I am a word-that-has-been-redacted-but-generally-means-i-cant-play-or-havn’t-played-this-for-long who has only seen this mode at T1/T2 levels.
Here are my impressions:
At T1, this mode is characterized by a mutual captain rush, followed by clean up by the team that got their captain kill first, or regular team deathmatch if both captains die. Captains don’t survive for very long and success usually means you took out more of the enemy ships while your captain was still alive than they took out when their captain was alive.
Which sucks because it’s all random and it feels like a bunch of Aces flying in circles.
At T2, this mode is characterized by long distance camping either in open space with a couple of frigates or behind a rock with smaller ships and nuking anybody who comes close. Victory is achieved by the team who has less idiots to try to 1-v-team the other team’s captain and more patient players who are willing to wait 15 minutes for the round to end and win on points gained from roasting the other team’s “idiots”.
Which sucks because you spend 15 minutes parked behind an asteroid instead of playing an exciting, fast paced, fluid game (this is arcade, yes?).
I think the solution at T2 is to force one of the teams to attack. Make the match asymmetric. One team being the aggressor will automatically lose if they don’t kill the enemy captain. And to make it easier on the aggressor team, once they kill the enemy captain, they win immediately without having to worry about clean up.
Dunno how this looks like in T3. havn’t gotten there yet.
I think you just need more empire interceptors. Warp in after your teammate has damaged the enemy captain, then dump all your rockets into their bum. Works almost every time assuming that you don’t instaexplode due to mines and junk.
I haven’t really seen a match where they’ve successfully defended without like, tons o’ mines in T2. It doesn’t take much teamwork to attack a captain with 2 empire interceptors with microwarp, but it does take some work to defend against it, thus your odds in pub matches are pretty good that the captains will die so as long as your team is aggressive enough to sneak at least 1 person behind the giant mess of a mid-fight and have another microwarp to get the 2v1.
i was the captain sitting back and watching the map to make shure no one snuck up on me and suddenly i was removed due to inactivity. this should not happen.
What if this mode was altered to make the captain invincible until certain requirements are fulfilled?
It would shift the whole “oh no i’m the captain” to “yes! i’m the captain!” and actualy create quite an interesting situation during the match, it would become more similiar to a team deathmatch with a hint of spice
Regarding the current mode, i find that the captain being always visible is a bad thing as it provokes rush in tactics or camping, instead i think it would be alot more interesting if each team didn’t know which one of the enemy ships was the captain and maybe even better if only contact between the 2 captains could reveal eachother
Idea that just occurred to me. What if, after the captain dies, He/She doeas get to respawn, but it takes an extra long time–say, at least one minute. During the wait, the remaining players have a countdown somewhere on the screen. If the players can survive long enough for the captain to respawn, then they get to respawn, themselves.
This came to me because there is no incentive to keep playing if the team can’t win after the captain dies, except by killing the opposing captain, and then the opposing team. That condition is practically impossible with better players on the opposition. I feel the mode needs an incentive built into it for the captainless team to keep playing, other than to provide a kill count for the opponent.
Alternatively, the captainless team could be able to draw or win if they can keep at least one ship alive by the end of the game clock. That would also be a reason to keep playing after their captain’s death.
This mode definitely needs a major redesign. In its current incarnation it’s the worst xxxx ever in pug matches and nothing but a giant fifteen minute turtling game that comes down entirely to which team has the less xxxx players that can sit around carefully camping out for the entire match.
I’d rather see the role of captain be given to an NPC capital ship of some sort and make it into a fun fleet duel instead of this awful xxxx we have now.
Recon is essential in this mode. You need to protect your captain, and then have a couple of picket ships running ‘recon’ further out. Otherwise you could get ambushed. The recon ships also let you know if the enemy team is moving en masse - leaving the enemy captain exposed.
Lolwut? There is absolutely no recon required whatsoever in this mode because the captain can see everybody and relay that information to the team. What wacky world do you live in?
They need to change the captain ships to two large Dreadnoughts duking it out at extreme range. Each team needs to destroy points on the enemy dreadnought, and as the dreads take damage the team loses certain bonuses, eventually ending the ability to spawn. Have the dreads move around the map, and suddenly the game involves a bit more then camping or making suicide runs.
I don’t believe the dreadnought thing is a good idea, simply becouse it will simply force entire fleets of frigates with torpedo and disintegrators at 10k+ distance and whoever has the most wins
i like flying my fighters myself and when im chosen as captain i feel like im garanteed to die unless i always take a frigate in my lineup which i may not want to do , i do like the idea of having the team vote for there captain or at the very least a slight defence buff to those who are picked as captain ?
It’s centered around protecting your ability to respawn and denying the same to your opponents. So it’s very much still combat recon with 2 main differences added
Opportunity to regain respawn - solves suiciding issue
Two weakness points - solves long range healer cluster standoffs that leads to games going into time
another idea, i hope there it is not already (did not read whole topic) - what about make captains to get to designed point? (obviously at the other side of the map, close to the enemy resp point) I mean something like “VIP transport”, if you get your captain killed, he will re spawn as all other ships, but you will have to start the transport all over again. it will solute the “captain behind the rock, did not shot for whole round” thing but keep the original - captain - idea alive.
another idea, i hope there it is not already (did not read whole topic) - what about make captains to get to designed point? (obviously at the other side of the map, close to the enemy resp point) I mean something like “VIP transport”, if you get your captain killed, he will re spawn as all other ships, but you will have to start the transport all over again. it will solute the “captain behind the rock, did not shot for whole round” thing but keep the original - captain - idea alive.
VIP Escort sounds fun. Have fond memories of playing that sort of mode in other games. It should really be a new game mode by itself.
I love this game mode. It does ocassionally happen that it becomes a giant stand-off, but usually a smart team will be able to launch a succesful attack at the enemy captain sooner or later.
There are many possibilities for improving or building upon this game mode moving forward, especially if we start thinking about capital ships in the future.
I love this game mode. It does ocassionally happen that it becomes a giant stand-off, but usually a smart team will be able to launch a succesful attack at the enemy captain sooner or later.
There are many possibilities for improving or building upon this game mode moving forward, especially if we start thinking about capital ships in the future.
Even 3 intys are not capable to make it, not sure if a engi send a warp gate and averyone atacks the capt.Ill try to do that!
