Looks like a case of fighters being better missiles than missiles.This is completely wrong - these weren't bombers acting as regenerating missiles in the slightest. It was force projection and concentration of guns. Fighters have the highest possible force concentration (and Sparks are exceptional even among fighters), while pirates have the lowest force concentration. The Drovers can engage the pirates from out of range, and can swarm. Meanwhile, the Pirates lack any weapons that can deal with massed fighters, and trickle in a few ships at a time. In a lot of the combat, it was the sparks from about half the Drovers attacking the same target.
I was gonna post this in the carrier spam thread, but this was too epic, I hope I can share it in a new thread :Phttps://youtu.be/EVCrmXW6-Pk?t=3
If carrier gameplay can't be made engaging for the player, I'd suggest that:
- they should be nerfed sufficiently such that carriers are not a reasonable choice as a flagship
- The skills relating to them should be removed from the player skill tree (keep them for officers)
But they do need a nerf, and possibly the Atlas needs a rework of its ship system because right now, not using full bomber loadout is stupid. I get that there are "obvious" choices, but this one has no comparable options. Kind of like reaper Harbinger.Atlas has flares. Do you mean Astral? Recall Device was good for fighters too, well... at least when Warthogs were stronger in 0.8. Astral really needs carrier skills to shine. Without them, it are okay, but not great. Even with carrier skills, Astral is still not quite as powerful as combat specialist Paragon.
Next up, 24 Spark Drovers vs 9 Redacted fleets. Will their luck finally run out ;DSpoiler(https://i.imgur.com/7ixQ7nl.png)[close]
Astral/Legion and cruiser carriers are not that hard to counter for any player-piloted direct combat ship of same size, as long as it's outfitted with handling fighters in mind. So it's not that they are inherently OP - AI is just bad at countering fighters (while using fighters is easier and comes more naturally to AI). Even in AI vs AI these fights tend to be stalemates more often than straight carrier victories.
At DE size claim of fighter OPness is more solid. AI vs AI Spark Drover wins against any DE. Player vs AI: Hammerhead and Enforcer win easily (by raw firepower and armor-bum-rushing respectively), Sunder needs to rush and accept taking some significant damage or be whittled down, Medusa needs to take nonsensical narrowly specialized anti-fighter build and barely wins after a somewhat longer fight even then.
My experience with my private version of Rebal is somewhat at odds with this scenario.And this thread is not about your rebalance.
....
But I think the success is for many of the same reasons, and more shows some weak points of the current enemy ship composition/strategic AI: trickling forces that get meatgrinder-ed, insufficient aggression...
The Lack of Aggression is one of the biggest problems of the AI. To make the AI actually effective, i decided to choose only aggressive or reckless officers for small groups. In 1 Vs. 1 Fights of Paragon Vs. Radiant only these types get their ships not destroyed and they do actually win some of these duels without any help. Any other retreats too often, lowers shield too often (due distance, actually a mistake all AI has!), stays too often too far away and don't push enough pressure into the enemy (what means that the enemy can put much more pressure back).That, or the other side runs away too (or hovers just short of max shot range) and both sides die from CR decay. That kind of hurts in endgame fights when both sides only think about what is on the screen now instead of the hundreds of enemy ships waiting to be deployed. 0.9 is little better than 0.8, but still a long way from 0.7.2 or earlier.
So, how did the fight against remnant doomstack go?
It seems from the fact that only 1 stack would join that the enemy AI is underestimating your ships' combat potential - could that be why the enemy is trickling in ships so badly? It thinks all of yours are unarmed civilians/not combat capable, so only sends a mop-up force?
Yeah, that's almost certainly the case - should be fixed for .1 (thanks to goduranus' earlier report), but I'll take another look.
Didn't know that mechanic existed. Does that mean if I put a single gun on the Atlas and Prometheus, but leave those in reserve during battle, more enemies will deploy?
Flash bombers are like piranhas on steroids. I see them as more of a saturation bomber where massing them prevents the enemy from dodging them."Our bombs shall blot out the sun!"
Do you happen to have a save prior to this battle? I'd love to get my hands on it to use for testing both balance and AI behavior when faced with a player fleet like this.
Super effective!
In your opinion, does this work as well with other fighters? What is it in particular about sparks that are so powerful?
Niiice, thank you! <rubs hands>RIP Sparks and Drovers...
An entertaining light show, but torpedo bomber spam would've been much more effective.
Completely agree with @From a Faster Time, fighters & bombers are still far too powerful - especially for the lack of player engagement in their usage.
If carrier gameplay can't be made engaging for the player, I'd suggest that:
- they should be nerfed sufficiently such that carriers are not a reasonable choice as a flagship
- The skills relating to them should be removed from the player skill tree (keep them for officers)
Rather more subjectively, I don't find fighting against fighters & bombers particularly fun or rewarding.
- Point defence weapons are strictly automatic, so aiming is largely out of the player's control.
- the huge difference in speed between fighters & capitals, takes most of finesse in manoeuvring out of the player's control.
So you're left with shield control, which:
- vs swarms of fighters is rarely useful
- vs torpedoes is usually a binary choice; block it & hope you don't overload, or die.
Of all combat engagements, fighters & bombers degenerate most quickly into a numbers game; either you have sufficient DPS to overwhelm the fighters, and rush the carrier, or you don't, and you die.
There's not very much room for player agency & skill.
If I specialize with carrier skills, I only have few flagships to play with, with Astral being the ultimate endgame ship. This gets boring with only so few ships to choose from. Although if I want to do what the OP did, I probably would need to pilot Drover and run away.
Odyssey is a brawler with fighters on the side (similar to Remnant's Brilliant). Legion is a true hybrid (that slightly favors brawling) that wants all of the skills maxed, but if I can cannot get all of the skills, Legions works decently enough with only warship skills and Fighter Doctrine. It would be nice if there was another dedicated capital-sized carrier, and one that favors fighters and interceptors, instead of bombers. (Legion is not it!) Astral is built for bomber spam.
Unlimited fighters is like unlimited Salamanders plus unlimited Fast Missile Racks back in one of the 0.6.5 patches, but not as cheesy.
One of the reasons I feel there is such a fighter dominance is that there is really only 2 weapons in vanilla that deal with fighter swarms: Devastators and Dual Flak. Note they are both ballistic. The energy PD is more of a anti-missile weapon family, and while Guardian PD can get reasonably good results it's very rare. IPDAI can help, but it will eat firepower and again, few AI ships have it. Missiles has no real anti-fighter capability (since swarmes are bad, and barel any ships can mount locusts).
Why not add more counters to fighters:
1. Give swarmers regen to ammo. It's utterly useless without it, because fighters regen. And for reasons unknown, talons have a special version of swarmers that does regen
2. Add a medium missile that will target fighters, maybe somthing like a longer range high alpha for rare, but powerful shots instagibbing high valuable fighters
3. An energy weapon tailored for anti-fighter role.
My suggetions:We had limited ballistics before late 0.6.5. A problem was player can deploy a lone fast ship and either dodge or shield tank bullets until the enemy runs out of ammo, then pick them off. Peak performance does much of the job limited ammo does.
- like guns, all missiles can reload. But SLOWLY. Big powerfull missiles miight need a minute or two to reload. Either that or make it so EVERYTHING is finite. Fighters and guns included.
But why are bullets and fighters infinite, and missiles are not?Do not look at me for answers. I think most, if not all, missiles, should regenerate too, and AM blaster become unlimited.
One of the reasons I feel there is such a fighter dominance is that there is really only 2 weapons in vanilla that deal with fighter swarms: Devastators and Dual Flak. Note they are both ballistic. The energy PD is more of a anti-missile weapon family, and while Guardian PD can get reasonably good results it's very rare. IPDAI can help, but it will eat firepower and again, few AI ships have it. Missiles has no real anti-fighter capability (since swarmes are bad, and barel any ships can mount locusts).
Why not add more counters to fighters:
1. Give swarmers regen to ammo. It's utterly useless without it, because fighters regen. And for reasons unknown, talons have a special version of swarmers that does regen
2. Add a medium missile that will target fighters, maybe somthing like a longer range high alpha for rare, but powerful shots instagibbing high valuable fighters
3. An energy weapon tailored for anti-fighter role.