Ships and their classes

Strikecraft-

"Scout"- what would this unit do? What is its purpose?

"Interceptor"- the role that this is, killing fighters, is already fulfilled by flak and fighters.

Corvettes- we know nothing about these currently. There's quite a bit of speculation, but so far nothing solid.

Frigates- already have pretty much all we need.

Destroyers- what would these do? As far as I can see, any role you describe a destroyer doing, a frigate or cruiser already does. It seems as if these would simply be larger frigates and/or smaller cruisers, but not doing nearly as well as whatever craft they're based on.

Cruisers- already filled.

Capitals-

"Battleship/Warship"- already have them.

"Dreadnought"- as above.

"Carrier"- as above.

"Mothership/Flagship"- again, what are these supposed to do? Further, "1/race" is highly ambiguous; some might interpret it as follows: say you have 6 players, in 2 teams (a typical 3v3), with each team having one of each race. Does "1/race" mean that each side will be able to field one "mothership/flagship", or does it mean that only one can be built for each race, in which case one side might end up with most or all of these ships.

Further, you've missed a category of capital ships, the battlecruiser/support ship type.

"Scout"- i see no point for these unless this fighter was like anti mine in which case scout frigates would have little further combat utility.

"Interceptor" I believe this could only work if you have this ship assuming the roll of "bomber of ships" and then have bombers become "bomber of structures & planets". However, this arrangement would further increase the utility of carrier caps make them even more of a "One man show" able to bring severe firepower to anything in the game. Currently carrier caps tend to be the worst planet bombers of the game.

"Corvette"- There are already too many threads of speculation as to Corvette function. I will simply wait for new and not add to the wall of texts already existing on the subject.

"Destroyer"- There is no need for this to be a class of its own though I would be happy to see a Destroyer Cruiser or Capital, which has relatively low sturdiness with high damage output. For instance, its silly that there is no vessel larger than frigate class dedicated as anti fighter. Yes there are anti fighter abilities but there is no precedent for not having anti fighter weaponry on larger battleship/carrier class vessels in any real life modern Naval arsenal since virtually the invention of the fighter plane. The Destroyer could be purely a flying weapons platform with decent anti medium/anti heavy weapons as well as at least a baseline of anti-fighter weapons and relatively low shield/hull points.

Whiskey, I think atearth is intending on some form of super capital that functions as a combo battleship/colonizer. In every other Sci-Fi instance of a "Mothership/Flagship" it has been a larger than average vessel that carries settlers, invaders and fearsome amounts of firepower. The

Seems to me like the Titan class might be somewhat analogous to a large Mothership/Flagship.

I actually like the idea of appointing 1 of your capital ships as a "Flagship" much like you can appoint the home planet. It would have some form of cost and could only be applied to a single capital ship and could be re-appointed only upon the destruction of the ship. In return, said ship would get a variety of bonuses- my suggestions would be increased rate of experience gain, increased armor/shields/hull points/DPS and lastly some sort of Rally ability that would grant a grav well wide buff to your team under certain circumstances. Something along the lines of "Can only be activated when Flagship hull is at 50%, fleet gains 10% shield regen, hull repair, rate of fire increase, speed and decrease phase jump charge 50%" This would provide a last resort sort of "Lets get the hell out of dodge" button if you made a serious tactical error. It would be balanced by a high AM cost and cool down time on the order of a Super-weapon like 150 AM with 360 Sec cool down.

Akin to such ships as Homeworld's motherships.

Both points make sense.

I like the flagship idea, it makes a lot more sense than the current flagships have no added benefit situation, it reminds me of the Enterprises being the flagship of the Federation and other similar ships. Needs some fine tuning, but it looks promising

Not really. The HW1/2 mothership's best defense was to not get into combat in the first place; in HW2 a mothership might have had the gunnery to defend itself against, say, a minor bomber strike, but against most forces a mothership would require external support. A mothership's main advantages lay in the fact that your unit production facilities were not tied down anywhere, but was a mobile installation in itself.

In HW:Cataclysm, there was the armed mothership. But it wasn't carried over to HW2.

My point in bringing that up was that the OP was being far too ambiguous.

And here's where I point out that a "flagship" has little meaning, because a flagship is simply a vessel with a flag officer, i.e. an admiral, aboard. Ironically, this makes the USS Enterprise of ST fame most emphatically not a flagship; rarely, if ever, did it carry a flag officer. In a similar vein of irony, the Endgame future-USS Voyager was indeed a flagship, as future-Janeway was a Vice Admiral, making her a flag officer*.

As a result, a "flagship" makes sense contextually as a vessel that the flag officer chooses as his command center. In Sins, this means that the highest-level capital ship (i.e., capital with the most experienced crew) is the "flagship". Though, somewhat oddly, if there are two vessels of equal level, then neither will be flagship (this is mostly apparent in long SP games with multiple high-level or level-10 capital ships).

*Off-topic, but I truly fail to see how Janeway would have been promoted to being a flag officer considering the numerous examples of her rank incompetence seen throughout ST:VOY. First and foremost being that she could have used timed explosives on the Caretaker's Array, allowing it to send USS Voyager&crew home, and subsequently being destroyed.

I was just pointing out Homeworld because that is what I know best, but it would more akin to the Titans from EVE and similar ships in numerous other stories.

Indeed.

I know what a flagship is; Flagship of the Federation is more a term of prestige than a real representation of a flagship in the traditional sense. Flagship has often been taken out of its original context over the years.

True, which is one of the flaws with the current system.

That would have defeated the purpose of ST:VOY in the first place.

True, true.

I never really considered the term of "Flagship of the Federation" to be one of prestige, though the Enterprise in most incarnations always seems to get the job of going and doing the most interesting things.

WRT flagship being taken out of original context over the years, this is something that is beginning to irk me to no end.

I personally don't find it flawed. In-universe, it makes sense, and out-of-universe, I'd say the devs put it in for immersion.

But it still highlights Janeway's incompetence in her role as a starship captain.

I would disagree. Historically speaking if we refer to the British Naval histories or the modern WW1 & WW2 histories, Flagships were usually the best, baddest most heavily armed ships. In the older times they had the largest cannonade, largest hulls and widest sails. In modern navies Flagships will usually have extra armor plating, firepower and support aircraft deployment precisely because it is the ship carrying the Flag officer and it needs to be most protected and most difficult to attack.

I hate quoting Wikipedia but "A flagship is a vessel used by the commanding officer of a group of naval ships...typically the first, largest, fastest, most heavily armed..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagship

The quote you provide highlights the issue here. While a flagship is usually the biggest/best/baddest ship in a political entity's navy, it doesn't have to be. The problem is that any old bucket that floats could be a flagship, provided it carries a flag or "commanding" officer.

Because of the chain-of-command importance of said officers, they typically embark(ed) aboard the best ships available. However, the strictest interpretation of the term simply indicates a vessel with a flag officer aboard, and tells very little to nothing about the ship in question. I'll further point out a flagship is not required to be the most heavily armored and defended and armed vessel around; the Homeworld series actually provides an excellent example of this; the motherships used are very weak in combat, having little armament and poor armor. However, they are also the center of all production functions, making perfect sense for them to be the seat of command.

However this is all beside the point because in the current build the "flagship" qualification does little to nothing while, being the seat of power, they should some sort of "England expects every man to do his duty" attack buff or

retreat buff to prevent the propaganda nightmare of losing your Admiral of the Fleet

I honestly think that maybe another cruiser could be added, one less powerful than the kodiak level cruiser but more powerful (in armor, shields and weapons) than the cobalt light frigate level ship. I find that there aren't really enough frigates/cruisers focused entirely on dealing damage.

Also, I think alot of you have kind of missed the point of Sins: Rebellion, no offense. They are indeed adding a "Titan" or super-capital class of ship to the game for each faction. This is essentially a "flag-ship" in terms of it having the best of everything, whether it carries a flag officer or not. You can just pretend that it does carry a flag officer. And just have fun kicking butt with it ;D

It'd be nice to be able to assign RPG style characters to lead fleets. Like the generals in the TW series, Shogun 2 especially.

You upgrade them and they give percentage based boosts to the fleets and possibly a couple of additional abilities (Stand and Fight style "WE DO NOT MOVE BUT SUPER KICK BUTT RIGHT HEAH"). So you could set up an Admiral who is awesome with strike craft and reduces charge up time for phase jumps and put him in charge of a carrier group, and another who gives a boost to armor or shield HP for your bruisers, and a third that gives a bonus to planet damage for your siege squad. 

Gotta assign the Admiral to a ship, and if he has aura based abilities they affect ships within X distance of that ship. 

It'd be neat, but not super critical. 

I mentioned a long time ago that it would be a good idea to make the flagship of a fleet give a passive affect of some kind. I would much rather the whole fleet system get fixed at this point, but we'll see. The fleet system could potentially cut down on the empire tree jumpiness (the fleet displayed via the fleet icon doesnt change as ships move from system to system), but it doesnt work correctly for other reasons.

Maybe the flagship would get an AM regen bonus, and also receives 2% more damage (represents it being targeted more often). Simple mechanic, but it obviously can be done in a number of other ways

double post. Sorry