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Author Topic: Fighter Redesign  (Read 148431 times)

ANGRYABOUTELVES

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Re: Fighter Redesign
« Reply #345 on: February 19, 2017, 07:09:31 PM »

The thing is, 4-5 extra hullmods are a tremendous amplifier, translating into better range on weapons, stronger shields and more resilient hull.
It won't translate into longer ranged weapons because every single ship destroyer size or larger already gets ITU, no exceptions, unless it's being built by the AI. Wider and more efficient shields, more flux capacity, more armor, more hull, sure. You can do a lot with OP, but one of the only things it can't buy is weapon mounts. The Storm's weapons package is decidedly below battlecruiser grade and will stay there no matter how much OP it has. That's why it has flight decks.
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whatdoesthisbuttondo

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Re: Fighter Redesign
« Reply #346 on: February 20, 2017, 02:41:19 PM »

My point is ITU isn't built-in, so it isn't free, it is a choice where you have to make concessions.

Now if you're tight on OP with your weapons package already, coming up with extra OP means you'll
have to cut down somewhere.

Keep in mind that carriers, under the current system, have OP to fit a full weapons package,
and some to spare for vents/caps and maybe a hullmod or two. All other ships (typically) do as well.

Under the new system, given the (endgame) carrier will need the same as above, plus say
25 OP per bay for (endgame) fighters, putting cheap fighters (say 5 OP per, on 6 bays) there means
you've freed up 125 OP.

That makes the new carrier quite a bit more flexible than needed imho, and it complicates balance
considerations, when suddenly the problem is "there isn't a 5th useful subsystem I could get for my
leftover 30 OP" after you've maxed on vents, caps and weapons, instead of "do I take ITU or HS".

Same goes the other way round, if to a lesser extend. Say a cheap escort carrier that only sports
a couple of light turrets that don't do much in the grand scheme of things anyway. Do a full fit,
or run with only the smallest PD you can find and cram endgame fighters in there.

Hence imho it would be better to have a more fine-grained control over fighter size restriction, e.g. endgame
fighters require "large/hightech/whatever" bays plus a *moderate* amount of extra OP (e.g. 4 vs 7), especially
once mods come into play where modders deliberately stray from vanilla conventions.

(Disclaimer: I've actually read the blog, and for the record I don't see that much of an issue with the numbers
presented in there. However, I don't think that'll necessarily hold up for a heavily modded game, especially with
factions that revolve around "strong fighters", as they'd need to beef up more under the new system to stay true
to the theme, with OP costs on their fighters going along with it.)
« Last Edit: February 20, 2017, 02:47:39 PM by whatdoesthisbuttondo »
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ANGRYABOUTELVES

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Re: Fighter Redesign
« Reply #347 on: February 20, 2017, 03:02:08 PM »

My point is ITU isn't built-in, so it isn't free, it is a choice where you have to make concessions.
No, it's not a choice, it's an OP tax. You must take it. Alex has said that capitals are balanced around having ITU, and the Storm is a capital.
http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=11477.msg195608#msg195608
Apparently you're allowed to not have ITU on your ship just in case you want to do a "specialized build" but I can't think of a specialized build for a capital that wouldn't benefit more from ITU than whatever else you could do with the OP. Capitals aren't allowed to have Safety Overrides, so that's right out.

Now if you're tight on OP with your weapons package already, coming up with extra OP means you'll
have to cut down somewhere.

Keep in mind that carriers, under the current system, have OP to fit a full weapons package,
and some to spare for vents/caps and maybe a hullmod or two. All other ships (typically) do as well.

Under the new system, given the (endgame) carrier will need the same as above, plus say
25 OP per bay for (endgame) fighters, putting cheap fighters (say 5 OP per, on 6 bays) there means
you've freed up 125 OP.

That makes the new carrier quite a bit more flexible than needed imho, and it complicates balance
considerations, when suddenly the problem is "there isn't a 5th useful subsystem I could get for my
leftover 30 OP" after you've maxed on vents, caps and weapons, instead of "do I take ITU or HS".

Same goes the other way round, if to a lesser extend. Say a cheap escort carrier that only sports
a couple of light turrets that don't do much in the grand scheme of things anyway. Do a full fit,
or run with only the smallest PD you can find and cram endgame fighters in there.

Hence imho it would be better to have a more fine-grained control over fighter size restriction, e.g. endgame
fighters require "large/hightech/whatever" bays plus a *moderate* amount of extra OP (e.g. 4 vs 7), especially
once mods come into play where modders deliberately stray from vanilla conventions.

Quote from the blogpost, because your concerns have already been addressed in the blogpost:

Quote
There’s a bit of a trap here – it’s tempting to balance fighters against other weapons in terms of their cost. If we do this, however, carriers would need an obscene number of ordnance points – to support both fighter bays and normal weapon mounts. But then, a ship that’s ostensibly a carrier could instead invest those points into hullmods, flux vents, capacitors, and so forth – becoming a more effective direct-combat ship. That a carrier should remain powerful while giving up on fighters doesn’t feel right.

To address this, fighters are balanced around a base cost of zero for the “worst” fighter. (Hello, Talon interceptor! We meet again.) Better fighters cost more ordnance points, but are still superior to weapons point-for-point.

But won’t that mean that carriers will be fitted with fighters exclusively, since they’re better? There’s certainly a benefit to giving up some weapons to install better fighters, but so long as the fighter cost increase over the baseline is balanced against the increase in effectiveness, there are tradeoffs to consider.

For a more specific example, you could have a wing of Talons for zero ordnance points. A Broadsword wing costs 8 points, and compared to your weapon and hullmod options for those 8 points, a Broadsword wing is really good! But compared to 8 points spent elsewhere and a free Talon wing? It starts to look more even.

So no, that's not going to happen. Carriers aren't going to get 25 OP per flight deck, they're going to get much less. Both of the situations you consider problems (cheap escort carrier with endgame fighters and a powerful endgame carrier with crap fighters and more hullmods) aren't actually problems, they're legitimate strategies that force the player to make trade-offs between them.
« Last Edit: February 20, 2017, 03:09:04 PM by ANGRYABOUTELVES »
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whatdoesthisbuttondo

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Re: Fighter Redesign
« Reply #348 on: February 20, 2017, 04:11:19 PM »

So no, that's not going to happen. Carriers aren't going to get 25 OP per flight deck, they're going to get much less.

That's not going to happen for *vanilla* carriers. But you can't exactly balance strong modded fighters against
vanilla fighter simply by means of OP without running into one of two issues:

1) player uses vanilla carrier with (OP-cheap, strong) mod fighters
2) player uses vanilla fighters with (OP-heavy) mod carriers

Both of the situations you consider problems (cheap escort carrier with endgame fighters and a powerful endgame carrier with crap fighters and more hullmods) aren't actually problems, they're legitimate strategies that force the player to make trade-offs between them.

Even for vanilla, and I already said I think it'll probably be less of a problem there, the first thing that came to mind was the possibility
to beef up carriers as combat vessels with a bunch of zero-OP AI-distracting decoys. Some might see that as legitimate strategy, some
as unintended metagaming.

Sure the player should have fitting choice in carriers, but imho this shouldn't go as far as (bad real-life analogy incoming) the HMS Ocean
launching F/A-18s because they removed the Phalanxes, or the USS Ronald Reagon acting as a gunboat while swarming the enemy with
thousands of DJI Phantoms.
« Last Edit: February 20, 2017, 04:13:49 PM by whatdoesthisbuttondo »
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Techhead

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Re: Fighter Redesign
« Reply #349 on: February 20, 2017, 04:33:56 PM »

So no, that's not going to happen. Carriers aren't going to get 25 OP per flight deck, they're going to get much less.

That's not going to happen for *vanilla* carriers. But you can't exactly balance strong modded fighters against
vanilla fighter simply by means of OP without running into one of two issues:

1) player uses vanilla carrier with (OP-cheap, strong) mod fighters
2) player uses vanilla fighters with (OP-heavy) mod carriers

These two 'issues' are practically equivalent to the existing problem if you're using OP-underpriced mod weapons on your vanilla warship or... nigh anything on high-OP mod warships.

Even for vanilla, and I already said I think it'll probably be less of a problem there, the first thing that came to mind was the possibility
to beef up carriers as combat vessels with a bunch of zero-OP AI-distracting decoys. Some might see that as legitimate strategy, some
as unintended metagaming.

Sure the player should have fitting choice in carriers, but imho this shouldn't go as far as (bad real-life analogy incoming) the HMS Ocean
launching F/A-18s because they removed the Phalanxes, or the USS Ronald Reagon acting as a gunboat while swarming the enemy with
thousands of DJI Phantoms.

This is more or less a consequence of ordnance points being an abstraction of the logistical ability to equip, supply, and maintain weapons, fighters, sophisticated equipment, and whatever else is installed on your boat. Conceptually, there's only so much materiel that a crew can keep running with the equipment they have. High-OP guns mean more abstract man-hours spent keeping shooty things shooting; high-OP fighters mean more time spent on the piles of spare parts that a carrier hurls into the void; installing Safety Overrides means engineers worrying over the aftermarket kludges they've installed to eke every last drop performance out of the ship.
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ANGRYABOUTELVES

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Re: Fighter Redesign
« Reply #350 on: February 20, 2017, 04:38:27 PM »

That's not going to happen for *vanilla* carriers. But you can't exactly balance strong modded fighters against
vanilla fighter simply by means of OP without running into one of two issues:

1) player uses vanilla carrier with (OP-cheap, strong) mod fighters
2) player uses vanilla fighters with (OP-heavy) mod carriers

The solution is not to have fighters that are both powerful and OP cheap, or carriers that are too OP-heavy; i.e. don't use overpowered mods. The reason mod fighters are so strong right now is because vanilla fighters got left behind by the officer changes; with the fighter/carrier rebalance, they no longer need to be that powerful to be viable.

Even for vanilla, and I already said I think it'll probably be less of a problem there, the first thing that came to mind was the possibility
to beef up carriers as combat vessels with a bunch of zero-OP AI-distracting decoys. Some might see that as legitimate strategy, some
as unintended metagaming.

Sure the player should have fitting choice in carriers, but imho this shouldn't go as far as (bad real-life analogy incoming) the HMS Ocean
launching F/A-18s because they removed the Phalanxes, or the USS Ronald Reagon acting as a gunboat while swarming the enemy with
thousands of DJI Phantoms.

It is explicitly a legitimate strategy. "For a more specific example, you could have a wing of Talons for zero ordnance points. A Broadsword wing costs 8 points, and compared to your weapon and hullmod options for those 8 points, a Broadsword wing is really good! But compared to 8 points spent elsewhere and a free Talon wing? It starts to look more even."

And yes, that is a bad analogy, because the modular nature of ships in Starsector inevitably leads to those sorts of situations. Besides, the USS Ronald Reagan acting as a gunboat while swarming the enemy with thousands of DJI Phantoms would look really cool and be fun to play with, and isn't that what matters?
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whatdoesthisbuttondo

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Re: Fighter Redesign
« Reply #351 on: February 20, 2017, 04:52:05 PM »

Besides, the USS Ronald Reagan acting as a gunboat while swarming the enemy with thousands of DJI Phantoms would look really cool and be fun to play with, and isn't that what matters?

Heh, I'll have to agree there. If you tape a Galaxy Note 7 to each of the DJIs, it might even increase the ships combat value...

Still not convinced about placing the blame on "overpowered" mods alone, if you apply the very same logic here then
it is only legitimate to have fighters (or a weapon) with 3-4 times the combat value, at the appropriate OP cost. There is nothing
overpowered about that by itself, it is just flavor.

The problem comes when OP alone are not fine grained enough to balance out, and with weapons we have two factors, OP and slot
size. In my opinion, that would make sense for fighters as well. We don't have to agree though ;D
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ANGRYABOUTELVES

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Re: Fighter Redesign
« Reply #352 on: February 20, 2017, 05:51:19 PM »

The problem comes when OP alone are not fine grained enough to balance out, and with weapons we have two factors, OP and slot size. In my opinion, that would make sense for fighters as well. We don't have to agree though ;D
True, if fighters are treated like the weapons of a carrier, then having fighter slot sizes wouldn't be out of place. However, fighters have many more balancing factors than just OP. More balancing factors than weapons do, seeing as fighter wings have both the performance of the weapons on the fighter as well as the performance of the fighter itself. Powerful weapons on a fighter can be balanced out by the fighter having poor flux stats, while the carrier's flux stats remain the same. Wing size is another factor that I don't believe weapons have a counterpart to; the very small Wasp comes 6 to a wing, while the larger Gladius has only 2 fighters to a wing.
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Midnight Kitsune

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Re: Fighter Redesign
« Reply #353 on: February 20, 2017, 06:57:33 PM »

The problem comes when OP alone are not fine grained enough to balance out, and with weapons we have two factors, OP and slot size. In my opinion, that would make sense for fighters as well. We don't have to agree though ;D
True, if fighters are treated like the weapons of a carrier, then having fighter slot sizes wouldn't be out of place. However, fighters have many more balancing factors than just OP. More balancing factors than weapons do, seeing as fighter wings have both the performance of the weapons on the fighter as well as the performance of the fighter itself. Powerful weapons on a fighter can be balanced out by the fighter having poor flux stats, while the carrier's flux stats remain the same. Wing size is another factor that I don't believe weapons have a counterpart to; the very small Wasp comes 6 to a wing, while the larger Gladius has only 2 fighters to a wing.
Fighter weapons cost flux to fire on fighters. IIRC Or maybe that was only for shielded fighters...
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ANGRYABOUTELVES

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Re: Fighter Redesign
« Reply #354 on: February 20, 2017, 07:15:56 PM »

Fighter weapons cost flux to fire on fighters. IIRC Or maybe that was only for shielded fighters...
Yes? That's what I was saying, a powerful weapon on a fighter can be balanced by the fighter having poor flux stats that you cannot improve through spending carrier OP. That is, no matter how many OP you dump into flux dissipation/capacity on the carrier, a fighter equipped to that carrier will not see improved flux preformance.
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Cik

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Re: Fighter Redesign
« Reply #355 on: February 20, 2017, 07:49:12 PM »

at least in vanilla the fighter gunboat thing is going to be a non-issue. there is not a single carrier that makes a decent gunship, most of them barely even qualify for the title "missile support" and since LRMs are mostly a joke and aren't going to get better that's hardly an issue.

i mean, what are you going to make a gunship? an astral? you plan to close with the enemy in a very vulnerable carrier that will never be able to disengage and primarily relies on spammable missiles (which it can spam from across the map anyway?) there's simply nothing to worry about. probably the "shootiest" is the heron, which has what, a single heavy blaster? tops?

modwise i can't even really see it being a problem either. you can remove your fighters and spam slightly more mods, but let's be honest at level 40+ you can fit everything you want and then some on every ship in the game and that probably is not going to change.

fighters with op cost doesn't seem like a big deal, unless it's balanced really poorly and then it'll be a bad change i guess. the real question is, are fighters actually going to be good? and that will decide whether fighters are good or not; the carriers almost don't even come into the equation, same as now where they're essentially a non-factor in any engagement. to even think about changing that, you'd have to retool every carrier in the game pretty much from scratch.
« Last Edit: February 20, 2017, 07:51:13 PM by Cik »
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Techhead

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Re: Fighter Redesign
« Reply #356 on: February 20, 2017, 10:10:11 PM »

at least in vanilla the fighter gunboat thing is going to be a non-issue. there is not a single carrier that makes a decent gunship, most of them barely even qualify for the title "missile support" and since LRMs are mostly a joke and aren't going to get better that's hardly an issue.

i mean, what are you going to make a gunship? an astral? you plan to close with the enemy in a very vulnerable carrier that will never be able to disengage and primarily relies on spammable missiles (which it can spam from across the map anyway?) there's simply nothing to worry about. probably the "shootiest" is the heron, which has what, a single heavy blaster? tops?

Did you forget about the Odyssey battlecruiser? Or just the fact that it has a flight deck?
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Midnight Kitsune

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Re: Fighter Redesign
« Reply #357 on: February 20, 2017, 11:15:46 PM »

Fighter weapons cost flux to fire on fighters. IIRC Or maybe that was only for shielded fighters...
Yes? That's what I was saying, a powerful weapon on a fighter can be balanced by the fighter having poor flux stats that you cannot improve through spending carrier OP. That is, no matter how many OP you dump into flux dissipation/capacity on the carrier, a fighter equipped to that carrier will not see improved flux preformance.
Actually I mistyped. I meant to say that some or all fighters have a mod that makes all weapons cost ZERO flux to fire
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Cik

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Re: Fighter Redesign
« Reply #358 on: February 20, 2017, 11:17:58 PM »

>odysee
>a ship i have ever seen in this game

no
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ANGRYABOUTELVES

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Re: Fighter Redesign
« Reply #359 on: February 20, 2017, 11:39:33 PM »

Actually I mistyped. I meant to say that some or all fighters have a mod that makes all weapons cost ZERO flux to fire
I'm pretty sure that no such hullmod exists. However, many fighters do have more flux dissipation than they can actually use. The Wasp, for example, has 1 PD laser which costs 75 flux/second to fire, and 100 flux dissipation. That might be what you're seeing.

And if such a hullmod exists, I would expect that it wouldn't be put on fighters which are balanced by having poor flux stats.
« Last Edit: February 20, 2017, 11:47:41 PM by ANGRYABOUTELVES »
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