Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Kanil]

I like the idea of being able to slap a fighter deck on most ships. Looking forward to carrying around a few fighters on some big ships for fun.

Can you install the extra flight deck on a carrier for even more fighters?

[Gothars]

I'm curious about the EMP susceptibility of flight decks, too.


Also, I a have a bit of a problem with Hammer torpedoes on Daggers, thematically. I mean, a improvised mining charge on a high-tech bomber? That's like a F-35 dropping a pressure cooker bomb, it doesn't make sense.

I'd suggest to either re-brand Hammers as something more modern, Daggers as something more low-tech (mid-line?), or introduce a new low-yield high tech torpedo for them (maybe with EMP component?).

e/ninja'd


For broadswords, a nice way to sell the jamming visually would be to have the fighters deploy flares. You could make those either functionless, or actually working as distractors, which would necessitate less  armor on the Broadswords. Yeah, it's visual clutter, but a bit of a colorful sensory overload seems appropriate for the task of jamming.

So, if fighters can be "equipped", is there any possiblity that other commodity can be installed?

You might be on to something. Remember those techy looking things from the last blogpost?

Spoiler

My guess for the new items: Neural skill-implants, red for combat-, yellow-green for leadership- and blue for technology-aptitude. Those little tails remind me of neuron dendrites

Hmm. Both very wrong and very right at the same time.

[close]

Maybe they are for ships, not characters...

There you see the stats of how good you fared. Starfared I might say.

*chuckle*

[Embolism]

I'd be happier if Daggers get Harpoons even, it may be a massive nerf (and completely inferior to Thunders assuming they're still the same) but at least it won't be completely out of place.

Alternatively there could be a fighter version of the Reaper that has half the yield (i.e. dumb-fire Atropos pretending to be a Reaper). It's already done for fighter swarmers so why not.

As an aside... I find a wing of two strike craft rather odd. I feel like three should  be the minimum size for a wing, though I realise that can be a bit difficult to balance.

[Cycerin]

Not a fan of the PD distraction mechanic based on how it looks on paper. I think opening the way for a bomb run should be emergent instead of being hard coded. But since distracting PD mostly revolves around spam, that would just make sure Flak outpaces all other PD by a massive degree. So I can see the conundrum. Some kind of visual indication, no matter how subtle, would probably feel good there.

But the rest sounds solid, and ultimately will make carriers way more interesting. Making a loadout for a carrier is now actually a big deal with interesting tradeoffs to be made, not to mention the added feel of "agency" to fighter mechanics both AI and player-wise. Good job.

E: also, about the Terminator drone, I think since the phase cloak change it hasn't been in a good spot, and always felt the Tempest isnt really the right ship for it. A high-tech carrier or support ship, maybe. The Tempest is not as fun to pilot as other high-tech frigates for me because of the hands-off nature of the T drone. An active system that lowers speed to gain firepower or staying power would be fun on a frigate.. hmm. But tricky for the AI.

Ultimately having drones handled as a type of built in fighter rather than a ship system might be a better solution, but there'd need to be some sort of way to show their reduced autonomy.

[Sabotsas]

I also think it would be interesting if the ECCM hullmod acted as a debuff to the PD Jammer, after all it would make a hullmod that is not extremely useful in many cases just a bit more so. It also would make sense, after all, ECCM in reality is to combat jamming and why not make it so here as well and not just for missiles?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_counter-countermeasure

Hey, that's a really cool idea! Plus it's one more place to let the player know the PD jamming is a thing. Made a note.

@ Alex: First of all, nice and informative blog post, as always :-)
@ David: the LPC-placeholder-icons look pretty neat already, looking forward to seeing the polished version.
 

---------------------------------------------------
Jammer / fighter mechanic:

Although I am still a bit skeptical about fighters as "weapons", tightly integrated with carriers,
your blog post has me somewhat convinced that this might just play out nicely and offers fun interactions / choices.

From a game mechanical point of view the sacrificial fighters make a lot of sense but from a lore perspective...
"Tough and agile, the Broadsword carries a point-defense jammer that draws defensive fire away from high-value targets like bombers and their payloads. "
Who in their right mind would want to fly such a thing? Isn't is bad enough to sit in a poorly armored fighter to start with? Now they strapped big red lights on it that say "shoot me please".

A few ideas:
Tweak fighter speed / dodge or let them drop decoys (with limited HP / limited time) which act as a bullet magnet.
Could just take the flare ability and rework it for that purpose?

That said, the jammer mechanic has a lot of potential in my opinion and could be expanded on (especially for the high tech-fighters).
A few ideas for the jammer effect:
- reduce: PD turning speed
- reduce: PD fire rate
- reduce: PD accuracy / weapon spread
- reduce: PD range
- disable PD
- increase PD flux costs

Are there any plans to tweak the fighters further (comparable with how all other ships work?). (besides skills).
For example for each wing could be 4 slots that could be filled with buy able enhancements (just adds another layer of customizability). [see attached picture]  

Spoiler

http://imgur.com/a/bP9Z6

[close]

A few ideas for fighter enhancements:
- speed
- hp
- shield
- weapons
- range
- formations
- ai / officer behavior (aggressive / cautious)

---------------------------------------------------
Some questions about modability:
- Is range (3-4k atm) easily modable? If yes, will SS native AI make use of increased range or is custom AI needed?
- Will fighter still be easily modable (speed, turning speed, weapons, behavior, formation)?
- Will it still possible to fly a fighter in dev-mode? (via take control over ship/fighter)

---------------------------------------------------
AI tweeks?:

Are there currently any AI tweeks planned (beside what was already mentioned in the blog-post / thread) concerning:
- Ships / fighters - interaction
- Interceptor / fighter / bomber - interaction ==> Combined formation of several wings
- How does the AI launch successful attacks with mixed fighter/bomber groups? It is just the speed difference (fighters arrive earlier) or something more sophisticated?
If it is just the speed difference this could potentially lead to problems, depending on engagement range or mods.

---------------------------------------------------
Some questions about the UI:
- Could you please explain what the fighter/bomber-wing-symbols in screenshot 1 mean in a bit more detail (AFAIK: symbol=glowing ==> bomber still have ammo / active engagement)
- In the screenshot it seems that there is only place for 6 wings (maybe 7), that would be enough for an Astral /w "Converted Hangar" hullmod ==> Any idea about mods with more than 7 decks?
[Possible solution: replace with %-bars for hp @ fighters, interceptors, bombers ///Disadvantage: Less information, information portrayed is less obvious for inexperienced player]

---------------------------------------------------
Some general questions / observations:
- When a carrier is lost but the wings escape successfully, how does this impact salvage? (e.g. salvageable LPCs?)
- With some new players complaining about a challenging early game it might be worth keeping the (relatively easy to fight) fighters around in small (pirate) fleets.
An poor or even "ill advised" frigate carrier might do the trick here and even adds some flavor.
- The Astral in the screenshot seems OP starved. Not even all weapon slots are equipped, no hullmod and only a mix between good and mediocre fighters...
Please keep an eye on that. I am looking forward to see how balanced this is. Tweaking should be easy though (either OP increase or fighter OP decrease).
- Dagger: Lore wise it does not seem to make sense for them to use Hammer torpedos instead of Reapers. Maybe reduce wing size to 2?
- Trident: I am very glad to see that they are still around since you thought about deleting them a while back
- (D)-variant of Hyperion: good idea, since currently it is a pretty but very rare ship. Without the jump-capability it much easier to balance it vs other ships.
- (Somewhat unrelated to the blog-post): When selecting hullmod(s) the window closes after selecting one. This means opening the menu several times for several hullmods - a tedious process. How is that handled for the carrier wings? Are the boxes working more like weapon-slots?



In my response I mainly touched the points I thought I could give some (valuable?) feedback on.
The "Fighter Replacement"-mechanic looks good on paper but I will need to see how this will work out ingame first before
making a judgment on that.

Thanks for the update!
I am looking forward to the next blog-post / release :-)

Kind Regards
Sabotsas

[Orikson]

Oh my, I'm late to notice this. Really interesting. I wonder how to modify fighters and carrier hulls to fit these upcoming changes?

A lot will change certainly.

[Megas]

E: also, about the Terminator drone, I think since the phase cloak change it hasn't been in a good spot, and always felt the Tempest isnt really the right ship for it. A high-tech carrier or support ship, maybe. The Tempest is not as fun to pilot as other high-tech frigates for me because of the hands-off nature of the T drone. An active system that lowers speed to gain firepower or staying power would be fun on a frigate.. hmm. But tricky for the AI.

Active is not always better or more fun, just one more thing the player needs to think about or micromanage.  All that matters in the end is how effective abilities are.  If two hypothetical abilities with no downsides are the same except one is passive and another is active, I will take passive.

With that said, if drones are basically fighters or vice-versa now, then having a frigate-sized carrier does not make much sense unless the ship was built specifically for the job (like Shepherd), or jury-rigged to do it (like Mudskipper II for heavy weapons).  Tempest seems to be a full-blown dedicated combat ship.

[Wyvern]

Not a fan of the PD distraction mechanic based on how it looks on paper. I think opening the way for a bomb run should be emergent instead of being hard coded. But since distracting PD mostly revolves around spam, that would just make sure Flak outpaces all other PD by a massive degree. So I can see the conundrum. Some kind of visual indication, no matter how subtle, would probably feel good there.

Amusingly, I have in current versions had to deliberately prioritize Broadswords as kill targets.  Making them PD magnets makes sense for trying to slip torpedos through against low or mid tech targets, but for any high tech ship with primarily shield-based defenses, prioritizing killing Broadswords is actually what I want.  Plus, y'know, the insanity of strapping pilots into flying decoys.

In short, I don't think they're the right ship for that.  If we're going to have EW decoys, I'd expect to see those as either zero-crew drones, high tech EW platform ships with decent shields, or maybe even specialized dagger-E bombers that fire a decoy missile (make it look like the Reaper, but white rather than red).

I'm also a little bit concerned how this will impact the smaller carriers.  If an Astral works well with, say, four wings of daggers and two wings of EW fighters... what do you do with the poor little Condor that can only fit two wings?  Fitting in EW fighters costs half your firepower.

Ultimately having drones handled as a type of built in fighter rather than a ship system might be a better solution, but there'd need to be some sort of way to show their reduced autonomy.

Assuming fighter max range can be set per-fighter-type, that's easy: just make the drones not really able to roam as far as the real fighters.

Hmm. High energy focus might be nice on the Tempest, actually.

No!  No no no no.  While that would be a potent complement to the Tempest's weapon loadout, the Tempest (especially assuming it's keeping the terminator drone as a built-in LPC) does not need a strong ship system - I don't want to see another Hyperion where a previously good ship gets itself elevated to god-tier and then balanced by becoming too expensive to ever actually use.  That's why I suggested giving it the Missile Autoforge - it fits well with the terminator drone, giving the ship a feel of "this thing has an advanced internal factory, capable of replicating munitions on the fly" - but with only a single small missile point for it to synergize with, the autoforge isn't going to make the Tempest vastly more powerful.

[CrashToDesktop]

Christ, I actually missed this.  The end of an age certainly, maybe even one greater than when the Trylobot epoch ended.

[Megas]

Like Wyvern, when it comes to fighters, I generally prioritize machine gun (or other kinetic armed) fighters first because they make your ships lose the flux war the fastest.  EDIT:  Also, if a ship lost its armor, then Talons become much more dangerous and should be eliminated immediately before their Vulcans rip through hull.

I do not know about autoforge on Tempest.  It is thematic, but Tempest is one of those ships where I gladly sacrifice missiles to fit everything else more important.  Well, (currently) I can fit a missile rack if I use Heavy Blaster and Tactical Laser, but it I use two medium weapons, only 0 OP missiles get used.

EDIT:  If I do have OP to afford a missile rack on Tempest, Salamander is a no-brainer because it regenerates and it is simply too good.  Autoforge would not help this.

EDIT:  I like terminator drone most as pseudo-PD.  Without it and a narrow shield, Tempest has no PD, unless it uses both mounts for PD (which defeats its purpose).  I probably would ditch the Tempest if it lost the drone for a non-defensive system.  Something like Active Flares, Phase Skimmer, or Damper Field would be useful if the drone has to go.

[Ghoti]

I love the look of this change, big time!

Did you consider having different sized fighterbays? Large/Medium/Small, just like weapons?

It seems a bit weird to me to attach a hull mod to a mule, which allows it to launch tridents () or xyphose (), even if in small numbers.

[Dri]

Could you share any info about the new Khopesh rocket bomber? I'm guessing it has an Annihilator rocket launcher on it - does it fire a single salvo of 5 rockets or what?

[Nick XR]

This is super cool, now it'll be possible I imagine to find ancient fighter plans or something during salvage!  I think the best compliment I can give about this

Two thoughts:

* The old meta in vanilla vs fleets that had multiple carriers seemed to always be "Find and kill the fighter hoses ASAP".  Do you feel like it now plays differently in this scenario?

* Since all crew, fuel and supplies are the same, would it perhaps make more sense to represent them as a slider rather than something in inventory?  Fuel, Crew and Supplies always struck me a something that should be represented and interacted with differently since it's not so much cargo as the cost of doing business, and usually at a scale that's 10-100x everything else.

[cjuicy]

Why does Macross come to mind... Someone should make a mod for it.

[Gothars]

Oh yeah, about that crew level removal: any new thoughts on specialized crew types beside marines (engineers, medics)?

(Oh man, good luck answering this avalanche of questions!)