Formidable-class has critical power issues

[Regularity]

Flying other dreads, I can usually keep a gun battery powered forever at only 33-50% weapons power, since there are only 7-9 guns per battery. But flying the formidable, which has 16 guns on one battery, I can't even last ten seconds at 100% weapons power. While the designer gave it a pretty large battery to help compensate (~66% larger than most dreads?), this is pretty useless since it only means the gun battery can fire an extra five seconds longer before it hits zero.

Can you fix the Formidable battery issue by increasing the recharge for that 16-gun battery, maybe in exchange for nerfing the recharge on the tiny 4-gun batteries? Or if that's not possible, can you distribute the guns more equally like with other ships so we don't have a perpetually empty main battery?

TLDR: The Formidable has to run twice as many guns on one battery than your average dread, which causes huge power issues

[Geek]

Alpha strike is whole point of that ship.
Highest number of turrets, highest energy, good coverage, second best defense etc
All of that needs a counterpart.
If the layout is changed, then eveything else becomes obsolete.

[Regularity]

Alpha strike is not a viable strategy though. The battery lasts about ten seconds with high-end guns. How many battles finish that quickly? Combat is generally 30 seconds+ in 1v1, supercapital vs supercapital combat. Nevermind battles involving multiple ships.

Additionally it can bring about 20 guns to bear on a target at a time if it angles the front and one side at an enemy. Most dreads can do the same for 15-18 guns.

So it's not an alpha strike ship at all -- or at least, not an alpha strike ship that does notably more damage than other ships of its size. It's just a severely underperforming dreadnaught.

[Geek]

You can do way more than 20 turrets with that ship - front, rear and one side.

[Regularity]

Originally posted by Geek - Gemini Warlord:

You can do way more than 20 turrets with that ship - front, rear and one side.

Same for literally any other ship. It's not an arguement for this ship being an "alpha striker" any more than it is literally any other dread.

At the end of the day, it has to run twice as many guns on a single battery than other dreads, which absolutely cripples its ability to sustain fire.

[Geek]

Sorry but no. There is not a single ship that does that much.

Yes, its sustain fire is worse, which again is the only counterpart for otherwise super stats.

[Regularity]

Originally posted by Geek - Gemini Warlord:

Sorry but no. There is not a single ship that does that much.

Yes, its sustain fire is worse, which again is the only counterpart for otherwise super stats.

You yourself admitted that ships can easily have multiple sides firing at a target, which negates nearly all of the advantage of having all guns on one side (particularly if it comes with a much heavier disadvantage of lower sustainable dps).

Come back after flying it for a day and then tell me I'm wrong. Fly it for a few hours and swear to me that it doesn't perform much worse than other dreads in combat. If you don't fly for a while yourself before arguing about how awesome the alpha strike is, I'd suspecting you're arguing for the sake of refusing to admit you're wrong.

[Geek]

No, I said the Forrmidable can do this. And yes, I have tested it quite a bit.

You do not seem to undertand that different ships have different firing arcs. Having X turrets total does not mean X will all fire at once.

The Formidable is not my favourite, but that does not mean it is "much worse" overall.
Again, creating a ship that leads in every area is very wrong.

[76561198156207256]

When deciding on design and balance of this ship what I had in mind is exactly an quick and powerful artillery after which you are left struggling but still having a lot of power in side and bottom turrets. 555 maximum power makes an interesting choice over actually choosing and preferring very battery hungry weapons and enhancements instead of the energy conserving ones. It'd also be a wise choice to spend this on a specific target to preferably destroy it and therefore weaken rest of the encounter instead of autofire spraying randomly.

I feel it is interesting to have such extreme options instead of every ship following classic designs and balance with "style" variations.

[Regularity]

Originally posted by Maximus:

When deciding on design and balance of this ship what I had in mind is exactly an quick and powerful artillery after which you are left struggling but still having a lot of power in side and bottom turrets. 555 maximum power makes an interesting choice over actually choosing and preferring very battery hungry weapons and enhancements instead of the energy conserving ones. It'd also be a wise choice to spend this on a specific target to preferably destroy it and therefore weaken rest of the encounter instead of autofire spraying randomly.

I feel it is interesting to have such extreme options instead of every ship following classic designs and balance with "style" variations.

The thing is that its battery lifespan is too short given the nature of combat, where it takes supercapitals at least 30 seconds to take one another down solo. This means the boosted DPS from the forward guns only makes it effective against targets you can take down VERY quickly (15 seconds or less, maybe?), meaning it's only useful against ships much weaker than yourself -- the sort even the weakest of dreads can take down without issue.

The Formidable is like those WW1-era tanks that had only machine guns and no cannons of any sort. It's only useful against targets weaker than itself, which in turn really limits its usefulness.

I suspect if you ran a poll of players who have flown multiple dreads for any significant time, almost none of them use the Formidable. I personally *love* the design of the ship graphically, but it performed so much worse than the other dreads that I had to dump it for one of the ones I considered uglier. I really tried to love it, but the handicap was too much.

[Oluja]

Originally posted by Regularity:

Hmm I find that the combination of:

Marauder + Expose + Dmg Amplifier + Railguns + Power Redistribution to Weapons, and man i melt any capital withing seconds, of course i don't leave fire at will on all the time, but carefully assasinate the big targets first.