Alright, so another strike craft pass to build upon the new balance concepts post-rework. I've been using Albreo's balance tier list as a reference as well as my own testing experience after recent changes. I also wanted to extrapolate the role of fighters into something more concrete. Should likely be compatible with current saves.
DL:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6cxbrz5xcftwn8m/AAAaOPS8xMh6uIN5Pd1mwrbta?dl=0As a reminder of the general thought process of strike craft roles and their relation to carriers and warships:
Spoiler
1) Carriers can more easily equip gunships and bombers which deal a lot more damage to ships than interceptors.
2) Warships get OP cost reductions to interceptors and fighters.
3) Interceptors are crucial to supporting ships - especially smaller ones - against massed gunships in particular. They also help a fair amount against bombers both by taking them out and by providing additional PD.
4) Fighters are the oddball role in that they can do a little bit of everything depending upon the wing. I wanted to flesh this out a bit more.
Note: A secondary goal of these changes was to ensure that while combat performance of lower OP wings is necessarily worse as a concept, that doesn't mean that using low OP wings is unattractive overall.
The changes are not documented in detail in order to save time, but here is a summary:
Spoiler
1) Fighters have been given additional weaponry in most cases. (The Hellcat was a test bed for this.) Though their overall role still changes from wing to wing, in general they either do their specialized role better or they can perform multiple roles in some cases. (Broadsword comes to mind.)
2) Interceptors replace much faster than other strike craft depending upon their relative tier. They are the go-to anti-strike craft defense for warships and carriers alike. PD is a separate consideration for each.
3) Low OP wings like the Warrior or Brute that only deal one damage type and have less weapons replace faster. So in addition to the OP discount they can at least keep the carrier or warship's replacement rate up even though their combat performance is worse.
4) Strike craft weapons deal 250% damage against other strike craft. (So base damage x 2.5 - Up from 200% in the prior download.)
The idea here is that fighters have less defense and are easier to destroy than gunships, but they perform more competitively against them at the expense of lower average replacement rate for the ship. So due to their OP discount they are pointedly favored on warships as a way to give those vessels a clear choice between interceptors or fighters - which generally means less OP for the build while still allowing the build to be viable unlike the addition of most gunships or bombers.
Carriers, on the other hand, are generally going to equip gunships over fighters
unless they are going for an interceptor build to guard other ships. Then fighters become an option again as a source of damage when the interceptors aren't needed to guard anything. Fighters tend to have anti-strike craft weapons as well as assault/strike weapons so they complement interceptors well without changing the AI's use of the interceptors.
I'm patching this in to the DL, so if I miss a file or something and it causes a crash please let me know. I'll verify on my end sometime later tonight.
*EDIT* Found an obscure bug that I fixed while testing today. I'll update the DL overnight
Thoughts after testing for a while today:I also made some additional tweaks to a few wings. I increased replacement time for the Hercules - which ended up being too low. I also reduced replacement time for the Paradigm since it was outperformed by the Trident for the same DP. The Claw and Renegade feel like they are in a good spot at the moment especially since the Renegade gets the warship discount to OP now. The Broadsword (A) heavy fighter was too good with additional Shockstorm rockets so I increased its OP from 24 to 28. It might even need to be 30. Finally from what I remember, I gave a Burst PD Laser to the Spark, decreased defense for the Cyclops and Hellcat, and increased the Cyclops wing size to 3 from 2.
Outside of the Krakken, the midline line of wings seems really solid overall. The Krakken probably needs further testing but its a Legendary so it can afford to be a bit broken for now.
Lowtech feels much better even if its still likely not optimal. Reducing replacement times for the lowtech
tanks gunships really helped give them a niche and I may play around with that further before considering wing balance "finalized" for this update. Lowtech bombers feel better because they are less likely to die from ship fire since they release their payloads from farther away. This also has the side effect of letting frigates and destroyers dodge torpedoes which seems better than forcing losses and damage on both sides.