I've heard that cap ships are in the works, and that one of the main problems is how they handle. I think if you're trying to capture the nature of a capital ship, one of their aspects is that they don't maneuver so much as they navigate.

From an interface standpoint, to me this says you don't "fly" a cap ship so much as you tell it where you want to go and it tells you when it will get there. The down side of all this is that piloting a cap ship is going to be pretty boring.

My take on this is that a cap ship should have a "nav station" where you plot its course, and when you're done doing that you can go man some other position. Interface suggestion would be a Homeworld-style nav point plot, where you get a rotatable 3D view of local space and plot your nav points.

Since under this paradigm, capital ships can't effectively dodge, they should be given some sort of light shielding or self-repair, so that they can't be plinked to death, as well as some sort of ECM or Phalanx guns to defend from long-range missile attacks.

Suggested crew positions:
Captain -- controls power levels (trade off speed vs. gun power vs. shields vs. ECM?), decides which crew members have access to which crew stations. If cap ship can dock small craft, decides docking policy, and whether these craft can repair and rearm.
Navigator -- plots cap ship course (possibly just different screen for captain)
Gunner -- mans gun turret
Missileer -- fires missiles. option to actually pilot missile versus let it auto-guide -- puts pilot skill back into missile duels

Crew members should be able to switch to any unoccupied position, so you could fly a cap ship "single handed" at reduced effectiveness, save that only the ship owner could switch to the captain spot.

GuidoDKP, yes. I'm not sure what the devs are cooking up, but I agree with you completely. Only thing I'm not so sure about is if cap ships need shielding. Just give 'em enough hit points to begin with. Also, I think the Missileer crew position is a little redundant... a gunner could man either an energy turret or a missile turret.

'Each member of the crew could have a different task... and the tasks could be like minigames. There could be someone who plays the ammo reload game, someone who plays the targeting homers game, someone who plays the navigating-ship game, someone who plays the repairing game, the engine pressure/energy game...
effectively splitting up tasks among many people; and when you have a great crew, your ship will be more agile, have better defenses and energy than ships with less skilled members.'
^^I had that in the crafting thread, and I have to admit it's more suitable/on-topic here.
then of course there are the people docked at the capital ship... the capital ship can have its own station economy, and participate in battles/convoys.
What with all the different types of capital ships, and each crew will master different styles.

What will the capital ship's view of the universe be? I remember a1k0n saying that our ships looked very tiny when he flew the frig for fun.
If the capital ship were to have multiple views, does that mean there will be sensors/cameras we can damage or block?

Well i agree that's a good idea harvestmouse but it would get real redundant real fast. I think players will end up maning different turrets and there will be one captain that pilots the ship. Though at any point in time he'll be able to leave his station (let the ship lay in space idle) and man a turret. The (trade off speed vs. gun power vs. shields vs. ECM?) is a good idea too GuidoDKP. But it seems capitol ships will be more like flying stations in this game and take a very long time to get to. So i think the devs need to focus on more lower level capitol ships or frigates or whatever so we don't go straight from flying a little ship to maning a huge mamoth star destroyer :)

(my 2 cents)

Here is what the Battle-Cruiser/Frigate (known as [NPC] Gentu to the alpha testers) looks like: http://images.vendetta-online.com/extras/capital.jpg

It is *not* located anywhere ingame currently, but will be found in the post-release addon.

On a somewhat related note:

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/2314

This is Celebrim's uberlong cap ship thread. It's an interesting read and brings up a lot of good points.

True, no need to differentiate between a gunner and a missileer. Have X number of turrets and you fire whatever the turret's equipped with. The idea mainly came to me because the most consistent complaint that crosses channel 100 is "no-skill missile" players and whether or not missiles are too accurate in today's rev.

Celebrim has a lot of detail in his thread; my feeling is that we should have a long time to work our way up to that, because people shouldn't be able to afford cap ships for a while. Heck, maybe they're government-issue only and we can *never* afford them -- it's not like we can go buy a machine gun today, regardless of cost. Most of the thoughts here are for balancing corvette class ships versus starfighters.

On shields/auto repair, the reason I threw that in versus just having lots of hull points is that I feel that cap ships should be able to shrug off isolated attacks from single craft, but should require a coordinated attack from multiple starfighters. Pure ablative armor encourates fighters to sit out close to max weapon range and "plink" at slow, unmanouverable cap ships. It's possible this could balance out in other ways -- if all long-range weapons have ammo limitations, this becomes less of an issue. Having shields/repair means that you need to do a lot of damage quickly, rather than a little damage over a long period of time.

I'd instead vote for armor like Celebrim and mine. IE: Basic capital ship armor can shrug off anything taht does less than 800dmg/shot, so most fighter weapons are useless.

After having read both threads and thinking on it... first i would like to say... I want a capital ship... and I want one badly.

Next thought on it are a couple ideas I had about how I would want a capital ship done:
Economy:
Having the ability to hold n fighters depending on size, and maybe also the abiliity to dock m more. Holding a fighter allows the captain to warp out with the fighter in tow, while docking is if someone wants to trade with the ship. Then, having some way for the ship to have its own economy, somehow it gains resources and then uses the resources to build weapons and ships (if someone's gets destroyed). This leads into a couple of things, One, Them being guild/player owned, so that way, if a player who is part of the ships crew dies, the ship can build him a new one, at a cost of resources. This also leads to them being a guild owned mobile space station. But, if the guild wanted, it could manufacture and sell cargo, weapons, and ships to independents (or guild, and choose the cost), to help its economy go. This also allows for a place for people to repair in guild wars, though of course it would cost resources.

Command:
Command should be: Captain (Owner or someone put in command, or AI FO if captain chooses)
Gunners: Depending on number of guns on the ship.
Captain controls the ship, where it goes, what prices are, etc.
Gunners control a set of turrets which during battle, they get to shoot people with. At other times, these are AI controlled (NPCs) but it will encourage players to use them, as they won't be perfect.
There should probably also be a "command" for lack of better discription, License. This allows players to get better command ships. Has a minimum req, and effects how good your AI is for moving, etc.

Other parts to this: Some how capturing capital ships, but how you determine onboard battles, I don't know. Also the draw back is that cap ships should be expensive to buy, like 1,000,000c to 1,000,000,000 (dunno actual economy yet). And i'm not sure about respawn either. Also, don't have a suggestion whether or not they can be destroyed when the owner is not online, but my belief is it should. THat's why you hide it somewhere in an empty sector. This will also probably require some form of space docks also, where you can repair the ship, or the captain can spend resources on it to repair it also, but slowly. Maybe also implement some form of mining.

This sounds all on big scale, but I'm also thinking you can do larger ship types, like corvettes mentioned by GuidoDKP. One major drawback is they should not be able to move far, fast, and no 1 fighter should be able to take out a capital ship, but maybe include really heavy weapons, that fire slowly, rarely hit a fighter, but when launched and hit, do massive damage. THis will encourage team play.

I hope this all makes sense.
I also realize I might be repeating stuff, but that i feel is a at least working idea of how to have a Capital Ship. I believe the main contribution, is the ability for it to manufacture its own goods.

Okay first of all i'm a little concerned about what Mirith suggested.

"Also, don't have a suggestion whether or not they can be destroyed when the owner is not online, but my belief is it should. THat's why you hide it somewhere in an empty sector."

I would not want to get online after spending all of my credits on buying my capital ship to find out that it's been destroyed. All someone has to do is find a capital ship sitting idle at an empty sector and rally their guild to blow it up. Of course no guild would want to do this unless there was some benefit to destroying it. (maybe the Capital ship belongs to their enemy or something) So i was thinking that either you have the capital ship disappear when you log off. OR you put automated turrets on the ship. Of course they would be less accurate than when players control them but they would certainly make blowing a capital ship up harder. (whether un-manned or just under-crewed).

Another suggestion I have is that smaller capital ships are built. This is probably already going to happen but i'd just like to see something around 50-100 thousand hit points. That way we don't jump to some SpaceStation sized mammoth. Also it'd be pretty cool to have a ship that takes maybe 3 vaylkries to take down instead of something invulnerable to them :)

Well that's all i got.

BOB

Yeah, i know what you feel about getting it destroyed, so my more recent thought is that you somehow have an AI script control of it while you are gone, where you set a couple actions, like if they are under attack, jump away to another sector. Stuff like that. Otherwise it would sit there and defend itself from hostiles. I really do understand the problems with what I was suggesting, but I think it would be neat otherwise to do something like that.

Before we add Cap ships, we need to have a purpose for Capital ships. Historically they have been used for 3 things, command centers, escorting high value/low defense targets such as troop carriers, and for bombardment of shore targets.

So we could do several things to give capital ships purpose in the game, other than as status symbols for ultra-rich players. We could make the the faction ore convoys very large, with large numbers of defending bots, so that a group with a capital ship carrying fighters would be needed to do any large amounts of damage to them. We could make cap ships to be Guild Halls, a mobile docking and repair point for members of a guild, with a limited number of repair points, so that the captain of the ship (the guild leader) would have to choose between repairing the cap ship, or repairing damaged fighters during a battle.

For something to really promote battles between guilds and groups with capital ships, we could make certain un-aligned starports able to be captured by a guild with a capital ship if they would desire a more permanent repair base. When the base begins to be attacked, it would also send out a distress signal over a chat channel, so rival guilds could show up with their own capital ships to try to keep a guild from getting a space station. In order to make it so that capital ships are actually needed to take over a spaceport, we could give the spaceports asteroid defense weapon platforms, that can only be damaged by capital ship class weapons.

Just a few ideas to make capital ships into something more than just a status symbol and worthless "that's cool" thing in the game.

I agree fully with Thomas Gunn. They should be a more than a "status symbol" they should be a viable and hopefully important part of the gain, mainly as a guild hall/Command Center for a guild. They should not be Player houses. The reason i suggested an extravagant price, something no 1 person could afford, but instead, a guild puts together and pays for. Also for balance reasons, limit 1 per guild, owned by the guild.

I do like the idea of taking over space stations.

I'd like to be able to afford a cap ship for myself. Using it as a house (moving repair center / cargo hold ! Yay !) for example could be worth the price. Anyway eventually, whatever the price it costs, someone will buy one for him/her-self. See what extremes happen in other MMOGs if you don't believe me ;)

I'd rather Guilds get their own spaceport instead of a cap ship, for the same purpose you describe, Mirith. Could lead to blockading of a guild's station in case of war with another guild, friendly trade, etc... And possibly custom missions.

[Edit]
Additional reflexions:

Armament: Just as there should be a distinction between Cap Ships and standard ships, there should be a distinction between standard anti-fighter weaponry and anti CapShip weaponry, like very slow and very powerful. That could make them CapShip battles much more strategical and maybe even enjoyable, from a spectator point of view ;) and make it more balanced regarding fighters (so that they don't instantly go splat). But that's probably already been said...

Radar: Maybe the CapShips should have a longer ranged radar, mitigated by the slower movement of capships ?

Or rather make it longer-range only for detection of capships (kinda like detection of navpoints or stations), this way a band of fighters can still surprise-jump a capship, but you can spot other capships from a long way.

[Edit2]
CapShips should be the main focus of the devs right now. Why ? Because when all the new players flock in to test the game they will then see those mightily impressive ships and think to themselves "Wow, I wish I had one !" and proceed to document themselves on how they can get their own. Eventually the CapShips, and the players that have them, will become central elements of gameplay (Duh) and thus additional content will automatically revolve around those.

I like the idea of cap ships in this game, it would be a great addition. My susgestion would be to base the implementation on a game called darkspace, it has done cap ships for many years and remains a fun game to play. I'll be brief, as I'm sure the devs have this idea well fleshed out already.

-3rd person view with point and click interface/targeting
-all weapons bindable to number keys, just as with fighters
-manual control of movement, with the exact same keys as fighters
-keep cap ships controlled by a single player, except for maybe turrets(1st person) on dreadnoughts and stations

additional, the role of a cap ship shouldn't be confined to just combat. Support roles are important too, sensor boats spring to mind
My only fear is that with 3rd person view (and the associated wider field of view) the sector will be too small, in that even tho they are infinite in size, the objects within them are few.

But controlling a capital ship in a 3rd person view would be like eve-online.

I mean every 1 player flying a capital ship would be a fun killer.

Eve-online isn't a combat game, its a space age stock market simulator.

With large slow cap ships with multiple weapon systems, a 3rd person veiw gives much better tactical awareness.

I don't get what you mean about about fun-killing tho, in what way?

Well to only one limitation, if capital ships are hard to get, then I would say sure.

I think I see where your coming from. Are you saying that, if everyone could get capships then everyone eventually would, meaning no more fighters? Well, if thats the case, the solution is simple(in theory).

Its all to do with weapon balance. The aim would be to make facing the enemy with just a capital ship or fleet of capital ships with no fighter protection, an act of suicide.

I'll do a few examples to demonstrate this.
Starting with a cap ship with no weapons at all, its easy to see that both fighters and bombers would walk all over it.
Give the cap ship some short ranged weapons, like flak, and now the fighters can't get close enough to kill it. But the bombers, with their long ranged missiles, can.
Go too far tho, by giving the cap ship long range weapons that can target small craft like fighters and bombers, then you would end up with everyone in cap ships.

The balance can be tweeked in such a way as to inherently require mixed fleets, regardless whether every player in the game was at full levels or not. In the above examples, in order to increase the number of fighters/bombers in a fleet, just make the flak less effective. To lean toward cap ships, give them some point-defence lasers to shot down bombs.

This is all in theory of course. In practice, achieving balance takes alot of playtesting and bad balance usually means the downfall of a game.

Here's an idea for weapon balance... 2 different types of weapons on a Cap ship... somehow balanced... and of course, limited slots on each side of the ship (front back left right). But Anti-Cap ship weapons that are slow (therefore impossible to hit a non-stupid fighter with) but strong, therefore damaging other cap ships. And anti fighter weapons that are faster both in rate of fire and speed, but won't even damage a cap ship. Therefore a cap ship will need fighter support if they want to be effective against fighters. Of course have some nasty things that fighters can do against a cap ship, but only if they have it equiped, while being close to immune to anything the cap ship can throw against it, unless it has fighters as part of its compliment (complement?).

I think i just reiterated what c0ldfury said, except added the thought of having weapon mounts based on location...
Its the balance of Rock Paper Scissors that you find in war.

Possibly suggestion: Python Scripts to deal with attacks/defense when the player is not there? I still believe that while 1 pilots, there should allow for multiple people as gunners. Possibly since of size, also allowing for disable of guns by shooting them enough.