Gameplay Week Update #2: Capital Ships

Capital ships are easily the most visually impressive thing in Dawn of Victory. While capitals in the base game were large and imposing already, they were quite common and easy to field. In Dawn of Victory, capital ships are behemoths, with dozens of weapon points, insanely high hull and armor ratings, and accordingly large resource costs. Players will not be able to field them at the start of a game, like in base Sins, and small games may not ever get access to them. However, seeing as how cruisers largely take the role, size, and impressiveness of vanilla's capital ships, it shouldn't be too much of a loss.

Capital ships

Capital ships in Dawn of Victory tend to fall into a specific class, however: their usage is not solely direct fleet engagement. This isn't to say they aren't versatile: most of them can adapt to any role as needed, but their effectiveness often varies substantially depending on their nomenclature. Not every faction in Dawn of Victory has every type of ship: several are only available to certain factions.

Battlecruisers: Like historical battlecruisers, these ships are higher-speed, lesser armed capital ships, in between a medium or heavy cruiser and a true capital ship such as a battleship or dreadnought, and with considerably less armor. In Dawn of Victory, ships of this class tend to be medium-range fleet interdiction and hit and run attacks, with abilities that increase effectiveness of flanking maneuvers. These ships should be positioned, fire salvoes behind enemy lines, then taken out of combat. These ships can pack a punch but are most effective against cruisers: while their pure firepower is quite staggering, their guns tend not to be as large as their historical counterparts and therefore less effective against other capital ships.

Assault Cruisers: Assault cruisers are a special class of capital ship. Not to be confused with the Entrenchment “Assault Ship”. these ships focus on close-range utility. Unlike a dreadnought, they do poorly in fleet engagements on the basis of pure strength, but their armor is relatively high and they can use abilities such as remote mines to harass the enemy and halt or slow their advances.

Battleships: A battleship in Dawn of Victory is a versatile medium-range fire support platform, good at fleet combat, able to take a beating, and armed with a variety of weapons. They can engage at closer ranges but gain no advantage by doing so. Like battlecruisers, their best usage is to destroy cruisers, but they can also take on other capital ships admirably.

Dreadnoughts: The dreadnought is the one-size-fits-all solution to any capital ship problems. Dreadnoughts are armed with the heaviest guns as well as normally long range weapons such as torpedoes, but the latter is fitted more for firepower purposes than the ability for these ships to fire from far away and therefore warheads are much larger and range much shorter than torpedo frigates and cruisers. Dreadnoughts are the fiercest non-supercapitals in the game, with heavy armor, heavy guns, and abilities that boost both itself and the fleet's attack power.

Carriers: Carriers have one role: transporting strike craft. As in World War II, pure naval firepower doesn't mean a thing unless you have the planes to back it up, and carriers are much more important in Dawn of Victory than base Sins. Carriers tend to field extremely large masses of strike craft: the Soviet carrier holds more than half a dozen squadrons, each comprised of several fighters. They have decent speed and armor, and can fight off attacks from smaller ships relatively well.

Command Ships: Command ships perform like their equivalents in Sins, with medium-long range abilities that bolster the fleet's effectiveness in combat as well as out. Because of their remote positioning, these ships are designed to ward off any attacks from long range: in other words, their anti-fighter defenses are second to none. They carry a slight assortment of fighters but a multitude of flak guns. They are not a replacement for flak, as their defenses are designed to defend themselves, not friendly ships, but can hold their own against enemy fighter squadrons.

Supercapitals

There are also two types of supercapitals. These ships are mobile superweapons, but they have drastically varying roles. It is also rumored that the Democratic Federation is working on a design of their own, but this is yet to be confirmed...

Soviet Rodina Superdreadnought: An enormous behemoth of a vessel; easily the largest ship in the game, dwarfing even traditional dreadnoughts in size. The Rodina is designed for total fleet domination from any range. However, its main inspiration is the Slavny Light Cruiser line of ships, a line that emphasizes varied weapons loadouts and modularity: it is simultaneously destructive and versatile. To unlock this titan, players must research three separate prerequisites, with each research item coming out of a particular trait of a ship line. A game in which the Rodina is fielded is pretty close to over (both in the sense of time and of unit strength): it can be destroyed, but it will take several fleets, a menagerie of unit types, and a good strategy to take it down. Players are best advised to bring lots of torpedo cruisers and a lot of patience.

Greater German Reich Einseite Heavy Assault Cruiser: The Einseite is just as powerful as the Rodina. However, it's much more specialized. The Einseite is a unusually speedy, maneuverable capital ship, designed for sniping at fleets from long range. It is a potent blend of all the capital ship types: a battlecruiser in mobility, a dreadnought in firepower, an assault cruiser in interdiction capabilities, a carrier in anti-strike craft capability and a modest strike craft capacity, and a command ship in support abilities. The Einseite is a frustrating enemy and takes a good strategy to destroy: it can take out slower ships from range, then run away if cornered. Trapping the ship or slowing it down with abilities can help.

The thing we've heard the most out of people when they hear the concept is “make capital ships awesome”. And as you know, we listen to our fans. Tune in tomorrow for another announcement, this one just as inspired by you guys.

Just one question, will there be Star Bases.

Sounds so damn awesome, can't wait.

Our first release will be for vanilla. So no: structures may be technically "starbases", and there may be outposts that are "starbases", but ones like exist in Entrenchment will not be present.

April fools

Now THIS gave me a good old WTF

Indeed! Well this is something new,another halo mod,hmm what can i say,good luck i quess.

1st April you fools!

I admit i spent about 20 minuetes looking for the dawn of victory page before i realized this was it

The amount of ripping that you guys do to me and the mod astounds me.

Funny though, I'll admit.

Do you have another link? the one on the external listed in the main post is not following through.

With that April Fools day prank out of the way (we were originally going to make it a Gameplay Week feature, saying that we were making Japan playable or something silly, but it sort of spun into its own feature, so we might be technically one journal short), it's time to talk about the two factions in Dawn of Victory's first release and how they play off of each other in combat, economy, and overall strategy. We'll be talking about the Soviets today and the Germans tomorrow to round out the week.

An early game advantage

The Soviet playstyle is all about expansionism. Soviet players must make it their top priority to capture and reinforce as many systems as possible during the early game. To achieve that goal, the Soviet player is armed with essentially free corvettes and diverse frigates, as well as comparatively much more powerful strike craft planet defenses. The Soviet player starts with a Planetary Defense Base, so their first corvettes are produced essentially instantly. Between the autocannons, missiles, torpedoes, light cannons, and flak guns available to an early game Soviet player, there is a lot of diversity to be had for destroying lighter ships like German corvettes early in the game. By obtaining a good income stream with several planets, the Soviet player can afford to finance the several fronts he'll undoubtedly be opening. While not particularly cost-efficient in the short term, Soviet economic upgrades are quite lucrative when multiplied over several planets over a long period.

Unfortunately, the early game superiority comes with a price. The Soviet player is stuck with their frigates up until they start researching cruisers, and unless they have built up their economy well, they will be hard pressed to afford them. A Soviet player can get trapped in a downspiral as they build more and more defenses and poor frigates toward later in the game, losing resources that could be best put toward cruisers, and eventually be driven from a system or defeated. This is why the Yeremenko Destroyer and Slavny Light Cruiser are very essential upgrades: the Destroyer has heavy armor and can tackle larger ships with a medium cannon, and the Light Cruiser (as you probably know by now) has a massive amount of flexibility with flak, a medium cannon, and light cannon and optional torpedo launcher.

Later on

As the Soviet player is mostly about early game superiority, mid-game there's not much to talk about. In fact, there's so little to talk about that we decided to throw in another cruiser when doing the unit lists: originally, there was only a torpedo cruiser and the medium cruiser.  The Genrikovich Special Operations Cruiser (informally known as “the KGB cruiser”) is a special cruiser devoted to taking over and sabotaging enemy ships (not in that order). It rounds out the mid-game nicely, but it's still a gap between the early game and the Soviet capital ship advantage later.

Later in the game, the Soviet player begins getting all his capital ships. Unfortunately for him (with the exception of the relatively quickly researched Kiev Battlecruiser) by now everyone else has them too. Not to fear: the Soviets have a natural capital ship advantage both in unit roles and individual superiority. If the game isn't over by now it soon will be: capital ship faceoffs are extremely rare.

Summary of playstyle

In summary, the Soviet Union player will focus on expansionism, planet defense, and elite capital ships. A player that can master these abilities will master the faction.

Weapons rundown

The Soviet Union player has a variety of different weapons: more so than most other factions.

Flak Cannon: Seemingly somewhat paradoxically, the Soviet player has made the most advances in flak technology. However, the role ends up fitting the USSR quite well, considering the faction is more about brute force than anything: instead of missiles, the Soviets just fire giant exploding shrapnel shells into space and hope enemy fighters fly into them.

Light Cannon/Deck Gun: The light cannon or deck gun is fitted on most Soviet ships and is effective against corvette screens and frigates. It is not very effective against anything larger, but it tends to have a fast refire rate to do its specialized job effectively.

Medium Deck Gun: The Medium Deck Gun is mounted on smaller ships than the other factions, at the cost of reactor power.  Its power is crucial to a early-mid game Soviet player, as stated above.

Heavy Deck Gun: Rare except on the largest capital ships, the Heavy Deck Gun is designed to tear capital ships and cruisers apart at short range.

Torpedoes: Torpedoes also do a pretty good job at destroying cruisers and capital ships, but their reload rate isn't nearly as fast. Soviet light torpedo designs (like on the Torpedo Frigate and Bomber) tend to focus on “clusters” of individually less powerful torpedoes: the effect is somewhat like a guided shotgun. Heavy torpedo launchers have different staggered-fire designs more reminiscent of today's missile cruisers, but either way their trail effects and sheer numbers make for some very nice looking video (as you can see in our Aurora Torpedo Cruiser teaser).

Autocannon: Available to all factions, the Soviet autocannon is moderately powerful against enemy fighters. The Soviet fighter is also armed with short-range missiles to provide an advantage at range: these missiles can also be used in a pinch against light targets like corvettes.

See you tomorrow when we discuss the Germans: I know we've probably kept much more of their mechanics and ships secret, so I think it'll be a good round-out to the Gameplay Week series.

It should work fine? If you want the site try http://dov.slipstreamproductions.net, the link to the forums works fine here but the direct URL is http://forums.slipstreamproductions.net/index.php?showforum=85.

i wonder what the sinfaxi stradagies will be

Welcome to what's probably our last Gameplay Week feature, barring anything exciting we come up with. The German side is a lot less transparent as far as gameplay: I think everyone knows that the Soviets just run in with a lot of guns, but so far we've given very little information to how the Germans look and play.

Corvette superiority

Unlike the Soviet Union, German corvettes are few and expensive. This is for a reason, though: their variety and power rivals, if not exceeds, most of the other factions' frigates. Their corvettes receive stacking buffs when grouped, aiding their survivability and guiding the player toward using them in small packs. The German player has access to a railgun corvette from the beginning, as well as a heavy corvette with medium armor and both a cannon battery and anti-strike craft defenses and a standard missile corvette with anti-strikecraft capability.

Playstyle diversification

In fact, the Germans have a playstyle that is almost completely the antithesis of the Soviet player. The Reich uses missiles for strike craft destruction and light duties, but switches to railguns, projectile weapons, for anti-cruiser and anti-capital roles. As expected, this gives them a rather nice boost to range at every point in the game. We didn't want to make them simply the opposite of the Soviet playstyle or vice versa in laziness, though: the German side has rather decent armor, and they have a couple different unique frigates to compensate for corvettes being the backbone of assault fleets. These frigates are more defense oriented: for example, the Interdiction Frigate specializes in detecting and delaying enemy jumps, and the Minelayer Frigate drops mines around planets.

Planet defense is a big deal for the GGR player: while losing a planet is usually disastrous for any other player, the German player has it even worse. Each planet gives much more resource income: this means the Reich player doesn't have to be very aggressive (we understand the irony here) at the start of the game to compete effectively. A Reich player should use their time and resources to raid enemy colonization with corvette groups and upgrade their own planets. German players will also be able to upgrade their planets with extremely powerful but expensive railgun turrets: these turrets have extremely long range and therefore provide each other overlapping fields of fire in most cases, creating a defense grid that's unmatched by any other faction. Naturally, the German side gets quite a boost to propaganda, having a tree about as long as the Advent's and natural bonuses. This is not to say they can sit in their planet gravity well and flip everything through turtling, but it is a good way to sap the enemy's resource income.

Cruisers and beyond

German cruisers aren't particularly powerful in sheer weapon damage, but are agile, ranged, and have excellent special abilities allowing them to make powerful barrages and quickly move out of range. Their Medium Cruiser has excellent versatility, with a light cannon, light railgun, and regular railgun array, allowing it to tackle a variety of threats. German capital ships are also relatively varied, with a pure damage battleship that has a similar weapon layout to the Medium Cruiser but with more armor (it's equivalent more to a battlecruiser with lots of plating), a carrier, but also an assault ship, the only faction to do so. Its options and special abilities will allow a GGR player to better engage ships in close combat, if they are forced to do so, and also wall off long range ships like railgun frigates with mines so the enemy can't close to destroy them.

Summary of playstyle

The German Greater Reich player will be focused on corvette raids, planet defense, and firing from range. Their ships are agile and can quickly retreat, set up a position, then retreat again. Players will need to balance their time between management of units and management of planets more than any other player to succeed. If you've ever played Team Fortress 2, the German player is the Scout and the Soviet player is the Heavy: the GGR makes quick strikes darting in and out while the USSR has massive damage potential if it can survive a while.

Weapons rundown

Light Cannon/Deck Gun and Autocannon: the same role and damage type as the Soviet versions, although German autocannons are lower caliber.

Anti-Air Missiles: Missiles that take the place of flak: good damage and excellent accuracy, fire in clusters. Also present on the German Fighter (not the interceptor).

Anti-Ship Missiles: Anti-medium missiles that launch from a variety of ships even down into the cruisers, as well as bombers.

Light Railgun: Small railguns, excellent against heavy targets from range.

Railgun: The main weapon of the GGR, they fire from most larger ships, as well as surprisingly early on the Railgun Frigate, allowing these frigates to take on other factions' cruisers from range.