details might be helpful to informing the motivation.

I see them fairly often actually, usually it's Iron Lord. I'm waiting in Sedina B-8, sometimes alone and sometimes with another player. He likes to just sit there with swarms and shoot at anyone in the sector. I don't even bother attacking him anymore because I first had to deshield with swarms locked onto me in a slow Rag, then leave to get a smaller ship to be able to dodge and damage him and once he is low on HP he just turbos away using the massive armor to his advantage, leaves for 3 minutes to race in a tube to repair and come back. If this change was implemented I could immediately use a light fighter against him that is much more effective at dodging Swarms and make him stop firing and turboing away. At some point cap ship pilots would either get bored because they're not getting easy free kills and can't really be annoying or they would come out and fight in a fighter. They still have the advantage of having unlimited repairs and refills and fighting against a ship with limited firepower due to the PCB but at least you would have a chance of winning instead of just losing from the beginning just because you don't have a cap ship yourself or multiple fighters. It's still a 1v1 after all and you should be able to at least have more options than simply running away. It wouldn't be easy since you still have to reduce your firepower, remove a lot of energy and dodge many projectiles but it would certainly be better than losing just for not having a cap ship or players to help you.

And in general, this change would make things a bit more interesting. Cap ship pilots need to consider their energy and have to pick out the PCB fighter first and focus them instead of just spamming shots at the chasers and hope that something hits. I also don't think it would be unfair in a group cap ship hunt because a team of coordinated players should be a threat to anyone, including cap ships. They can get gunners/escorts as well to counter the attackers. Cap ships would still be strong but would benefit from escorts and encourage teamwork not only on the side of the cap ship hunters but also on the opposite side.

Perhaps another option would be to only have Capital Swarms and Capital Railguns require energy since they are the biggest problem and other turrets like the standard Neutron turret have uses for things like taking down Levis. This would also make cap ship loadouts something to think about instead of just using 4 Swarm turrets. It could also be used to defend yourself against a fighter in case you don't have fighters yourself and can't undock.

Yes, running is your only option when you are ALONE. It's been established many times that capships are not meant to be soloed, and that 2 or more can clear an "occupied sector".

I have even seen a single person chasing ILs goli away, so yeah skill also factors in.

I suggest you rather make suggestions to improve existing anti capship weaponry...

It was only established in the sense of destroying them. This would allow for more options. And in general, cap ships should use energy just because it's only logical that they are balanced like any other ship. They shouldn't be overpowered just because they take a long time to build. They already are and always will be strong but they can't be too strong and at the very least they should use the same mechanics as any other ship since they are in the same game. Such an inconsistency shouldn't be possible in the first place. If 99% of the ships use energy, why should cap ships be allowed to have infinite energy? We even have a PCB but that does only half of what it's supposed to do against cap ships. Sure it may stop them from turboing when you chew through 4000 energy with 150/s recharge rate but they will still magically be able to shoot because they get special treatment and are allowed to break one of the most basic rules of VO. You wouldn't want fighters to be able to shoot forever, both energy and ammo weapons, so why would it be okay for cap ships to do so? It's just wrong and imbalanced.

Also a PCB IS an anti cap ship weapon and I want it too be useful. I would say that the PCB even is the only anti cap ship weapon in the game because it's essential. There is no way to stop a running cap ship because, unlike the rest of the ships in the game, they don't need to spend energy to shoot.

I suggest using the current energy consumption stats as already mentioned in the description of the turrets. And 1000 energy for Cap Swarms (and infinite ammo) like the Cap Rail.
But Neut turrets could be left unchanged because they are needed for things like taking down Levis, defending yourself in case you don't have a ship to undock and to make more creative loadouts.

I fail to see how a capship, sitting in B8, taking pot-shots at passers by, is "disrupting a sector". Or, why I should care that you can't easily solo a Trident in your fighter?

Basically, you've never really defined a problem, Heini. You have strong opinions about making the game different, but this isn't the "strong opinions" forum. You can't just suggest something because you happen to want it, you have to make a compelling logical argument for how it improves the game, as a whole, for everyone else.

I've commented elsewhere on how more anti-capship weapons will be developed, along with more tradeoffs, including both benefits and further challenges to owning / maintaining a capship. This may eventually include some degree of shared energy consumption for turrets. But, I don't really agree with the balance proposed here.

I don't intend to make a Trident trivial to threaten or drive off by a single fighter. Possible, perhaps, but not trivial.

You've never been able to easily solo capships before, nor do I see why we would move in that direction.