Capitol ships

This is something I thought people had gotten over a while ago. The cap ships are not intended to be all powerful godships capable of taking on everything thrown at it by themselves they were basically designed as anchors for the fleets.

You combine them with a fleet, even a small one, then they are a serious threat.

As for comparison to real life capital ships its a lil bit odd, battleships for example  in ww2 could stand up to a fair beating from smaller ships but A: they were rarely ever alone and B: they could infact be beaten to a pulp by smaller ships in numbers as do the caps in sins, and thats not taking into account the advance the radically different technology in sins.

I love a good rant

Their not, they are called capital ships :p

Nitpicking aside, sesmet pretty much said it all. All capital ships, including battleships, are useful as a support for a fleet, but pretty crappy by themselves. Their abilities, especially with Advent, make them useful. I don't really know about MP, but in SP several capital ships in a fleet are a must have for their abilities (Unless you go for "Fear of Icebergs" achievement.)

I blame the Homeworld and Freespace series for this recurring phenomenon. I found that having less powerful "capital" ships is an acceptable tradeoff for commanding dozens of worlds, hundreds of ships with a thousand-plus fighter craft.

Starbases partially fill that scale role for the moment. That said, I wouldn't be up in arms if a future expansion added supercapitals (:

I have hold off some serious attacks with just 1 Radiance and some defenses. 

If their name is a "capital ship" though they should really be able to take a beating from a large fleet and give a beating to a small fleet.

Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica         Now they had some serious firepower on their ships.

While capital ships are pretty nice, I agree that they are a fleet's anchor, not invincible super-destroyer death-machines.

Star Wars: The attack on the deathstar, take 2. A few capitals, supported by a large ammount of frigates, X, A, Y, all kinds of wings. The same goes for the empire, though the also had a SB.

Star Trek: Wolf 359. If you don't know the reference, look it up. A galaxy class anchored a fleet of older and smaller  vessels against the borg. There's a similar scene in voyager, at the Alpha quadrant exit of the trans-warp network.

Battlestar galactica: It's not just the galactica, there's an entire fleet with it. Furthermore, it's stated that the galactica's main power lies in the strike craft it fields.

It holds true. Pretty much all canonical instances of capital type ships on their own and outnumbered end with either a barely made retreat or destruction. While a capital ship may be full of firepower and armor, alone, it is weak and defenseless. As it should be.

P.S. Please be specific with your Sci-Fi references next time.

Then the Russian aircraft carrier that is designed to go out on it's own... (probably with a few nuke subs, though).

No such animal. The Russians have one carrier, the Kuznetsov. (all others of the Kuev class have been scrapped), it was certainly not designed to go out on it's own, but to function as a fleet anchor, and provide support for a fleet as well as "show the flag" in forward areas.

ie, what the capitals in SOASE do. Capitals are symbols, and they have capabilities that smaller ships do not, but don't confuse them with invincible death machines. They're strong ships when compared to frigates or cruisers, in an individual fight or against a small group of such ships a capital will ALWAYS win.

Making capitals too powerful would not improve the game. It would just make people only build capitals. Balanced fleets are much more interesting.

Misspellings aside, and the reason brought up is I haven't had much time to play the game and now entrenchment is comming out and was checking things out.

I wasn't expecting Capital ships to hold their own against everything, I knew about the issues with SC swarms and the like.  I was just rather shocked to see them go down so fast and without taking out many when they did.  In my defending the well scenario, I had overseers going into the well, as I said, I was re-establishing a fleet, and overseers aren't going to do much to help if I don't have the other supporting fleet there.

Again, I'm not trying to compare PC to RL, but the concept is there.  The Bismark, the USS Constitution, Enterprise, etc..  I would put in the hood, but it actually proves the opposite when faced vs the Bismark and sank almost immediatly, regaurdless of it's supporting fleet.

As I said, I have been away from the game for a bit and it may of even been implemented prior to Entrenchment, I was just shocked when the tactic of attempting to XP up my fleet lost me 2lvl6, 1lvl4, and 2lvl3 caps, the full spectrum as I was xping them up to send into thier own fleets.  Also with what used to be a decently defended well with 3 squadrons and 5 placed platforms for coverage one transporter 3 overseers (3 more showed up but as we all know overseers are toast)  THe pirate fleet, going for >270 bounty, went through that and ate up my cap ships, which seemed insane at the time.

Thanks for the feedback and imput, I mostly put this out as I realize I have to re-learn Sins and everything with it, hehe, makes for fun times!

      If you are losing caps to pirates you are doing something wrong.  Mid to late game pirates are now a joke. Once you have a decent starbase set up, and know where pirates are going to show up....their toast. Pirates really need a mid to late game buff (caps,sc).

I know. Honestly I leave the game a bit to let the beta of entrenchment mature (i was one of the ones with crash issues) and i fall completely outa the loop well no more! lol

There have been some threads on buffing capital ships here lately, so that just might happen

well, if analogy to real life Capital Ships is called for this is the first place I would go.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_battle_group

from that page, typical composition of a U.S. carrier strike group:

1x Super Carrier (typically Enterprise or Nimitz class) and its Carrier Air Wing

1x Destroyer Squadron (generally 4-6 ships, for example http://www.cds7.navy.mil/default.aspx)

1-2x Aegis Cruisers (Ticonderoga class, equipped with lots of cruise missiles and RADAR systems)

2-3x Guided Missile Destroyers (Arleigh Burke class, generally lots of surface-air-missiles and anti-submarine weapons)

up to 2 attack submarines (usually Los Angeles class)

1 supply and logistics corps (actually lots of tankers and transport ships trailing behind the main fleet)

thats 1 capital ship, 2 large offensive support cruisers, and 6-9 smaller defensive ships (the destroyers), as well as optional stuff like the submarines. 

so you can see that in real life naval strategy Cap ships are never used alone and are not considered self-sufficient vessels. they drive the strategic value of the fleet because Cap ships have capabilities that simply cannot be replicated by smaller ships but they are not competent to defend themselves alone in surface fleet action and require a large escort at all times. 

world war 2 era battle groups were of similar composition but multiplied by a factor of 4 or more. 

basically the cap ships in Sins correspond pretty closely to real world cap ships. not at all self sufficient but clearly the most powerful and most important vessels in their fleets. they provide unique and powerful strategic capability but they aren't all-in-one invincible super death machines. 

Try the Mad Scientist Mod for Entrenchment, it makes Capital ships into true Battleships, i can win majority of games vs 4 unfair AI's with mostly capital ships, 2 fleets of 8 ships.  Similar to a WW2 battleship, only thing that can really hurt them is carrier spam / sb / or another large capital fleet.  Add in repair ships to support the capital fleets and the AI is no match...  The key is the mix of ships you use, always have to have the support capitals like dunov's, vasari carriers/marauders, advent mother ships, if you dont, your capital fleet will die from AI focus fire - which seems to be better in entrenchment, it seems to prioritize capitals, even when i send in some crap ships to distract the ai, it re-focusses on my capitals...

Mad Scientist is the way to go.  Makes the Battleship class capitals into... Battleships !!!

my good man you have just managed to improve on my point in detail I had no idea how to arrange in words if i can find out how to give plus to that karma thing i shal lol

Edit: just found out,,,have some karma :p lol

The only thing I don't like about Capital ships is how vulnrable they are to force fire even in huge fleets.  This goes both ways, not just for myself.  But I'd like defeating a capital ship to feel like a accomplishment over destroying a heavy cruiser.  All capital ships really need a universal defensive buff that propegates damage to nearby frigates and cruisers while mitigating damage to itself.  Given to each faction, this would really make Capital ships better in their supporting role, as they will last significantly longer in battles.  Also then, we might see online more than 4 caps being used in even long games and/or in single player, enemy Capital ships over level 1-2 (maybe 3 if pirates are on)

*Edit* I forgot to mention, MAKE THE FREAKIN CARRIERS USEFUL.  Advent Carrier exempt, the energy weapon cooldown is ultimate win, at leeast a reason to stick one in your fleet.

In relation to your comparison to ww2 batteships, not quite correct. There seems to be a misconception born of the legendary status of batteships that makes people think they were practicaly indistructable super ships that could win a battle singlehadedly against lesser ships.

While powerful those battle ships could be beaten by "lesser" cklasses of ships in sufficient numbers, the attacking force would no doubt take a beating in the process but still. And a single sub possesed enough fire power in a few torpedos to bring down all but the most heavily armored, and even those would be badly damaged.

In fact if you realy wanna go into detail (cause i do) there are, in nither world wars, very few pure battleship engagements that were considered decisive to the war effort.

Basically the myth of a "true battleship" as you called it is quite misleading

Any ship is vulnrable to force fire, by which i assume you mean concentrated fire. Why should cap ships be any different? Their big and powerful but their not meant to be indestructable.