Before I go on to address your post Trooper, there's one thing I want to point out. When it comes to a ship's firepower, there's one very key aspect that needs to be considered, one that the game doesn't tell you ingame; targets per bank. Or, in other words, how many targets a ship can target at once. The ISD/Nebula SD/Tector have 3, while most other smaller ships (ex. Venator, VSDs, Providence) have 2. This effectively increases the capabilities of a single ship, even if their raw firepower would suggest to the contrary.
Yeah, especially with rebellion- FIVE weapons types per ship- you can really go all-out with new ship weapons. Give these suckers a crapload of new weapons and such. Cap. Ships in particular- they all should have some form of anti-fighter point defense (all big ships & structures, really) though of course some would be better than others, it would be one of many ways to diversify the fleets.
While there are indeed plans to put in more weapons for some ships, this requires rigging, which requires time I do not have. Further, most large ships and structures already have anti-fighter guns! While it isn't that clear in the public version, most 0-8 damage "Laser" weapons are in fact point defense batteries.
I remember having my squadrons of 20 bombers or so (Lucrehulk, Providence, one/two of the cruisers with mines and fighters...) wiped out in.. couldn't have been more than a minute. The two lancers were the only ones capable of firing at fighter targets, right? They were pretty tough, I remember them taking quite a bit of time to take out, longer than some of the heavier combat frigates or cap. ships, even.
Again, this was a while ago, but I'm not sure if this was intended, or if I was not recognizing the various ships' roles properly. Speaking of which, even as a semi-star wars nerd I sometimes found it difficult to judge which frigate I could build, it seemed like there was a lot of overlap between their abilities and not much difference in their strengths from the stats. I also didn't see much need to build fighters early game.
Nope, Lancers are not the only ships that had anti-fighter guns, or even anti-fighter abilities. However, Lancers, and all other exclusively anti-fighter ships (ex. Patrol Frigate, DP20), have a Flak Burst ability that allows them to eliminate swarms of bombers at once. As such, even having 2-3 of these in a single fleet can be extremely dangerous. It was this ability that likely slaughtered your fighter squadrons.
As for frigates; as of 2.0 there's a nice little description as to what frigates/cruisers can do. It's fairly simple (ex. if the ship has fighters, is meant for combat, etc), but with some slight experimentation, you should be able to figure out what ships work best. Though, admittedly, there is overlap, but that was the case in SW proper. The ingame stats are also extremely misleading; for example they won't tell you if a ship's weapons are 95% all forward firing, or if they are good in all directions.
In general, having three varieties of Venators (for instance) is rather.. redundant. There were really only two, the Clone Wars version and the Imperial version (three if you want the Jedi to have their own, though you could make that a hero unit, a lathe enhanced 4X mod) which would have different fighter types and different paint schemes, and perhaps slightly different weapons/armor/shield stats.
If you looked at the Venators themselves, they all have the same base stats, other than antimatter reserves, effectively making them all the same ship! The key difference is twofold; abilities (ex. the Jedi version has Force-derived abilities, while the Command variant has CNC capabilities) and level-up bonus (the special/unique/hero/etc versions of a ship benefit notably more from leveling up).
The Open Circle Fleet (Anakin/Obi-Wan's ships) placed their artillery walkers (the guns on Geonosis in Episode two, that fired the blue beam thingies at the core ships) at the hangar bay entrances, in effect using the ground artillery as makeshift weapons batteries to protect the hangars. This would, naturally, be a viable ability "SPHA gun cannons" or so forth, this could either be an active, instant damage ability (along the foreward firing arc) or a passive extra DPS/DoT.
The SPHA was previously in the game, as an ability on the Venator SD-C. It was removed due to the AI being absolutely unable to use it, and to make room for it's Invasion ability, which was added in order for the AI to not absolutely crap itself. There are no plans to add it back in at this time.
The venator is supposed to carry a crapload of fighters, and have roughly the firepower (and/or shielding) of a Victory 1, but concentrated into fewer batteries, also they don't have missiles IIRC. Having the overall stats be more or less the same but giving other ships i.e. the victory many more turrets/guns etc. would reflect this nicely, as I think this also means the Victory could fire at more targets (or is the targets-per-bank for the weapon type rather than the actual turret/gun?)
The Venator and Victory I SD have equal shielding and firepower as of all the SoaSE: Rebellion builds... What version of the mod are you playing? If it's for Entrenchment, then it is horribly outdated. The Ventor also did have 4 proton torpedo launchers, and the VSDs do have more firepower than the Venator. The VSD-I does roughly 100 total DPS, excluding rear weaponry and anti-fighter guns, while the Venator does roughly 80 total DPS, excluding rear weaponry and anti-fighter guns.
Speaking of the main batteries, an ability "power to weapons" a la Empire At War could also work well for cap. ships in general and the Venator in particular; I'd imagine a penalty to engines and/or shield regen but a massive damage boost for all energy weapons.
Some ships do have such an ability, it's called Volley Fire. Not all ships have it, in part due to them having full slots, due to it possibly being very OP, and/or as the AI would not use the ability effectively, possibly to the point of shooting itself in the foot.
A passive ability similar to the vanilla battle meditation or something (i.e. boost fighter effectiveness) as it has a dual bridge, one for fighters, one for the ship. Isn't the Jedi Venator a different ship?
I don't follow you. What are you trying to say here?
The Venator can also directly land on planets, giving an obvious edge for ground assaults (who need drop ships?) not sure how that would be possible in game.. perhaps an ability (ultimate?) that would temporarily disable the ship (make it channeling, perhaps, also cause it to be invulnerable and/or take reduced damage, as it's "on the planet" and not in orbit and targetable) but after a short time period instantly capture a planet regardless of its health etc, or at least drain health over time, perhaps as a percentage or something. Alternatively, it could "destroy" the ship or "remove it from play" somehow, for a lengthy duration.
This would be extremely OP and would not work well with Sins' current mechanics. I have to flat out say no to this; it would be even more powerful than many supercapital abilities!
Finally, the ship's massive hangar bay took a while to fully open (and was vulnerable- hence the suggestion to place the artillery by the doors) but once it did it could launch all 500 or so fighters all at once. The Halcyon's ultimate ability comes to mind- modify it by requiring a few seconds "charge up" and also increasing physical damage (this buff would only apply to missiles and the like, right?) but instantly deploying the reserves. Alternatively it could be a toggle ability that insta-builds fighters (perhaps) but has a significant damage penalty and a charge up time.
You can't truly implement the opening of the Venator's hangar bay doors in Sins as a passive ability (it would have to be passive), and more importantly, one Venator uses all of it's ability slots, so this cannot be done.
The different fighters could also be, well, different, in quality and quantity. The ARC is a heavy multi-purpose fighter-bomber, has an Ion cannon, missiles, guns, sensor suites and a rear gun turret, but is bigger and more expensive, i.e. you carry fewer... I think the venator carries like 36 ARC-170s and about 200 each of the V-wings and Eta (Episode Three jedi fighters) Interceptors. Note that the ARC was shielded, while the other two usually weren't. Now, of course we can't shield fighters in game, but I get the impression that the shields are only as important as the plot demands, and more importantly IIRC Star Wars has two shield types, one for energy ("Ray Shields") and one for objects ("Particle Shields" and aside from cap. ships and I think droidekas only ray shields were used.
Erm, what? The ARC-170 did not have ion cannons. The V-Wings were also all shielded; they were much closer to being a Clone Wars A-Wing than say a Clone Wars TIE Fighter due to their shielding, even if they were in truth an inspiration for the TIE-series. Further, ray and particle shielding were common on most frigate sized ships and above; anything with a deflector shield could have ray shielding, particle shielding, or both. Further, as of the latest public Rebellion release, a mechanic for fighter shielding has in fact been implemented; a constant 0.5 hull regen (as fighters cannot have "shields" in Sins).
I'm not sure if you'd want to change the shield/missile dynamics (they work rather well, EAW did the same, i.e. Ion for shields only, projectiles ignore shields, so on) but between point defenses and the presumed particle shields, cap. ships weren't completely open to missiles... perhaps, if you have missiles work like phase missiles (have the "Level 0 research tech for all missile weapons have, say, 90-100% chance to bypass shields from the get go, then an ability that reduces Phase missile efficiency a la the adaptive shield, would help simulate the effects of point defenses. Unfortunately there wouldn't be a way to tie that to point defense cannons...
Not really possible; missiles simply cannot entirely bypass shielding, and EaW's interpretation was absolutely wretched. Thanks to particle shielding, ships DO have some innate protection against physical attacks. While it's true that missiles can bypass shielding to an extent, they cannot do so entirely.
The Lucrehulk was noted as extremely massive, with the battleship requiring a "flotilla" of Venators just to drop its shields... it has a crapload of turrets (point defense and otherwise), a crapload of shields and armor, a crapload of fighters/bombers and a crapload of landing craft. Basically a colony-carrier-battleship all in one, and correspondingly expensive. There's a reason that we see more frigates and providence's in the opening of RoTS.
Which is exactly why outside of the later Star Destroyers (ISD, Nebula) and Vong ships it's the most powerful capital ship, in both health and sheer firepower.
I get the impression that the droid control ship model was largely unused, either incorporated into the battleship model (a target that important might as well be that tough and expensive) but of course there's no reason that the CIS wouldn't have spares lying around. Note that, in addition to being far, far weaker than the battleship it also has far fewer guns; it would certainly carry almost as many (perhaps just as many) fighters and landing craft, but far fewer weapons and far weaker guns. It would also be less expensive, somewhat less than now perhaps, as it's clearly outclassed by other models, being obsolete a decade before the CW themselves.
That's exactly how it's portrayed currently. The DCS has MUCH less firepower than the Battleship variant, and costs a good deal less. Though now that I look at it, I see that it somehow has 3 targets per bank, which it should not have. I must have missed this in during the capital conversion project, reduced it to 2.
The Munificent and Recusants had a rather powerful bow turbolaser battery; a gauss cannon type ability would simulate that quite nicely. Both the Munificent and the Recusant could carry a squad or two of fighters and some battle droids, the Munificent in particular having a rather large complement of battle droids for "boarding or ground" operations.
The Munificent previously had a gauss-like ability, it was removed as it was made redudant by the fact that much of it's firepower is from the actual weapon representing it's frontal firepower; it's first weapon exclusively does damage in the Front.
As for the Providence, there were two variants, the carrier of doom a la the Venator, or a battle-ship (ish) variant that used some of the hangar space for extra reactors to power more weapons, shields, etc... just like you have it.
With the ion cannon project in the works, I have plans of making the two Provindences more different; currently the Invisible Hand-like version has more fighters than the standard version.
Remember RoTS, when the Invisible Hand was "crawling" with vulture droids? Either type could have the "scramble bombers" ability to instantly release hordes of vulture fighters and/or Hyena bombers. A "power to weapons" ability could also fill things in.
The Providence is rather full when it comes to abilities, and has rather good ones at that. I'm not sure changing these would be a good thing, either for better or for worse; the ship is already really powerful.
Finally, as far as neutrals and pirates go, there are plenty of opportunities for different ship types. In particular, different weapon types. In an Empire at War mod, the neutrals used mass drivers and railguns as the main armament and point defense respectively, both always ignoring shields. They would also use disruptors a.k.a disintegrators which would likewise ignore shields.
Weapons that entirely ignore shields will not be put in the mod. To be frank, much of that is EaW bullshit, and other than the Maw Irregular Fleet, exotic weaponry of that kind was not in general use. Or, in some cases, some of EaW's unique weaponry was somewhat wrongly utilized. For example, mass drivers made their name in Star Wars history not as ship-to-ship weapons, but as planetary bombardment weapons.
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