Yeah. Killing a Kingship is going to be very difficult, especially when you recall that there will be strict limits as to how many ships can enter an instance. Manning the big ships makes good sense, but the level of player cooperation for such a thing will probably make that relatively rare. Worse still is that for the big UEE ships like the Javelin to go to field, requires a lot of players. Player numbers and cooperation are hard to get. Imagine if you need 20 Javelins at 70 players each to take out a Kingship. . .that's a lot of players. So if players are going to regularly take down the big Vanduul guns, and contribute significantly to the War That Has Raged for 225 years, they need to find another way. I think about this often, and given we have no stats on Kingship shields, escorts, etc., it's pretty hard to guess. Could be there is no way to take down a Kingship without Javelins. If that is so, battles will be very bloody because the spinal mounts on the big ships need direct line of sight, and the Vanduul spinal mounts will come to bear on whomever is shooting at them. The first time a Javelin blows up with 70 players onboard, lots of players will reconsider whether they want that kind of gameplay.
But what can we do with the smaller ships--Polaris and down? Maybe not a Kingship but those are pretty rare anyway. Generally only the larger clans have them and there are lots of lesser targets to consider first. What could a coordinated assault on a large Vanduul cap ship or ships like the Marauder look like, given the kinds of resources Esctasy mentioned?
If you don't like theorycrafting, we don't need you to remind us you're a bah humbug. This is fun for lots of us to consider, and Esctasy deserves something like an answer to this question, since he has so many assault ships.
Lets consider a few rules to the game:
1) Only 50 ships in an instance at a time. We've no idea how many CIG will allow for a strike force, so lets guess at 30. If the target includes several large cap ships, they could include a couple hundred fighters, but they won't all be able to fly at once. They'll have to continually enter the instance as they're destroyed. Finding the limits here is key, as is choosing exactly the right match to complete the mission.
2) Players drop out. Connection problems, going off to work, whatever--not all players can stay through an entire engagement. Unless you know you can add players and ships to a conflict after it has begun, you need to plan for this. Some positions, like a lone player aboard a Lancer MIS are more critical than others. Just figuring out who flies what in a small fleet engagement is a ton of work.
3) Best laid plans fail all the time. Keys to successful battles are discipline, flexibility, surprise and deception. You have to have all four to win the big battles.
4) We do not even understand all the game dynamics behind the weapons yet. For instance, we don't know if Arresters will become available in sizes other than S3, so we can't plan on Eclipse launching all their missiles to take down a ship's shields at a critical moment. We just can't theorycraft much past bare essentials.
Given this dismal array of issues, I will make a few simple observations.
You should expect to need a fighter screen, using semi stealth craft that can get close and spot for the big guns. That means Sabres and F8s. Lesser fighters do not belong on the battlefield when this means they are replacing another, better bird. Stealth is important becasue they need to skirmish in that sweet spot where they provide targeting data to the big guns, but are not locked by their opponents turrets. Skirmishing inside capship defenses is a fools errand.
You should expect to need fire support--call the thunder! A single player riding a Lancer MIS can launch a fantastic amount of hurt so long as it stays out of the real battle. Fire support needs to launch from about 20 km. One encouragement is that the Lancer can launch four salvos of 6 S3 missiles to 20 km and then follow up with another six pairs of S3's. That is a lot of firepower for a single player.
Add to that a wing of Eclipse for surprise, a wing of Vanguard for deception, and the Polaris' torps, and you could have the makings of a great assault force. Add to that use of celestial bodies to hide behind (the assailants need to control the battlefield) and you could expect some excellent results. And this notion of ramming with an Endevour. . .well that is really risky but if you can drawplay the big Vanduul cap ships in close enough to an asteroid field, maybe you could do that too. In fact, given the slow rotation rates of the big cap ships, could be all you need to do is get an opponent's cap ship's spinal mounts pointed far enough away from an approaching Endeavor that it doesn't have time to bring them to bear. There is hope here, but we need data on Vanduul cap ship rotation rates.
However, with deep penetration (can I say that?) missions you have to be able to refuel the Sabres and Eclipse before the battle in enemy territory, so they're not running on empty as a battle begins, so there are some pretty advanced logistical requirements to all this. It's not an easy task at all. For smaller engagements, say a Polaris or two against a pair of Void Bombers, I think I'd want a wing of Eclipse. They have lots of uses. And your Vanguard. . .12 Vanguard might be able to handle a lone Void Bomber. I'll bet there will be lots of missions for one or two VBs. The VBs have three spinal mounts, but they probably can't hit Harbingers. We'll have to wait and see.
