My solution would be to make fighters more like real life aircraft and essentially make them very vulnerable to anything that can touch them reliably. Bullets, flak, proxy mines, you name it. But then make them far easier to replace, perhaps when the squadron is recalled entirely to the carrier, to make up for the rates of attrition they'll be facing. Possibly making certain scenarios where overwhelming flak might necessitate not deploying them at all. Like how missiles are not always a good idea to use due to overwhelming PD.That used to be the case when fighters were ships instead of missiles during 0.6.x and 0.7.x. Unfortunately, there were no fighter skills back then, and (during 0.7.x) warships with officers trumped all.
There's only so many ships that can fire on a single target
There's only so many ships that can fire on a single target, and even when they are together they have to watch out for friendly fire. Fighters have virtually infinite force concentration and no friendly fire. That's the main issue, besides AI ships not dealing with fighters especially well.
fighters are only a problem when they hit "critical mass" so to speak, so nerfing them outright is dumb because they are otherwise balanced and probably would end up being useless in any other situation.I would not want to see fighters become Pilums 2.0.
How about a variant Talon Interceptor that has to stay close the the carrier like a Xyphos (with a touch more range) but doesn't count towards the max squadron limit.That is what Mining Pods are for. Of course, mining lasers are rather lame.
I tried reaching critical mass with Pilums, but could not do it with unskilled officers. I suspect I might if I get ten officers built for missile spam. Without critical mass, Pilums are mostly useless and act much like old pre-0.8 Thumper - waste of OP. I do not want to see fighters end up like that. Then carriers become useless like they were during 0.7.x.
I've never liked the idea of putting simple number limiters on things like this. Not my jam.
One reason that fighters are so effective is that they are essentially mobile turrets for fully sized ship weapons. Which in the case of bombers is fine, as they are supposed to be combating full on ships. But for fighters it gets problematic as you have swarming drones fitted with ship scale point defence weapons (Wasps/Sparks) to be used against craft that have corvette levels of endurance (the idea being that a fighter is just the next size down from frigates, as in they are more like corvettes.)
My solution would be to make fighters more like real life aircraft and essentially make them very vulnerable to anything that can touch them reliably. Bullets, flak, proxy mines, you name it. But then make them far easier to replace, perhaps when the squadron is recalled entirely to the carrier, to make up for the rates of attrition they'll be facing. Possibly making certain scenarios where overwhelming flak might necessitate not deploying them at all. Like how missiles are not always a good idea to use due to overwhelming PD.
As it stands a fighter like the warthog or broadsword, or an interceptor like the spark, are far more comparable to a corvette that endlessly re spawns rather then a valuable reusable fighter craft like in a ww2 setting. You could make an argument that like missiles you should have only a small number of replaceable per battle, so must be used conservatively lest you waste them all, but that isn't for me.
Fighters were quite a bit weaker before they were turned into fighters-as-weapons. What we have now is their strongest iteration yet, and nerfing them (a bit) is perfectly OK. I would start by reducing their speed.Back then, there were no carrier skills and no carrier hullmods.
In the past there was a bug which applied the multiplied the lowered replacement rate twice.Fighters were quite a bit weaker before they were turned into fighters-as-weapons. What we have now is their strongest iteration yet, and nerfing them (a bit) is perfectly OK. I would start by reducing their speed.Back then, there were no carrier skills and no carrier hullmods.
Today, most carriers need to ultra-specialize into carrier duty (and/or get more Sparks) just to do their job well.
In the past there was a bug which applied the multiplied the lowered replacement rate twice.During 0.8.x, when characters got fighter skills and ships got carrier hullmods. Also, some fighters were overpowered in earlier 0.8a. Talons were free and better than 8 OP fighters, Warthogs were overpowered, and Sparks had two burst PD instead of one.
He's got a point though. Having to use weak carriers just to use powerful fighters may be a valid balance mechanism, but it isn't fun and it isn't pretty to look at.But then you remove any sort of choice from the customization. You're always gonna have full ''flight deck OP'' or you're basically shooting yourself in the foot. Carriers will always have the same OP for weapons and hullmods. I think the current system is fine, it's just as you said, fighters are strong currently. So I keep suggesting the same thing, nerf all fighters/bombers and buff carriers (or just give them extra OP). When the fighter rework came, Alex said he would give extra OP to carriers for compensation but some are still super OP starved that you can barely fit any decent weapons.
Would much prefer if hangars had their own separate ordnance points. A fixed amount per carrier model.
Add a limit to the number of active squadrons that can be deployed at once before degrading fighter performance. Perhaps a max of 10-12? squadrons deployed at once then start applying penalties to fighter performance as the number increase.
I wonder if making fighters collide with each other would prevent them from swarming at the volume where fighter blob becomes an issue.
(I vaguely suspect the main side effect would be killing CPU when fighter AI has to take collision avoidance into account)
I suppose at the very least if they can't shoot while stacked, that should be close enough.
There's only so many ships that can fire on a single target, and even when they are together they have to watch out for friendly fire. Fighters have virtually infinite force concentration and no friendly fire. That's the main issue, besides AI ships not dealing with fighters especially well.
It would help if there was some "general fighter behaviour" setting (for entire fleet or for individual ships — preferably the latter), where you could either pick force concentration or distributed presence.
It's actually way more likely for the player to exploit this, than the AI. Only Persean League gets close to fighter spam and even then, they don't go to the extremes the player can.
Yeah, that would look as stupid as a typical Dynasty Warriors game - horde of enemies in front of you, politely waiting for their turn to attack.
You don't have a limit for # of destroyers ganging up on a frigate, either. The numbers game and the tactical application of it is at the core of winning battles, and this suggestion is going completely the other way. It's like nursery school for fighters. If I bring a fleet with 20 fighter squadrons and I have a single target selected for fighter strike, I want them all to strike that target. Unfair situations happen constantly in this game, and it's up to the player to deal with them. If you overextend and find yourself in the middle of a dozen fighter swarms in a frigate, guess what, you're supposed to die.
Well, there's always going the route that Company of Heroes did to combat Pioneer spam - in there, Pioneers suffer a 5% damage received debuff for every other Pioneer unit within 10m. Maybe something like that could take into effect when there's more than 3 fighter wings in the same general screen space? Of course all the numbers could be tweaked, but what about the general idea of it?
I would think that as not a good suggestion as it is anti-intuitive and oddly specific. The player doesn't have fine control of the position of units like you would in Company of Heroes.Well, there's always going the route that Company of Heroes did to combat Pioneer spam - in there, Pioneers suffer a 5% damage received debuff for every other Pioneer unit within 10m. Maybe something like that could take into effect when there's more than 3 fighter wings in the same general screen space? Of course all the numbers could be tweaked, but what about the general idea of it?
Very first reply and, while not perfect, IMO the best suggestion in here.
Before these options are even considered, I would prefer fighters not be touched at all.
To be honest, this so called fighter swarms are not much of a problem at all. It can only be done by the player deliberately creating such a fleet. Also the discussion confuses between fighter-type fighters and bomber-type fighters, of which Sabot armed Longbows are part of and Atropos armed Daggers are part of. It's not always clear which is which when people are discussing. It is also not clear if people are discussing Sparks in particular, or say the Talon/Broadsword example or even just Thunder.
As it is anyways, next release seems to hint at 6 fighter bays being an optimal number and perhaps frigates as well by giving a limited number of those a boost. I would imagine that there will be a reduction in fighter replacement rate as well, though that would be less of a nerf against the likes of bomber-type fighters.
According to the blog, the bonuses from fleetwide skills like that decrease after the fleet exceeds some threshold, such as the six fighter bays. It does not seem unskilled characters will take penalties for having too many carriers, just those that have skills to discourage "mono-fleets".To be honest, this so called fighter swarms are not much of a problem at all. It can only be done by the player deliberately creating such a fleet. Also the discussion confuses between fighter-type fighters and bomber-type fighters, of which Sabot armed Longbows are part of and Atropos armed Daggers are part of. It's not always clear which is which when people are discussing. It is also not clear if people are discussing Sparks in particular, or say the Talon/Broadsword example or even just Thunder.I just really hope this mechanic is through skills. Even if it is, I still don't like it honestly because it still violates the above concepts I've already mentioned, but it might be tolerable if its an optional skill that requires the player to pursue it for it to take effect.
As it is anyways, next release seems to hint at 6 fighter bays being an optimal number and perhaps frigates as well by giving a limited number of those a boost. I would imagine that there will be a reduction in fighter replacement rate as well, though that would be less of a nerf against the likes of bomber-type fighters.
I don't know what that looks like, per se, but the chief mechanic for fighting carriers is depleting its replacement rate. I feel it's better to lean into this mechanic than anything else.This is why Expanded Deck Crew hullmod feels mandatory for carriers. Slower drain, faster recovery. No way I have OP left to build a warship-lite carrier after I spend OP on good fighters and hullmods carrier needs to do its job well.
According to the blog, the bonuses from fleetwide skills like that decrease after the fleet exceeds some threshold, such as the six fighter bays. It does not seem unskilled characters will take penalties for having too many carriers, just those that have skills to discourage "mono-fleets".
Radical solution:
Turn fighters into mere recievers of the carrier's energy. Flux generation is proportional to a normal weapon rate and a distance-from-carrier based multiplier.
I think the primary issue with fighter swarms is that PD is just not that effective against them. PD is geared toward missile defense rather than swatting fighters and it shows. If you're going to add an arbitrary mechanic to dissuade mass fighter attacks, increase the effectiveness of PD against fighter hulls and make them take losses. As has been said, granular control over individual fighters isn't possible but an attacking player could be warned that condensing a ball of fighters onto a single target makes them more vulnerable to anti-fighter weaponry.
I don't know what that looks like, per se, but the chief mechanic for fighting carriers is depleting its replacement rate. I feel it's better to lean into this mechanic than anything else.
Radical solution:
Turn fighters into mere recievers of the carrier's energy. Flux generation is proportional to a normal weapon rate and a distance-from-carrier based multiplier.
In concept, I like this idea because it's a "tried and true" balancing mechanism for any sort of weapon, including fighters. If this were the route taken, I would recommend flux be generated each fighter replacement that scales with replacement rate increasing that amount as more and more fighters die. Each fighter entry would have its own flux cost per replacement in the wings csv file. Max flux carriers stop replacing all together until they vent?
However, this might be a lot of work. I'm not sure. It also might run the risk of overly promoting weaponless carriers, which would feel a little off. And venting is fast enough that it might not even matter since fighters have such a large range... hmm second guessing it now. While good in principle it seems like there might be a lot of complications. Not saying it couldn't work though.
Idea in general is to force fighters act like bombers: "get in - unload - get out". No staying on top of the target till it shredded and consumed.
To be honest I don't like the idea that much either for the same reason. It was off an image of a blog post about skills and there is no guarantee that would be the case. The way it was phrased seem to imply that the bonus was distibuted by beingshared after 6 fighter bays, so perhaps it doesn't create the "optimal" number I was writing anyways.Before these options are even considered, I would prefer fighters not be touched at all.
This is kind of where I am at right now, too. Just leave them alone rather than implementing anything arbitrary.To be honest, this so called fighter swarms are not much of a problem at all. It can only be done by the player deliberately creating such a fleet. Also the discussion confuses between fighter-type fighters and bomber-type fighters, of which Sabot armed Longbows are part of and Atropos armed Daggers are part of. It's not always clear which is which when people are discussing. It is also not clear if people are discussing Sparks in particular, or say the Talon/Broadsword example or even just Thunder.
As it is anyways, next release seems to hint at 6 fighter bays being an optimal number and perhaps frigates as well by giving a limited number of those a boost. I would imagine that there will be a reduction in fighter replacement rate as well, though that would be less of a nerf against the likes of bomber-type fighters.
I just really hope this mechanic is through skills. Even if it is, I still don't like it honestly because it still violates the above concepts I've already mentioned, but it might be tolerable if its an optional skill that requires the player to pursue it for it to take effect.
The fighter bay bonus that was shown (and the other scaling bonuses mentioned) scales in a way where no matter how many you are "above the limit", you will always get a benefit from adding another of those items. Your fighters won't get worse if you add a 7th hangar - it'll still be an increase over 6. It's just a skill that you take if you want your strikecraft to be better, it doesn't matter how many hangars you have.What happens when there are no fighters or no carriers left in the opposing fleet? Then there is nothing for them to artificially prioritise and their behaviour is exactly the same. I don't really like the idea of directly nerfing their weapons to be worse against non-fighters. A weapon should act the same way no matter the target. A MG on a fighter should do exactly the same damage on the shields of a fighter as it would do on a frigate.
As for fighter balance, having fighters act more like fighters (air superiority, anti-strikecraft) would help a lot. Nerf their weapons against non-strikecraft targets, buff up their agility and speed, change their AI to priotize strikecraft/dump flares for bombers. That alone would help differentiate them from bombers and stop clouds of them from quite so overwhelming to proper ship targets.
The fighter bay bonus that was shown (and the other scaling bonuses mentioned) scales in a way where no matter how many you are "above the limit", you will always get a benefit from adding another of those items. Your fighters won't get worse if you add a 7th hangar - it'll still be an increase over 6. It's just a skill that you take if you want your strikecraft to be better, it doesn't matter how many hangars you have.
As for fighter balance, having fighters act more like fighters (air superiority, anti-strikecraft) would help a lot. Nerf their weapons against non-strikecraft targets, buff up their agility and speed, change their AI to priotize strikecraft/dump flares for bombers. That alone would help differentiate them from bombers and stop clouds of them from quite so overwhelming to proper ship targets.
What happens when there are no fighters or no carriers left in the opposing fleet? Then there is nothing for them to artificially prioritise and their behaviour is exactly the same. I don't really like the idea of directly nerfing their weapons to be worse against non-fighters. A weapon should act the same way no matter the target. A MG on a fighter should do exactly the same damage on the shields of a fighter as it would do on a frigate.
Idea in general is to force fighters act like bombers: "get in - unload - get out". No staying on top of the target till it shredded and consumed.
If staying power of fighters is identified to be the problem then the easy fix would be to to simply change their staying power, whether by HP of hull and Flux of shields or by changing fighter replacement rate. There is no need to artificially make it so certain weapons do more damage to certain hulls. It'll be like making Tachyon Lance do half damage to Frigates so it wouldn't be so easy for a pair of Tachyon lance to instantly kill a Frigate.
Please write here about what happened first with our current implementation of the fighters. Either you learned how to direct your interceptors to attack enemy strike craft or the first thing was destruction of the enemy carrier with your interceptors.
Try to remember your first attempt(s) at deploying fighters. Did you just pressed Z and watched them go and attack ships or did you intentionally started targeting enemy strike craft in attempt to protect your ships?
I'm talking about current state of the game. Sorry for asking but are you (or anyone else for that matter) even aware that it is still possible to divert your fighters into enemy ones?
I think it is clear that AI cant do it and the target had to be manually set.
A weapon should act the same way no matter the target. A MG on a fighter should do exactly the same damage on the shields of a fighter as it would do on a frigate.But it's not the same weapon. The fighter version is better because it builds no flux! And it's on a regenerating 3000+ range platform. Why should it be allowed to also do full damage to ships on top of that? It's clearly a miniaturized strikecraft gun variant.
But it is the same weapon, lol..otherwise they'd use a specialized variant, like one of the fighters uses a fighter version of SRM missileI want the fighter version of the Swarmer for my ships.
I wonder, what do you all think of giving them limited ammo ? It would reduce their staying power as they need to return to the carrier to rearm but they would still keep their alpha strike potential. Of course they should have enough ammo to at the very minimum engage a target for 20 seconds.
I would consider nerfing so called alpha strike perfectly fine. If you don't want to nerf alpha strike, then only the fighter-type fighters can have the defensive stats changed and the bomber-type fighters can retain their defensive stats. Take for example wasp vs spark. They have similar weapons and speed, but the wasp is far easier to shoot down and so is less likely to become a problem by massing. As you say, it's the easy road. There's no need for complicated game mechanics when simple elegant stat changes can better solve perceived problems.If staying power of fighters is identified to be the problem then the easy fix would be to to simply change their staying power, whether by HP of hull and Flux of shields or by changing fighter replacement rate. There is no need to artificially make it so certain weapons do more damage to certain hulls. It'll be like making Tachyon Lance do half damage to Frigates so it wouldn't be so easy for a pair of Tachyon lance to instantly kill a Frigate.
The staying power portion of the request was actually the limited ammo. The increased damage to fighters is just to increase the usefulness of interceptors and anti-fighter fighters, mostly. It can be separated out of the idea without impacting it very much, though IMO it makes fighter clashes "more cool" to look at. That's subjective for me, but since this is one of the few suggestions not completely experimental and actually implemented and tested to a certain degree, I can say that with a fair amount of confidence coming from my perspective.
Also, the custom fighter weapons (just so as to have limited ammo- otherwise a copy paste of the csv entries and changing two fields) can be implemented in a day's worth of work, maybe even less.
The real challenging part to this suggestion as far as work goes is the AI tweaks. I can't speak very much on how long those changes would take, but considering the other AI threads floating around... well, this is one of those times where I think the work is worth it. Like Alex likes to say (paraphrasing): Hard things to implement aren't worth it just because they're "cool", there needs to be a design problem to solve. In this case, there are several, so its multiple birds with a single stone- so to speak.
*EDIT* As far as the idea of changing defensive stats of fighters to reduce staying power, you'd think that would do it, right? I thought so too. The problem with that is then you are also inadvertently reducing their alpha strike potential because they then also die more easily to ship weapons- sometimes before they can even get into firing range. It reduces the effectiveness of a small number of fighters. To say the problem is complex would be an understatement, I think. I'm not saying that couldn't work, but to be honest I think it would become surprisingly involved even compared to the above suggestion, and it only solves one of the underlying problems just mentioned.
*EDIT 2*
Still, if nerfing fighter alpha strike potential would be considered fine and no additional changes had to be made, then that could perhaps be considered the easy road. I'm not quite convinced that's true, though, as from what I've gathered most feel that the alpha strike of fighters is in a good place right now and that's part of the reason this thread was made. Specifically, it seems like the staying power of critically massed fighter spamming is too overwhelming. My suggestion targets that very specific issue because it was an issue I also dealt with for a long time in Archean Order. Spamming fighters is an inherent feature of that mod.
Weapons on fighters don't continuously shoot. There is no need to artificially place an inelegant game mechanic. If you want fighters to do half damage, just half the number of guns on a fighter. Some missile weapons on fighters already do this.A weapon should act the same way no matter the target. A MG on a fighter should do exactly the same damage on the shields of a fighter as it would do on a frigate.But it's not the same weapon. The fighter version is better because it builds no flux! And it's on a regenerating 3000+ range platform. Why should it be allowed to also do full damage to ships on top of that? It's clearly a miniaturized strikecraft gun variant.
There's no need for complicated game mechanics when simple elegant stat changes can better solve perceived problems.
no-one has problems with leaving empty mounts in normal warships, only on carriers. I feel like that changing the OP of warships, could make carriers, especially the combat carriers better warships than actual warships.
Anyways, I am somewhat fine with OP on Carriers. Sure, carriers have the same OP like normal ships without taking into account of their fighter bays, but fighter bays are basically the best most OP efficient weapons in the game right now, and typically no-one has problems with leaving empty mounts in normal warships, only on carriers. I feel like that changing the OP of warships, could make carriers, especially the combat carriers better warships than actual warships.Carriers do not have the flux stats or the mounts to match ships of their class.
Vanilla doesn't offer good slot fillers, so you leaving empty mounts becomes the only solution for many builds. I rarely do that when I have Mini-blasters and Reliants (SWP, I think?).
While I understand the desire to make carriers not so barren, with current state of fighters, it's something of a necessity, to balance their long range power. Reaching a carrier only to find out it isn't actually vulnerable in close combat would make their great weakness balancing their great power otherwise.
Vanilla doesn't offer good slot fillers, so you leaving empty mounts becomes the only solution for many builds. I rarely do that when I have Mini-blasters and Reliants (SWP, I think?).
Is this because they are very low OP? Are they very useful? (I'm unfamiliar with the stats and I'm curious)
Very low OP and dps, but decently efficient.
Reliant is ballistic 1 OP, 50 kinetic dps, 25 fps, 450 range. Mini-blaster is similar weapon for energy slot. Both are hard flux and qualify as PD.
Won't carry any build, but worth 1OP for most ships.
In this case what is easy is also elegant. There's no need for complicated -10% effective within a certain range, or only a set amount of fighters can attack a ship, or fighter weapons do double damage to other fighters, if you can adjust pre-existing values of HP or flux capacity or fighter replacement rate.There's no need for complicated game mechanics when simple elegant stat changes can better solve perceived problems.
This is a stretch to me. Easy isn't "elegant" its easy. Very different things. I'm not saying your logic isn't sound or that the suggestion is bad, but don't try and disguise it as "better design" just because its a couple spreadsheet changes instead of implementing new mechanics or improving AI.
*EDIT*
Tiny nitpick, but when I said alpha strike I wasn't talking about bombers, though it is true I should have clarified that. It just means the initial damage of the strike remains the same for whatever viable duration the craft can stay on target without getting destroyed, retreating or otherwise losing its ability to attack. Lowering defensive stats effects the first of those scenarios- and that is the most damaging to the carrier itself because it affects replacement rate the most.no-one has problems with leaving empty mounts in normal warships, only on carriers. I feel like that changing the OP of warships, could make carriers, especially the combat carriers better warships than actual warships.
*Raises hand* I do. I hate empty weapons for "optimal builds" and wish it just wasn't a thing that was ever encouraged, but that is a separate discussion. As far as your concern, I think it is definitely a valid one.
*EDIT*
Though I also think there are solutions that would not result in that happening, too, if that wasn't clear. The point is for me: I would rather have all carriers have built in weapons than no weapons because you feel encouraged to have to spend all your OP on fighters and fighter improving hullmods. It's just plain silly to me. ;)
As for weapon mounts being left, most often they are small weapon mounts on ships that have medium and large weapon mounts available. Small weapons are costed for as if they are compared to other small weapons, but their worth decreases vastly once larger weapon mounts are available. LDMG and PD Laser might be worth 4 OP due to small frigate to frigate combat it might have a dual role, but in larger ships, it would be rare to see them being worth that OP, short of perhaps destroyers with safety overides hullmod. It's like another version of the frigate vs capital problem. It probably doesn't help that for instance that many small weapon mounts have small coverages that overlap with larger coverages. For instance I advocate that a Dominator can leave 2 or even 4 of its side small mounts empty, as it simply doesn't need that many if equipped the the PD-specialised vulcans. Perhaps empty weapon mounts should be automatically filled with almost useless PD mount for free. Or perhaps Cruisers can have a -1 OP and Capitals have a -2 OP reduction to small mounts, but that come with the disadvantage of being a significant boost to cruiser and capital power, when they do not need it.I would not fill small mounts on some bigger warships because either range do not match or I already have flux problems with the bigger weapons, especially with Dominator or Onslaught.
But in the case of carriers, it is due to the carrier themselves don't need weapons. They have a range 4000 weapon in the form of fighter bays. At the moment, carriers have a weapon count as if they were one hull size lower. Why would you want them to move closer to a range they can barely fight at? If carriers were given more OP, that OP can be used to make carriers better weaponless carriers. Or if they could use their OP to fight like them, and with their fighter complement as well, all carriers, being viable as combat carriers would eclipse warships as combat ships. The carrier OP / empty weapon mounts on many warships is a separate issue and a fairly complicated one at that.
To be honest, I'm fine with carriers to have more OP as long as it excludes the possibility of making them better combat warships than dedicated combat warships. However, with a fighter slot being the most OP efficient weapon in some respects, even without hullmods, I would think it seems a bit much to essentially buff carriers in the current state of the game. I think that all carriers should be slower, to be the speed of the slowest ship of their hulltype. The Heron and Drover is a outlier to the paradigm of the relationship between weapon range and ship speed. Fighters generally outrange everything, yet those ships are fairly speedy themselves. Though if opposing ships cannot move past fighters that is a moot point anyways.This is an issue, too. Fighters are counterable, but not always. Carriers in a mixed force can hide behind warships or buy some time with their swiftness. And on their own, they can be really hard to catch, without you also taking damage from fighters, too.
The other thing is that adding more fighters doesn't make any other fighters worse. If you add too many weapons, you might not have the flux to fire all of them, while also not having as much dissipation, as some more modest designs.That is a thing I do not like about warships. Onslaught really suffers here. (Legion, even more, but at least it has fighters.) Back when skills were overpowered, I could fill up every mount on most warships with whatever weapons I wanted and have some OP to spare for the essential hullmods. Today, most warships need to skimp a little to be optimal. Few warship loadouts need to skimp too much on weapons to be optimal, and they are just as guilty as unarmed carriers when optimal looks ugly or feels silly.
Fighters are counterable, but not always. Carriers in a mixed force can hide behind warships or buy some time with their swiftness. And on their own, they can be really hard to catch, without you also taking damage from fighters, too.
In this case what is easy is also elegant. There's no need for complicated -10% effective within a certain range, or only a set amount of fighters can attack a ship, or fighter weapons do double damage to other fighters, if you can adjust pre-existing values of HP or flux capacity or fighter replacement rate.
If you are concerned for the" initial" damage of the strike for the viable duration the craft can stay on target, "alpha strike" is kind of the opposite of that in common gaming parlance. In any case, that is kind of the point. By reducing values of HP or flux capacity is just an alternative to reducing the fighter replacement rate. Both are a suggestion with similar aims. To reduce the rate of auto regenerating fighter "cloud". The first has a bonus in reducing the ability of fighters to simply destroy frigates with ease.
As for weapon mounts being left, most often they are small weapon mounts on ships that have medium and large weapon mounts available. Small weapons are costed for as if they are compared to other small weapons, but their worth decreases vastly once larger weapon mounts are available. LDMG and PD Laser might be worth 4 OP due to small frigate to frigate combat it might have a dual role, but in larger ships, it would be rare to see them being worth that OP, short of perhaps destroyers with safety overides hullmod. It's like another version of the frigate vs capital problem. It probably doesn't help that for instance that many small weapon mounts have small coverages that overlap with larger coverages. For instance I advocate that a Dominator can leave 2 or even 4 of its side small mounts empty, as it simply doesn't need that many if equipped the the PD-specialised vulcans. Perhaps empty weapon mounts should be automatically filled with almost useless PD mount for free. Or perhaps Cruisers can have a -1 OP and Capitals have a -2 OP reduction to small mounts, but that come with the disadvantage of being a significant boost to cruiser and capital power, when they do not need it.
But in the case of carriers, it is due to the carrier themselves don't need weapons. They have a range 4000 weapon in the form of fighter bays. At the moment, carriers have a weapon count as if they were one hull size lower. Why would you want them to move closer to a range they can barely fight at? If carriers were given more OP, that OP can be used to make carriers better weaponless carriers. Or if they could use their OP to fight like them, and with their fighter complement as well, all carriers, being viable as combat carriers would eclipse warships as combat ships. The carrier OP / empty weapon mounts on many warships is a separate issue and a fairly complicated one at that.
Ability to fill all mounts with any weapons robs the player of the real choice. You can just remove fitting option altogether. At least now Onslaught is not some abstract "DP slot" (like carriers) but very distinctive melee brawler with the memorable character.
Fighters, as a concept and historically have always been "OP".
Using this to blow up an armored battleship!? Nonsense. Its still limited to lucky shots against unprotected ammunition storage.
Strange, I feel like that the Onslaught has way too much OP. I can fill it up with plenty of hullmods. it's good that you are forced to choose how you want to fit your ships. What's the point of having OP for customisation if you can have all the options you want and more?The other thing is that adding more fighters doesn't make any other fighters worse. If you add too many weapons, you might not have the flux to fire all of them, while also not having as much dissipation, as some more modest designs.That is a thing I do not like about warships. Onslaught really suffers here. (Legion, even more, but at least it has fighters.) Back when skills were overpowered, I could fill up every mount on most warships with whatever weapons I wanted and have some OP to spare for the essential hullmods. Today, most warships need to skimp a little to be optimal. Few warship loadouts need to skimp too much on weapons to be optimal, and they are just as guilty as unarmed carriers when optimal looks ugly or feels silly.
SpoilerSome of these replies seem to indicate a misunderstanding of how carriers should fit into the the tactical battlefield- at least traditionally in these types of games. Many people take issue on the "fighters as weapons" part of the design destroying warship viability unless carriers are actually made to be bad. They are willing to sacrifice carriers' overall viability because they like flying warships more than carriers (gee I wonder why? Maybe because carriers as glorified fighter barges that can't even pick multiple targets to attack are boring compared to the flux war? :) ) and range and eternal wing replacement seems too powerful. It really isn't though. I mean, I get why that mentality exists when used to flying a warship, but you are trying to make carriers balance along the same operating principles as warships. That will quite frankly never work without a complete redesign. At least right now flying a carrier lets you do something (press z on a targeted enemy) whereas in pre-.8 flying a carrier was even more boring. Fighters were separate entities so you could control them without any need for flying the carrier itself. Not ideal.
Aircraft (and their modern version- drones), as a concept and historically have always been "OP". That doesn't mean they have to be from an overall design standpoint, however. To make a good strike craft/warship balance you make the carrier vulnerable but still able to use its strike craft effectively. That is what results in good gameplay tactics. Weaponless carriers do have that effect, true, but it is a boring and off-putting way of implementing that. There are much better ways.
If the Heron has enough guns to destroy a frigate in the flux war, that does not make carriers OP even if its strike craft can kill a destroyer or damage another cruiser at range. Its a cruiser. It should kill a frigate almost no matter the circumstances and destroyers should mostly lose as well. That is how the Eagle operates too... there really isn't a difference except since strike craft have so much range they are the priority threat. That point, in particular, is the main issue I think some players struggle with. They don't want that to be the case but it has to be for strike craft to feel worth it to use. Otherwise, they will be mostly flavor- like they have been for every update pre-.8 imo. I used them because I liked them, not because they felt good. The only way back then to make them work was, ironically, picking the most optimal ones and mono-spamming them (remember the old Thunder?). In small numbers they were borderline useless.
Now an Eagle vs a Heron? First of all, the Heron should be at least 1/3 or more weaker defensively. The carrier has less flux stats and defense. It should also be quite a bite slower. Quite honestly, if two Herons are fighting an Eagle without escorts.... the Eagle should barely win most of the time. But a Heron and a destroyer escort to screen it? Much different story.Fighters are counterable, but not always. Carriers in a mixed force can hide behind warships or buy some time with their swiftness. And on their own, they can be really hard to catch, without you also taking damage from fighters, too.
Yeah, this is a big part of the problem. On their own, they should be sitting ducks to anything their hullsize. They should, however, be capable of lightly defending themselves against smaller threats. Smaller threats should rely on wolf-pack tactics to combat them (just like when fighting a regular warship of a larger hull size) but have such higher speed that the fighters can't pick too many of them off before they close the distance.In this case what is easy is also elegant. There's no need for complicated -10% effective within a certain range, or only a set amount of fighters can attack a ship, or fighter weapons do double damage to other fighters, if you can adjust pre-existing values of HP or flux capacity or fighter replacement rate.
Ok then, I'm open to your interpretation though I don't agree right now. Give me an example of how that would operate once implemented. What is your "vision" (be as specific as possible) of how stat changes will solve these problems?If you are concerned for the" initial" damage of the strike for the viable duration the craft can stay on target, "alpha strike" is kind of the opposite of that in common gaming parlance. In any case, that is kind of the point. By reducing values of HP or flux capacity is just an alternative to reducing the fighter replacement rate. Both are a suggestion with similar aims. To reduce the rate of auto regenerating fighter "cloud". The first has a bonus in reducing the ability of fighters to simply destroy frigates with ease.
The first sentence makes me think you don't quite understand what I am saying unless I have been misunderstanding alpha strike- which I certainly could be. In military terms, its just how many fighters/bombers (really just damage) you can field in a single sortie on one target. The limited ammo idea I suggested relates to this because alpha strike for fighters, atm, is unlimited because it relies on fighter losses in order for it to be reduced in any way (bombers notwithstanding) Limited ammo makes interceptors like the spark and thunder also follow this rule and makes it easier to balance massed fighter clouds. This would be a huge nerf to the staying power of all fighters which don't currently have limited ammo because it reduces the alpha strike vs time- which makes large fighter clouds so effective since they can just move to a new target without providing a window of opportunity for any counter reaction.
If interceptors and anti-fighter fighters better followed their role, that nerf wouldn't really matter. We don't want interceptors to be ship killers any more than we want a cruiser sized carrier killing a cruiser in close combat. Strike craft killing frigates with ease (should they hit them) is as it should be. To make them not do that would make them incredibly bad against larger ships. Frigates must rely on larger targets acting as shields, positioning, numerical superiority and allied fighters to survive. That's what its speed and maneuverability is for. It's on-board PD is a deterrent and additional support- not a solution in and of itself. A frigate is a tactical combat vessel whereas a battleship is a brute force combat vessel.As for weapon mounts being left, most often they are small weapon mounts on ships that have medium and large weapon mounts available. Small weapons are costed for as if they are compared to other small weapons, but their worth decreases vastly once larger weapon mounts are available. LDMG and PD Laser might be worth 4 OP due to small frigate to frigate combat it might have a dual role, but in larger ships, it would be rare to see them being worth that OP, short of perhaps destroyers with safety overides hullmod. It's like another version of the frigate vs capital problem. It probably doesn't help that for instance that many small weapon mounts have small coverages that overlap with larger coverages. For instance I advocate that a Dominator can leave 2 or even 4 of its side small mounts empty, as it simply doesn't need that many if equipped the the PD-specialised vulcans. Perhaps empty weapon mounts should be automatically filled with almost useless PD mount for free. Or perhaps Cruisers can have a -1 OP and Capitals have a -2 OP reduction to small mounts, but that come with the disadvantage of being a significant boost to cruiser and capital power, when they do not need it.
But in the case of carriers, it is due to the carrier themselves don't need weapons. They have a range 4000 weapon in the form of fighter bays. At the moment, carriers have a weapon count as if they were one hull size lower. Why would you want them to move closer to a range they can barely fight at? If carriers were given more OP, that OP can be used to make carriers better weaponless carriers. Or if they could use their OP to fight like them, and with their fighter complement as well, all carriers, being viable as combat carriers would eclipse warships as combat ships. The carrier OP / empty weapon mounts on many warships is a separate issue and a fairly complicated one at that.
That's a good analysis. It also means small weapons aren't doing their job correctly- or large weapons are doing their job too well. Larger weapons should not be able to hit frigates or fighters reliably unless they are specifically balanced to do so by being weaker in their primary role.
Take the dominator example: The small weapon mounts you advocate are unnecessary should be necessary to prevent a frigate surround from pinning the dominator. For a warship, it shouldn't be about just PD. Small assault weapons should hit fighters more reliably as well, its just that PD is equally as good or better and can also stop missiles. I digress...
The point is, even if its true that more OP just leads to better weaponless carriers, then other solutions should be considered. It can't just be left how it is, imo.Ability to fill all mounts with any weapons robs the player of the real choice. You can just remove fitting option altogether. At least now Onslaught is not some abstract "DP slot" (like carriers) but very distinctive melee brawler with the memorable character.
Agreed, though I don't think that is what anyone is trying to advocate. Its more that a player is encouraged to fill all weapon mounts with something. :)[close]
What about setting a max op per hanger bay? Separate from the weapon, vent/cap, and hull mod general pool. Say, 30 OP per bay for the astral, and maybe 24 OP per bay for the heron. This will limit smaller carriers to fielding smaller fighters. If you elect to load smaller fighters than the max bay size, shuffle the leftover hanger OP to the general OP pool at a balanced ratio, or even at a variable rate as you move more hanger OP into the general pool. This gives a design choice to put less fighter power in return for diminishing increase in regular warship capabilities. You can have your close combat Astral with an all mining drone loadout.Schwarz suggested the same thing. It's a good idea but I feel like at this point we are all discussing several areas of discussion at the same time. If the ideal is to make carriers not have empty weapon slots, it is difficult to say what the impact will be as any spare OP can be used for hullmods and caps and vents and not go into weapons at all. It'll have to be a lot of spare OP to force a player to fill all weapon slots so as not to waste the spare OP. Personally I would suggest that whatever the OP transferance ratio should be, it shouldn't be possible to exceed whatever the player can do currently by filling its fighter bays with Talons or the 0 OP mining pod auxiliary. As it is I think carriers could do with +8 OP per fighter bay to make them more comfortably fit weapons of the player decide to do so, but since people think carriers are powerful at the moment, it must be accompanied by other balance changes at the same time.
Maybe create a hull mod that adds hanger OP and allows smaller carriers to field larger wings. Or a hull mod that removes a hanger bay in return for increasing the OP size of the remaining bays.
It'll require a bit more balancing but will add more design freedom with additional constraints on the maximums. Not sure how to balance it against drover/sparks spam but it'll give us a few more ways to nudge it into balance.
Strange, I feel like that the Onslaught has way too much OP. I can fill it up with plenty of hullmods. it's good that you are forced to choose how you want to fit your ships. What's the point of having OP for customisation if you can have all the options you want and more?In case of Onslaught, it is in part due to dissipation. It is too hard to use heavy weapons with it. As for OP, since Onslaught needs missiles and Expanded Missile Racks, I have no problem guzzling all of its OP even with Loadout Design 3, and this is leaving the small (insignificant) mounts empty.
@lucky33
Sorry, I mean't to say "strike craft" or "aircraft." I sometime use "fighters" as a catch-all to mean "things that come from a carrier." Its a bad habit.
So mostly bombers and torpedo bombers are what I'm referring to here (edited the original post to clarify)- but that's related to the concept of the interceptors > bombers > warships kind of relationship.
Bombers could be stopped from dealing much damage if enemy fighters/interceptors caught them without an escort before they reached an optimal range because they had such poor mobility compared to fighters or interceptors. This has happened to my knowledge during both land based and sea based aircraft assaults.
Probably from my wording error, but you are talking about mm cannons when the power of aircraft came from bombs and torpedoes.
It was largely felt, at least according to what I have read, that warship based anti-aircraft guns were sub-optimal and rarely could stop a sortie from causing critical damage even if it caused a few losses to the wing in return. Smokescreens were actually far more likely to work in comparison due to the training issue you have already mentioned.
Now, all of that said, I don't want "aircraft" (what I will use to avoid confusion) to be that strong, but they should be intimidating enough to warrant pursuit and priority of the carrier and force the engagement of the warship protective screen.
In case of Onslaught, it is in part due to dissipation.
Its mostly because you are too much into the zero caps meta. Spend some points for caps and armor.I do not remember if I have caps on Onslaught, although I try to put some points in caps on ships if I can. (I frequently trade caps for Hardened Shields if I cannot get both.) As for armor hullmods, it slows Onslaught too much. I tried Heavy Armor, and it slowed turning too much for comfort (and I do not want to spend even more for Auxiliary Thrusters). I do not have armor skills in my last game because they went into colony skills, before I learned about Pather bug and the intricacies about cores.
Onslaught
Capacitors: 0
Weapons: 2x Devastator Cannon, 1x Mjolnir Cannon, 4x Heavy Needler, 2x Hypervelocity Driver, 3x Dual Flak Cannon, 6x Vulcan
Onslaught is really a gambling glass cannon
Since Onslaught has only 1000 dissipation you have to choose weapons accordingly.This is a thing I do not like about Onslaught's design. It has three heavy mounts, but it does not have the dissipation to use them! I see heavy mounts, along with the plethora of other mounts, and I should be able to mount and use heavy weapons decently enough. But Onslaught cannot. Better if it did not have heavy mounts. Conquest and Paragon can use their heavy mounts. But Onslaught, I mount one good heavy weapon on it and it cannot use anything else.
We all have thoughts on how carriers should fit into the the tactical battlefield. You don't get to say how others misunderstand how they should. What I am interested is in how carriers are used in the game and how they can or should be used. Same as with all fighters and with frigates and battleships. I'm not particularly interested in your personal interpretation of inaccurately perceived historical roles of ships and your assignation of such. In game there are frigates intended to fight fighters, frigates that are brute force and capitals which are "tactical combat vessels". Your personal interpretation of ship hulls and their roles does not matter. Fighters countering frigates contributes to the feeling that frigates are nearly worthless in the later game.
Alpha strike in common gaming parlance refers to a first and sudden high damage attack. You can see that usage constantly all over the forum, referring to missiles like Reapers or ships like Harbinger or Aurora, so I don't know why you are acting so confused for. Using it to describe variable damage over time that could extending all the way till the battle ends is the very opposite of that. I am not interested in discussing etymology to be honest. We are playing a game, not playing a specific military arm of a specific side in a war 40 years ago; it shouldn't really need to be said which usage is which.
- at least traditionally in these types of games.
If you are concerned for the" initial" damage of the strike for the viable duration the craft can stay on target, "alpha strike" is kind of the opposite of that in common gaming parlance.
Ok then, I'm open to your interpretation though I don't agree right now. Give me an example of how that would operate once implemented. What is your "vision" (be as specific as possible) of how stat changes will solve these problems?
@lucky33
Sorry, I mean't to say "strike craft" or "aircraft." I sometime use "fighters" as a catch-all to mean "things that come from a carrier." Its a bad habit.
Thats much better.
*snip*
I'm completely ok with our current state of the attack capabilities of the strike craft. Since they have limited ammo their dps is limited too based on the range. Thats balanced. My problem is anti-ship capabilities of the fighters.
It has three heavy mounts, but it does not have the dissipation to use them!
But Onslaught cannot.
but that does not cut it for AI use
In some older releases, I could flux cap quickly, vent, kill a few ships, flux cap quickly, vent, repeat.
Overall, though, I think we are on the same page as far as design intentions. Now its just a matter of "can it be done and how much work will it be?"
Overall, though, I think we are on the same page as far as design intentions. Now its just a matter of "can it be done and how much work will it be?"
You tell me.
Give carriers two separate OP pools for fighters and for itself. Make these OP pools able to be exchanged for the other at a 2:1 ratio or something like that. So a carrier with 40/60 OP who only uses 38 OP for fighters gets 61 OP points to use for itself. The point of this would be that carriers across the board can get more OP (because they need it). At the same time, fighters can still be made weaker.
What about setting a max op per hanger bay? Separate from the weapon, vent/cap, and hull mod general pool. Say, 30 OP per bay for the astral, and maybe 24 OP per bay for the heron. This will limit smaller carriers to fielding smaller fighters. If you elect to load smaller fighters than the max bay size, shuffle the leftover hanger OP to the general OP pool at a balanced ratio, or even at a variable rate as you move more hanger OP into the general pool. This gives a design choice to put less fighter power in return for diminishing increase in regular warship capabilities. You can have your close combat Astral with an all mining drone loadout.
Maybe create a hull mod that adds hanger OP and allows smaller carriers to field larger wings. Or a hull mod that removes a hanger bay in return for increasing the OP size of the remaining bays.
It'll require a bit more balancing but will add more design freedom with additional constraints on the maximums. Not sure how to balance it against drover/sparks spam but it'll give us a few more ways to nudge it into balance.
My problem is anti-ship capabilities of the fighters.This is half of what it boils down to for me. I feel like the strongest fighter weapons should do negligible damage to frigates+, while only bomber weapons should be anywhere near on-par with those used by regular ships.
Ideally I would want the guns on fighters/interceptors to be weak to ships somehow. Also trivial, but others really don't like the idea of separate weaker weapons on fighters or hullmods improving damage to strike craft. Removing weapons to reduce damage has been suggested.
It's the AI changes to interceptor attack orders that is the question on workload and I can't speak to that.
Morrokain, I apologise if you feel like I am being antagonistic. Perhaps "inelegant" isn't the exact right word, but I did try to use words like complicated, simplier, to easier to understand afterwards to explain what I meant. If for example, you view fighter weapons as too powerful, instead of have fighter weapons do half damage, causing a visual discreptancy for what is occuring on the battle, why not simply half the number of weapons on that fighter, or change a dual light machine gun into a single machine gun, or halve it's rate of fire as with some pre existing missile weapons, would that not keep the visual feedback and have the exact same aim? After doing that, if for some reason you want these fighter weapons to do just as much damage to other fighter type fighters, you can half their HP/shield. Sure fighters will die faster against weapons on ships, but that's also ties into that some people also view some fighters as being tough, so it stands as a suggestion on its own. Afterall, in the end pilums didn't get "solved" by hard to communicate visual discreptancies or with a change in AI programming, but by lowering their HP.
Anyways, all this belies that the most dangerous anti-frigate fighter isn't any of these fighters like spark or thunder or talon spam , but is the Longbow and Dagger. Of course that is somewhat balanced out that it costs much more OP than just about every other fighter.
Sure fighters will die faster against weapons on ships, but that's also ties into that some people also view some fighters as being tough, so it stands as a suggestion on its own.
causing a visual discreptancy for what is occuring on the battle
why not simply half the number of weapons on that fighter, or change a dual light machine gun into a single machine gun, or halve it's rate of fire as with some pre existing missile weapons, would that not keep the visual feedback and have the exact same aim?
Well. You can also remove flux dissipation on fighters. Like, entirely. No dissipation - no staying power. Fighters are forced to return for recharging.
The other half is that most bombers and many fighters are a practically limitless supply of dangerous missiles, that would otherwise be severely limited as regular ship-weapons for the same OP.
Sure fighters will die faster against weapons on ships
Anyways, all this belies that the most dangerous anti-frigate fighter isn't any of these fighters like spark or thunder or talon spam , but is the Longbow and Dagger.
Afterall, in the end pilums didn't get "solved" by hard to communicate visual discreptancies or with a change in AI programming, but by lowering their HP.
Well. You can also remove flux dissipation on fighters. Like, entirely. No dissipation - no staying power. Fighters are forced to return for recharging.
Well. You can also remove flux dissipation on fighters. Like, entirely. No dissipation - no staying power. Fighters are forced to return for recharging.
Well the problem there is that it does basically the same thing as limiting ammo, except it screws over shielded fighters entirely and also the AI wouldn't know that returning to carrier because of high flux is a thing - but the AI very much DOES know that running to carrier because no ammo left is a thing.
Well. You can also remove flux dissipation on fighters. Like, entirely. No dissipation - no staying power. Fighters are forced to return for recharging.
Well the problem there is that it does basically the same thing as limiting ammo, except it screws over shielded fighters entirely and also the AI wouldn't know that returning to carrier because of high flux is a thing - but the AI very much DOES know that running to carrier because no ammo left is a thing.
It's not really clear to me what you think the the underlying problem with fighters is though other than that you think they don't fit your personal perspective of what fighters should do, especially since you touch on all sorts of suggestions including AI changes.
It is the intended purpose of the suggestion of changing hull and shield values is that fighters will die faster. So that is not a problem that they will at all. There may be a sharper tipping point between being useful and dying but that can be fine too.
An alternative is to change the fighter replacement rate.
They don't counter bombers or each other. So, because of this, they are essentially just bombers themselves- just infinite ammo bombers. You are advocating making them "weak bombers" for this reason. But if the AI stays the same, then the line between interceptor/fighter/bomber is practically nonexistent as far as behavior is concerned. Interceptors only fight each other when around the enemy or allied ship. If they are weaker to PD, then their clashes around ships are more meaningless because the real threat is the PD guns and not the interceptors themselves. As I have stated before, I'm not even saying you can't weaken them defensively. They may need that and limited ammo to become more balanced. But, none of that will make fighters feel good- especially compared to bombers- until fighter and interceptors have a role that isn't just being another bomber that sometimes "fights" other bombers briefly before settling back on the target.We are talkign about two different issues. Sure I might touch on it during this thread long meandering conversation. You are interested in the historical uses of various designation of fighters and how they should be used and the AI changes for that. I don't care about that; I only care about how the game works.
So my question to you is, what do you think is the role of fighters and interceptors? How would you use them? Would you use them? If they are just "weak bombers" then people will just equip actual bombers and ignore fighters- we have already discussed why less OP is not enough of a reason to make them attractive if they are just bad in comparison.
All of my suggestions have a purpose. They are pieces of the same puzzle. If you would like me to explain that further please let me know.
Frigates already work like that right now. They are useful till they suddenly die when fighters appears. I would greatly prefer a smoother tipping point as seen in numerous other posts, but such is the design of the game.It is the intended purpose of the suggestion of changing hull and shield values is that fighters will die faster. So that is not a problem that they will at all. There may be a sharper tipping point between being useful and dying but that can be fine too.
How is that fine? Would you be ok with that design if it were like that for frigates? I suspect not...
I'm fine with that. It's not really that much of a problem to reduce the staying power of the fighters themselves compared to bombers, when the purpose of the thread have been discussing the staying power of fighter type fighters. I don't mind if replacement rate was changed to be affected as soon as one fighter is destroyed in a wing. Nobody talked about bombers till I brought them up afterall. There's a lot of inter-related issues with fighters.QuoteAn alternative is to change the fighter replacement rate.
Forgot to respond to this point. Ironically, it just so happens that this was the second balancing mechanism of the new .8 fighter system I tried when attempting to combat fighter spam in .9. To break it down:
There are two ways you can do this:
1) Reduce fighter and interceptor individual replacement rates so they take longer to replace a wing member.
2) Reduce the minimum threshold cap for replacement rate as it decreases.
(I guess you could also do both if you really wanted to. If the replacement rate threshold could go all the way to zero, that would make fighters more in line with vanilla missiles as a concept of limited burst damage- with a weird mechanic where as long as you don't let it get too low it could theoretically be infinite... Not only would this direction also probably require a lot of AI changes so that fighters aren't wasted (missiles have already gone through this transformation), it practically reeks of player abusiveness leading to unexpected power creep without some serious AI nuance. If AI refinement is the concern, then this suggestion would be even more work.)
To discuss this, an overview of how replacement rate works is required. I believe that replacement rate starts to decay if any wings are under ~50% members? (Someone correct me if I am wrong) What effect does this have? The longer it takes to replace an individual wing member the more impact that wing has to replacement rate when the wing takes losses over the threshold. This compounds upon itself because obviously the continuous lowering of replacement rate further hurts the wings' ability to replace their members and get above the threshold where replacement rate begins to increase again... so in effect this means bombers are often the hardest hitting factor on replacement rate and losing a bomber wing can mean the replacement rate goes from 100% to remaining at 30% the rest of the battle.
If fighters are changed to take longer to replace each wing's members, then fighters are more closely aligned with bombers in their effect upon replacement rate. So, instead of having a more nuanced system where bomber-based carriers are more easily handicapped by being stuck at 30% replacement and fighter/interceptor-based carriers have more of a wax and wane effect as they take and replace losses, all carriers just quickly get to- and remain at- 30% replacement rate for the majority of the battle. So this further emphasizes the "fighters as bombers" role the system already encourages.
How does this solve mass fighter spam? It does nothing to really reduce the staying power of the fighters themselves compared to bombers, because fighters still have infinite ammunition while bombers do not. The unstoppable fighter waves may come less often- or even only once considering the exponential effect replacement rate has- but this results in two and only two scenarios:
1) The first and likely only wave focuses on a single target and beats it handily- then moves to another and does the same- then moves to another and does the same, etc. Massed fighters are still optimal.
2) The first and likely only wave focuses on a single target and takes enough losses to weaken the swarm before the target dies. The swarm moves to the next target. Gets weakened further and takes out the target or dies. Either way, fighters are no longer useful for the remainder of the battle. Carriers sit there as useless paperweights and may as well be retreated (leading to player strategies that never let the carrier die while AI carriers get slaughtered.
That makes mixing fighter types even less optimal. And that already sucks. You're supposed to build cool mutually supporting wings, but most things make doing that worse than just spamming one fighter type.
Plus, it doesn't actually make swarms worse, it just builds in a cooldown between every time the swarm pops a ship. You still have infinite scaling fighter balls that get exponentially better with every extra wing in the ball.
Oh and you'd need new AI, because a player would be smart enough to call back all fighters for refills after every kill and in regular intervals because the only thing that matters is huge alpha - but would the AI be smart enough to do the same?
What about the idea of only having a certain number of replacement fighters per wing?
If my sparks only have 10 replacements then they'll get ground down eventually right? Forcing me(or AI) to be more mindful of their use. Kinda like how missiles are not infinite with the exception of support missiles. I know we have a fighter replacement timer that can then get buffed with player skills and ship mods, but that has always seemed to nebulous to me.
Also as for fighting fighters directly, my big ships get way way way too frightened when they are swarmed which can often kill them as enemy carriers can sit back in safety as my cruisers freak out.
To prevent a complete overhaul back to .8 or something new, the best way I can think of implementing this concept in the new system is to separate out the carrier "Fighter Strike" command into a ship attack variant that stays the way it is now- and a "counter incoming strike craft" variant that can only be used on ships with flight decks. This attack could either still send the carriers' bombers/assault fighters to target the enemy ship alone, or leave them safely back with the carrier. Whatever feels better. The interceptors and anti-fighter fighters, though, would pursue that target's strike craft (bombers having priority as targets) relentlessly even at the carriers docking bays until the command is canceled.
*EDIT* Hmm, thought about this a little more. What if... the two commands were independent toggles that could either be stacked on one target or separated out onto two separate targets?
"Intercept Strike Craft" would send interceptors and anti-strike-craft fighters to target strike craft as described above, "Bomber Strike" would send bombers and assault fighters to attack the ship itself. Support fighters, erm, off the top of my head would probably escort bombers during "Bomber Strike" but that is debatable.
The benefit to this would be to increase the ability of using tactics while flying a carrier (including AI ships very importantly) whilst keeping the vast majority of the current system intact. It also promotes diversity in carrier strike craft builds for the player (to increase the ability to use tactics that is still reliant upon actually piloting the carrier yourself) and even if the AI cannot be made to do this on their own (seems like they should be but not an expert there) the player's specific commands in the tactics screen allow the player to direct the battle tactics of fighter deployments more easily and would even increase the value of command points as a nice bonus. (Operational Command hullmod has more usefulness now.)
Some important details/suggestions for implementation:
Not having strike craft of the appropriate type would result in the command being unavailable with a popup explaining why upon mouse-over in the tactics screen. Pressing Z while targeting a fighter issues a "Intercept Strike Craft" order on the fighter's carrier while targeting a ship itself defaults (selecting a "Bomber Strike" while interceptors, etc have their own orders would not override them) to both commands but interceptors/fighters can be manually disengaged by issuing another Z press on a strike craft. Pressing Z without a target returns all bombers first, and a second press returns all fighters. If no orders are currently active for the player carrier and they press Z without a target, all strike craft pick their own targets.
Pressing Z on an allied ship results in only the interceptors, etc coming the the ship's aid to escort it, but bombers, etc would be retained in order to still be able to provide an unescorted sortie if that was desirable to the player.
To me, this feels like the most intuitive way of handling the details of personally flying a carrier without creating a new hotkey and still allowing for two separate strike craft commands in the tactics screen.
We are talkign about two different issues. Sure I might touch on it during this thread long meandering conversation. You are interested in the historical uses of various designation of fighters and how they should be used and the AI changes for that. I don't care about that; I only care about how the game works.
Frigates already work like that right now. They are useful till they suddenly die when fighters appears. I would greatly prefer a smoother tipping point as seen in numerous other posts, but such is the design of the game.
I'm fine with that. It's not really that much of a problem to reduce the staying power of the fighters themselves compared to bombers, when the purpose of the thread have been discussing the staying power of fighter type fighters. I don't mind if replacement rate was changed to be affected as soon as one fighter is destroyed in a wing. Nobody talked about bombers till I brought them up afterall. There's a lot of inter-related issues with fighters.
What about the idea of only having a certain number of replacement fighters per wing?
If my sparks only have 10 replacements then they'll get ground down eventually right? Forcing me(or AI) to be more mindful of their use. Kinda like how missiles are not infinite with the exception of support missiles. I know we have a fighter replacement timer that can then get buffed with player skills and ship mods, but that has always seemed to nebulous to me.
Also as for fighting fighters directly, my big ships get way way way too frightened when they are swarmed which can often kill them as enemy carriers can sit back in safety as my cruisers freak out. I know there is a AI PD hull mod that makes shooting down missiles and so forth easier, but I'd love an anti-fighter hull mod to make killing those a little easier.
Finally, we have things like the Proximity Charge Launcher and Swarmer SRM Launcher missile weapons but due to their limited ammo vs infinite fighters they seem utterly terrible in comparison. The Locust SRM Launcher is actually pretty good even against frigates and destroyers because oif the ungodly swarm they produce, but even still in a protracted battle their missiles are not re-spawning, but fighters are? Not to mention fighters and bombers with missiles of their own that re-spawn!
Another tweak could be for Expanded Deck Crew to come with a malus of some sort, and to not have a skill that effects replacement rate.Rather see that hullmod disappear so carriers can get ITU and some guns (or maybe Expanded Missile Racks and missiles) instead like they used to. Barring that, a replacement hullmod that negates the penalties from carrier (D) mods (and maybe Converted Hangar), with no cost beyond OP. Aside, Expanded Deck Crew has a malus, +20 crew requirements. That is not insignificant for some fleet configurations earlier in the campaign, before player has effectively infinite resources.
Morrokain, we are talking around in circles. As you clearly have given this a lot of thought and time in writing, I want to pay respect to that by reply back to your post. The effects you describe as of the suggestions is part and parcel of the intention and I am perfectly fine with those effects you describe. I am perfectly fine with reducing the initial staying power of the first wave, as a way to prevent the warding off effect of fighter-type fighters and I'll it leave with that.
If you want to cut down on fighter spam, increase the cost of crew. When every dead fighter = 200 credits, suddenly throwing a mess of interceptors at enemy fleets doesn't look so appealing.
There are obviously points that need addressing here. Specifically, you can still spam Sparks - but these are rare and difficult to find LPCs for. Also, Talons and other low-tech fighters inevitably die en masse. Perhaps low-tech fighter pilots come with a greater chance to be recovered after a battle (because of their redundant safety features, or whatever).
This also makes crew recovery hullmods & skills very relevant. They're usually sub-optimal, since you usually just want to stack the best fighter wings/offensive skills you can.
Has anyone suggested adding deployment costs to the carrier for each mounted fighter? That would go a long way towards cutting down on massed fighter spam while still making them useful.
I think lower fighter ranges across the board would help. Carriers would be in more danger, and fewer carriers would be able to attack the same target.
4k --> 3k for all 4k fighters, and make the Thunder be special in that is has 4k range (down from 8k).
Lower fighter ranges would do it, although I think your Thunder nerf is slightly too harsh - 5K would be fine, it's a light, fragile fighter.
This does bring nearly all carriers within the station-weapon envelope, however; a not-inconsiderable nerf given that smaller carriers are already less desirable. Off the top of my head, I think that's fine; most weapons don't have 1000/1200 range, the ones that do have notable drawbacks, and destroyer carriers regularly fly right up to stations and die as it is. Another reason to make larger, tougher carriers your striking arm.
It's worth testing to see if there are any unintended problems.
Fighter limits; limit the amount of fighters that can be deployed.
Sounds like the best option so far since it doesn't mess with play styles other than carrier spam (which would be ideal). For example; Thunders having 8k range is my saving grace early game to capture ships I normally couldn't reach in time. It is also fun having clutch moments when I catch a ship at the edge of retreat all game.
Limiting fighter amount/deployment lore/story-wise could have something to do with comms, considering the implications of organizing 50-100 fighters at once. However it could be implemented, limiting the amount of fighters that can be deployed per battle would directly fix fighter spam issues all round. If it's possible/realistic to implement.
AI problems
A targeting bonus or hullmod (like IPDAI but to destroy fighters) for cruisers and capitals akin to Advanced Countermeasures +50% damage to fighters could help these bigger ships to make a realistic dent in swarms and decrease derping.
Fighters were not redesigned from the ground up but generally modified to fit by the same balancing formulas.Same with carriers. (I suspect even the new 0.8 newcomers might have been designed with the old system in mind.) All of those weapon mounts that used to be filled up with big guns... mostly useless because fighters became the weapons and carriers need to specialize hard to make them good.
- OP costs increase 'fitness pressure' for carriersThis is my biggest gripe with fighters. Make armed carriers good again! If fighters need to be weakened so that carriers can brawl in a pinch and live to tell about it, so be it.
It is also respawn efficient because Sparks are tought little buggers with shields. Do we now make all fighters shieldless? This could actually work and is not an unreasonable change. Shield generators could be too large and unwieldy to be put on anything smaller than a frigate. But I don't see this get to the root of the problem.I don't think fighters need to be shieldless. The true power comes from the high recovery rates. For 8 OP a Spark squadron gets 250 venting worth of shield regen, the kind found on a frigate. Sparks obey the same hard flux rules as anything else but their sheer numbers and speed make them more capable of ducking away to regen any damage they take. The shield is supremely effective against HE weapons (few are anti fighter), but also has extremely high potential against all kinds of soft flux beam PD. It would take some hard data logging to figure out exactly how much damage they can really absorb, but it's pretty safe to say that Sparks can survive long term engagements in a way that other strike craft can not. Their quick shield recovery definitely factors into their durability and they'd not stack up nearly as well without it.
QuoteIt is also respawn efficient because Sparks are tought little buggers with shields. Do we now make all fighters shieldless? This could actually work and is not an unreasonable change. Shield generators could be too large and unwieldy to be put on anything smaller than a frigate. But I don't see this get to the root of the problem.I don't think fighters need to be shieldless. The true power comes from the high recovery rates. For 8 OP a Spark squadron gets 250 venting worth of shield regen, the kind found on a frigate. Sparks obey the same hard flux rules as anything else but their sheer numbers and speed make them more capable of ducking away to regen any damage they take. The shield is supremely effective against HE weapons (few are anti fighter), but also has extremely high potential against all kinds of soft flux beam PD. It would take some hard data logging to figure out exactly how much damage they can really absorb, but it's pretty safe to say that Sparks can survive long term engagements in a way that other strike craft can not. Their quick shield recovery definitely factors into their durability and they'd not stack up nearly as well without it.
- Can be expensive
- Respawn too quicklyThis is why Expanded Deck Crew hullmod is very good (faster recovery and slower rate drain). It is practically an ITU (in importance) for carriers, a must-have. It is pricey enough that carrier (except Legion, with difficulty) cannot afford ITU on top of that and support both fighters and guns. With Expanded Deck Crew and pricey fighters (and no ITU), carrier is incentivized to go all-in for fighters.
the more fighters you have, the less fighters you lose.It's more like the slower you lose fighters, the more fighters you can afford to lose. Carrier fatigue does favor survivable squadrons far more than expendable ones. As long as the enemy lacks a critical damage rate to push replacement rates down, they're doomed. Shields take things to the next level because the more shield fighters you have, the more damage they can cover for each other and vent away, so the less fighters you lose, so your carriers never get fatigued, so any small losses are quickly replaced. One synergy is fine, but shields do create a double stacking synergy.
I mean they can be expensive to fit onto a carrier. You can pump a lot of OP into it if you're looking to have a Heron with 2 bomber wings and a Broadsword escort. The OP costs encourage a certain way to play which involves more or less spreading out the expense over all your carriers. I.e. each of them gets a Talon, a Broadsword, a Dagger.
It also makes the pool of viable fighters and carrier loadouts smaller.
Give carriers two separate OP pools for fighters and for itself. Make these OP pools able to be exchanged for the other at a 2:1 ratio or something like that. So a carrier with 40/60 OP who only uses 38 OP for fighters gets 61 OP points to use for itself. The point of this would be that carriers across the board can get more OP (because they need it). At the same time, fighters can still be made weaker.What about setting a max op per hanger bay? Separate from the weapon, vent/cap, and hull mod general pool. Say, 30 OP per bay for the astral, and maybe 24 OP per bay for the heron. This will limit smaller carriers to fielding smaller fighters. If you elect to load smaller fighters than the max bay size, shuffle the leftover hanger OP to the general OP pool at a balanced ratio, or even at a variable rate as you move more hanger OP into the general pool. This gives a design choice to put less fighter power in return for diminishing increase in regular warship capabilities. You can have your close combat Astral with an all mining drone loadout.
Maybe create a hull mod that adds hanger OP and allows smaller carriers to field larger wings. Or a hull mod that removes a hanger bay in return for increasing the OP size of the remaining bays.
It'll require a bit more balancing but will add more design freedom with additional constraints on the maximums. Not sure how to balance it against drover/sparks spam but it'll give us a few more ways to nudge it into balance.
I think these have potential to be a good solution. I'll mull it over at work today.
Re: Expanded Deck Crew. I don't doubt it is good. What is bothering me is that I never use it and find it unnecessary. It is perfectly possible to build a fleet of 2 Moras and 2 Drovers and just overwhelm every single engagement with high-performance fighters that never run out of steam because the more fighters you have, the less fighters you lose.
It's more like the slower you lose fighters, the more fighters you can afford to lose. Carrier fatigue does favor survivable squadrons far more than expendable ones. As long as the enemy lacks a critical damage rate to push replacement rates down, they're doomed. Shields take things to the next level because the more shield fighters you have, the more damage they can cover for each other and vent away, so the less fighters you lose, so your carriers never get fatigued, so any small losses are quickly replaced. One synergy is fine, but shields do create a double stacking synergy.
I feel like part of the reason fighter spam gets so powerful is because point defense weapons don't. Flak cannons and all their variants including the devastator suck, period. They miss 90% of their rounds in my experience thanks to their HIGHLY random detonation range. Other PD weapons have such painfully short range they can do nothing against any sort of real bombing run either. Integrated point defense AI and some skills help with this...but beyond a point it's meaningless as well. It's just an arms race and the fighters win.Point defence weapons are not anti fighter weapons. PD weapons are anti-missile, many non-PD weapons are good antifighter weapons like Pulse Laser, Railgun and all the beam weapons. Against bombers, large ballistic turreted weapons do well against them.
My preferred anti-fighter weapon is the Locust. One volley is almost guaranteed to wipe out half a dozen fighters, even more if they're unshielded. Highly likely to clear a lot of torps and bombs on the way too. Unfortunately they're missiles so you'll probably run dry before the carriers do...but that just means you need to get in there and get the job done before you're out of locusts. An Atlas mkII makes a fantastic bugsprayer with extended racks and ECCM. For 24 DP one atlas can kill a LOT of fighters very quickly...
Problem is, AI doesn't see any problem with huge enemy fighter/bomber swarm approaching it. While proper course of action is usually to backpedal to covering allies and concentrate fire on the swarm before it breaks into individual fighters/or bombers get chance to unload.
To put it simply: I find the idea of this either / or decision very unappealing. I find it difficult to suspend my disbelief that a carrier is not able to field its designated ordnance without stripping itself down to bare metal. It's ugly, it makes no sense and it's an unfun decision a player has to make if he wants to optimize fleet strength and win his engagements. Alex talked about this before as 'gamers having to game' the system against their own sense of fun.
Now I'm not against fighters incurring a cost and all fighters are not the same strength, obviously. But there are no other ships in the game that are currently as OP-starved as carriers. Imagine if you were to kit out an Enforcer, but if you want it to have 4 x Annihilators, you better put Small Mortars in three of those medium slots. I'm getting mad just thinking about it. ;)
It's not strictly weapon systems that are getting taxed by this, btw. You have offense, defense and fighters. Most players will choose defense and fighters and dial back on the offense, since no one likes losing ships. Especially bigger ships. All this is not unreasonable from a balance standpoint. But if you want to have a strong fighter presence-...
I need to go on a tangent here. Fighter strength is not just determined by the raw power of the fighters. It is also determined by the relative strength of your squadrons vs. their squadrons. Since fighters are not strictly 'offensive missiles' but they also distract PD, they provide PD themselves, they work like suppression weapons in a carrier vs. carrier duel against the enemy fighter replacement rate.
...so if you want to have a strong fighter presence, numerically, you can still have that after fighters have been nerfed across the board and carriers have the spare OP to get their weapon slots and hullmods filled out.
I don't think players would mind more OP on their carriers, but I think they'd just spend those points on more powerful bombers instead.
Radically simple idea.....That would wreck warships with a bay or two on the side, like Tempest, Odyssey, or anything with Converted Hangar. Not everything with a bay is a dedicated carrier. (Not to mention that while game treats Legion as a dedicated carrier, it is good enough to function as a warship.)
Dramatically reduce carrier combat speed & durability, so that they can't be used to kite & therefore need non-carriers to act as a meat shield.
By forcing mixed compositions, not only do you solve the balance issues of the 'critical mass fighter swarm', but you also create more tactically diverse, interesting and (dare I say) realistic fleets.
All without introducing any arbitrary rules or limits.
-75% combat speed might be enough.
Perhaps only apply the debuff while the carrier is actively constructing or rearming fighters.
That'd also give a lore-based reason for the behaviour "Operating the nano-fabs is enormously power hungry"
Point defence weapons are not anti fighter weapons. PD weapons are anti-missile, many non-PD weapons are good antifighter weapons like Pulse Laser, Railgun and all the beam weapons. Against bombers, large ballistic turreted weapons do well against them.
Radically simple idea.....
Dramatically reduce carrier combat speed & durability, so that they can't be used to kite & therefore need non-carriers to act as a meat shield.
By forcing mixed compositions, not only do you solve the balance issues of the 'critical mass fighter swarm', but you also create more tactically diverse, interesting and (dare I say) realistic fleets.
All without introducing any arbitrary rules or limits.
-75% combat speed might be enough.
Perhaps only apply the debuff while the carrier is actively constructing or rearming fighters.
That'd also give a lore-based reason for the behaviour "Operating the nano-fabs is enormously power hungry"
That would wreck warships with a bay or two on the side, like Tempest, Odyssey, or anything with Converted Hangar. Not everything with a bay is a dedicated carrier. (Not to mention that while game treats Legion as a dedicated carrier, it is good enough to function as a warship.)
Nothing like watching battleships cower in the center of a ring of civilian destroyers with converted hanger, because they are too scared of the piddly fighters and "destroyers" to attack.
I wish that ships would plow right through fighters as if they weren't there. I also wish that ships would ignore the 'weight' of carriers in terms of being scared. Completely ignore both for movement determining threat assessment. Running from fighters doesn't help: actually closing with carriers and shooting does!
Some of the carrier problems can be resolved with better AI tactics. Carriers are the ultimate long range unit, so the typically cautious AI gains no benefit by staying out of range. It plays into the carrier's biggest strength. Frigates and destroyers are also effective for flanking the main lines and hunting down carriers. Phase ships can outrun most interceptors, so they have the option of harassing carriers without much danger. I dunno if that'll resolve everything, but it will at least place more pressure on carriers than they are used to.
QuotePoint defence weapons are not anti fighter weapons. PD weapons are anti-missile, many non-PD weapons are good antifighter weapons like Pulse Laser, Railgun and all the beam weapons. Against bombers, large ballistic turreted weapons do well against them.
Well the reason you equip PD weapons is to deal with ordnance that gets close, which fighters are going to bring. You either want to shoot down their torps or blow them up directly, for which some PD is incidentally decent. While small and midsize weapons are good at knocking out fighters, it's AREA weapons that are intuitively meant to be the answer to swarms. You don't use a slingshot on a swarm of mosquitoes; you get the bug spray. Fighters are fast; far faster than most frigates; ballistics can only keep up with so many. There's plenty of room for PD weapons to also serve as fighter deterrents and I feel like flak ought to be the premier anti-air weapon. It just feels purposely terrible, like it's TRYING not to hit its targets; I think just trimming off a wee bit of the delta of randomness on its detonation might close the gap on fighter swarms a bit without ruining everything else.
I mean think about it. Why are swarms even a problem in the first place? Because current defense weapons can generally only hit one at a time. We have to rely on our offensive weaponry like autopulsers, ballistics and missiles to combat them, none of which have anything resembling reliable area damage. Flak and its cousins wouldn't even need a damage buff or HE type, either; just a little reliability on WHERE they pop. At the very least it would make flak weapons worth the ordnance points, whereas now they're an auto-sell for me.
Problem is, AI doesn't see any problem with huge enemy fighter/bomber swarm approaching it. While proper course of action is usually to backpedal to covering allies and concentrate fire on the swarm before it breaks into individual fighters/or bombers get chance to unload.
I don't agree with this tactic the AI tries to use (in my experience it already does this). It actually hurts the ability of the ship to combat strike craft. The AI is not smart enough to perform these kinds of tactics and all this ends up doing is making most ships never pursue the carrier. I have a feeling this is because individual fighters are still mostly considered "ships" to the AI when they are not ships in function.
Sure, but what you wrote wasQuotePoint defence weapons are not anti fighter weapons. PD weapons are anti-missile, many non-PD weapons are good antifighter weapons like Pulse Laser, Railgun and all the beam weapons. Against bombers, large ballistic turreted weapons do well against them.
Well the reason you equip PD weapons is to deal with ordnance that gets close, which fighters are going to bring. You either want to shoot down their torps or blow them up directly, for which some PD is incidentally decent. While small and midsize weapons are good at knocking out fighters, it's AREA weapons that are intuitively meant to be the answer to swarms. You don't use a slingshot on a swarm of mosquitoes; you get the bug spray. Fighters are fast; far faster than most frigates; ballistics can only keep up with so many. There's plenty of room for PD weapons to also serve as fighter deterrents and I feel like flak ought to be the premier anti-air weapon. It just feels purposely terrible, like it's TRYING not to hit its targets; I think just trimming off a wee bit of the delta of randomness on its detonation might close the gap on fighter swarms a bit without ruining everything else.
I mean think about it. Why are swarms even a problem in the first place? Because current defense weapons can generally only hit one at a time. We have to rely on our offensive weaponry like autopulsers, ballistics and missiles to combat them, none of which have anything resembling reliable area damage. Flak and its cousins wouldn't even need a damage buff or HE type, either; just a little reliability on WHERE they pop. At the very least it would make flak weapons worth the ordnance points, whereas now they're an auto-sell for me.
I feel like part of the reason fighter spam gets so powerful is because point defense weapons don't. Flak cannons and all their variants including the devastator suck, period. They miss 90% of their rounds in my experience thanks to their HIGHLY random detonation range. Other PD weapons have such painfully short range they can do nothing against any sort of real bombing run either. Integrated point defense AI and some skills help with this...but beyond a point it's meaningless as well. It's just an arms race and the fighters win.So which is it? Do you want to shoot down fighters with your PD weapons or shoot down missiles with your PD weapons? You can't say that you can't use PD weapons to shoot down fighters, and then pretend you actually meant to say they can't shoot down missiles, and then say you actually want PD weapons to serve as fighter deterrents. Non-PD weapons are prefectly fine in shooting down both bombers and fighters. It's honestly not a problem to me, so I can't see why it is a problem to you. I can fight the swarms of fighters from Luddic Church/Persean league/Tri-tachyon fleets just fine with normal weapons and PD weapons. Flak cannons seem to work fine to me anyways. They kill missiles, and they kill swarms of missiles with their Area effect.
Problem is, AI doesn't see any problem with huge enemy fighter/bomber swarm approaching it. While proper course of action is usually to backpedal to covering allies and concentrate fire on the swarm before it breaks into individual fighters/or bombers get chance to unload.
I don't agree with this tactic the AI tries to use (in my experience it already does this). It actually hurts the ability of the ship to combat strike craft. The AI is not smart enough to perform these kinds of tactics and all this ends up doing is making most ships never pursue the carrier. I have a feeling this is because individual fighters are still mostly considered "ships" to the AI when they are not ships in function.
Depends on conditions.
For my fleet containing a lot of officer-ed ships with Advanced Countermeasures 3 among other things + pair of Drovers for fighter support, even the most carrier-centric AI compositions, including Nexelerin ones (still far from player Drover spam) are very much counter-able like this. Or more like enemy carries lose all fighters soon after encounter start and become easy targets.
For typical enemy fleets lacking proper weapons and officers vs player's full Drover spam, sure, rushing is the right answer (as long as they are fast enough to not get simply kited indefinitely).
So which is it? Do you want to shoot down fighters with your PD weapons or shoot down missiles with your PD weapons? You can't say that you can't use PD weapons to shoot down fighters, and then pretend you actually meant to say they can't shoot down missiles, and then say you actually want PD weapons to serve as fighter deterrents. Non-PD weapons are prefectly fine in shooting down both bombers and fighters. It's honestly not a problem to me, so I can't see why it is a problem to you. I can fight the swarms of fighters from Luddic Church/Persean league/Tri-tachyon fleets just fine with normal weapons and PD weapons. Flak cannons seem to work fine to me anyways. They kill missiles, and they kill swarms of missiles with their Area effect.
PD, PD_ALSO, ANTI_FTR
Is there a particular reason PD can't, by design, shoot down both? I mean sure I understand not wanting to mess with PD weapon damage too much to avoid rebalancing missiles, but the suggestion seemed more in line with making flak solely better against fighters without touching the effect it would have on missiles.
By now most its appears clear the massed fighters strikes are very effective. I'm not sure I think this is good for the game balance since drovers or other cheap carriers with massed fighters seems overly effective against other fleet compositions. Increasing the effectiveness of point defense/flak or nerfing fighters would penalize smaller deployments of fighters without addressing the issue of massed fighter wings. However, I think have simple solution that will work well to reducing the effect of massive fighter swarms without nerfing fighters and in keeping with the existing mechanics.
Add a limit to the number of active squadrons that can be deployed at once before degrading fighter performance. Perhaps a max of 10-12? squadrons deployed at once then start applying penalties to fighter performance as the number increase. In game lore this would be limited fighter channels for coordination. This follows the similar mechanics in game that penalize doing the same thing to extremes. You could even add a carrier hullmod for a new battlecruiser sized carrier that raises the max limit since you can't spam battle cruisers.
Thoughts?
I'm unsure what can be done to fix that, though, as it is pretty much basic that "the more you have it, the more each single unit does". V: Flaks being better, maybe? Not sure.Probably revert to how fighters worked before 0.8a. Fighters as ships, and carriers use OP for guns instead of fighters.
I might have to give battle carriers a go at some point, just stuff em full of mining drones and then go ape on their loadouts.I tried warship-lite loadouts with pods or talons on dedicated carriers, but they are not as effective as minimally or unarmed carrier with good fighters. They can work, but they are not the best.
The thing is, neither of those ships is a battlecarrier. I think only the Legion qualifies for that (maaaybe Mora) since everything else either has no firepower or too few flight decks for its size (Odyssey).I might have to give battle carriers a go at some point, just stuff em full of mining drones and then go ape on their loadouts.I tried warship-lite loadouts with pods or talons on dedicated carriers, but they are not as effective as minimally or unarmed carrier with good fighters. They can work, but they are not the best.
One place for mining drones is Odyssey. The drones are free and can tank a little, which is okay for a burn-happy Odyssey with a brawling (double plasma) loadout.
The thing is, neither of those ships is a battlecarrier. I think only the Legion qualifies for that (maaaybe Mora) since everything else either has no firepower or too few flight decks for its size (Odyssey).Heron could work. Heron outfitted for brawling could bully small ships. Currently, Heron has no firepower because it needs to spend OP on fighters. Before 0.8a, it did not need to spend OP on fighters. All OP went to weapons and warship things.
*EDIT*There's no reason why PD weapons can't shoot down both fighters and missiles. In fact they can and do so, as they operate just like non-PD weapons against fighters. For instance, a sim Dominator deals with fighters reasonably well with their PD weapons.So which is it? Do you want to shoot down fighters with your PD weapons or shoot down missiles with your PD weapons? You can't say that you can't use PD weapons to shoot down fighters, and then pretend you actually meant to say they can't shoot down missiles, and then say you actually want PD weapons to serve as fighter deterrents. Non-PD weapons are prefectly fine in shooting down both bombers and fighters. It's honestly not a problem to me, so I can't see why it is a problem to you. I can fight the swarms of fighters from Luddic Church/Persean league/Tri-tachyon fleets just fine with normal weapons and PD weapons. Flak cannons seem to work fine to me anyways. They kill missiles, and they kill swarms of missiles with their Area effect.
Is there a particular reason PD can't, by design, shoot down both? I mean sure I understand not wanting to mess with PD weapon damage too much to avoid rebalancing missiles, but the suggestion seemed more in line with making flak solely better against fighters without touching the effect it would have on missiles.
I'm unsure what can be done to fix that, though, as it is pretty much basic that "the more you have it, the more each single unit does". V: Flaks being better, maybe? Not sure.Probably revert to how fighters worked before 0.8a. Fighters as ships, and carriers use OP for guns instead of fighters.
I really dont know how to balance swarms without nerfing fighters. At least they must be nerfed in some mods, where single fighter can facetank plasma barrage.
In vanilla fighters are OK. May be you can balance them adding peak operation time penalty for carrier which replaces too much fighters... Like: minus 2 or 3 seconds per fighter. It will make them just like phase ships, loosing their CR the faster the more they spam their main ability.
(Also, fighter swarms were still an issue pre-0.8a so a reversion to that system wouldn't solve that)If fleet cap is still (effectively) thirty, there is no way to pack as many fighters-as-ships as twenty Drovers can with fighters-as-missiles. I suppose a carrier fleet with pre-0.8a fighters would appear something like three carriers, twenty-something wings, and the rest support ships. Capacity will probably be terrible because fighters have no capacity.
*EDIT*There's no reason why PD weapons can't shoot down both fighters and missiles. In fact they can and do so, as they operate just like non-PD weapons against fighters. For instance, a sim Dominator deals with fighters reasonably well with their PD weapons.So which is it? Do you want to shoot down fighters with your PD weapons or shoot down missiles with your PD weapons? You can't say that you can't use PD weapons to shoot down fighters, and then pretend you actually meant to say they can't shoot down missiles, and then say you actually want PD weapons to serve as fighter deterrents. Non-PD weapons are prefectly fine in shooting down both bombers and fighters. It's honestly not a problem to me, so I can't see why it is a problem to you. I can fight the swarms of fighters from Luddic Church/Persean league/Tri-tachyon fleets just fine with normal weapons and PD weapons. Flak cannons seem to work fine to me anyways. They kill missiles, and they kill swarms of missiles with their Area effect.
Is there a particular reason PD can't, by design, shoot down both? I mean sure I understand not wanting to mess with PD weapon damage too much to avoid rebalancing missiles, but the suggestion seemed more in line with making flak solely better against fighters without touching the effect it would have on missiles.
What I am objecting to is the nonsensical switching of arguments to suit whatever he happens to be writing. First he says that PD weapons don't anti-fighter properly, so I let him know that PD weapons are anti-missile specifically and that many non-PD weapons are good anti-fighter weapons. Then he quotes me and goes on a ramble about all sorts of things as if he is replying to me some of which contradicts his prior post. He has no reason to quote someone and talk as if he is replying to something that I did not write. If he wanted to write all that, he could had done it without quoting me.
If fleet cap is still (effectively) thirty, there is no way to pack as many fighters-as-ships as twenty Drovers can with fighters-as-missiles. I suppose a carrier fleet with pre-0.8a fighters would appear something like three carriers, twenty-something wings, and the rest support ships. Capacity will probably be terrible because fighters have no capacity.