Capital Ship Balancing

Hello, everyone. I’m presently very very busy getting ready to go on a two-year trip for my religion, but while I’m away I intend on putting a little bit of time into developing (on paper. YAY PAPER!) a universe for what will be, hopefully, the greatest, most original, and totally unique Total Conversion Modification for Freelancer, ever. And entire universe built from the ground up with 9 planned races (two of which are unplayable to the player!), countless factions, all-new equipment and ships, backstories for EVERYTHING–- yeah, I’ll stop there before I get too excited. laughs Needless to say, I’m very excited to come back in two years and see if I can’t get a team together to work on this.

Well, here’s something that’s been bothering me. I’m doing my best to balance everything. Each race has its pros and cons (speed over power, defense over speed, etc.), each ship class its pros and cons, each type of weapon, on and on.

Well, I have 4 planned classes of Capital Ships. These include:

Corvettes/Cutters: These ships are light and fast, almost with the agility of a heavy fighter. They carry a nice compliment of guns… but none of them really pack a punch to anything bigger than a fighter, or another cutter. This class might include the slower, more heavily-armored Gunboats.

Light Capitals: Frigates or Destroyers. While they’re the fastest REAL Cap (Cutters hardly count), they’re not terribly maneuverable. Good armor, good shielding, and (potentially) mounted with special, Destroyer-only Main Guns that do a considerable amount of damage to much larger vessels.

Medium Capitals: Cruisers. The backbone of any fleet. Armed well, armored just as well, and just as good at taking out Capitals as they are strike craft. Their maneuverability and speed problems are addressed with turret view, pretty much.

Heavy Capitals: Battleships and Carriers. Nothing has more armor, nothing has more guns, nothing moves and slow, and nothing can even COMPARE to the cost. These ships are going to be extremely rare in the game, because they’re gonna be PRICEY ($500mil-ish for a Cruiser, 2bil for a Battleship). They’re designed to decimate anything, including installations, but their heavier weaponry has a hard time tracking the small stuff. Did I mention they’re expensive?

Now, what I want to do is be able to balance these classes out with advantages and disadvantages. While speed and maneuverability can play a part, when you’re not dodging around like fighters it hardly seems to matter. The Light does have access to Main Guns that the other classes won’t have, just to give it ever so slightly an edge, but how do I make combat between Caps more… strategic than “My ships has more armor, so I win”?

A thought I had was relying heavily on stripping an opponent down with adv. targeting, so that you can focus on hitting his weaponry and disabling him, but even then, it turns into a “he-who-has-more-guns” fight, kind of.

Tips? Suggestions?

One last question; is there a way to mount the shield on the OUTSIDE of the ship? So that when a capital’s shields go down, you can destroy the generator and keep the shields from regenerating?