I've been doing some plugging in spreadsheets and have the following observations.

My preference would be for a level 5 battleship to start to outclass a similar fleet supply of Heavy frigates. A level 10 Battleship should significantly outclass a corresponding fleet supply of Heavies in dps and durability.

A level 1 Kol Battleship compared to 50 fleet supply of Heavies

• does 50% dps all banks.
• does 25% forward dps.
• has 57% hull.
• has 41% shield.
• Capital Armor (5) versus Very Heavy (5).

A level 5 Kol Battleship compared to 50 fleet supply of Heavies

• does 77% dps all banks.
• does 34% forward dps.
• has 68% hull.
• has 64% shield.
• Capital Armor (7.25) versus Very Heavy (5).

A level 10 Kol Battleship compared to 50 fleet supply of Heavies

• does 104% dps all banks.
• does 54% forward dps.
• has 80% hull.
• has 86% shield.
• Capital Armor (9.5) versus Very Heavy (5).

Capital ships will also increase hull restore rate and shield restore rate from 1.5 and 3 to 2.5 and 5 respectively. Heavy frigates have a base of 1 for hull restore and 2.5 for sheild restore.

If we're going to determine a "break-even" level where battleships match heavies, we should probably compare this against the current performance of carrier caps.  50 command in carriers provides you with ~7.5 squads, and carrier capital ships only surpass this mark at level 10.  However, carrier capital ships have other advantages, including not requiring antimatter for unit replacement and (of course) special abilities.  I think we want battleships to mirror this; surpass the heavies at about level 10, but field other advantages that make them superior in different ways.

Broken record, I know, but this is exactly why I love the move speed solution; it gives the capital ships a completely different angle.

Well, that's the reason that SC rule in naval warfare. If you're smart, you have use SC to bring down a nearly defenseless enemy. If the other person is smart, they spend resources on a cloud of flak frigates. Too bad we can't set formations.

Btw, love the Star Trek demonstration. Surprisingly apt.

I think I made a post about that earlier in the thread. But maybe I wasn't clear on the non-ability thing.

Don't count special abilities, ZombieRus.  All capital ships get special abilities that make them awesome, this is their primary selling point.  The point is to look at their base performance before specials are applied.

Ok, fair enough... I don't really agree with this opinion but it's worth doing the math.

The break even point for a Carrier Capital to a Carrier Cruiser is LEVEL 5. Since we are only looking at base performance the 6 strikecraft plus the carrier capitals own dps makes this an even wash. Additionally in battles that 6 strikecraft is worth more than 7 carrier cruiser strikecraft due to AM requirements.

What you are also noticing about a level 10 Capital Carrier is the diminishing returns it has after leveling up past level 5. In other words a Capital Carrier doubles it's squadrons from Level 1 to Level 5 while only experiencing a 50% increase from level 5 to level 10.

I'm with you that I don't want to nerf the carriers as it made the game more dynamic and interesting. Before 1.18 people rarely built multiple capital ships. Pandora's box was opened by making carrier capitals competive with one simple change. I would like to see similar differentiation happen with the other capital ships and make the choice of a starting capital ship and subsequent capital ship have pros and cons.

A simple change for Battleships would be to increase the MaxCooldown PerLevel and MaxWeaponDamage PerLevel for battleships. Increasing these to 0.04 and 0.08 results in a level 5 having a dps equivalent to 10 heavies. It's still not as good as the damage is spread across multiple banks but it's an improvement. A level 10 battleship starts to equal the composite damage modifier against Light armor. Again though this is still spread across multiple banks. The forward banks are still only 80% of the base heavy damage.

I'd also like to see some broader differentiation in Planet Bombardment between classes of Capital ships outside of abilities. For example, Carriers and Battleships being damage dealers in the fleet should have significantly less sieging capabilities compared to a Colony or Siege class Battleship. Support capitals could be somewhere in the middle.

A good point, though we'd have to account for the fact that battleships also get strike craft at higher levels on the other end of the calculation.  Furthermore this isn't much use to a kiting carrier that doesn't get to use its weapons, though it's still a plus that shouldn't be ignored.

While this is completely true, it's also very difficult to model.  In a quick battle involving swarms of strike craft strafing a target, the difference is meaningless.  In a long battle involving several minutes of vicious fighting, this is a game-changer.  In other words, some situations will favour the larger number of less reliable strike craft fielded by cruisers, while other situations will favour the smaller number of more reliable strike craft from capital ships.

This gives strong distinction between the carrier cruisers and the carrier caps.  I'd like to see the solutoin approached in a similar manner to the battleship capital ships; in terms of raw damage output they shouldn't (at least until higher levels) pass over the heavies, but there should be some very notable aspects in which they do perform better.

All capital ships have linear progression.  This is true of all their attributes, including damage, hull, and shields.  The biggest plateau isn't actually their sheer power, but rather that their abilities cap out at level 5.

As far as bombard damage goes, right now siege frigates are kinda gimped so I'm hesitant to start tweaking capital ships roles in this fashion.  Battleships, unlike carriers, are also pretty much taken out of the fight when they bombard, so I don't think it's justifiable to give them the same level of bombard power as carriers.