Musings on high-cap ships

[Mad Rubicant]

So, a common complaint with AIWC is that high-cap ships are worse than low-cap ships. The quintessential example is the laser gatling. Correct me if I'm wrong, but a major reason these high-cap and small unit ships are bad is that they have a quicker dps falloff than low-cap ships (since they lose units faster). Now, my mental model of how squad-squad combat works may be outdated or incorrect, but here's a possible solution I've thought up. This is assuming that a squad can lose individual ships, reducing its dps.

Squads with more ships in them lose ships asymptotically slower
Thematically, this would be high-cap squads spreading around the damage to each of their members; the more members you have the more you can spread around the damage.

I'm not sure whether it would actually work, or even make sense; I just thought of it during class today.

And I could be totally off about squad-squad combat and squads don't lose dps as members are killed (or members just can't be killed, until the squad hp hits 0 and the entire thing dies)

[Sestren]

While I don't know how squad dps interacts with internal ship loss, I would like to mention that it has been mentioned elsewhere in the forum that part of the reason that high cap ships are so bad is not just the more continuous loss of dps. It is more a factor of the targeting algorithm in AIWC, specifically that ships go out of their way to (generally) target the weakest things that they can first. This means that the reason laser gatlings lost dps so quickly is partially because they were simply the first things shot at, further compounding their other weaknesses.

If either the targeting algorithm is altered so that other aspects are used to select a target (all else being equal) or former high-cap ships are placed in squads with sufficient ships in them to bring the total squad hp more on par with other fleetships, I feel that a lot of this problem will be resolved without having to add a non-intuitive damage scaling mechanism.

As far as I know the question of squad repair mechanisms, specifically what to do when the squad is partially full due to ship loss, is still not nailed down so I would guess that ship loss mechanics aren't either.

[x4000]

As far as I know the question of squad repair mechanisms, specifically what to do when the squad is partially full due to ship loss, is still not nailed down so I would guess that ship loss mechanics aren't either.

This is correct.  There are several valid possible ways to handle this, but I can't really arbitrarily choose one without us prototyping them and letting people see what they like best.  We'll need to have an on-paper discussion in more depth during the KS about what the best starting prototype will look like, and then during alpha refine that more.

[tadrinth]

I did some calculations here: https://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,19168.msg208369.html#msg208369

Turns out the DPS falloff from losing ships has a very minor effect at moderate cap sizes.  Going from a cap of 32 to a cap of 64 is about a 1.5% change in effective DPS. 

Maybe high cap ships should have *fewer* squadrons instead of more.  That doesn't give any particular ship more survivability, but it does make the squadron feel more durable.

[GeistenHaus]

laser gatlings have hilariously low hp so thats certainly a factor. but their damage isnt really there. a 1.8 multiplier isnt much on such modest numbers but armor is what really makes a joke out of them. theyre extremely cost ineffective which is cruel given how underwhelming they are. even without multipliers against polycrystal cutlasses do better against bombers, while having respectable hitpoints, multipliers and being able to actually damage the bombers above their mark. cutlasses are the real laser gatlings, with the added bonus of force field immunity.