Attackers would want to aim for the weak spots in a shield, if they all aimed for the centre of mass they could easily be countered.  Your lore explanation is poor.  Its also that having too many ships shooting at one target makes the the attacks themselves interfere with each other.  Like having too many bomber aircraft over the same tactical target.

Target points are far too complex, just leave it at the simple method of number of ships, though differentiate them from strikecraft, as already exists in the code.

With the mitigation method the early game will become a walk over for caps, thats too much of a change after three years.  You want somethings that applies directly to the number of ships firing.  An accuracy based method would leave the game mostly unchanged.

Not at all.  If you are talking my "diminishing returns after X numbers of lrf" mitigation, it won't affect early game, unless that early game entails 30+ illums bearing down on your capship.  If you are talking my damage cap - same.  If you are talking Deceiver_0's mitigation increase by leveling caps, that won't affect early game.  And if you are talking my mitigation increase tied to maximum fleet level researched in game (by any player), that won't affect early game either.

It seems to me that none of these things will create walkovers for caps.

Could possibly change the support class Caps armor type so they are vulnerable/strong against the same things as LRF.  That'd make it so one ship type doesn't counter the most powerful ships, all at once.  Like make a new type of "Light" armor for these 2, so they are vulnerable to fighters/scouts, but not so much from LRF or Bombers.  Not exactly the be-all end-all fix, but it'd make your opponent have to think about which cheap unit to spam to counter your cap.  It'd also make which ships you build more important.  Because you would be bulding ships strong against what counters your cap ships.

-Exile(\/)

If you really want to get into a lore discussion...

Simply put, shields would be layers of hot and cold plasma suspended in the vacuum around a ship.  These layers would stop incoming shots and beams from impacting a ship.  However, the magnetic fields suspending them are not impenetrable.  If you get enough damage focused on one spot, the shield will become punctured.  Once that happens, the defending ship will designate all shield power to that one location to attempt to close the hole.  However, the way that they would do this is to increase the magnetic field holding that area of the shield up.  However, magnetic fields are not enough.  You get a big enough boom, and you will lose shield reaction mass.  Essentially, that plasma is cannon fodder.  You have to have it in the way of the shot or its going to do nothing so you use the magnetic fields elsewhere to push the reaction mass to the hole.  However, this takes a few seconds.  In the mean time, you have a few hundred ships drilling a hole through your ship by firing on the same location.

Nearly any bomb/missile in space would be using AM.  The reason for this is that while there is no shockwave or fireball, you still get a massive burst of super-photons emanating from it which would shred shields.  Now, an apple of AM risks ending life on earth.  For this reason, the missiles wouldn't be large at all.  And thus they have low mass.

Beams and lasers have no mass as they are shooting either photons or photinos.  Either way, you still have zero mass heading towards your target.  Also, it should be noted that since photons are singularities, they cannot impact each other, and thus, you can have an infinite number of beams overlapping without causing interference.

Also, targeting computers would not use traditional targeting software like we use now.  Now, we use GPS, visual cues, thermal imaging and the like.  They would most likely use magnotometers and gravitometers.  The combination thereof would be able to identify where objects are in three dimensional space.  The former would detect the magnetic fields emanating from any ship with shields and gravitometers (which already exist btw, they are just really really expensive and weigh 60 pounds) which would detect the mass of a ship.  Since nothing you would throw at the enemy ship would have much mass at all, you would never interfere with gravitometers short of using the Egg's Gravity Bomb.  Outside of that, nothing would come close to interfering, though more than likely, a gravity bomb would just make your shots more accurate because the target would have a massive gravitational entity following it.

At any rate, no number of ships you would ever have firing at the same spot would ever interfere with targeting.  Also, you really think realistically that any ship could hold off 100 beams firing at it simultaneously?  Good luck.  The system currently is fairly realistic.  My version would be moreso, but all the same I know what I'm talking about.  Or, you could think of it this way..  The reaction mass needed to fire all those weapons is probably about 1% the mass of your ship.  If you had a chunk of AM 1% the size of the earth, you wouldn't even be left with an asteroid field.

Also, I'm not so sure that would work...  I still hate the idea of capping damage though.  There is no reason you could possibly use to justify having a damage cap in lore.  Also, I would think that having a damage cap is a horrible solution for gameplay.  It would ruin the point of large fleets.  You currently get them to blast the crap out of your opponent.  Well, if you do add in a damage cap, you would ruin large fleets as one of the key features they have is cap-slaying.  Cap-slaying fleets are perfectly acceptable IMO, just not at the current rate.  At this time, they are far to good at that.  I believe that the easiest solution would be a mitigation increase across the board for capitals at higher levels.  It would not be permanent, nor would it be perfect, but it ought to help some.  I would say that the best solution is using researchables, but that takes more effort than other options..

Better yet, let's see what happens to this once the Illuminator bug gets fixed.  Once that happens, we will have a much clearer shot at diagnosing the problem because we are currently trying to fix a problem that a good chunk of which is a bug.  Really, we need a bug fix.  Period.  End of story.  Further discussion of the exact details can be dealt with later, once this problem is fixed.  Until then, we don't really know how much we should help caps.  This last patch showed us that caps can suddenly rush.  We need to make changes obviously, but we don't want them to be too large or else we are going to run into problems.  Once the Illuminator bug is fixed, we will be able to better see the extent to which we need to adjust this.

Only way to do that is to make capships cheaper in order to make a grand fleet.

Honestly, I could really give a crap about the lore.  My only focus is the gameplay.  But I'm not so sure I couldn't construct some decent lore for damage caps, were I so inclined.  I just don't feel like doing it.

Really?  You think that with a damage cap, a large fleet is no better than a small fleet?  You really think that?

Well Volt I suppose if you've invented non-interfering beams and lasers then you have, though my scientists say they'll believe it when its been demonstrated to them.

Your shielding is truly primitive though.  Plasma layers!  It's as if there were no phase shifts, resonance distortion or parasitic mass tracing.  Multiplayer any time mate.  Unless- um- you have made any progress with... Dimensional Cascades??  If you don't know what that is, that's okay.

And we've been warned off mitigation increases by someone who knows.  Good to see that we're agreed on the Illuminator bug though.

Just imagine, 4,5 maybe even 6 Halcyon's or Sova's breathing down your neck.

Photons don't have mass.  Neither do photinos.  As such, I see no way on earth that beams could interfere.  The death star's laser doesn't work.  You would need a ridiculously powerful magnetic or gravitational field to even point them in the same direction given their default angles.

Also, I was going by stuff that we know would work.  If you could warp space-time around your ship so much as to create a bubble then obviously that is the way to go, but currently, we have no way to manipulate gravity.  Not saying we won't ever, but for the time being...  

What does MP have to do with anything here?  That was a really random comment..

And are you referencing the idea of piling up multiple branes to block something, if so, I see that more as a frontal shield, I don't think you could envelop your ship terribly easy in that, but I'm no expert on it, and we don't even know if string theory is right.

but at lease we agree on something...

@Agent: I am saying that one of the pluses about late game fleets is that they can slay capitals supporting enemy fleets faster.  Its a numeric arms race.  You want to get more ships than him so you can defeat his fleet so you can bomb his worlds and destroy him.  Well, if you suddenly find that having a bigger fleet yields the same damage as a small one, then what are you going to think?  This is completely counterintuitive.  I've said it before and I'll say it again.  More guns aimed at you=you dying faster.  We just need something that increases the durability of caps, not inhibits offense.

@Everyone: We all agree that the Illum bug needs fixing.  Also, we agree that capital ships need to survive longer.  What if...  What if...  We nerfed them.  Now, before you all blow up, listen.  We nerf their initial stats, but dramatically increase their boost per level and then also make the first level upgrade cheaper or faster.  In this way, they would cross over with the power levels of current ships at about level 4 so that rushing won't become better and late game, caps are stronger?

Then nobody will ever build battleships as the time to get them up to strength against a fleet of LRFs will be too long.   Even if you add research to buy addtional levels, it is still cheaper and logical to spend that money on LRFs.

Caps should be definitely more useful in general. Game should be much more capship oriented. Strategies using caps as support should be significantly more rewarding then strategies using pure frigates. Capships should be natural core of almost every attack group. Why? Capships are extremely expensive in terms of both resources and control points, they need multiple different upgrades (including weapons upgrades from at least 2 different weapon trees) to max their stats, they are forced to gain experience to max their efectiveness, their maximum number is extemely limited (and require extra research tree) etc. etc.

What about reducing the damage of each attack on a capital by the capital's level?

For example:
5 frigates attack a level 1 capital, 1 damage is removed from each frigate's attack.  Total damage prevented per volley = 5.

100 frigates attack a level 5 capital, 5 damage is removed from each frigate's attack.  Total damage prevented per volley = 500

There would also need to be a minimum that damage per attack can be reduced to, say 1.

This method would scale both with the number of enemies and the level of the capital.  It would help capitals against large fleets of frigates without changing the balance that much against other capitals.  Infact, other capitals could have a 'penetration' value equal to their level that reduces the damage blocked, or capitals could just ignore the damage block totally.

It would probably be best to apply the damage block before mitigation or armor is calculated as it might be too powerful if applied after they are calculated.

@Unknown, that isn't a bad idea..  I don't love it, but it certainly is better than most of the ones people throw around...

@Everyone: No..  Late game, you are going to be training up your caps.  This will cause you to hit the breaking point between old and from then on, your cap would be quite powerful if it leveled up on its own.

The entire problem with Sins from day 1 is that LRFs counter LFs, caps, and defences.  Basically every early game unit choice.  Thus, to the suprise of no one who knows anything about competitive RTS play, guess what unit gets spammed almost every game?  You cannot have a long range DPS unit also be so cheap and tough, or else there is no reason to try and fight it with anything else early on.  Cap ship resistance to LRF fire is a small part of the problem.  I really think LF vs. LRF balance needs to be flipped so that LFs counter the LRFs, or at least break even.  Let LRFs counter one of the current LF specialties instead.

IMO near everything should be able to counter LRF at close range. LRF should be equivalent of artillery units from "ground-based" rts games - deadly and long ranged, but expensive and relatively easy to defeat by near everything able to get close enough. It is natural interaction, forcing players to micro their long range units and meatshield them by short-ranged, but more resistant stuff. Unfortunately LRF in this game are long ranged AND have good dps AND are spammable AND have relatively good resistance AND are still very effective at short distance... They have all long-range units advantages, but they don't have any of their natural weaknesses.

There is no natural counter (something able to cost-effectively kill them with minimal risk) to LRF excluding Strikecrafts. If opponent have something able to neutralize Your Strikecrafts (like telekinetic push), it is GG... unless you mirror his strategy and build smae units with similar proportions. This situation is extremely limiting players in terms of possible tactical options.

In my testing when I was modding sins the simplest and easiest way to fix masses of LRF killing caps in second is to change the damage modifer of LRF from 0.75 to 0.5. This has a very profond impact and makes focus fireing with spams of LRF on caps quite inefective in a full combat situation. But you do need some killing power vs caps early on. So light frigates damage modifer VS caps should go from 0.5 to 0.65, hell making it 0.75 would still be very acceptable since LFs have a lower DPS then LRFs. This means that the early cap killing is LF is cheaply contered by LRFs. It also means that caps will have much better logevety without touching it base HP and armor stats. Doing the fix this way limits the chances of havign adverse effects on other parts of the game that HP and armor buffs would generate.

LORE wise this woudl also make sence since cap have the heaviest armor in the game. LRFs use and anti-medium armor weapon and LFs use a anti-heavy armro weapon. Logic would dictate that teh anti-heavy would be more effective vs capital armor then anti-medium since the weapon should be stronger.

Balance wise LRF should not be effective counter to everything at every range...

IMO best counter to cap should be another cap (eventually with support). Using caps should be slightly more important part of the game.

I used to love RTS games onilne, but now I personally do not like playing online due to exploits.  The one that ruins this game for me is the Capital ship carrier rush.  I was in a 4v4 doing well, and a neighbor with two carriers invaded my fifth planet after leveling them up and destroyed my two cap ships plus defenses.  The map was a big wheel so I was taking planets to try to get to the inner ring.  The guy that attacked me only had 3 planets which led me to believe that he just leveled them up on the way to me.  I think the way to solve this is to require the cap ship carrier to have 4 or 5 weapons labs built in order to make one.  This way they will not be able rush with them.  This was a problem with the early mechanics of Warcraft 3 and creeps.  The reason this is a problem and NOT a strategy is because a trend is something that I would have to defend against every time thus removing strategy from the game.  I do not think an exploit used by everyone in every game since it is effective should be allowed, and patches should remove game design flaw exploits.

@Volt- beams use particles with no mass? Yeah, lasers use massless photons, but a particle beam fires electrons or protons (or even atoms), or possibly neutrons (at relativistic velocities it is useless to use the antiparticle counterparts), which all have mass.

Photinos- what are these? I've never heard of photinos before. Neutrinos yes, but never photinos.

AM is a rather expensive warhead type, and you will never get 100% reaction of the warhead (at least w/o handwavium). Nuclear shaped charges and plain ol' kinetic kill are far better.

I was saying that beams, as in continual laser beams..  I am assuming that the beams in sins are lasers, but if they are particle beams, which does make more sense given the particle effects would have mass, and yes, they could potentially interfere.

Its basically a really really powerful photon from my understanding of it.  Whether it is intrinsically different or is just an ultra-gamma ray I don't know...  They can be formed from AM/M reactions...

Kinetic bolts that would have charges to detonate inside ships would probably be best.  And Nukes are going to be mopped up by shields for the most part.  The majority of the power of nukes is the shock wave.  AM bombs have shockwaves of superphotons that vaporize the area around them.  And I don't think that the cost of AM is an issue since all caps run off it and abilities such as deploying a few terra liters of nanites is going to be much...  It will be pocket change...

The only problem with Nuke shockwaves in space warfare Volt, is the simple fact that you only get shockwaves in atmosphere environments.

In other words- atmo nukes are heavy on blast/shockwaves, while vacuum nukes are heavy on X-ray flux, and light on blast.

The other problem is that it is WAY cheaper to manufacture nuclear weapons, and subsequently cheaper (and safer!) to store them. AM bombs are much more expensive to do with both.

Mostly I was saying RL or "hard-SF" style comments, I had no idea most of it had to do with actual Sins (ironic, as this is the Sins forum!).

AM bombs do have their uses though, particularly as high damage rapid response bombardment ordnance. A big rock is cheaper but is a lot more complex to get into position, and takes more time in general (a missile could accelerate to significant %s of c, while a rock cannot).

True, nukes are safer to store, but they still aren't going to be as good as an AM bomb...  But my point is just that if ships in sins can dump teraliters of nanites or can launch an infinite number of missiles into the gravity well, they probably have no shortage of AM/ability to store it.  For that reason, I'm saying that they ought to be able to use it.  But yes, nukes are a lot more stable than something that'll make a big boom if you look at it hard enough...

Yeah..  Some scientists did the math and originally wanted to create a weapon called Rods from God.  Basically, it was an orbital kinetic dart launcher.  Giant metal darts a foot wide and 20 feet long.  Only a fraction would burn up on reentry, so you end up with the explosive power of a tactical nuke without the fallout.

Capital Ships should have an interface where it allows people to increase shield migration and Hull plating to either the front, sides or back of the cap ships, such as using anti matter to increase shield migration to either front, sides or back of a capital ship.

This could help to stop every unit in the game aiming for your capital ship at one angle, and instead hit them at sereval angles, this would then allow Capiital ships to last much longer in engagements, but you guys have to remeber, last game capital ships, only some are made for front line combat, and some should be kept away from the front line, maybe near a grav well.

Front Line 

(KOL, Radiance, Kortul)

Back of fleet

(Support caps like Dunvos, Carrier Caps like Hecoloyn and planet destoryer caps, like Marzas)

A fool who moves his Marza into the front line of a battle should be shot! you need to let the enemy come to you, then jump your marza in and then MB them, then jump out STRIGHT AWAY!