I agree 100%, which is why I said:

The best chance of success might be to get a decent-sized core group of "hardcore" players to dedicate themselves to using the mod - people like yourself and whoever else out there still plays and hosts the big 5v5s.  Back in the day, it was people like Ferdie and a few others who would host these things religiously.  But whoever that group of people is nowadays - get them involved.  Every time they host a game, have it say in the game title "balance mod" or whatever, possibly with even a link to the download.  Beyond that, get players like Darvin, myself, etc. who used to play regularly to play online and use the mod, and see where it goes.

I guess the best place to gauge interest in this thing, and know how many players will be involved to start up the "core group" is right here on the forums, on this thread and the other threads discussing balance mods.

I agree...even with late-game swarms of Vasari bombers, most of the capital ships I lose are entirely my fault or just part of large battles...either I'm dumb and leave my cap in too long, or I sacrifice it in the hopes that I benefit from its abilities long enough to win the battle...

That being said, I do think something needs to be done to increase their late game resiliency...but I don't think it lies in making cap ships stronger, and I don't think it requires anything drastic...

I'm most in favor of #2, changing LRFs and Bombers...however, this needs to be done very very carefully, because there still needs to be counters against capital ships, and those counters need to be effective and available in the early game...

The idea I like the most so far is Darvin's idea of decreasing the speed of LRFs...this makes it easier to kite with caps or get them out of a hotspot, but LRFs are still just as deadly if you choose to leave your cap in the heart of the battle...reducing LRFs effectiveness against HEAVY armor I think also would make LRFs a less feasible ship to use as the backbone of a fleet...HCs and LFs would become more relevant if LRFs sucked against carriers, flak, and support ships...basically, there would be a huge trade off between making a cap-killing fleet and making a frigate killing fleet...

I also think it would be worth looking into changing phase missiles...it should be a Vasari advantage to be able to kill caps faster than the other too factions, but given the power of bombers and kanraks (both which use PMs), Vasari can do 3 to 4 times more damage against caps than the other two factions...I'd like to see that number cap at no more than 2 or 2.5...

Preventing the subverter's shield disruption from affecting caps might be a start...changing the DPS and shield bypass stats of PMs might also work...if damage was increased but shield bypass was decreased, PMs could be changed so that they are just as effective against frigates as they are now, but twice (instead of 2.5-4 times) as powerful against caps...

I'd have to look at the numbers again to be certain of this...changing shield disruption and changing fighters/sentinels to other weapon types while nerfing LRFs and/or bombers in general might be more than enough, in which case PMs could be left untouched...

I wouldn't say that...FFing on capital ships is a concern, its why its a concern that needs to be analyzed...Vasari bombers and kanraks are a little too powerful against capital ships...part of this problem is scramble bombers (which is going to be fixed) and phase missiles (which may or may not need to be fixed)...the other problem is the current counters to bombers...right now, the only effective counters are cap abilities...problem is, flak burst and magnetize don't work so well, so one faction is completely out of the loop when it comes to countering bombers....

All of these said problems are going to hopefully be fixed...in addition, all the capital ships (save the top 3 or 4) are going to be more powerful...this in itself may mean that capital FFing is fine as it is, or it may still need to be addressed...

As I said in my post, I think some measures need to be taken (LRF speed and PMs), but I don't think anything dramatic is necessary...I'm not content with the current situation, but it is important that whatever is done, capital ships don't become invincible...

I prefer #3, it is something we did in Distant Stars mod and have had much success, it's now preferable to build caps as they are much stronger, last longer and used more often in MP games

heck you can't even win without them

I'm leaning towards a combination of 2 and 3, but I'm still open to experimentation and different ideas.  I feel there are lots of ways to approach this problem, and it's a matter of trying different combinations to find what works best.

The problem is, we can't have the non-carriers overperforming in the early part of the game where you don't have that much firepower.  It's extremely difficult to get this to the point at which they can tank focus fire without being overcome by focus fire too easily.

Carriers get away with this by kiting.  They're constantly running and never let you get close enough to focus fire, or if you are they're warping out.  Other capital ships can do this, too, but unlike carriers they basically have no effect on the battle while doing so.  I don't know how how to address these issues, but I hope with some experimentation we can finda solution.

Most battleships are tough enough to last 30-40 seconds, but the point still stands that they don't last nearly long enough, and if fleets get really huge (like 200+ frigates) they just melt.

I can see a rationale for giving them a few more hitpoints, but anything beyond that will change the entire strategy of the game, which is fine as it is now.  Capital ships are still useful and many good players make more than two, even as things stand now.  At worst they are merely heavily armored seige frigates.  It seems like part of the strategic challenge of the game is keeping the capital ships alive and learning to use them without losing them.  If capital ships are made almost invulnerable then you'll start to see nothing but capital ships.

Aren't there some capital ship enhancing mods out there?

Well, if the official strategy of this game is supposed to be "keep capships alive amidst hundreds of lrms and bombers," I guess count me out.

They are useful at colonizing and bombarding.  Beyond that, the carrier capships are useful for deploying strikecraft.  Beyond that, no they are not useful.  If you try to use your capship to do what it is supposed to do - support your fleet - it will not be able to perform that function because even newbs rabidly focus caps like their lives depended on it.

Yeah, you can use your skirantra to good effect because you can kite it all day long (provided it isn't targeted by bombers).  But you sure aren't going to use your mothership to recharge your fleet's shields in battle, or it's going down.

Again, not the type game I've ever been interested in playing.

If you want the "make them invulnerable" route, then other things need to be changed so that people don't build nothing but caps.

Well said

Kharma, I do admit that I personally would prefer a game with more powerful capital ships and believe LRF/Bomber spams are a major concern...

However, balancing the game and...shall we say, improving the game are two very different things...eventually I seek to "improve" the game as I see fit, but right now I think community efforts should focus merely on balancing the game so that all 3 factions are equally capable in MP....

I dunno about reducing the amount of experience required to level.  I guess it's not such a bad idea, but the Marza Missile Barrage would need a significant nerfing or you'd see nothing but people playing TEC with lots of Marzas..

2 points i may agree with

1) Adjust cap ship cost to be proportional to the ships usefulness, and survivability. If a cap has low hit points, and doesnt do very much to support the fleet. Then it should be a cheap attrition unit. Both in price and cap ship crew usage (1 command point can build 2 cheap cap ships). Where as ships like the Kol, or any with high hit points, and very useful ability's should be the opposite. Very expensive.

2) Nerf the LRM's, and other cap ship counters. However not nerf them so badly as to make them totally useless.

Its a tough call on both sides, because if you buff, or de-buff too much on ether side it just makes matters worse.

A few examples of where we saw ether one extreme, or the other. Does anyone remember the early days of Original Sins, and the Siege Frigate spam? IC's solution was to nerf, AND make the Siege frigs expensive as hell.

Same thing happened with the early era pre-entrenchment light carrier spam. Now light carriers are expensive as hell too despite having more strike craft.

Final example are the pirates. We rejoiced when we found out that the Diplomacy pirates got a buff. However it looks like they got way too much of a buff.

Like i said. One extreme or the other. With no happy medium. This is what you need to avoid with a community re-balance. This is why you need to test, test, and test some more until you are sick of it before finalizing any idea.

Another idea you may want to consider is adding research to the high end cap ships just like the late game cruisers. Just a thought. It seems to work for the SoA 2 mod.

A slight speed increase to battleships and perhaps support capitals will add enough survivability against LRF.  It is already tricky to destroy a microed capital ship. 

Later in the game there are other options to enhance the defenses of capital ships.  If you make them independent of these the Overseer will be entirely redundant, for example.

Once the abilities on that capital ships other than carriers have been somewhat improved then that will be sufficient.  There are other tactics against massed fleets that just require slightly more consideration in how to deploy capital ships.  Simply strengthening stats risks dumbing the game down. 

Zombies are you going to add this mod and help test it when you're online?  You'd be very welcome, a large part of the concept of a community mod is having a range of opinions based on continual testing.  Ideally players should be able to test the mod whenever they're online- especially those who've played enough of 1.19....