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[Sonlirain]

Pretty straightforward and in line with the upcoming changes.

Flight decks come in 3 differens sizes.

1 - small

Fighters like Talon, Broadsword, Thunder, Wasp

2 - medium

Bombers and heavy fighters like Piranha, Warthog, Gladius

3 - large

Small frigate like craft similar to Antediluvian* "fighters"...
Pretty much large gunships that are too small to be considered proper frigates but way bigger than the largest fighters.

*  http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=2381.0

[Pelly]

So really...

1 - Light Fighters/Interceptors

2 - Heavy Fighters/Bombers/Strike

3 - Corvettes

[Megas]

Sounds like added complexity to make a casual player's life more miserable.

[Upgradecap]

Sounds like added complexity to make a casual player's life more miserable.

Or maybe it's a good thing? Carriers have always been needing a buff - right now, you'll pick a condor/gemini over an Astral all day, every day, simply because they're so easily acquired and expendable. The astral is everything but that, and provides no real benefit aside from tons of hassle.

[Reshy]

Why not just two flight decks? 

"Standard" for fighters, and "Expanded" for frigates.  Expanded flight decks could could take extra fighter wings.

[Megas]

If anything, I see this added complexity as unnecessary feature creep at best, and a nerf to carriers at worst.  The OP needs to explain the benefits of his idea, because I do not see any.

I do not use either Condor or Gemini.  They do not have enough OP, even after +50% OP and Optimized Assembly, to get what I want on them.  Also, three Condors and/or Gemini costs more FP than an Astral.  I rarely use Astral because aside from three flight decks, the Odyssey is better in *EVERY* way.  That said, the Astral is a viable attack ship, given the right configuration.  If I need flight decks badly, I would take an Astral or two Ventures over three Condors or Gemini any day.

[xenoargh]

I'm torn on this one.

On the one hand, it has some merits:  being able to field-repair Frigates would be nice.  I

t would also make fighters that are incongruous in size make more sense (you should see large fighters docking with a Dachshund, it's pretty amusing).

On the other hand, it's definitely feature-creep, and it would probably introduce some additional AI complexity as well.  But it would be interesting if ships could repair other ships like Carriers do, with some sort of filter for size.  That might really be interesting, in terms of making battles more strategic.



I personally like using Ventures; they're tough, cheap carriers, if I need a combat-ready carrier that can survive rough conditions.  For massive air forces (something we almost never see in Vanilla, but can be done readily in my mod) I buy a lot of Orions or one of the other modded-in lighter carriers or mid-grade carriers. Adding in more carrier variety was one of my biggest priorities.

I never buy Astrals, simply because I think they can't defend themselves well enough for cost.  Three Orions can out-compete an Astral in terms of damage, AI-vs-AI, if set up right, and they're usually far better at defending themselves from fighters.  In Vanilla, they are really hard to get and they've never been worth the effort.

[phyrex]

xeno, the OP never mentionned field repairing frigate.
he was talking about the third sort of "fighter" ship, the corvette, which is just a huge fighter with a lot of weaponry.
even in mods they are pretty rare and the only one i know are the persephones in the antediluvian mod

[Sonlirain]

If anything, I see this added complexity as unnecessary feature creep at best, and a nerf to carriers at worst.  The OP needs to explain the benefits of his idea, because I do not see any.

I do not use either Condor or Gemini.  They do not have enough OP, even after +50% OP and Optimized Assembly, to get what I want on them.  Also, three Condors and/or Gemini costs more FP than an Astral.  I rarely use Astral because aside from three flight decks, the Odyssey is better in *EVERY* way.  That said, the Astral is a viable attack ship, given the right configuration.  If I need flight decks badly, I would take an Astral or two Ventures over three Condors or Gemini any day.

It would add some complexity but it would also allow characterization of carriers.
For example the fluff text on the gemini states it has a tiny flight deck for mining drones.
So it (and possibly Atlas) would have a small flight deck suitable for quick servicing of the smallest of strikecraft that might serve as thair escorts but not big enough to quickly restore a wing of bombers while in combat.

Astral on the other hand would have 3 large flight decks for servicing corvettes (making it valuable and unique when compared to the boring Condor/Venture that would have medium bays at most)

[xenoargh]

xeno, the OP never mentionned field repairing frigate.
he was talking about the third sort of "fighter" ship, the corvette, which is just a huge fighter with a lot of weaponry.
even in mods they are pretty rare and the only one i know are the persephones in the antediluvian mod

Well, we don't really have that third type atm. 

Not even sure it's necessary; perhaps the best way to handle this whole issue is by having a formula for repair / rearm time based on something integral to the fighters? 

For example, mass?  It's one of the least-sensitive things that could be changed. For each point of Mass, divide by the number of Flight Decks * 10 and multiply by 5 to get the turnaround time, in seconds.

(Mass / (Flight Decks * 10f)) * 5f;

For a 10 mass Fighter on a 1-deck ship, that's 5 seconds.
For a 50 mass Fighter, that's 25 seconds.
For a 50 mass Fighter on a 3-deck Ship, that's 8.333 seconds.

That would handle all these cases nicely, give Fighters a way to be differentiated past their CR and differentiate carriers considerably.

[Megas]

So it (and possibly Atlas) would have a small flight deck suitable for quick servicing of the smallest of strikecraft that might serve as thair escorts but not big enough to quickly restore a wing of bombers while in combat.

See, this is what I mean by a nerf to carriers.  Now, Condor and Gemini can repair any fighter.  With your proposal, said carriers cannot repair bombers, and this would hurt!  Condor and Gemini become less desirable to use, as do bombers.

[BillyRueben]

A solution looking for a problem.