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[IronBorn]

With the character system, by mid game because of the significant number of bonus Ordinance Points and special systems I've gained, carriers and fights begin to become increasingly marginalized. This is unfortunate, as one of the thing I really enjoy about Starsector is how fighters are actually a viable and potent threat in the game and I love watching the fighters swarm ships and dogfight! But with a Lasher Frigate only costing 5 FP, and many decent fighters costing more than that (especially in mods), I am able to build frigates that easily dominate any fighter wing and can even bring down destroyers.

So here are some ideas I have for keeping fighters a viable option for players who wish to play with carrier groups.

Carriers:

Carriers are usually under armed because... they are carriers. As fighters become less effective, so do carrier roles. Every carrier you add to your fleet weakens it with no real gain for your fighter craft.

1. Flight Decks Boost Fighter Stats:
Every flight deck you have in your fleet gives a 2% performance boost to armor, hull, flux, speed, and damage. The boosts stack up to 5 flight decks, giving a potential boost of 10% max. You have to deploy your carriers to the battle to gain the boosts, not just leave in reserve. The idea is that having flight decks in your fleet helps to maintain and tweak the performance of the fighters. So having a cruiser with 1 flight deck and a dedicated carrier with 4 flight decks would stack to a 10% boost on your fighters if you deploy both.

2. Flight Decks Provide Fleet Points for Fighters
Each flight deck should give Fleet Points for fighters, as fighters are damn expensive and you'd think flight decks would lower their management. Each flight deck would grant +2 FP (ONLY USABLE WITH FIGHTERS). Lets say you had 50 FP, and you add a carrier with 4 flight decks to your fleet, your FP could be displayed as Fleet Points 50 (+8). The +8 FP could be used to support 1 heavy fighter wing or 2 talon wings without costing you any FP. Also, to gain these bonus FP in battle, you'd have to deploy your carriers first. Fighter Fleet Point bonuses could be capped to prevent abuse, or have diminishing returns. After 5 flight decks, any more flight decks only give +1 FP.

Fighters
I've seen this discussed before, but fighters need their own skill tree to keep them competitive. So here are some ideas I have for their skill tree. Perhaps have two skills for fighters. One boosts armor and damage 1% per level. The other boosts flux and speed 2% per level. Then players can aim for heavy, swift, or balanced fighters.

1. Dodge Large Cannon Mounts:
Fighters gain the ability to not be hit by large weapon mounts, unless the mounts are marked as PD (could have a special flag that allows large turrets to hit fighters). The idea is that skilled pilots would know how to avoid the firing solutions of large slow moving turrets and guns.

2. Elongated Barrels:
Fighters carrier more ammunition, 10% increase in weapon range.

3. Expanded Missile Racks:
Fighters carrier 100% missile munitions.

4. Engine Enhancement:
Fighters gain increased maneuverability.

5. Micro Flux Capacitors:
Fighters gain 25% flux cap, 5% vent.

6. Carbon Fiber Armor:
10% gain in armor.

7. Efficient Deck Crew:
Flight decks repair and rearm fighters 25% faster.

8. Anti-PD Jammer (High Level Skill):
Fighters have an integrated jamming system that reduces the accuracy of PD and small mount turrets in a limited range.

9. Reserve Fighters (High Level Skill):
Carriers carry reserve fighters that can restore fighter wings to 75% of their strength, if fighters are lost but manage to return to a carrier. Can only restore each wing 1 time.

10. Improved Fleet Logistics (High Level Skill):
All fighters cost -1 Fleet Point. So a fighter that costs 4 FP would now only costs 3 FP.

Command Points
Last thing, rallying your bomber groups to a way point so they attack as one wave shouldn't cost any command points, as it exhausts 2 command points to carry out an effective and coordinated bombing run. It should really be thought of as one command, such as "Rally here and strike the capital ship!"


Well share your thoughts and ideas!

[PCCL]

I like the idea of carriers projecting a buff to fighters when on the field

just a thought, though, I don't think we should have fighter boost by flight deck, nor should the boosts be on the general stats

instead, I think we can have have fighters gain CR boosts, and they can gain boosts by carrier, where each carrier will have a stat of "coordination capability" (CC) that represents the strength of her on-board C&C hardware and will determine how big a boost they project.

on the battlefield, the CC of the carrier will be used to determine how much CR boost is on each fighter, with the equation being something like this:

assume CC is %10

CRIncrease = CC/NumberofFighterWings + 0.2CC

meaning, the fighters get 12 percent CR boost if one wing is on field, 7 if 2, 5.3 if 3, etc etc. This encourages the use of more or stronger carriers to coordinate the fleet. And of course the boost will cap out at some point, maybe at %20 or so.

[PerturbedPug]

I think that the ability of deploying fighters/bombers directly from carriers should be added. Otherwise, I mostly agree with your suggestions.

[Thaago]

I do think fighters suffer extremely in the late game.

...

1. Flight Decks Boost Fighter Stats:
Every flight deck you have in your fleet gives a 2% performance boost to armor, hull, flux, speed, and damage. The boosts stack up to 5 flight decks, giving a potential boost of 10% max. You have to deploy your carriers to the battle to gain the boosts, not just leave in reserve. The idea is that having flight decks in your fleet helps to maintain and tweak the performance of the fighters. So having a cruiser with 1 flight deck and a dedicated carrier with 4 flight decks would stack to a 10% boost on your fighters if you deploy both.

2. Flight Decks Provide Fleet Points for Fighters
Each flight deck should give Fleet Points for fighters, as fighters are damn expensive and you'd think flight decks would lower their management. Each flight deck would grant +2 FP (ONLY USABLE WITH FIGHTERS). Lets say you had 50 FP, and you add a carrier with 4 flight decks to your fleet, your FP could be displayed as Fleet Points 50 (+8). The +8 FP could be used to support 1 heavy fighter wing or 2 talon wings without costing you any FP. Also, to gain these bonus FP in battle, you'd have to deploy your carriers first. Fighter Fleet Point bonuses could be capped to prevent abuse, or have diminishing returns. After 5 flight decks, any more flight decks only give +1 FP.

I think these might make nice perks for unlocking if they were a bit more powerful - say 5% and 5 FP each up to 5. I like the idea, but at the moment they have a pretty small effect while adding complication. I like those perks, so I won't quote them all

One of the reasons I think fighters suffer so much late game is because they don't gain power from tech ordinance point increases. How about for every % OP bonus the player gets, fighters get half of that added to speed, armor, hull, and flux stats? The level 10 maxed skill would then give +25% to all of those, which would help a bunch.

[Vinya]

I'd love to see a fighter buff, but I doubt Alex is going to add another skill tree.

Fighters in late-game aren't completely useless though, you just need to manage them a lot better. Especially with mods though, fighters are completely different. A Neutrino Corp fleet based off carriers and fighters is especially deadly.

If you're having trouble using fighter later in the game, only keep a couple wings on-hand. If you use them right and you have a carrier kickin' around, you can do some serious damage. I'd also recommend assigning a Talon wing to any bomber wing you use to increase their longevity.

[Cik]

bombers need help IMO. in vanilla, they're garbage because anything small enough can get out of the way, and anything big enough to actually get hit is heavy enough to take the hit and destroy them with little effort. fighters are alright, if not great. they're going to be marginalized when much bigger hulls start appearing, just because their weapons are insufficient to mash meters of heavy plates.

[Hari Seldon]

Could bombers get torpedoes?

I also think that fighter CP might not be balanced right now.  Maybe strike craft can no longer fly solo and need a carrier, and decrease strike craft CP?  Well, maybe fighters can fly in system patrol but NOT travel without a carrier to go between systems?

[PCCL]

uh... you mean torpedo bombers?

[Cik]

uh... you mean torpedo bombers?

aren't that great either because they're suicidal, will usually hit shields, and are very slow and weak.

[Decer304]

uh... you mean torpedo bombers?

Isnt the dagger a torp bomber? I think that fighters should have manual recall and lauch. Too often, fighters bomb the shield because of mistiming, and then blow up because they launched in the middle of a fight.

[Debido]

I agree that later in the game fighters become marginalized, often to the point of being pretty cannon fodder. The skill tree you've proposed is interesting and could really help keep them relevant.

One or two suggestions
Early game having human resources in the fighters/bombers early on is good and puts pressure on the human resource factor. You don't have access to carriers, so when you lose them, you lose them.
+ Keeping fighters and bombers relevant mid to late game is to make the fighters and bombers as 'drones', and are a resource that is continually* reproducible by carriers. At the moment they repair themselves at carriers anyway.
+ The number of concurrent drones produced and maintained in continually* combat by the carrier is limited to ordinance points and drone facility slots. So on the ordinance/weapon slot screen, you can 'slot' in a drone facility to your carrier.
+ *Continually: It looks like in 0.6 onwards there will be combat readiness stat. Maybe a carrier can only produce an amount limited to combat readiness. After a time in combat, production slows, until eventually an accident or malfunction occurs. A fresh carrier @ 100% may produce around 300 before fatigue/malfunction. A carrier at 50% going into combat may produce around 150 before fatigue/malfuncion (example)
+ A drone facility can produce it's type of drone. Such as a fighter or a bomber. A drone facility cannot produce any type of drone during combat, the drone slot can only be changed out of combat in the re-fitting screen.
+ More expensive drone facilities can support more concurrent drones or better drones
+ Each time a drone is produced/replaced when destroyed in combat, it uses supplies, the cost of the replacement depends on the drone. Though a useful slot.
+ Augmentations are available for extra ordinance points. Augmentations for drones are unlocked with skill points in skill in the technology tree. I like the suggestions you've made.

+ Big down side for drones - when the host carrier is destroyed, all supported drones self destruct/crash into nearest enemy ship/engines stop

What I would like to see is wave after waves of fighters or bombers. Although easily destroyed by capital ships, some still get through and do damage or cause engine flame out/emp damage etc. If you have a fight between a slow capital ship and a slightly faster carrier that outpaces it, eventually the fighters/bombers would wear it down.

Carriers would become a more important combat asset, you can choose to place it on the edge of the map somewhere or have it protected by a few frigates or something. Some players facing a larger carrier wearing them down with bombers might want to hunt down the carrier quickly, but they would expose their flanks to the enemies other combat ships, it opens up a few more decisions.

Players can still choose to use human piloted fighters/bombers in combination with drones, as human piloted fighters/bombers aren't disabled when the host carrier is destroyed.

What are your thoughts/comments?

[Vinya]

There's already drone-based ship systems in vanilla and many mods. They're designed for helping defend their host ship though, generally.

[Silver Silence]

I think fighters could be buffed directly rather than giving yet more skills to invest in. Thunders were great when they were a 3-man wing. Their Ion Cannon gave them sufficient punch against fighters and made them capable against ships. Then they were stripped to a 2-man wing and their FP didn't change much. For the same FP costs, you could field a frigate or a light destroyer, either of which could bring more firepower to bear and be more durable. I think that's the problem with fighters, they aren't very durable. And while they have the ability to no-clip, their fragile nature means if anything with a half decent amount of firepower glances in their direction, they're dead. The game specifically limits your ability to command your fleet to stop it becoming an almost EndWar-esque RPG/RTS hybrid, so you can only tell your fighters to get the hell outta there so many times before they do something stupid like derp straight into an Onslaught and expect to win. Maybe a new fighter wing or two and some all round buffs to fighters to at least make them equivalent to an actual ship of their costs, whether it be firepower or durability. Perhaps phase fighters/bombers, fighters with missiles for every occasion, that sorta thing

[Nanostrike]

The big problem I have with fighters is that when they're gone, they're gone.  And they're so easy to kill late-game that they're almost not worth wasting the money on.

Talons are awful and the Torpedo bombers are almost universally useless.



My idea to "Buff" them is to be able to assign a squadron to each ship with a flight deck.  If a squadron is assigned to a flight deck, it won't permanently "Die" in battle as long as the carrier it's assigned to is alive.  Instead, if they're completely destroyed, the carrier can, after a significant period of time in battle and probably at a cost of supplies and combat readiness after the battle, send out another squadron of "Reserves".  Fighters that aren't able to be assigned a flight deck don't get this bonus.

The more expensive the squadron, the longer it takes.  And each respawn takes longer than the last, so that towards the end of a long battle, they'll literally be scraping together any fighter that flies.

After the battle, the more respawns the squad had to use, the worse shape it's in.  A squad that had to respawn several times would be completely unable to fight for quite some time, and have low combat readiness for a bit even after that.

If they make it back to the Carrier instead of being wiped out and having to respawn, however, they're repaired like normal, with only a small dip in combat readiness after the battle for each fighter that had to be replaced (And it's much faster than the respawning).

The risk with this is that if the carrier a squadron is assigned to is destroyed, no fighter wings respawn and any of them that are destroyed are permanently gone like they are in the current system.  This would give even more incentive to take out enemy carriers and more incentive to protect yours.


Since they're more likely to be lost, Talons, Bombers, and Torpedo Bombers could have a special ability that grants reduced respawn times and reduced penalties after the battle for respawns.  Costs, if needed, could be increased accordingly.  It could be assumed that each of these squadrons comes with the reserves needed to quickly replace losses in battle.

[Silver Silence]

Those respawn times could be tied to their repair costs, the gist of it being that the more supplies a wing uses, the more complex it is and the longer it takes to rebuild them. I personally would love to be able to tie fighter wings to carriers or at least to ships with enough hangar space to carry them. It is very odd how fighters can rebuild 6-man wings from one barely flying survivor, yet if that survivor goes, the carrier just goes "meh" and forgets about them.