Are "battleship" capital ships stronger in cap vs cap ship fights?

Battleships arguably have the best survivability of their respective factions' capitals in both abilities (Kol has Finest Hour and Adaptive Forcefield, Radiance has Energy Absorptive Armor, and Kortul has Power Surge) and armor (which can be four points higher than any other capital). Their endurance is usually further increased by abilities of supportive capitals (Vasari seems to get the shorter end of the stick in this respect - its either Repair Cloud or Phase Out Hull - neither of which is significantly helpful). Outside of abilities, they have the best DPS of all the other capitals.

Don't forget that the Kol also has its rail gun which costs relatively little AM for its damage output and can be the edge in a cap to cap fight. Using the Kol (level 6) you can pop Finest Hour, Adaptive Forcefield and them spam Gauss Rail Gun until you wipe out almost any Cap Ship.

They excel at engaging multiple targets.  Marza is mostly forward facing, as are other dreadnaughts.

radiance can really do some nasty things with Detonate AM. they get one ability off adn tahts it. Stops even a marza.

unfortuneately, even at level 3 it still has a 5 second gap between cooldown and duration.

but cleansing brilliance is evil.

Arguably.

The DPS depends a lot on passive benefits and abilities, but let us assume all weapons can fire on a target up front, even the side and rear guns:

As example, I will take Kol and Marza (TEC):

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p7xc_snd9Cc-6o2UwvPEWUg&gid=4

Kol:

Marza:

28.5 (Missile) Front

this is a bit off-topic but i giggled a little when i read it. hope you don't mind some friendly ribbing. 

Boni is not the plural of bonus. and it sounds funny when you say it out loud. please, bonuses. yes, i looked it up to make extra certain. 

anyway, back on topic.

in a 1on1 situation the combat abilities of a battleship will tend to make it beat any other ship. taking the example already used of Kol vs. Marza: the reactive shield makes a huge difference and more than makes up for the slightly higher dps of the Marza. generally there are no ships that can destroy a battleship before the battleship destroys them. 

that said, not all battleships are created equal. the Kol is probably the weakest in ship to ship combat because it has no counters to enemy abilities, its just a tank. A Kortul with Disruptive Strikes or a Radiance with Ignite Anti-Matter can totally neutralize the special abilities of enemy ships and then the fight comes down to guns+armor/shields vs. guns+armor/shields. Battleships tend to win these fights, even against dreadnaughts. The dread might have more DPS but it does not have even close to the survivability level of a battleship. It will surely die first. 

The marza does do more single point regular weapon damage, but its level six is channeled...which means it stops attacking with normal weapons and can be interrupted....the kol on the other hand is not channeled and continues to fire its weapons.

It depends on whether we're talking a pure capital duel or not. The Marza certainly has the edge early game thanks to higher damage output and the benefit of incendiary shells / radiation bomb. The limitation being that all that damage is pointed straight ahead. The Kol can't quite match in pure damage output, but it does have a much wider coverage of fire, making it pretty good at taking out swarms of cruisers or frigates. Late game they both round off nicely; the Kol getting Finest Hour and Railgun letting it pump out the high damage, and the Marza getting missile swarm allowing it to target multiple opponents.

Research would play a part too; again looking at things from a cross fleet perspective the Kol comes out on top - the laser and autocannon upgrades which give it a nice boost in damage also boost the majority of your ships, both capital and non-capital alike, while the missile upgrades the Marza needs to really pack a punch is limited to assisting only a select few.

Typically you pick a capital ship for its special abilities, not its base stats.  While higher damage and durability is always a plus, at the end of the day it's abilities like shield regeneration, nano-disassemblers, and flak barrage that decide whether a capital ship is good or not.  Typically dreadnaughts and battleships are roughly on par for combat strength, followed by colony ships, with support and carriers bringing up the rear.  That has no bearing on their actual usefulness, however, as it will ultimately come down to what special abilities they're packing.

i wouldn't say the ships stats have no bearing on their usefulness. the special abilities are more important, i agree, but Battleships have fantastic stat gains per level, which is a major appeal. they gain the most effective survivability (new hull and shield points, and more armor) and damage per level up than other types of ships. given that people often complain that the DPS of cap ships isn't that exciting i think its a big selling point that battleships (and the Marza and Vulkoras dreadnaughts as well) actually do have excellent damage from regular guns. 

Dreadnaught capital ships are also the most vulnerable of all capitals to strike craft (they can only ever support 1).

Players can also take advantage of the battleship's side weapon banks and rotate their capitals such that both the forward guns and one side are firing simultaneously at the same target (though this makes a rather small difference with the Kortul, whose side banks can already fire at targets in front of the ship - this makes it the battleship with the most forward-facing DPS).

I never said they didn't.  I said better stats are always a plus, but at the end of the day you pick for special abilities.  People always pick mothership first as Advent, and I can tell you it's not because of its DPS or armour.  Same goes for evacuator, it's picked for its special abilities and not base stats. 

I'll agree that battleships and dreadnaughts get great DPS and this is a plus, but if damage is all I'm after I'd have gotten five heavy cruisers rather than a Kol.  When I get a capital ship, it's for the special abilities first and direct combat power second.

You should note that theses stats just say DPS, not actual damage per shot. The Kol forward beams (according to the ships data files) does more damage per hit than the autocannons, but the autocannon fire faster and does more damage on the long run. However, ships with high armor rating gets less damage from fast firing weapons because (unless i'm mistaken) armor block a given set of damage from each shot received (after shield mitigation), so more damage get through with high damage per shot... Also, all capitals have more than one side they can fire from, the Marzda has forward and right side.

you're mistaken, armor does not reduce damage from each shot. it is normalized to DPS like pretty much every other weapon and defense in this game. armor is just a percentage based increase to effective health. each point of armor is worth approximately +5% effective health. this is slightly better than just getting the hull points directly because it also serves to increase the effectiveness of hull regen and hull repairing special abilities. 

By the way only thing we can call "dreadnaught" is Mazda.

Vasari is more of just plain siege cap ship, wanna be dreadnaught, but fails.

The Marza is the only capital with the word "dreadnaught" in its title, yes, but since the Marza specializes in planetary bombardment and offensive support (not quite a front line unit, however), it serves the same general purpose of the Desolator and (to a lesser extent, I might add) the Revelation.

You could say its an extremely appropriate title for the Marza, since "dreadnaught" means "dreads nothing" or "fears nothing" due mostly to Missile Barrage.

not for nothing but... a Vulkoras kills planets faster than a Marza. it has 2 upgrades that enhance sieging. or if you wanted to go the other way with it Phase Missile Swarm is a better direct damage ability than Radiation Bomb. i'd say the Vulk was a much better ship in every way except for Missile Barrage, which as we know, is quite ridiculous. 

Alright, i stand corrected.

marza and dunov. dream team.

See, the problem is that Vulk's dps is low compared to Mazda.

Frontal dps of Mazda is 41.5.

Frontal dps of Vulk is 34.

ALL dps of Mazda is 54.5.

ALL dps of Vulk is 41.

Do you see massive difference? And you just can't rely on abilities for damage because you will be out of AM pretty soon.

Not to mention MS of Vulk is not that great.

And no, killing units are more important than bombing planets. Because you can't bomb planets when enemy units are around! (well, unless you want to play as 'pirate')

I just have to ask this, but does your version actually say mazda? 

Marza might have better DPS, but the Vulkoras does get phase missles which is a definite bonus.  Too bad missle swarm doesn't seem to have the ability to bypas shields/

You'd have to compare Phase Missile Swarm to Radiation Bomb. Also, the Vulkoras' Phase Missile Swarm does not go through shields with phase missile research, however much I wish they would ;-;

Phase missile swarm doesn't bypass shields like all other phase missiles?

Lol, what defines a dreadnought? (Except a british battleship built in 1906)

There are considered to be five classes of capital ship.  There is "battleship", "colony", "carrier", "dreadnaught", and "support".  The Advent does not have a dreadnaught, and instead has two support capital ships.

The dreadnaughts are defined as forward shooters with good DPS and excellent bombardment capabilities.  They also have special abilities that aid in bombardment.  These are the Marza and the Vulkaros.