This is it. After half an hour in lobby hell, the game is starting. Your team is ready to unleash the full might of the Alliance Navy on those Protectorate Rebels. You are flying your mighty Solomon-class battleship, and your allies brought a pair of Axfords and three Vauxhall-class light cruisers. You even have two levies providing carrier support.

Twenty minutes in, you’ve lost the game. In the end, you were down to a single point, and your battleship is now a lifeless wreck after a failed push on the central point. What happened ? How did it come to this ? Were your guns not mighty enough ?

The answer, my friend, is that you neglected the power of the humble Ferryman.

Big ships, big guns, mighty missile salvos and bombers bringing down fury upon your foes – those are all important (and attractive) aspects of the game. But the most crucial component to win the match isn’t the size of your guns or the damage number in the after-action report. To win the game, you must win the cap war.

First, a few definitions, so everyone's on the same page : In this guide, ‘cap’ refers to ‘capture’, and therefore a ‘cap ship’ is a ship that is meant to capture points and a ‘cap fleet’ is a fleet that is built around capturing points across the map. Additionally, a ‘natural’ refers to a point that a team is expected to control from the start, because it is located near their spawn and is difficult for the enemy to contest or deny. For example, on Pillars, D and C are ANS naturals, and E and B are OSP naturals.

• Focus on your mission, Build for the job
  
  A capfleet’s role is to take and hold points. There’s many ways to build your fleets for that, with cruise missiles to support your other ships, beams to defend points even against larger threats, rocket shuttles and torpedo sprinters, sensors for situational awareness…
  
  But spending too much on missiles, beams and torpedoes can leave you strapped for points when it comes to your actual capping assets, and you end up in a situation where your fleet has a lot of capabilities, but it kinda struggle to do its primary mission of being a capfleet. When you’re building your capfleet, ask yourself: “Do I have what it takes to capture multiple points? And what if I fail, do I have enough assets to try again? How many can I defend effectively at once ?”

• Keep The Price Down
  
  Points are very exposed positions, as well as predictable positions. There’s bound to be enemy assets watching contested points, and since a ship has to be inside the sphere to capture it, a missile player can just point a salvo at it and let the seekers do the rest without much guesswork involved as soon as they hear the notification.
  
  As a result, you will lose ships, no matter what you do. It’s very rare for a capper in the contested point to make it out alive after getting the cap, and a Shuttle with a single T20 and chaff and a Sprinter with Torpedoes have about the same odds of survival. Additionally, sometimes your other cappers will die to enemy light assets, crafts, etc… and sometimes you will lose a point that you died for, and you need to be able to recapture it. So having a high hull count in your fleet is important to be able to absorb the inevitable losses. And having a high hull count means cutting corners to make it fit.

• Expendable, Not Disposable
  
  “An LCDR told me Vauxhalls keep eating his cap shuttles so I asked how many shuttles he has and he said he just goes to the shipyard and gets a new shuttle afterwards so I said it sounds like he’s feeding cap shuttles to the Vauxhalls and then his LT started crying.”
  
  You will lose ships, that’s why you have a lot of them. But that doesn’t mean that taking losses doesn’t matter. Each capper you lose is one less try, one less chance to pull off a backcap later on or one less asset to defend your own points. So make every attempt count, and don’t simply throw half of your assets into the center cap at the start of the game. A ship that spends half the game behind a rock isn’t wasted if it allows it to recapture a point at the end of the game.
  
  In the same vein, know when you’re outmatched on a flank and pull back/hide to save your assets. Don’t feed the Vauxhalls. Instead, let the frontline or backline handle them and recapture once they’re gone.

• Map Awareness
  
  An important part of doing well in caps is knowing where and when the enemy is, and where your friends are. You will not be able to cap under a Vauxhall or Liner’s nose in most situations, but you might stand a chance if they’re already engaged by allies and distracted. Similarly, you are unlikely to get a successful backcap when both teams are entrenched in their positions, but once action starts and the frontliners start to move around, gaps can be created which can give you a chance at sneaking in a corvette into a point.
  
  When playing caps, it’s therefore important to take a step back and look at the whole map to keep count (and track) of what assets the enemy has and where they are/might be moving to. Having your own sensor assets, like a spyglass frigate or a tug/monitor with an Early Warning Radar can prove quite useful to assist you in this task, otherwise just rely on your team's sensor network.

• Work With Your Team
  
  
  The cap game isn’t separate from the frontline – it works alongside it. If you’re stuck in a stalemate, you won’t be the one to break it – unless the enemy left one of their flanks grossly undefended. You need to work with your frontliners to coordinate pushes and draw enemies away from their defensive positions (or force them to retreat and hide). Send a capper with them as they move, to take advantage of opportunities as they arise, or in a pinch, to check a corner for them.
  
  If you have a cruise missile or carrier player on your team, it’s also worthwhile to coordinate with them to call out strikes on enemy cappers or capguard assets, which can create openings for you and relieve some of the pressure on your ships.

• Gain Time
  
  This is especially relevant in the late game, and even more so with OSP ships. Even if you’re outmatched on a point, a tug or a monitor can take a while to fully kill, and during this time it can either contest the point, or prevent the enemy from leaving it lest it starts recapping. Even a harmless sensor monitor is immune to 120mm guns. This can buy you precious time to get another point, or to build up that slight lead you need to secure the victory.
  
  Depending on the situation, if your ship can’t get another point (because it’s too slow, because it’s too late in the game), it’s better to send it to die on point to gain time.
  
  

The concepts are nice and all, but what kind of assets you have is what defines your capabilities in the end. So, let's go through the ships on OSP and ANS that will be relevant in the context of a capfleet !

As a head's up, in this category you will see a few recurring missiles :

• SGM-11 Swarmers are ACT AMMs with max size Blast-Frag warheads. You can replace those with other AMMs types as you will, depending on your budget.
  
• SGM-1 Menaces are “arming missiles.” WAKE, min-size HEI warhead, and not meant to be fired at anything. These make it so your ship counts as “armed” even if the magazine or gun goes down, and allows you to contest a point against a ship with guns still working or capture if a harmless ship is sitting on it.

• Ferryman (Shuttle)
  
  The humble Ferryman, the backbone of your OSP capfleet. Small; quick, evasive, the shuttle’s role is to get on point and flip it - and often, die in the process. They are naturally tied with sprinters for speed on a base drive, but with a sundrive they become the quickest ships in the game with a flank speed of 65 m/s, which allows them to get on point faster and potentially gain an early advantage.
  
  They are quite fragile however, and even if rockets can give you some strike potential, don’t expect miracles - especially against ships with proper PD nets.
  
  
  
  
  
  This is a rather typical cap shuttle. The single T20 wins against a single Mk61 or 62, but will struggle against dual gun sprinters – you’ll want to use your other assets to secure points or win duels. The Pavise can help you against bombs and torpedoes, but if you want more guns you can move the chaff box to the 3rd slot and get a second T20 instead.
  
  The small DC locker can help you last just that big longer or restore your drives if they go down after a missile strike that didn’t kill you, but if you want to go cheaper you can replace it by a rapid. The sundrive is quite powerful for cappers, since it lets you go really fast and boosts your linear thrust (IE, acceleration), but it is quite fragile and the speed can sometimes turn against you and make you overshoot if you don’t plot your courses right.
  
  
• Draugr (Tug)
  
  While the Draugr lacks the speed of the shuttle, it makes up for it in endurance. A properly built tug can easily overpower ANS gun Sprinters, and can be quite difficult to properly kill even when softened up by missiles. They are not invulnerable however : they will quickly falter against Vauxhalls, and their larger size makes them more vulnerable to 450mm shells - getting caught by an Axford or Solomon often ends poorly for a Draugr.
  
  The mount layout allows for flexible builds, and the full sized reactor allows it to be turned into a sensor asset, mounting either an Early Warning Radar or a Bloodhound.
  
  
  
  This is what is commonly called a “Multi-Mission Tug”, or “MMT” for short. This is a specialist design that is especially effective at hunting down ANS light assets. But, it can also be used to capture a point in the later stages of the game, or it can be used as a sensor asset to guard the flanks. The jamming gives it a distinct advantage at longer range, alongside the missile launcher, and it allows it to hide from larger ships to cover a retreat (or perhaps a flank). If you can afford an upgrade you can get a reinforced CIC, another small DC or perhaps even a reinforced DC locker in the front. If you need the points, you can strip out the Actively Cooled Amplifiers.
  
  The S2s on this one are CMD/HOJ with 9km of range, 2,8 G of maneuverability, and weave terminals, but you can lower the range for more Gs depending on your needs, or if it comes to it, get a cheaper seeker combo (but you will potentially lose some reliability).
  
  Alternatively, if you’re looking for something cheaper, you can just use a similar layout, but strip out the ACAs, replace the Huntress with a Bridgemaster, remove the missiles, jammer and pinpoint, upgrade to a Reinforced CIC and get a single Pavise. You’ll get an overall decent gun tug that can typically win 1v1s against sprinters for cheap.
  
  
  
  
• Flathead (Monitor)
  Flatheads are most often seen on the frontlines, but they also have value in a capfleet. They are among the slowest ships that the OSP can field, but their armor makes them impervious to the low caliber weaponry fielded by cappers, smaller missiles and bombs from crafts, and they can even tank a few torps pretty well depending on the angle.
  
  Besides their armor, they can bring T30 turrets to overpower ANS light assets, alongside the powerful C90 cannon, with bombshell to cripple small, evasive targets, and HESH to finish off static small assets or damage larger ones. Alternatively, the C56 Casemate is less expensive, but naturally comes with a loss of firepower and flexibility.
  
  
  
  
  
  This is an example of what a capguard monitor looks like, although admittedly on the pricier end. Usually, it’s commonplace to bring either a C90 or a Damage Control Complex, but not both. I did so because in the fleets I run I have the budget to spare, but if you don’t you can either downgrade the C90 to a C56, or replace the DCC with a small DC + a rapid. The pinpoint is also a personal preference, as the bridgemaster can struggle to pick up sprinters past 5km – this allows me to lock the track provided by a capper or an EWR, therefore slightly extending the effective range of the monitor. Especially useful if you like to use it in contested point denial. Otherwise, people often run a container rack in this slot, either empty for free tanking or with a clipper decoy. “Swarmers” are ACT size 4 Blast-Frag AMMs.
  
  
  
• Marauder (Line Ship)
  
  One of the issues with capfleet assets is often a difficulty in ‘punching up’. Even capguard monitors will struggle against an enemy Vauxhall. This is where the Marauder comes in. Equipped with C56s on the broadside, it can be a legitimate threat to lone light cruisers, while still remaining effective against sprinters, raines and keystones outside their range bracket. This allows it to act as an ‘anchor’ of sorts, one which enemy capfleets will struggle to deal with – but it often fares poorly against a proper frontline fleet, so care must be taken to not get caught out of position.
  
  If it comes to it, it can push against a goalie keystone, but care must be taken to managed the heading and rotation – a pre-aligned liner typically kills the beam on a destroyer before it can kill the liner in return, but otherwise, the beam destroyer will most likely win.
  
  
  
  
  
  This build is from another player who goes by Nick0 – as I don’t use liners much in capfleets.It is merely a matter of taste, though, as such a ship is pretty effective at handling almost anything the opposing cap player can throw at you.
  
  Of note, the skiff is an Advanced Radar skiff, the pike is a regular EO Pike with a High Coherence decoy launcher, and Helljoys are CMD/WAKE Blast Frag (Warhead 9) with a self screening jammer, 3 Gs of turn rate and 7 400m of range, set to defensive with no target size selected. These are a specialist tool against bomber/fighter balls and/or torpedo/S2 dumps. The jammer is useful to softkill ARAD or HOJ threats, while the warhead can clear a lot of missiles or craft in a 250m radius. Fire by pressing whatever key you have bound to “Set PD priority” and selecting what you want gone.
  
  Flares are often considered mostly useless, but they do have a special niche on capital ships alongside a command jammer, since they help vs CMD/WAKE missiles.
  
  Do note the lack of restores – if the going gets tough, you will lack endurance, so pick your fights wisely

• Sprinter (Corvette)
  
  All in all, the Sprinter is to ANS what the Ferryman is to OSP : a fast, evasive mainline capper, with a few notable differences.
  
  With more (and one larger) hardpoints and one more compartment slot, the Sprinter can bring a greater variety of tools when compared to the Ferryman. It can bring chaff and a defender without needing to cut back on its armaments, and the extra compartment allows it to bring greater DC or an Auxiliary Steering for extra tanking potential.
  
  
  
  This is the kind of capper I like to run. The dual Mk62 lets you overpower most shuttles in a 1v1, especially with the reinforced components giving you superior tanking power. Use RPF at longer ranges and switch to HE on static targets or at close range. There is a few AMMs that can help against low volume S2 fire, such as coming from MMTs, but don’t expect them to save you against containers. If you're not afraid of S2s for whatever reason, you can drop them. You can save on points by replacing one or both guns with Mk61s, but this will naturally come at a cost in firepower.
  
  The reinforced CIC, auxiliary steering, reinforced drive and small DC makes you surprisingly tanky and can let you survive for those few extra seconds you need under intense fire to get the cap, or even let you limp away on an aux steering and reinforced drive, which has won me many a game. But if you need to go cheaper you can just downgrade to basic CIC and drive, with rapid DC.
  
  You will lose a 1v1 against a C30 tug in most cases, but if you team up two sprinters you have much better odds of killing its gun first.

• Raines (Frigate)
  
  To compare the Raines to the OSP’s Draugr would be a mistake. Both ships are in a similar size class, but the Raines only has 4 mounts, which requires it to specialize. In a capfleet, it can make for a sensor asset, a missile ship to provide support, but my personal favorite is the ‘police frigate’ build – one gun frigate and one escort frigate working together to overpower OSP light assets, and maybe even carefully harass larger ships. If you don’t have the budget for a Police frigate pair, a single gun frigate can come in handy to provide support against tugs and shuttles.
  
  Do mind the vulnerability to 450mm shells, like the tug on OSP.
  
  
  
  This is a rather straightforward build. Auroras on the escort frigate provide good defence against low volume S2s and rockets, while the jammer allows the pair to either gain the upper hand on opposite light assets or hide from more dangerous foes. Using only active decoys is uncommon, but in this case, you have a rather expensive pair of assets (around 850 points) with limited mount space for softkill, that at the same time is unlikely to be facing a large amount of strikes. The ADs therefore make softkilling the few long range strikes coming for you easier, and you’re unlikely to need the “mass” provided by chaff.
  
  The gun frigate has a pair of 250mm guns for longer range, better DT breaking, and armor pen (which allows it to hurt armored ships like monitors, whereas 120mm would be utterly helpless), but do note that without jamming cover a capguard monitor still has an advantage on you. It also has a parallax for the powerful burn ping, and jamming resist, but it will struggle to lock on shuttles and tugs at longer ranges. This is just something you will have to live with, as you sadly don’t have the mount space for a bullseye.
  At the start of the game, police frigates are useful to deny contested points, and later on they can help with securing your flanks, handling whatever light assets slipped into your backline, or even capping points themselves.

• Keystone (Destroyer)
  
  In Nebulous, Keystones are only really useful in two roles – long range railgun support, and beam ambushers. Railguns aren’t all that useful to a capfleet, as they’ll often be fighting against small ships, sometimes with jamming, and often lacking a lock, so hits are unlikely. Beams, however…
  
  Few things are more feared than a beam destroyer. In a capfleet, they’re often barebones, but don't let that fool you – if that beam gets on target, they can severely damage if not outright kill many ships in a short time. They are often quite fragile though, and so must rely on ambush tactics and jamming to cover themselves when peeking out of their cover.
  
  
  
  Once again, straightforward enough. A beam, a bullseye (getting a lock is very important if you don’t want your beam to miss small targets), a jammer to cover yourself when peeking, and chaff.
  
  FPAs are practically mandatory with beams, as they don’t deal their damage in chunks of 300 per second – instead, they deal 1/5th of the listed damage 5 times per second, with a sharp dropoff as distance to the target increases. This means that at range, a non-buffed beam will struggle to deal enough damage to grey out reinforced components. On destroyers, 2 FPAs is the norm, and is enough to melt shuttles, tugs, monitors and sometimes even liners in seconds but you will have a harder time against large assets at max range. At 3-4km though, you can melt just about anything.
  
  Don’t hesitate to use Battleshort for as long as you need to secure the kill, but be mindful that every damage your beam takes shortens the duration of future Bshort and makes it easier to kill, so don’t do it for too long if you don’t need to.

• Vauxhall (Light Cruiser)
  
  In the cap war, the Vauxhall is an apex predator. It’s fast enough to catch up to enemy light assets, and its 250mm guns will annihilate shuttles and tugs while remaining a credible threat to larger assets. Its agility allows it to just dodge larger calibers at range, and it usually carries enough point defense to not have to worry about the low-volume missile fire that is commonplace in capfleets.
  
  It does, however, only have 26cm of armor, which leaves it vulnerable to 250mm fire, and larger guns can severely punish poor positioning or reduced mobility.
  
  
  
  It’s really just a 250mm CL, the same kind that you’d see in TF Birch, just, on its own. It should make short work of most light assets and be a credible threat to goalie monitors on its own, but it’s not uncommon to see those run in pairs with cheap cappers to fill out the rest of the fleet. If you do want to run a second CL, just copy this one, remove the chaff and bullseye, replace the parallax with a frontline and give it an interrupt in the back and two blanket jammers somewhere in the PD mounts.
  
  One CL is already dangerous to an enemy capfleet, but two of them can present a legitimate threat to enemy liners as well, as long as they take care to avoid return fire. They can easily deny a contested point, and either react to flanking maneuvers or support their own cappers in a backcap attempt.

• Axford (Heavy Cruiser)
  
  In a capfleet, Axfords are not unlike a mix of a Flathead and a Marauder. They are slow, but their heavy armor makes them impervious to 100mm and very resistant against 250mm from the front, and they can carry considerable firepower using 250mm turrets and secondary 120mm guns. Such a build is called a ‘pitboss’ within the community. They offer an insurmountable threat to OSP light assets, while still remaining credible against enemy Marauders and even lone Flatheads. But, they are often vulnerable to craft and missile strikes due to the side slots being used for PD, and they will still struggle against a proper frontline asset in an extended fight.
  
  

These are the capfleets I run the most- but they are not the end all be all of capfleets, and likely not the absolute most optimized, but they do their job well. The idea with these is to provide a concrete idea of what a capfleet looks like, and how the assets listed above can be distributed, over just telling you "this is the meta run this or die". Names have been modified for clarity.

• Shelter Alliance Navy
  
  
  
  
  This is what I typically run on ANS. One beam destroyer is there to deny the contested point on maps like Pillars, while the other one is held back to defend one of the natural points against potential flankers and back-capping enemy assets. Alternatively, on maps with multiple contested points, both Keystones can be used in the denial role.
  
  The gun sprinters are your workhorses. They can 1v1 regular capping shuttles pretty well, and two of them can take on a gun tug relatively effectively. However, they struggle against tugs in 1v1, and they are helpless against anything bigger. They can also take a surprising amount of low-caliber punishment before dying for good. Deploy one for each of your “natural” and contested points and keep the rest in reserve in the backline, to either help defend against flanking shuttles/tugs or to make use of flanking opportunities later.
  
  Alongside those, a spyglass frigate is there to help the team with vision and provide you with some of the map awareness you need to make the right calls.

• Outlying Systems Protectorate
  
  
  
  This is what I like to run on OSP.
  
  The “CIA Monitor” is there to provide battlefield awareness, and, in the late game, it can sit on one of your points and give you valuable time. The other two Capguard monitors are there to defend or deny points, not unlike beam destroyers, although they are not as deadly. They are however pretty tough and, on some maps, if the situation allows for it, they can be used in an offensive manner to assist your own cappers in a push against enemy light units. And, if it comes to it, they can be quite difficult to dislodge from a point if they decide to sit on it. Fire 600mm Bombshell at long range or on poor quality tracks, switch to HESH at closer ranges or on slow moving/static ships.
  
  The so called “meat tugs” are general purpose gun tugs. They can defend a point against a gun sprinter, or they can move up alongside a shuttle to assist it in capturing an enemy point against defending sprinters. If it comes to it, they can also last quite a while under low-caliber gunfire.
  
  With the majority of the defense relegated to the other assets in the fleet, the shuttles are there to get on points quickly to make use of gaps in the enemy’s lines, or sneakily recapture a point after it was stolen by an enemy that left. They can struggle in direct combat against a full health gun sprinter, but are not harmless either, especially if they have some help in the form of a tug or another shuttle.

Playing caps is sometimes seen as a thankless job, that someone has to do instead of playing the actually fun part of the game, and I often see people try to do without. I think otherwise. Caps are a very important part of Nebulous core Control gamemode, and part of what makes it more interesting in terms of dynamic than pure anhilitation. It's also a great way to learn how to play the game, how to position yourself, etc... since it's the main part of the playstyle, while also giving you room to make mistakes when you don't have everything figured out yet thanks to your hull count.

The purpose of this guide wasn't to be an exhaustive and definitive list on every cap matters, but rather to serve as an introduction to the core concepts for players unfamiliar with this side of Nebulous to set them on the right path. Hopefully, these concepts should last even through shifts in meta specifics. I also don't claim to be a definitive authority on caps, but I like to think that I did learn a few things.

Naturally, do feel free to experiment with the ideas above, but be mindful to keep the core concepts of capfleet gameplay in mind. I also purposefully didn't include carriers in this guide as I am quite unfamiliar with the playstyle myself and they can be a heavy micro load for less experienced players, especially when you have to manage both a CV and a capfleet. But stuff like Journeyman + caps can work, for example.

Lastly, thanks for reading ! This is the first time I write such a guide, I hope it was of use. My thanks to the people of IMA for their assistance in providing me with feedback and ship builds to showcase, and to Zabbix for the pictures. Do let me know if you have any feedback regarding the contents of this guide.

And if there's one thing you should take away from this guide : playing caps isn't as complicated as it sounds, give it a try ! You don't have to worry about softkill beyond EMCON + Chaff most of the time, you don't have to worry about holding the line, you have the mobility to make up for positioning mistakes... and most importantly, if you screw up with one ship, you have more to try again.