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[Alex]

Per my earlier point, an Astral loaded with interceptors is the best example of where it might be useful, and it's still a waste of an Astral and supplies. I mean, are you really going to want to outfit, maintain, and deploy an Astral to hunt down frigates and provide fighter escorts?

Still, it's definitely one of the best examples; could also see some other loadouts being potentially useful - such as two groups of 2x bomber 1x heavy fighter, or splitting bombers and heavy fighters to have finer control of the arrival timing.

Again, I'm not saying it'd be 100% useless in every situation. It's very much not clear what good controls for that look like, and then there's dev time. My assessment is that given its limited utility, it's not worth it, and honestly, that's not likely to change without some of the considerations also changing. I may revisit that at some point, but, really... would you want me to do that, or work on something like outposts?

But even that aside, I don't think that finer-grained control would necessarily be an improvement to gameplay, especially in light of what it might cost in control complexity.

[Gothars]

Outposts! Outposts!  


(An idea though, for if there's ever more of a need to address this: "autofire" for fighter control (shift+Z), where your fighters automatically escort nearby allies or engage targets (multiple if appropriate), and you can use "r" to focus weapons.)

[BillyRueben]

What exactly DO fighters do when you have them set to engage with no target? Fight the nearest ship?

[Darloth]

Yeah, if you want to avoid the complexity but allow the feature, provide a mode where you can say to your 6 fighter wing:

"Go do something useful but not here.  Go on.  Shoo - find someone to escort, someone to bomb, and someone to intercept, ideally different someones".

If that were a toggle, you could then use it, and untoggle it to collapse your fighters onto one important target later.

re: BillyRueben - in my experience they pick a target nearby and attack it, but I haven't tested it.  It seems to be a bit shorter than the total engagement range, but that's probably perceptual, and I think it's always one target, but... I'm not sure.  It's hard to tell in the middle of battle, we should probably watch and see specifically.

[Alex]

If you don't have a target, they'll go after the nearest target, decided individually for each wing, with consideration for the wing's role. ... so, yeah, they'll split up.

Hmm. That's kind of a neat idea, yeah, an "autofire" mode for fighters.

[Gothars]

Another issue that "fighter auto-targeting" would help solve: More than once I had my fighters where I wanted them, far away about to bring some enemy down, but then got attacked by some other ship. Now you have to choose between your fighters finishing their job, or your weapon systems (especially missiles) working to take out your attacker. You can work around it, but it is pretty cumbersome at the moment (pause, target attacker, fire missiles, re-target fighter prey, repeat).

[SCC]

Any chance for for multiple targeting for carriers ("R" to set, double tap to unset all) and/or target-sensitive fighter behaviour (like only interceptors escorting, bomber not attacking frigates, etc.)?

[MesoTroniK]

If you don't have a target, they'll go after the nearest target, decided individually for each wing, with consideration for the wing's role. ... so, yeah, they'll split up.

Hmm. That's kind of a neat idea, yeah, an "autofire" mode for fighters.

Such a "autofire" mode would be wonderful.

[Megas]

Another issue that "fighter auto-targeting" would help solve: More than once I had my fighters where I wanted them, far away about to bring some enemy down, but then got attacked by some other ship. Now you have to choose between your fighters finishing their job, or your weapon systems (especially missiles) working to take out your attacker. You can work around it, but it is pretty cumbersome at the moment (pause, target attacker, fire missiles, re-target fighter prey, repeat).

This gets annoying at times, especially with a Legion.  Many times, I want my fighters to seek and destroy small ships elsewhere while I want my Legion to focus-fire and destroy some bigger ship near me.  If I select the target I want to kill, my fighters will join in on the action.

[Schwartz]

I maintain that more fighter orders = more fun and more tactics, but a sensible automatic mode is a good first step to make fighters feel more real and autonomous.

This gets annoying at times, especially with a Legion.  Many times, I want my fighters to seek and destroy small ships elsewhere while I want my Legion to focus-fire and destroy some bigger ship near me.  If I select the target I want to kill, my fighters will join in on the action.

Pretty much this. Applies to all ships, but it may show most often on the big ones that are themselves a credible threat.

[Techhead]

Perhaps in the refit screen fighters could be set to either "Engage carrier target" or "Engage at will"? It should probably only apply to target selection and still obey Engage/Regroup commands.

Interceptor screens can be left to deal with missiles and fighters while bombers and heavy fighters can be pointed at things discriminately. Or in the hybrid carrier's case... letting fighters do their own thing while the carrier focuses its own target.

TLDR: Fighter auto-targeting setting, but decided beforehand on a per-wing basis instead of mid-battle.

[Cik]

Per my earlier point, an Astral loaded with interceptors is the best example of where it might be useful, and it's still a waste of an Astral and supplies. I mean, are you really going to want to outfit, maintain, and deploy an Astral to hunt down frigates and provide fighter escorts?

assuming i am facing a particular sort of foe (that is, a fleet of strike carriers) and my ships themselves are not fitted very well for PD, and i have an astral, yes

i mean, you could say the same thing about an astral with bombers "are you really going to deploy an astral to kill a bunch of trash cruisers that you could just use anything else to kill"

to which the answer is pretty much, yes

i mean i would if i had ever gotten an astral in campaign which in my probably 500+ hours in this game i have not yet ever seen AFAIK lul

but anyway as someone said upthread it's the same for the legion and theoretically any other large carrier used in any other mod. even relatively small carriers will occasionally benefit from changes to make it more flexible. heavy fighter fitted condors, for instance, could shield two frigates from fighters instead of one.

[Megas]

I forgot to mention that the current UI is painful if you want to select an ally for fighters to escort, then you need to turn around and select an enemy for your guns to focus-fire at and kill.

It is not just for big battlecarriers (like Legion) that can fight, but also for any warship that has Converted Hangar for expanded flexibility.  With Loadout Design 3 and other skills, it is fun for my Eagle and some other ships to have a wing a fighters to do things and my Eagle can still fight about as well as an unskilled Eagle without Converted Hangar and more OP from Loadout Design.

[TrashMan]

I liked the old fighter system a lot better.
Fighters shouldn't be 100% tied to a carrier anyway - it's not like fighters don't re-base if their home carrier was destroyed. WW2 has many examples of fighters landing on and operating from another carrier when theirs was sunk.

[Death_Silence_66]

The universal fighter orders are a big problem if you want one wing to stay at the carrier for PD use while the others go out and attack.