Today I watched the imperium field 2000 capitals and supercapitals and all other considerations aside I couldn’t help but feel it was a bit meh to see what was in practice 4-5 different hulls.
So can I put forward CCP reworks capitals to be a lot more visually diverse. Maybe for the sake of breaking up the visual blob of capital warfare have 2 or 3 distinct variations of the same ship. As I am sure Design work on capitals has been done I am sure there already exists multiple concepts for reworks and I think it would be nice to see more than one make it into game. And I just feel like capital visual diversity is to low.
I’m pretty sure the carriers and the capitals and titans look different but some factions are stealing the designs from the others and thus it looks similar.
that problem roots down to the low amount of hulls once you go Battleship and up. however, unlike Battleships which are all combat focused (with some exceptions), capitals and supercaps have been basically ungrouped and are each hull an specific thing.
this is something that happens in many Space Sim games actually. usually there’s much more number of subcaps compared to capital ships in the end.
not every subcap role can me magnified into a capital ship. if that were the case would have something like:
2 Dreadnoughts (each one reflective of the empire’s combat doctrines)
1 FAX (cause logi)
1 EWAR capital (perhaps an EWAR burst based carrier)
1 “Exploratory” capital providing stuff like fitting service, supply transport and perhaps some sort of “jum portal” capabilities
1-2 Titans that provide the command burst stuff and provide bigger anticap support
1 Supercarrier for real fighter support
1 “Colonization” supercap that acts as temporary base for the whole fleet by providing limited hangar capabilities, tethering and refitting, perhaps having some sort of siege mode which enhances its defensive capabilities in order to remain mostly intact until fuel runs out.
UPDATE:
also you have to take in account the playerbase. while exploration, EWAR or Strip Mining bonuses sound great for diversity on possible capital hulls, not many people will find them usefull on the hull most of the time. not because they’re not good, but because the ships are too slow and expensive for such activities which can be more or less done with smaller vessels.
perhaps if there were content avaliable for capital ships which required that kind of stuff they could be used. but so far there’s no exploration content oriented for Caps or a need for a super carrying a large rack of strip miners when a Rorqual does the same thing with just a bunch of excavators or a fleet of barges can move out quickly for the same role.
also EWAR is a complicated thing to discuss at that size. imagine an ECM capital ship with a gargantuan armor tank via deadspace and officer mods shudders
UPDATE 2:
then there’s the Navy and T2 variation dilemma. what kind of role in warfare could demand the creation of a T2 capital hull? they already run a gimmick instead of being a plain hull like it happens with Subcaps.
Navy means higher stats but still lower compared to Pirate and some sort of unique combat gimmick i cant think of atm.
How about a T2 Dread hull with anti sub-cap bonuses, or T2 carrier hulls with space-superiority bonuses. - There are plenty of specialized roles you could buff in that manner.
Although I’d personally rather see them simply adding new T1 hulls, rather than create T2 hulls from the existing ones. Similar to how they once added the Tier 3 battleships. (Us old farts can vaguely recall a time when there were only two battleship hulls per race.)
There have been all sorts of ‘interesting’ (horrible) balance issues with capitals and supers over the years. Anyone here remember the issues with AOE doomsdays? Or hauler dreadnaughts?
I wonder how much of this problem can be fixed, or at least partially remedied, in the short term by adding half a dozen or so basic color skins for each hull. The hull would be the same but with colors and color accents you can at least break up the monotony. The skins would have to be fairly cheap and matching across hull types to do this well.