I would think around having ship 'size classes'. Ships can engage normally with up to 1 size of difference, but for each point of difference greater than 1, damage effectiveness doubles if you are bigger, or halves if you are smaller.

Given the size class scale:

fighter/bomber

frigate

cruiser

capital

starbase

Fighters, for example, would engage frigates normally, but be 50% effective against cruisers, 25% effective against capital ships, and 12.5% effective against starbases.

Frigates would be 50% effective against capitals, but capitals are 200% effective against frigates, which is one part of what is needed to make them less frail (the other part is to increase their hull/armor).

The problem with this is the game mechanic is based on Damage Types and Armor Classes. The system of counters is also based on this approach. I don't really see how ship size fits based on this.

Armor Class: Very Light, Light, Medium, Heavy, Very Heavy and Capital
Damage Type: Anti Very Light, Anti Light, Anti Medium, Anti Heavy, Anti Very Heavy, Composite and Capital

LRF do at least 75% damage against all units... they are equally as effective against heavies and support as they are against caps?  They are also more effective against scouts than LF in terms of the % damage they cause, I'm not sure where the concept that LF are a counter to scouts is from?  If there is a seeker nerf and no Illuminator nerf LRF will reappear with a vengeance under the current system- to protect the carriers that are supposed to be their best counter!  Basic frigates should be escort types.

The change that I proposed would allow LF to counter scouts, as it is scouts share the same armour type as LRF so LF are penalised against them.  The specific change I want is for LF to become Anti Medium and LRF to become Anti Heavy- but to retain the heavy and anti-cap %

The v1.041 lines are (unless I've missed a change)

Assault:  (Anti-heavy) Light 75% Medium 100% Heavy 150% Very Heavy 50% Capital 50%

LRF (Anti-medium) Light 100% Medium 133% Heavy 75% Very Heavy 75% Capital 75%

Its always seemed peculiar to me that anti-heavy damage should be less effective against very heavy armour than anti-medium, thats counter-intuitive.  Its also why heavies don't counter LRF as well as they might, as they have too few ships to be taking damage at the 75% level. 

With these changes the new lines would be:

Assault:  (Anti-medium) Light 100% Medium 133% Heavy 75% Very Heavy 50% Capital 50%

LRF (Anti-heavy) Light 75% Medium 100% Heavy 150% Very Heavy 75% Capital 75%

It wouldn't take 6 patches to get right either, the changes aren't huge.. the current system has taken more, and still isn't right, it's a question of whether it can ever be right.  Though these changes could even be interpreted as a slight buff to LRF the effect might be very different, as medium and light types are far more common in play. 

Otherwise, the problem remains that LRF do too much damage to all types of armour, even to scouts and heavies, thats why LRF spam is so effective.  It is necessary to create a weak spot- and only limiting the effect on scouts would simply promote the survivability of the LRF themselves, as they share the same damage type. 

Just watched a replay of one of my recent games.

ANATOMY OF AN ILLUM SPAM:

- Illum spammer drops 2 mil labs, builds halcyon, scuttles capship factory, builds 3rd mil lab, researches illums.

- Illum spammer takes roid.  First illum rolls off assembly line. Time: 5 minutes.  Second illum rolls off assembly line.  Time: 6 minutes.  No feed.

How this went down was, the illum spammer clashed with me shortly after, and killed my capship (20 illums).  Meanwhile, my teammate on the other side of him hit his homeworld with 2 caps, so he pulled and went back to his homeworld.  I warned my teammate he was coming, and my teammate started to pull his caps.  The illums rolled in.  My teammate lost both his caps in the next gravwell, fleeing the illums.  3 capships lost from 2 different players to the same 20 illums in a few minutes time.

It's because scouts only do 50% damage to LF and 200% damage LRF.

I would have issue with turning the LRM into basically a counter for almost every unit in the game. I would be more for nerfing the LRF's ANTIMEDIUM's Very Heavy and Capital damage to 50%. They would still be affective at taking out a capital and structures over time (similar to LF), just not as affective as bombers or HC. I'm also more in favor of buffing Capital's ship damage modifiers to 125-150% for Very Heavy and below.

Flak are a decnt counter to lrf.They both do 75% damage and in most cases flak have more total dps and more hp than lrf.You just have to micro flak to work.

I am against this reducing damage from lrf to caps.I am more for caps getting better miti as they level up.Maybe 10% total or something.Lrf are only counter to caps early on.Most people dont have many bombers and a dual sieg cap rush would be really bad if nothing can damage cap without huge numbers.

Agreed; this is the problem.

Well for 1 thats alot of ships compared to 1 ship.Alot of fire to absorb.I dont want to see caps become unstoppable but they need better survivability I agree on that.One thing I would like to see is a good counter to lrf like fighters.This would cut down on the issue.One thing is you can do alot in the way of survivability for caps.You have hoshis and dunov for tec.If dunov gets buffed you will be seeing it more often.750 shield restore is pretty good.Advent have progen which is up to 62.5 dps plus guards is another 33%.Vas have overseers and skirantra.Support abilities can prob completely negate around 15-20 ilums.If you make caps to tough how would you ever kill a level 6 marza?I am in support of a miti buff as they level up to a total of 10.That would put a level 6 with 6% more miti then it has now.It doesnt sound like much but the more ships the more damage/ships can be negated by support abilities.An ilum does about 17 damage.6% of 17 is about 1.Each ilum would do 1dps less.So for 80 ilums thats -80 dps.This is if all ilums are using all sidebeams on the cap which is not likely but you get the idea.

Like I was sayin tho fighters need to be able to deal with lrf.This would heavily cut down on lrf in a game.It has been proven to keep lrf at low numbers.

Agent I think your new miti sytem will never make into the game because it would be to much work for devs.Only things that will make it are stat changes that take them 5 sec to do.I would call for new high level tecs for each race to help caps survive but I dont think they would ever do it.

Agreed. I wonder if the current game engine supports this in conjuction with it's chance to hit rules. The problem lies in what can be accomplished with simple stat changes and what would require changes in the game engine. If this could be done it not only makes real world sense but is intuitively understood and communicated.

If chance to hit could be reduced based on the number of ships FF'ing, this might satisfy the complaint in this thread.

Found this in the capital ship ability guide in regards to chance to hit (https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/373346/page/2):

Targeting Uplink  **
Level available: 1 / 3 / 5
Affects: friendly frigates, capital ships and structures
Range: self
Area radius: 8000
Duration: permanent (self), until out of range (others)
Effect(s):
Chance to hit increase: 5% / 10% / 15%
Weapon range increase: 6% / 12% / 20%
(Passive Aura) Increase nearby friendlies' weapon range and hit%. In certain situations, all nearby ships gain a small increase to accuracy, and small range increase.
Notes: Most targets have a base chance to hit of 100%, so the increased accuracy is only useful against: the Advent Rapture’s Vertigo ability, or within asteroid fields where hit chances are reduced.  Similarly, the weapon range increase is best used when you're not already engaged, so it most benefits the initial approach in battles and ships with long range.

Correct.  Whatever solution is created, it must only affect late game fleets.  Perhaps a tier 6-7 researchable for hulls/shields such as:

Capital Hull Construction [TEC]

Tier: VII

Effect: Increase hull points of capital ships by 10/20%

Colossal Construction [TEC]

Tier: VIII

Effect: Increases hull points of capital ships and starbases by 10/20%

Divine Guardian Arrays [Advent]

Tier: VIII

Effect: Increases shield points of capitals by 10/20/30/40%.

Ancient Defense Arrays [Vasari]

Tier: VII

Effect: Increases capital hull points by 5/10/15%

Empirical Defense Systems [Vasari]

Tier: VII

Effect: Increases capital and starbase shields by 5/10% and armor by 2.5/5 points

Those were just things I threw out there.  I have no idea what they would do, but they might work.  Really, the problem is late game..  Only then do they drop like flies.  I am thinking a researchable would be the answer, or perhaps a new bracket under the defense tree that specializes in capital upgrades.  Perhaps other upgrades would exist such that they would increase the weapon banks of capitals.  I would love to see a Kortul shred an enemy fleet with PS and a weapons banks upgrade.  2-3 times as many targets would make the Kortul a very very vicious ship to meet.  At that point DS would easily be the best interrupt ability in the game.  Send a single Kortul in and watch the enemy fleet get shredded and have their AM drained from every ship they have.

Basically, more labs=better capitals so that by the end, capitals are immensely powerful and could potentially stand against enemy frigate hordes.  Doubtful the devs would ever do it, but some modder could...

I have a suggestion to make regarding that idea.  Do not make that the total damage dealt to the capital that is affected by said graph.  Use a scan to check how many other targets of the same type are targeting said object.  The more of your ships targeting it the less each does, to a point.  

Let's say that you use a piecewise function (with two square root functions in opposing directions to generate an S-curve).  The maximum damage is the listed DPS of the ship.  It will obviously never go above this (unless accounting for armor bonuses of course).  However, as more ships target the same object, that dealt damage decreases.  That means that eventually by doubling the number of ships you have you will not necessarily increase your DPS.  At low numbers such as 10-15, you will very nearly, but as you start to reach the 40 range, it really starts to kick in.

However, have this calculation on the receiving end rather than the dealing end, you end up with a virtual damage cap.  That is unrealistic.  FF has to realistically work.  Simply put, more ships firing at you means more damage.  However, by putting it on the dealing end, you will suffer no such thing as eventually, you will hit a point where increasing the ship count has no real influence on how much damage you deal as the decrease will only yield a reduction of .1% per ship.  You will however kill illuminator spams because at swarms of say, 100, each Illuminator would only be dealing about 50% of its listed DPS.  That means that it is the equivalent of 50 illuminators which is much more survivable (btw, these numbers are just for proof of concept).  That does however mean that side beams would become the real reason for getting Illuminators and focus firing would not occur simply because you can because it causes instant target vaporization.  Now, unless targeting a high profile target, FFing would be foolish.

Now, I will say this.  I don't like your idea Agent.  The amendment explained above would be for the sole purpose of improving the idea you suggested.  My point is, if that were to be implemented, it would completely destroy FF.  It would be worthless beyond a point.  However, my suggestion does not kill it, but rather reduces its power.  Once again, I don't like it, but I think that the above would be more beneficial.

I enjoy reading your thoughts on this and other things, Volt_Cruelerz.

So why do you think this would "completely destroy" FF?  Focus fire is still good until you hit outrageous amounts of dps on a cap.  Say you got 100 illums and you FF a cap with this system.  Will you really be that upset if it takes you 10 seconds to destroy it instead of 1 second?  How many seconds to you think are reasonable?

We wouldn't be having this converstation if capships were light frigates.  But they aren't.

@Agent: No damage cap please...

@Nil:Interesting idea...  I believe though that currently, weapons target the things that look like critical systems to the computer.  This is where your nulls are.  These are going to be weapons, engines, hangars and abilities.

Now, that said, it is an interesting concept.  However, There is another issue...  If you have something like say a cloud of 80 bombers sitting on top of each other, why on earth would they bother shooting at critical systems?  Just fire at the center of mass!  That much DPS focused at one spot is going to blow anything out of the water.

And since we aren't playing where shooting at critical systems damages said parts, I don't think there is any reason to bother really.

While your idea would appear to solve the problem, there is no way on earth you could possibly explain it to the community through lore, and it would not fit with the current setup of the game engine.

@Everyone: Maybe its just me, but I don't want to rock the boat that much.  I don't want to take the system we have had for three years and throw it out the window in favor of something else, or add something so dramatic that it fundamentally alters gameplay.  If I had my way, shield mitigation would be different.  Very different indeed, but I don't want it.  Sure, I believe the idea (explained below) would be beneficial, it is far too big of a change to the current system to work.  If my the book I'm writing gets turned into a video game, its using my mitigation system.  But Sins is not.  Sins has its own, and any deviation from it could be catastrophic.

Basically, this consists of some major changes to the current system.

1. All damage types are spread across multiple levels of mitigation.  In this way, 50 missiles will not increase your resistance to beams.
2. Mitgation adjustment rates are not based solely on damage input rates, but also on the target receiving the damage.  For instance, something with powerful computers but low shields would be able to increase its mitigation nearly instantly.
3. Mitigation caps are not standards.  Each damage type's mitigation level would have independent mitigation caps to reflect the techological capacity to block those types of weapons.
4. Mitigation types are linked to those that are related to them.  For instance, AM rounds are linked both to beams and to kinetic rounds or explosives (depending on fashion of dilvery). 
5. Mitigation does need to fully restart after leaving a battle and entering another.
6. Mitigation Memory exists to fill the above which is an overlying damage reduction based on the total amount of damage inflicted per type upon a ship.  In this way, the nanites which construct many things remember the way damage is inflicted for later.
7. No two ships inflict damage that is identical.
8. To fulfill the above, the shown mitigation level on the displayed graph (which would come up on the infocard) is the average of all incoming damage mitigation.
9. Focused fire causes ships to target a single spot on a ship, dealing immense damage to that one spot which punches through the shield cells.
10. Shield cells are individual cells on the shield that each have set amounts of damage they can take before breaking.  The computer will attempt to balance the shield cell amount by transfering energy from other shield cells to the targeted one.  This results in a total reduction of health of the shield over time, but allows extremely focussed fire to nearly ignore shields.

Now, if the above makes sense, you ought to understand that while it is just about as realistic a representation of the world as you could get, its not going to work in Sins.  The problem is that while LRF numbers scale easily, capital numbers do not.  Also, I don't think its too hard for targeting computers (which would be using gravitometers to aim anyways) to aim at the center of mass of an object.  Any lore explanations for the things you guys are suggesting are null and void.  You guys are saying that wouldn't be getting data back from your target.  Well, wild guess says you'll know when it goes boom, so keep shooting.  Also, if every ship around you is shooting at the same spot, where do you think you should shoot?

What we need is something that scales for capitals.  You could pick standard upgrades per level, but that means that you will have a breaking point where ships below it die and those above it live.  Sure, end-game, you'll be able to train up to level 4, but that won't be high enough or else capital rushes early game would be far too powerful.  The other suggested item was researchables.  They would allow new capitals to at least somewhat match those from earlier in the game while not making capitals OP early game.  The problem here is that you just made capitals more expensive.  For this reason, people may not buy them.