FreeOrion

I think it would be interesting if the player could designate a Captial ship for their entire fleet. The captial ship, by virtue of it's uniqueness, could be given extra bonuses for combat purposes and the like.

What would be really interesting would be if the player could customise the capital ships look so it would appear different in some ways compared to all the rest of the ships in the fleet. I dunno - maybe something as simple as a colour change.

The idea was posted in another thread. I think the consensus was some unique ships that costs enormous amount and have some unique special effects that it would have its own icon on the galaxy map. You build it as a wonder/secret and not via a normal shipyard/ship design.

Hey, thanks for pointing that out to me - and you're right, it owuld be good if the ship could survive tough combat. I mean, what would be the point of building a really nice flagship, just to get swarmed by missile boats and blown to bits. Especially with the moo3 engine. It's like, "Wow, there's the USS Enterpri.. oh, it blew up with the other 26 ships in that taskforce"

unmodded moo3 missiles are way overpowered. They have the same power:space ratio as your strongest beam except missiles deliver all that power in one second so you have a insane snowball effect advantage. Hopefully weapons and ships sizes will be balanced.

You only get 20 fleets when you play against the AI. Most players won't let you develop that long for you to get 20 fleets. Plus we had some idea for dampening the strongest players for other players to catch up.

Rather than having special ships for flagships, I'd prefer to scale things so that ships are reasonably durable and the largest ship you can build is likely to be a significant presence on its own.

EntropyAvatar wrote:Rather than having special ships for flagships, I'd prefer to scale things so that ships are reasonably durable and the largest ship you can build is likely to be a significant presence on its own.

Definately. Kinda like Homeworld.

skdiw: not to forget, MoO3 was buggy, point defense did not fire against missiles, wich made PD useless for all practical reasons, and missiles actualy had higher damage to space ratio, and longer range, and if you let the comp control, it can fire at targets you cant even see....yes, missiles were insanely overpowered.

//discord

//edit
for instance, same tech level, 5 full armadas of beam ships, wasted against a guardian...one missile support fire tf, and a small scout group, one single volley missiles, and bye guardian.
//edit

Actually, what I really meant to say was - your capital ship may not necessarily be the strongest ship in your fleet (such as the uss enterprise d), but you'd get to make it look unique like. If it blew up, you could designate another one of your ships to be your flaship.

Perhaps all ships in combat with your flagship gain an extra (small) advantage, like +5% damage, so that it's not necessary and you're not breaking the bank with it, but it's customiseable... and it's YOUR special ship. (And just to bug people, you could build some special hit and run frigates and constantly kill the other guy's flagship just to tick him off.)

Anyhoo!

OWWW! I want to make an unarmed scout into my flagship!

::klackons blare::
Caption: Why the alarm?

Operator: The enemy's flag ship is heading right for us! Our fleet is dispersed, we'll never survive an organized attack!

Caption: All ships retreat and regroup, we'll hold them off for as long as possible. Op, fire at will.

Operator: They've disappeared off our screen after only one laser barrage.. They must have amazing cloaking technology!

Caption: Then it's over.. we may as well surrender now.


Ok, ok.. maybe I'm dreaming.. but serously: What's the point of a flagship if it can be any old hunk-a-junk ship?

Yeah, flagships are probably pointless. Unless, they have a unique quality that sets them apart from other ships, such as:
-a fleet wide bonus
-abilities

But even then, a falgship would be the first target for any player. It becomes a game of who can kill the flagship first.

The flagship should be strong, but should not be able to survive on its own. The heroes in Warcraft II were good, because they were strong, but it wasn't a case of 'kill the hero first'. The heroes in Warcraft III became too powerful, and turned into a case of 'kill the hero first'.

When playing MOO2 i used to make "Flagships" basically with things that I needed in a fleet, but only once, like the device that kept enemy ships from fleeing (warp dissipator?) and battle scanners and such. then that ship got max shields, max manouvrebility (spelling?) and cloaking devices so it was able to hide/flee from enemy attack while staying in the battle. These devices used up space in relation to the ship size, so i used smallish ships for them, but I still considered them Flagships as they made the fleet a lot stronger.

Feador

I was thinking you could designate any ship of like one of the 2 largest classes a flag ship, but you can only have one at a time, and you can't change it's designation until it dies. Maybe they would give all shis on your side in a battle a 10% increase in attack speed or something. The specific's could be changed during beta.

If the purpose behind a flagship is a small field bonus, then we can use supply ships to double as flagships so it has a tatical battle significance and not just a post-battle maintenence ship. This way, we keep things simple as it were and also adds more gameplay value to the already weak role of supply ships.

Of course, specials ships/secrets can give field bonus as well to mimic a flagship role. We can have a special ship wonder rule that allow a player to revive a wonder when it gets destroyed.

Since when will supply ships provide combat bonuses? Last I heard they were only supposed to refill missles and fuel, etc., though I think small combat bonuses would also work. Maybe flag ships could provide a larger bonus.

Flagships are meatn to be millitary.

The only support ships that I can think of that there most definately will be are:
-colony ships
-troop transports
-outpost ships