Their is a reason they have Escorts...

Id imagine their designed to destroy larger targets like other battleships and bases etc...

Pluss a good pilot can take out a torp heading towards a Battleship... just that the ai dosnt do it

Gameplay and game balance, simple as that.

They don't want you to get bored spending several days chipping away at the Battleships armour, which would probably be realistic.

Most games are the same. SW Games for instance make all capital ships much weaker than they are portrayed in the films (You can kill an SSD in a TIE fighter with a little patience!!!).
The only games I've played where it is actually difficult to kill a capital ship is WC1 & 2 *I still shudder at the thought of making torp runs in WC2*

We don't really own this place, just break a few arms if we have to - Bounty Hunter Mitch Murphy, Bonn Station.

I remember Kilrathi corvettes in WC3 being a bit of a tough nut to crack, especially with that rear firing tachyon turret..........

AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH, WC. Always seemed to set a standard and raise the bar a little higher. What happened to those games of yore that were more than linear eye-candy? What was that old song? Oh yeah;

Where have all the non-linear games gone? Long time passing.

Maybe some day writers will get away from being hobos riding the rail and gives us options. Stop making it FAILED MISSSION: GAME OVER. Or FAILED MISSION try again, again again, again . . . . . Early WC was so much fun in that regard. If did not want to go NAV 1,2,3 could switch around. Then there was P1 with the expanding map as you went into new uncharted systems UNTIL you mapped them.
We can only hope that the AGE of EYE-CANDY will eventually pass and we will have truely 'NEW & EXCITING" game play. Space Sims that don't ride the rail & give the opportunity to lose a misison & still continue.

It is hard to soar with eagles when you fly with turkeys.

I think the most dangerous and realistic battleships you will ever encounter were in Freespace 2, hands down. With their dozens of anti-fighter beam weapons and flak turrets it made it impossible to take out even a cruiser let alone a battleship, let alone the Colossus, propably the largest battleship every incorporated into a space sim.

i will have to experience this freespace 2 for myself, along with WC.. whats it stand for again ?

Wing Commander oh heathenistic one

WC = Wing Commander

We don't really own this place, just break a few arms if we have to - Bounty Hunter Mitch Murphy, Bonn Station.

Haven't you ever heard of WC being used?


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Why I hate the nerfing of capital ships

or

God Damned Lazy Game Mechanics

By Caelistis

Without resorting to comparing Freelancer to other games in its genre, we can easily see that even within the universe that Freelancer's fiction creates that there is a massive hole in the plot.

I can buy a single unit that will shield my ship in 360 degrees but there has yet to be discovered a way to make make units smaller and only project hemispherical shields? Please.

From an engineering perspective, it would be easy to setup a line of these 180 degree shield generators at X length along the belt line of a capital ships to overlap each other in serial. Much like the old "ironsides" sail ships of ancient Earth navies.

We already know from smaller ships (ie Armored Transports, the Clydesdale, the Dromedary, et al ad nauseum) that we can create shields that allow for high powered energy weapons and projectiles to pass through one side of the shield without a detrimental effect.

So what's stopping a modification of that for larger ships? Via sheer size, we can extrapolate that capital ships have either much larger reactors or reactors that work in serial for a cumulative output. So the power to drive these smaller shield generators should be more than sufficient. When not in battle, what does a capital ship have to provide power to? Environmental, engineering, navigation, communication and crew quarters.

Unless these ships are extraordinarily wasteful due to some unknwon entropic state of energy loss, there should be more than sufficient power to drive shields.

So they don't want you spending days chipping away at a capital ships armor/defenses. Ok, that's why we have torpedoes. The Sunslayer should, in theory, pack enough whallop that a few in a row should take down a portion of the shields and do damage. But common missiles? Please!

It just...irks me that the game mechanics treat the player as some sort of mentally deficient genetic throwback who needs nerfed capital ships to kill them. Make me sweat! Make me think! Make me be unsure of whether I will survive a confrontation, even in a wing, with a base killing capital ship.

Treat me like the privateer you are allowing me to be in the game. Make me act like one and think like one beyond running commodities and killing Nomads or contracts.

I think the talk about battleships having escorts was the best one. Consider real life. Take World War II as an example. Consider Battleships and submarines. A sub is nothing compared to a battleship, but it could still take out a battleship if it had no escorts by submerging (going to the blind spot in FL) and shooting torpedoes (your weapons in FL). Battleships didn't tend to have depth charges, so they had no defense against that little pesky sub. They needed escorts. Exactly like in FL. Your ships are pesky little things compared to the Battleships, but can still take one out if it's unescorted. Makes perfect sense to me.

Striker,

This isn't World War II. World War II naval tactics make zero sense in an advanced time frame with high technology items such as pure energy weaposn, shielding, small portable energy reactors and intergalaxy travel.

Yes, it does make sense to have cruisers as escorts to serve as anti-fighter platforms and to keep a group of enemy groups from harrassing your larger capital ships.

But that in no way excuses creating a paper tiger like model for a capital ship.

my point is, what's thee point in even HAVING battleships if a heavy fighter can take them out? okay, so it doesn't take as long for a battleship to take out another battleship, but if a powerful VHF can slap a Dreadnought around what's the point in their existing anyway, except as a mobile base for fighter wings?

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"preacher, don't the bible have some pretty specific things to say about killing?"
"Very specific. But it gets fuzzy in the area of kneecaps..."