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[dgs6686]

Fighters seem to be in a strange spot in the game the way it is. From what I have seen, their defensive stats are too high for PD weaponry to really have any effect which makes you rely on your main weaponry to hit them when they are approaching which just seems extremely unrealistic. My suggestion would be to make fighters only be able to be hit from weapons fired by PD labeled weaponry such as light / heavy machine guns, flak cannons, and PD Lasers, but in exchange greatly reduce their toughness.

Likewise it seems a little silly that you can simply shoot down missiles with your regular weaponry, and in larger battles most missiles will simply get shot down by the vast amount of projectiles being thrown around. With the limited number of missiles most ships can carry they often end up feeling pretty useless later on unless it is a 1v1 situation.

[TaLaR]

PD is anti-missile, not anti-fighter. For shooting fighters that already swarm around you much better option are small guns like IR pulse. Or even medium ones if you use Advanced Turret Gyros.
And you should make an effort to backpedal and shoot down fighter swarm as it approaches, this is when they are most vulnerable. Many larger guns are excellent at this like TLs or Plasma Cannons. But frankly, anything works, you just need more dakka - fighters are not that good at dodging projectiles and it's easy to saturate 2d plane with shots.

[dgs6686]

Oh yeah I definitely get it and I'm not saying that fighters are giving me trouble or anything of the sort, but I think you kind of highlighted my point of why I personally think the current fighter implementation feels a little strange. A large caliber weapon shouldn't be shooting down fighters but due to the 2d nature of the game it does. I was kind of just trying to think of a way to make fighters feel 3d in a 2d game and this was what I thought sounded the most reasonable was having weapons that were dedicated to shooting them down. Also as you said PD weapons are supposed to be anti missile so why does everything else work just as well or better at shooting them down when they are approaching. having more weapons firing a wall of projectiles will actually shoot down missiles while PD weapons struggle to.

[TaLaR]

Also as you said PD weapons are supposed to be anti missile so why does everything else work just as well or better at shooting them down when they are approaching. having more weapons firing a wall of projectiles will actually shoot down missiles while PD weapons struggle to.

It goes both ways. Annihilator or Squall stream also works as form of defense for firing ship by blocking a lot of likely flux-expensive shots.

While I don't have problem with this mechanics, AI being not aware of it is kind of a problem. The best weapon to stop Annihilators and Squalls is actually Plasma Cannon due to passtrough, but obviously AI doesn't use it like this.

[xenoargh]

This is an interesting idea, actually; it'd be more like the reality of WWII ship-to-ship combat, too; you don't aim battleship cannons at an incoming Zero.  Fighters and PD would be explicitly balanced vs. each other again, like they were originally (Fighters didn't have Armor values, let alone shields early on, IIRC).

I think the biggest problem here would be fighter weapons that were meant to interact with both ships and other fighters.

I'm trying to think if there's any way at all to implement this in a mod, just to test things out.  Tricky, but probably doable, by setting the collisions correctly.

[Offensive_Name]

I like this idea and I think it makes a lot of sense(and would make dedicated escorts/PD ships more useful). Fighters and missiles already interact in a pseudo 3d space by flying over ships and you would think when shots are fired between warships fighters would just dodge around those shots. Maybe it should be that all small weapons can damage fighters, and/or the weapons have to be on turret mounts. Could also have that certain hullmods allow unorthodox weaponry to damage fighters.

[dgs6686]

Yeah I can totally see that getting a little complicated - getting fighter damage / defensive stats balanced VS PD weaponry while not making them die immediately VS each other and still being a threat to other ships. Also the missiles such as the Swarmer heavy mount still being good vs fighters but not losing too much power against bigger ships. Maybe instead of complicating it more by adjusting fighter health it would be better to adjust PD weapon damage by say giving them a 100% bonus damage vs fighters or something to that effect but only those mounted on ship hulls.

I think the first step would be to make it so that only PD weaponry and maybe other small weapons w/ integrated point defense AI mod installed could hit them and see how that affects their survivability. The first problem I could see happening is the lack of range on most PD weapons making it very hard to kill bombers but then maybe the flak cannons will actually have a use?

[BringerofBabies]

A twin pair of changes that I think would be nice would be:
1. Make projectiles that are not actively targeting missiles/fighters have a significant chance to miss them (at point of collision), something like a 10-25% chance to actually hit. Some way to handle player ships actively firing into a fighter formation would be required.
2. Make weapons under the influence of Integrated Point Defense AI fire over allied (and enemy?) when targeting missiles/fighters.

In theory, this should make dedicated PD escorts more viable/important without drastically changing fighter survivability.

[Offensive_Name]

I love the idea of pd firing over friendlies.

[shoi]

Wouldn't this make fighter saturation even worse since you can't hit them with 99% of a ships weapons anymore? if anything seems like this would utterly screw over any fleet that doesn't have enough PD.

[dgs6686]

Every ship has at least some number of small or medium weapon slots that can easily be dedicated to point defense weaponry so I don't see that being much of an issue. Alternatively you could have escort ships armed with only PD weaponry to protect against fighters efficiently. I remember one of the first fights I got in to where fighters were a huge problem I outfitted 2 enforcers with 5 dual flak cannons only to watch how hopelessly terrible they were against fighters or protecting my fleet in general.

[Erebe]

Wouldn't this make fighter saturation even worse since you can't hit them with 99% of a ships weapons anymore? if anything seems like this would utterly screw over any fleet that doesn't have enough PD.

Well, it's the principle. If you don't have enough PD system, you're srewed because YOU DON'T HAVE THE RIGHT TOOL TO DEAL WITH FIGHTER. It's quite an interresting modification of the game, i think this would increase fleet variety because you would'nt just be able to put only big weaponry, or you can but you need an PD escort ship.

[Grievous69]

Well, it's the principle. If you don't have enough PD system, you're srewed because YOU DON'T HAVE THE RIGHT TOOL TO DEAL WITH FIGHTER. It's quite an interresting modification of the game, i think this would increase fleet variety because you would'nt just be able to put only big weaponry, or you can but you need an PD escort ship.

Lel nice contradiction, how would REQUIRING certain weapons on ships in any way improve variety. The whole point of the customization aspect of the game is that you can achieve a certain goal with different loadouts (see, having actualy options). Imo this is a terrible idea since it would make fights infuriating, you'd have ships that can't do *** vs fighters, and others that just completely eradicate them. I hate these kinds of mechanics in games since it forces you to play in a certain way unless you actually want to get ***.

[Thaago]

Fun fact: In WWII they did use the main and secondary guns to shoot down fighters. Granted, they used different ammunition than when firing at ships, but the idea that only the small machine guns or "AA" guns were used is a myth. In fact, the main/secondary guns were longer ranged, more accurate, and had higher kill rates.

The US's primary destroyer weapon and popular secondary gun on larger ships was the 5" 37 caliber gun - specifically designed as a compromise gun capable of shooting at high elevations to hit aircraft while still maintaining anti-ship capabilities.

[dgs6686]

Yes they specifically used flak ammunition and it was so effective because it didn't need to be super accurate when you shoot a 500lb air burst of flak into a group of fighters. This game has specific weapons at medium and large caliber all for dealing with fighters - the flak cannons. The difference is fighters often fly straight in to regular main guns which makes them way more effective at dealing with them than the flak cannons ever could be.

An alternate to this idea of mine I guess could just be to simply have fighters approach at angles instead of flying straight in to the front of ships? I just really liked the idea of trying to make fighters feel 3d in a 2d game.