I started this thread a while ago, but never opened an issue here.
Ships that were discussed as falling into this category included:
- Drake-class missileship (slightly)
- Tripoli-class destroyer
- Ranx dreadnought
- Sotho-class gunship
- Steel slaver (though it may be intended as a support ship)
- Urak destroyer (not as bad as it was, but still somewhat applicable)
- Edit: Hurin-class destroyer
Also worth mentioning on this list are salvager nomads. Not technically an enemy, true, but something that a lot of players will attack on sight.
I’m not necessarily sure that this is something that needs fixed (at least not beyond the Marauder-vs.-Bushido issue I mentioned in an earlier ticket). “Mighty glacier” is as viable a design strategy as “glass cannon” or “lightning bruiser” are, and all are represented to some extent in the Transverse.
My proposals:
Drake: Nerf internal HP slightly, increase missile range, give 2 Corsair/Corsair IIs as escorts.
Tripoli: Give better armor, increase missile range, half internal HP, possibly switch some turbolasers to particle beam weapons.
Ranx Dreadnought: Improve range and damage of main weapon.
Sotho: Increase firerate.
Steel slaver: Switch weapons with Wind Slaver. Makes no sense for Wind Slaver to have such an expensive weapon anyways, and farming Wind Slavers is way too lucrative for such a weak ship.
Urak Destroyer: Nerf internal HP slightly.
Maybe enemies with strong defenses could change behavior at some point during the fight once enough damage is done to them to make the fights more interesting. For example, maybe once the Tripoli takes enough damage to its armor plates it could visibly jettison its heavy armor, making it more vulnerable to damage but increasing its engine thrust and top speed and simultaneously revealing additional missile launchers that were concealed beneath the heavy plates.
That would be quite cool, though it'd take some thinking to implement. We'd need a system that detects when X% damage is taken, fires off some kind of effect to show the armor being jettisoned, replaces all installed armor with another(lighter) set of armor, and installs a set of additional launchers, while adding overlays to show the visual changes.
This also gives me another idea - Capital ships having multiple layers of armor would be a neat addition, and an excellent means of ditching the internal HP system(WMD weapons could deal a certain percentage of damage to the next layer of armor depending on their level).