... what kind of defenses would YOU put on it? Try to be consistent with VO's current conditions: weapons have mass, some need ammo, others energy. I don't mean do all the math. Just don't be crazy. Take a stab at imagining what a cap ship's design should be like. Here's a few questions that would be fun to think about:

1. Why have a cap ship? In other words, what is its purpose? [Example: to defend a station, to destroy enemy shipping, to destroy or embargo an enemy station ....]. List the purposes/mission you think a capship should have.

2. Assuming it's some kind of warship [of any kind, even a carrier]: what kind of weapons should it have, and where should they be located? If they need ammo, how much should it carry? Would you want to design different capships for different purposes/missions?

3. Assuming it's some kind of carrier [or tender] for other craft: where should its landing bays and launching bays be? How many?

4. Can you imagine other uses for a capital ship in VO besides war? I can, but I'm interested in other players' ideas.

just like this: http://www.gabereiser.com/gallery/highpolyship.jpg

I'm a 3d modeller and graphics artist and would love to help VO with ships and other artwork. (ahem, dev's).

This image is a capital carrier, the launch bays are in the front (2 of them). it has 8 turrets with 2 ontop, 4 on sides, 2 on bottom. This ship could also be a station (maybe? could be?) This ship could be a flag ship for a destroyer fleet? or cruiser fleet?

anywho, I could model some great looking ships (i did for Eve:The Second Genesis) so if you want some, drop me a line, aeon@gabereiser.com

What ships did you model for CCP?

I modelled a few of the caldari ships, (badger, Ibis, and the destroyer), and did a few of the stations.

Mostly I did all the 2d work for the gui/menu system and helped design the artwork for the website.

Luxury Liner: Once we get player controlled capital ships, I think it'd be cool to have a Luxury Liner class. The Luxury Liner would be enormously expensive (even for a Cap Ship), and completely unarmed, but could carry docked escorts to defend itself. To accompany the Luxury Liner there would be Luxury Tour missions, that would pay large amounts of credits. The Luxury Tour missions would pick up (NPC) passengers from station sectors, and would then tour out through certain specific sectors, chosen for their beautiful spacescapes and interesting 'roid formations. In order to successfully complete the Luxury Tour mission, the Luxury Liner would be required to remain in each of the sectors on the tour route for minimum length of time, at least a few minutes.

There could be short, intra-national tours, that would be the safest but also least profitable tours, and international tours (mostly originating in UIT space) that would travel from one nation's space to another's and back, that would be more profitable but also more dangerous due to needing to traverse grey space; and the most profitable tours would have tour sectors (where the Luxury Liner would be required to remain for a minimum length of time) inside grey space.

[edit]
Obviously, Luxury Liners would be prime pirate targets. If a Luxury Liner was attacked by pirates on its tour, it could either attempt to run, failing the Luxury Tour mission, pay off the pirates, or attempt to fight off the pirates. If they fight, and the Luxury Liner fails to defend itself (the pirates blow it up), then it will drop lots of Luxury Goods crates, Precious Metal crates, etc.
[/edit]

weapon choices for the cap ship? all weapons need to be turrets, that's pretty obvious. but, turrets with different features, or even multi-purpose turrets, would be nice. a dual or triple neutron Mark IV would be nice, making sure that it can saturate an area rather well. at the same time, rockets and missiles would also help. ammo based weapons should have ammo maybe two or three times their "normal" capacity, but also have the option for the turret to hit "reload" which'd make the turret have to spend maybe 30-60 seconds to reload itself, in effect being defenseless.

since the cap ship then provides ammo to its ships, it should also provide ammo to ships that dock.

oh, and with regards to docking, how about this:

Itani carrier, Itanis with admired or UiTs with +900 or above Itani can dock. Sercos with +900 Itani _and_ KOS Serco can dock.

Serco carrier, Sercos with admired or UiTs with +900 or above Serco can dock. Itanis with +900 Serco _and_ KOS Itani can dock.

UiT Carrier, UiTs with admired or Sercos / Itanis with +900 or above can dock.

Why would all weapons need to be turrets? Anti-fighter weapons, yes, but anti-other-cap-ship & anti-station weapons wouldn't all have to be turrets, IMO.

id have a mining capital ship.

id also have a janitor capital ship full of 'cleaning beams'.

id also have an 'art ship' just to make funky designs with special fluid guns.

Beolach I love your idea about the luxury liner. Thumbs up for that one. Especially if players can get on and go for a cruise. It could be an awesome way for people to explore KOS space that they usually can't access.

Ananzi I'm not sure about your art ship idea. Fluid guns? Sounds a bit kinky. O.o

Warp Point Frigate (WPF):

Closely associated with the addition of the "exploration" content.. Basically, each system may have the potential to form warp points with dozens of other systems, but natural wormhole areas form only rarely. The WPF would be a *big* slow-moving guild-owned ship with the ability to form artificial warp-points temporarily. It would either have "arms" reaching off it to encompass an area where a spherical wormhole would form, or have a hole punched in it for a circular wormhole "membrane". The wormhole would probably cost around 10-100k per minute to keep it open, as well as a flat fee for every ship that jumps through it... from 10k for a Centurion up to 900k-1mil for a capital ship.. ((edit: the monetary cost is a representation of the sheer amounts of energy that must be expended to warp something light-years across the galaxy.. the further the connection, the greater the cost; Earth is probably far enough away that the cost is super-prohibitive))

When a new system is first entered, the server can auto-populate it based on whatever algorithms are used now, and can suspend the system/sectors when the initial scouts leave... After they return from scouting, the council decides whether to send station-construction frigates through to establish a presence there...

Also, perhaps an artificial warp-point could be made permanent through the cooperation of two WPFs, each one connecting to the other, thus "fixating" the wormhole....

...hmm, whaddya guys think??

beo: generally speaking, all guns on large capital ships are mounted on turrets because turrets can turn (and thus aim) a lot faster than ships. That's why the U.S.S. Monitor was so revolutionary, it only mounted two cannons, but because they were mounted on a turret, the ship could hit anything it wanted to, no matter its orientation to the target.

i think that non carier cap ships should have a limit to the number of ships that can be docked at one time.

i also think that cap ships shopuld have some sort of anti- missile defence system. posably an ecm field, or a point defence grid.

i think that cap ships should have at least 2 docking bays (one for entry and one for exit). cariers should have more, potentaly 4-10 bays in total, with at least 2 usable for entry.

i think that docking bays could be put prety much anywhere provided the model looks good, but i think mostly they should be rear or forwared mounted.

the majority of cap ship weapons should be tureted. i think that smaller cap ships should have just enough turrets to cover all sectors of the ship. larger ships should have better redundancy. There should be cap ships that are desined to fight other cap ships, that would have few turreted weapons, but a devestating aray of mounted weapons (the weaopons should be fixed because of how deadly they would be to fighters), and posably some heavy missiles that can tear threw the armor of another cap ship.

I would like to see the turet placmets to be such that the area the turet can cover is maximised (like how the moniter had a flat deck to allow 360 degree fire).

i think most cap ships should be cariers, desined primarily to sevice fighters. these ships should have primarily anit fighter weapons, and limited usefullness against other cap ships.

as for non military cap ships, there are countless uses they could be put to, but most of them would be dull or unbalanced in game (or are extreemly obvious, or previously mentioned). having the ability to create artaficial wormeholes to a random sector in another system would be neat.

I would also like to see a series of Behemoth sised partole ships with grately inpruved firepower, and posably some turrets of their own.

The purpose of the capital ship is technically to destroy other capships and lead an invasion force into enemy-controlled space.
Since we can't destroy stations, the sole purpose now for capships is to destroy other capships.

So the capship should have a couple of LARGE main guns on turrets that deal out around 10,000 damage per round with a proximity fuse and have a range of 2000m; like a really big sunflare rocket. Just like hitting zoom when in your ship, you would be able to zoom in to target better at this long-range. In addition to these main offensive weapons, it should have some kind of defense-in-depth defensive weaponry. For long-range (1000m or so) Turreted anti-fighter missiles similar to long-range Geminis that deal out around 2,000 damage (like a Jackhammer). Then it should have the AGT turrets like it has now, but perhaps less of them, and without the limited field of fire they have now.

In fact, ALL these turrets should have hemispheric fields of fire. A full half-sphere. Or more if possible.

And I guess there will have to be the same docking bay. But make it a little larger. And make it so when you launch, your velocities are matched up with the current velocity of the ship, so when we leave we aren't rattling around inside the docking bay like a pinball. Better yet, shoot us out of another launch facility like Battlestar Galactica. At full turbo speed for our ship.

Obviously it would be good to have user-pilotable capships. And any turrets not manned by players are fully operated by the ship's A.I. If not piloted, the ship would orbit a station and defend itself fully.

I don't know about individually-owned capships, but I like the idea of guild-purchasable capships for guilds.

In my opinion the capships are too easy to kill now. I don't think they need more armor, but incoming bombers need to do a little more work to get within firing range. I wanna see that cap ship sending up tracer rounds like Baghdad circa March 1991. Getting through the flak to release your missile weapons on the frigate should be really hard, and would make for great fun.

Lastly...
I say that guild software should take gabereiser up on his offer to design ships as well. If he can work in 3DS and provide native files, awesome. If he wants to contribute out of the goodness of his heart, outstanding.

Cool ideas, right in line with what I've been tossing around in my head for a while.

I think the general idea of a "Capital Ship" in the true nature of the term is that it's more of a central command type of ship... the guy that sits in the back and directs the battle. Normally, it's heavily defended, but doesn't have the greatest offensive capability.

Then you get into the actual attack ships... things like carriers which bring in fleets of fighters. Heavy Assault ships which have massive gun platforms and are designed to fly through swaths of fighters, taking out anything that opposes it. Frigates which carry ships, but also bring supplies to battle.

Creating an all-in-one wondership can work, but it's not realistic, especially when you've got a handful of different corporations making all sorts of stuff, there will always be specialization in things. And it just makes mass warfare that much more tactical... who cares if the cap ship is weak, you've got 4 frigates and a carrier to get through first!

Also, having recently read the whole backstory, I wouldn't mind seeing some of those 3000m long super-cargo ships :D (fly THAT through an ion storm!!!) And the thought of the Akan Obsidian Fleet makes me warm inside (black ships in space... SCARY!)

I'm all for as many big ships as we can get. Think of a battle fleet moving through system to system the same way the Strike forces do... it'd be awesome to see!

I like the Serco ship design... hard edged, battle ready. The Itani equivalent should look more organic, smooth, but still viscious looking. And the UIT one should look like a slapped together bucket of bolts :P YAY TPG/UIT!

tkjode: according to the wikipedia,
"The capital ships of a navy are its "important" warships; the ones with the heaviest firepower and armor. There is usually no formal criterion for the classification, but it is a useful concept when thinking about strategy, for instance to compare relative naval strengths in a theater of operations without having to get bogged down in the details of tonnage and gun diameters.

In the 20th century, typical capital ships would be battleships, battlecruisers, heavy cruisers, and aircraft carriers. In the 21st century, the aircraft carrier is the last remaining capital ship, with firepower defined in decks available and aircraft per deck, rather than in tubes and calibres.

The definition of "capital ship" was formalized in the limitation treaties of the 1920s and 30s; see Washington Naval Treaty, London Naval Treaty, and Second London Naval Treaty.

Before the advent of the all-steel navy in the late 19th century, a capital ship was a warship of the first, second or third rate:

1st Rate: 100 or more guns, typically carried on three or four decks. Four-deckers tended to have problems with the waterline and the lowest deck seldom was able to fire except on the calmest of seas.
2nd Rate: 90-98 guns
3rd Rate: 64 to 80 guns (although 64-gun third-raters were very small and not very numerous in any era).
Frigates were ships of the fourth or fifth rate; a corvette was a ship of the sixth rate.

In the Star Wars universe, "capital ship" refers to any starship 100 meters or longer.

In the computer game Starcraft, capital ships are considered Terran Battlecruisers or Protoss Carriers."

So I think that in the Vendetta Universe, we can adapt the Star Wars definition of capital ships to being any warship over 40 meters.
-Carriers are the largest vessels, and compensate for a lack of weaponry with a large fighter complement.
-Battleships are large vessels with extremely powerful weapons, and a few fighters.
-Cruisers are smaller, faster, and more lightly armed versions of battleships, and carry a very small complement of fighters.
-Frigates are smaller than cruisers and their weapons are geared for providing an anti-fighter screen for the larger ships.
-Corvettes are the smallest vessel that could be considered a capital ship, and whose weapons are mainly geared against fighters.

And regarding weapon operation, there would be two main types of weapons. Player controlled anti-fighter turrets, and semi-automatically controlled main cannons.

The anti-fighter turrets would operate as I assume the current turrets operate on the frigates, just with a more diverse set of weapons that you can fire.

The large main guns would vary from ship to ship in size, damage, range, etc. Each ship's main guns would be generally homogenous in type, though weapon types spread through a fleet won't necessarily be. The main guns are controlled by a designated gunner, and he essentially targets an enemy ship, and designates which turrets are to fire on it. So theoretically, you could have all turrets firing at a single target (if that target can be hit by the turret, when you factor in depression and heading), or you could be firing at multiple targets.

Essentially, the large turrets would be far too slow to change aim to hit anything small, so hits on the smallest, fastest capital ships would need to be made at long range, or you'd need a smaller ship that could aim faster. And because the aiming process would be so slow, it'd probably be terribly boring for a person to aim only one gun, so one person controls all the main guns, and lots of people control the smaller guns. Although this line could be blurred for the main guns of Corvettes and Frigates, whose smaller main turrets could be manned by individual people.

It would have shields. They would of course protect capship itself and its turrets. And would be only damaged if damage exeeds certin amount (depending on size of the ship propably).
This turrets wouldnt die as fast and killing capship would require either another capship or squadron of heavy bombers with somekind of anticapship (antisheild?) torpedos.

If I was designing a ship for the vendetta universe I would read this thread and then do my best to avoid all of these suggestions.

Nice research CP.
Nice trolling Genka.

Boy, I dont' remember posting that info about a week ago <scratches head> Well, as long as it's being read and hopefully incorporated I don't care.

We definitely need to see more of the OTHER varieties of cap ships in game, just the simple introduction of the frigates has made VO a hundred times better IMO. Can't wait to see the next big addition.