Balancing thoughts

(side note: Cost is relative, and not based on the current cost of things)
Fighters

  • Small, cheap, fast and easy to fly.
  • Their speed should make them near-invincible, unless they get slowed
  • Weapons should have a chance on a critical hit. A critical hit means that whichever module is hit is destroyed, independent on size of module or ship. It does not do more damage on the hull.
  • Cost: 1, Speed: Fastest, Can hit: All.

Gunships

  • The ultimate in anti-fighter technology
  • Has a number of very high tracking, low damage lasers and missiles
  • Is the only ship that can use the multipoint tractor beam
  • Cost: 3, Speed: Fast, Can hit: All, uneffective against Missiles

Frigates

  • The ultimate in anti-missile technology
  • Is the only ship that can use advanced missile-tracking technology (e.g. can detect duds)
  • While other ships can use anti-missile technology, this ship should be double effective with these weapons.
  • Cost: 3, Speed: Fast, Can hit: All, uneffective against Fighters.

Destroyers

  • The ultimate in repairs and other fix-me-up’s
  • Is the only ship that can use range extenders for external repair and shield restoration modules
  • Is double effective with external repair and shield restoration modules
  • Cost: 8, Speed: Normal, Can hit: Seldom hits fighters, uneffective against all.

Cruisers

  • The brunt of the damage, and the brunt of the armor
  • Is double effective with weapons and armor compared to the rest of the fleet.
  • Cost: 8, Speed: Normal, Can hit: Seldom hits fighters, Effective against all (but fighters).

Dreadnaughts

  • Oh, my lord, what is tha…
  • Is 4x effective with armor compared to the rest of the fleet
  • 360 degrees weapon hardpoints are rare
  • Is uneffective with ‘normal’ weapons, will only do half damage with these compared to the rest of the fleet (quarter damage compared to cruisers)
  • Has special ‘doomsday’ weapons. These weapons are extremely slow firing, but can destroy a cruiser in a single shot, or multiple smaller ships in a line (e.g. Doomsday Missile Launcher, Doomsday Laser)
  • Is very, very, VERY expensive. You better know how to use them~!
  • Cost: 40, Speed: Very Slow, Can hit: Only hits fighters ‘accidentally’, seldom hits gunships or frigates, devastating against cruisers and destroyers.

I strongly disagree with your opinions on both the destroyers and gunships

with gunships I think the aim here was to make something akin to a patrol / torpedo boat (I know that what I want)
but this is minor, you could easily have the gunships do both

the big cheese (did i use that right) is the destroyer (keep in mind that most of the stuff discussed here in someway connected to naval battles)
Traditionally the Destroyer is the fleets escort as it has a massive anti air armament (maybe sometimes beat by light cruisers) and torpedoes allowing it to engage any bigger ships, in GSB2 i think the torpedo concept is sort been tossed (its alot less effective the giant death lasers) and replaced with support modules

meaning that as it is now, it is basically a dreadnaught’s (and cruisers) escort in that it is a counter to fighters, and use that towing beam to make things move faster

i guess that main problem i have with your description of destroyers is “uneffective against all”

this is not how I imagine we want ships to develop in this game. As general rule ineffective ships or unused ships by most people.
i just don’t want to see
“skip the destroyers their bonuses are outweighed by having a few more combat oriented ships”

i’m sure that archduke astro (if he had the time) would want to way in hevly on this, and get much more in depth

*disclaimer i don’t own gsb2 yet

(emphasis mine)

Eek. Let us perhaps tone this notion back. “Difficult to hit” = good, challenging, fun. “Near-invincible” = bad, frustrating, reason to quit playing.

(This comes from experience balancing modded fighters in GSB1, to prevent the “speed > highest tracking in vanilla game” issue.)

I went a bit overboard, and ‘misused’ the names.

The ‘destroyer’ in my view is the ultimate support ship. A better name would be a logistics ship. It cannot do much damage on it’s own, but it can use things like shield and armor repair to great effect, and because it can use it at a greater range than normal ships, it can stay out of the fray, mostly, while keeping all other ships alive to do more damage.

The gunships in my view should be the ultimate fighter killer. Fighters are quite powerful, but if they found a gunship, they’re toast.

My point wasn’t that there shouldn’t be anything that can hit the fighters. My point was that you should have gunships or frigates, set up properly, to hit the fighters. So Gunship vs Fighter: Gunship wins. Frigate vs Fighter: dependent on the setup, Frigate wins. Any other class vs fighter: Unless you’ve set it up really anti-fighter, which is rather silly because they’re better at other roles, you’re gonna lose.

In any case, I’d love to start modding the crap out of this game, let’s keep it at that :stuck_out_tongue: