here here!

I'd rather have an AI that will (at least try to) pummel me into the ground on hard, and try to rip my head off (figuratively) on unfair (with descriptions becoming more painful as the difficulty goes up).

Modders can provide all the supercapitals you could ever want, but only the devs can give us UBER AI.

Yea it totally doesnt fit the diplomacy expansion, but I'm not against this idea at all. Truthfully I dislike the idea of massing dozens and dozens of frigates in Sins like it is now. I'd rather have fewer ships with more abilities and weapons, I think that'd bring more diversity to the table.

But hey I'm obviously playing the wrong game if thats not what this game was suppose to be about, so I'll stop here.

Go to these post https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/370937 and read reply #27

and read how strong & epic capital ships can get at current game rules. It's amazing!

I agree Kronos,  if the game or should I say AI concentrated more on making Cap ships than spaming the hell out of the frigates that would cut down on the lag factor alot.  I personally like capital ship wars. Theres just something about having epic battles with capships that makes it a lot of fun.

What exactly are the devs working at the moment in the beta? Are they improving AI as well?

yes. The AI is getting a MAJOR overhaul in Diplomacy.

I think the updated Kortul almost counts as a supercapital now... I came up against one for the first time yesterday, it was level 4 and singlehandedly took down my lv3 progenitor (using shield regen all the time) and my lv3 rapture + 7 illums. Oh, and this was in my gravwell, with a repair bay right next to my ships. The kortul just kept regenerating until my ships were out of AM (and so was the repair bay) and then went for the kill.

I finally got revenge when the AI (in it's wisdom) decided it could take on a fully upgraded starbase, half an hour later. It was wrong.

Still, thats a heck of a strong ship. I guess it makes up for the vasari being underpowered to begin.

(btw I'm not a muppet, I saved when I saw I wasn't winning just to see if I would actually lose, then reloaded and ran... lost my planet though )

Okay, while I'm breaking my cardinal rule of "Don't bother discussing issues with people that append X's before or after their name", let me ask you to re-read what I said when I stated that SuperCaps don't match the theme of DIPLOMACY.  I didn't say they wouldn't match the theme of Sins  If you feel that SuperCaps are "needed" and the game isn't complete without them, then by all means find yourself a group of like-minded individuals and mod them in!  I'd be interested in giving that mod a try.  I was just restating what IronClad has said in the past before, that they aren't interested in superpowerful units.

Yes, I agree with goodgimp but one thing as a modder I dearly miss that he is asking for:

Why can't we set limits of units a player can produce (e.g. only 2 capships of type Egg or only 20 jarvelin frigates). This should be easily possible to implement and would be just a line in the entity file of the respective ship.

Don't really see why supercaps would not fit the diplomacy theme.

You could make it so they can be only be built as a joint venture between 2 allied races, a bit like the gtva Colossus from freespace 2 if anyone remembers that game. So the looks and stats/abilities of the ship would depend on which 2 races work together to build it.

And saying it would be unbalanced is pretty silly, given enough thought anything can be balanced... (build time, cost, 1 per player, vulnerability to the entrenchment anti structure weapons maybe?, ... )

problem: anti-structure cruisers cannot target normal ships, only structures.

problem: structures cannot phase jump

problem: the devs are already against it

problem: Diplo is already pretty much finished (release is set for Feb 9 2010)

I could probably keep going.

I have already brought up the suggestion of having precisely one flagship - a capital ship a bit more capital than the others - per faction, but it has been let for the realm of modding so far. Since it's so late in the Diplomacy development cycle I think you can pretty much wait for another Sins expansion cycle and frantically wave your arms trying to convince the devs...

Honestly I think a SuperCap takes away from the synergy of the game. Instead of racing to amass a balanced fleet. People will be racing to build themselves a SuperCap. The game goes from warfare to a battle of the SuperCaps. To me thats just lame. I prefer to amass a fleet of ships that work together, and none of them take the lime light over the others because without each other they dont mean squat.

I am not in favor our a SUPER capital ship in the sense that it would be like spelling doom over the enemies, game over. When i suggested, My idea was of a ship somewhere between 20-100% more powerful than a standard capital ship, only 1 allowed per faction, and it would be an upgrade for a standard capital ship - which would reset it to level 1, thus needing to regain all 10 skill levels back. 

Yes, I think many people are reading this thread and assuming by "supercapital" we mean "build this and win", which is not what I was suggesting. A SC would be less powerful than a starbase, by quite a way, but we all know how easy it is to take down a fully upgraded SB with a half decent fleet.

All I'm asking for is something unique, that is clearly leading your forces. It doesn't have to be that powerful, so long as it is stronger than a standard capital. Due to the way the game works it would be easy to stop players "just getting a supercapital as fast as possible then winning" - just make it so you can only build one, it's perhaps 2x more powerful than a standard capital and takes 3-4x the resources and supply slots. This way, it would be easy to balance - you could even make building a SC a disadvantage in terms of sheer strength, but about even if you consider the extra abilities a supercapital would have.

In terms of gameplay, it would be cool to see your enemies fleet approaching and know that because their supercapital is included, this must be their strongest fleet, or maybe everything they have (because why would you risk your ONLY supercapital?) This works best with the "make a supercapital from an existing lvl10 capital" idea - because once you lose it, it takes ages to get another, rather than just being able to churn them out every time one gets destroyed.

Of course, this opens the door for plenty of cunning tactics - like I said, some sort of bonus for taking out an enemy SC would mean you have to protect it, and clever players could intentionally risk their SC to force their opponent to do something they want - ie. send a diversion fleet including your SC, which the other player assumes must be important and rushes to counter... while you sneak round the back with your main force.

Again I say, I'm not asking for a ship that can take on a whole fleet and win. I'm asking for a ship that's like a capital ship (weaker than having smaller ships in terms of bang for buck, but has useful support abilities) but stronger than current capitals, and unique. Capitals are cool, don't get me wrong, but when you have two of each in every fleet, and the next player has the same... well they just become like any other ship.

It's like a food chain, one of those pyramids they used to teach in biology class - the capitals are not the top level, there are simply too many of them: the current "pyramid of power" in sins has a flat top. I'm asking for the peak! I'm not asking for unbalanced (rubbish) gameplay, which is why I doubt I can find what I want in a mod (never played a mod for any strategy/rpg that's as well balanced as the vanilla game IMHO).

I don't know if the others here who said "yay" for supercapitals are looking for the same thing, but this is my view anyway.

lums and guardians. Thats balanced right? 'S like a bowl of cereal for breakfast; carbs and sugar.

Idk, personally it seems like caps die way to quick to be worth it. Same w/ SB's. Why not just make a super capital take 2+ crews? That'd make it pretty balanced.

Supercapital ships would be awesome, tends to get a little boring later into the game when you have 2-3 of every capital in a fleet, need something more impressive and expensive, maybe instead of calling them Supercapitals you could call them Flagships?

Super capital would be just as stupid as having moving starbases

NO super capital

flagships are the first capital ship made in the game it even calls itself Flagship

No they're not, it's just the highest level capital ship you have, which means it's usually your first, but not always. And if you get two ships to lvl 10, no ship carries the title "Flagship" anymore.

Well I was working on a mod today to add some extra caps prototypes to be introduced at tier5 stage, and while I was adding the stings for them in the "Diplomacy" string folder, I noticed some strings refering to some Capital ship Destroyer class ships that are not in the game yet. Namely "Vera Destroyer" for Tech, "Salvation Destroyer" for Psi and "Marrasek Destroyer" for Phase, all capital class ships.

So perhaps there will be some caps introduced at some stage, lets hope so anyway. As for them being Super Caps we'll have to wait and see, but it seems they will be powerfull ships with some new abilitys.

it will likely be a new "light" capital ship class if anything. I doubt that they would be super caps, as the devs have stated that they don't want super-units.

As for them being powerful (powerful doesn't =supercap), and the new abilities, I would say- it may be some kind of special combative diplomatic capital, or even an espionage capital (though why a special capital would be needed is beyond me).

The discriptions seem to be more combat related from whats written.

StringInfo
    ID "IDS_CAPITALSHIP_TECHDESTROYER_NAME"
    Value "Vera Destroyer"
StringInfo
    ID "IDS_CAPITALSHIP_TECHDESTROYER_DESCRIPTION"
    Value "A balanced warship specialized in boarding and capturing enemy frigates and cruisers."

StringInfo
    ID "IDS_CAPITALSHIP_PSIDESTROYER_NAME"
    Value "Salvation Destroyer"
StringInfo
    ID "IDS_CAPITALSHIP_PSIDESTROYER_DESCRIPTION"
    Value "A balanced warship that is adept as harrassing and ensnaring enemy warships."

StringInfo
    ID "IDS_CAPITALSHIP_PHASEDESTROYER_NAME"
    Value "Marrasek Destroyer"
StringInfo
    ID "IDS_CAPITALSHIP_PHASEDESTROYER_DESCRIPTION"
    Value "A strong warship that is able to manipulate phase space direct the flow of battles."

I suppose in relation to diplomacy, perhaps "prisoners of war" could be exchanged. Though the Vasari's looks all combat related.

Hmm. I like the sound of these new capitals. Especiallly the Vera and the Marrasek.

I know what the Vera is being described as is something people have been asking for. Marines! boarding parties.