It needs a passive ability for one, and adaptive forcefield is the obvious choice...many mods have done this and I think a general consensus is that the Kol is better for it....

I would argue that GRG needs a different secondary effect instead of slowing down the enemy ship...I would advocate a shield mitigation penalty, which would make this ability more a "utility" to help deal with high value targets (SBs, titans, and caps) instead of a "let's just do more raw damage cause somehow that's different from weapons"...that's about as far as I can go on that ability, as the cooldown, AM cost, and duration would depend on the nature of the secondary debuff and whether it would be allowed to stack...

Flak burst could be reworked but it is "good enough" for now that I'd just leave it alone...it's AM intensive but hey, if at least adaptive forcefield is passive then it's not nearly as bad...

change damage reduction to 15%/20%/26%/32% and change back autocannons damage modifer and you have a winner

Let me speak for another respected forum member:

"Kol needs more LAZERS, and nyan enginetrail...also it is too easy to kill so the HP should be doubled...perhaps to help it late game, there should be techs that double its DPS or something..."

GUESS WHO???

Maybe because we have all gamed (and did it in MP) these changes and are behind it?

The Troll King?

The main reason I am against these debuffs is that:

1. TEC already have a damage reduction debuff via targetting uplink...
2. TEC already have an armor debuff via meson bolt (or whatever that Gauss upgrade is)
3. In my personal mod, incendiary shells also has an armor debuff...know that's not relevant to most of you but it is to me...

As such, I refrain from advocating a damage reduction or armor related debuff with GRG...and idk, it just makes sense that an abnormally fast moving projectile (more abnormal than the other projectiles in the game) might strain your ship's shields for a bit...

Some people claim this debuff is OP against advent, but really?  The Vasari can do it with a cruiser ability, I think a cap ability is just fine...besides, TEC need more help against Advent that against Vasari anyway, right??

Making adaptive forcefield passive is nice, but the problem is that would only really help the Kol when fighting Vasari opponents, and it's of questionable usefulness in large fights.  The problems with the Kol seem to be twofold:

1.  Mediocre damage output

2.  Insufficient antimatter to support three abilities

As for the second, unless you get a dunov with flux field, you're not going to be using anything other than flak.  Making forcefield passive sort of helps this, but you're still not doing anything to really fix the first problem, which is that when compared to other battleships the Kol simply doesn't do any reasonable amount of damage.

Now, I'm fine with the Kol being more defensively-oriented than the other battleships in general, but it still needs to be a threat.  A big brick in the front of your fleet that's hard to kill is only a problem if that big brick can actually do something to you if you ignore it.  The solutions to this problem are either to give it some sort of fleet support or to give it some more weaponry, and as the former is more in keeping with the role of a battlecruiser than a battleship I'd certainly say the latter is the way to go.

I don't think there is anything Wrong with the Kol its just it only deals damage, you may as well use a Heavy Cruiser for this (same issue I have with the Tech Rebels Titan.. it Only deals damage) Compared to the other ships of its class.

The Radiance Can stop a ship using its ability's with detonate antimatter, it can kill a titan/cap simply by disabling its abilitys, it can change a fleet battle by 2-3x Aoe taunting and its final ability can hit multiple targets in a line.

The Kortul Devastator is the same, it can Stop channeled ability's, Drain enough antimatter to turn off ships, Cripple Rate of fire, Turn off strike craft's weapons causing huge late game power shifts, its final ability can AOE Debuff damage taken for all the fleet, 30% damage on 100 vs 100 fights... is 500 dps. (also doesn't help that power surge lets it 1v1 Any other ship)

Even if you gave the Kol 10 AM/sec it still only deals damage on its ability's and while Its a total BRICK and its hard to kill with huge hull, for the most part its meaningless because it doesn't DO ANYTHING, you can just ignore it.

Imo to Balance it with the other Battleship ships of the same class it needs something that makes it a Threat, thats not just Damage... Raw damage I can soak up and tank, CC / debuffs Cause issues

-Perhaps have Gauss Blast disable ships ability's, this lets it win vs the 8 other ships it previously looses to in 1v1 and gives it some late game threat.

-Perhaps give it an Taunt when it uses Force field.

-Add adaptive FF and finest Hour to all ships in an AOE radius when used.

-You could change flak burst to also give AM for every fighter killed

No, adaptive forcefield becomes more powerful late game because it scales...10% reduciton damage only knocks off 10 DPS if you are taking 100, but knocks off 100 DPS if you are taking 1000...definitely more useful late game than early...

Raw DPS isn't useful until you get to absurd levels thereof (like the Ragnarov or Orky).  Clearly a Kol shouldn't deal that much DPS.  For balance reasons, capitals must be less efficient DPS-wise than frigates.  The difference is compensated for by their abilities.  The problem is, the abilities of the Kol, don't compensate it.

That in part is why I elected to go with a regen disable on the Kol.  The Kol is a big but slow-acting brick.  In a long slug-fest, it'll shine more, but in shorter ones, it won't have any effect.  As a result, putting a regen disable on it makes it force the enemy to play by its terms, not to mention regen disables on titans is nasty.  The change of AFF from active to passive was just because the Kol has horrible AM management skills (ignoring Flux Field).

Finest Hour does not need a buff.  it is already a very good ability that lets the Kol regen a lot of AM and hull on top of giving the Kol AoE damage.  Throw in an Armament Pact with a Vasari player, and the L6 Kol becomes very DPS efficient.

It would be interesting to find out what the developers had in mind for the role of the KOL as well.  It would help in understanding why it hasn't been tweaked despite a general consensus how lack luster a capital ship it is.

Cup holders and maybe some LED lights underneath.

It looks like the consensus is:

1.  Make Adaptive Forcefield passive (with possible nerf) Edit: Seleuceia, I had forgotten your Diplo-cap mod had this.  It was a good change.

2. Make GRG do something.

I was actually expecting someone to say "Make it so when you build one you get 16 of them"