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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Author Topic: Are fighters supposed to be so costly?  (Read 7976 times)

Doom101

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Re: Are fighters supposed to be so costly?
« Reply #15 on: September 16, 2013, 07:40:23 AM »

trying out the less survivable fighters eh? have you tried out the ridiculously op Thunder wing? They have a great theme song too. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2AC41dglnM     Get 3-4 of them and their ion cannons will literally rip apart anything, from fighter wings to capital ships, well you need a bit more to take capitals but they are great at keeping entire ships completely offline, and they each carry a harpoon which they can reload so it basically adds infinite harpoons to your fleet :D also did i mention they are the FASTEST fighter in the game? in fact at a top speed of 225, they beat hounds, tempests and hyperions in speed as well, ( okay nothing can really be faster than a hyperion because it teleports massive distances in a flash but you get the point) frigates need modifiers just to keep up with the little beasties
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Sonlirain

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Re: Are fighters supposed to be so costly?
« Reply #16 on: September 16, 2013, 08:04:44 AM »

trying out the less survivable fighters eh? have you tried out the ridiculously op Thunder wing? They have a great theme song too. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2AC41dglnM     Get 3-4 of them and their ion cannons will literally rip apart anything, from fighter wings to capital ships, well you need a bit more to take capitals but they are great at keeping entire ships completely offline, and they each carry a harpoon which they can reload so it basically adds infinite harpoons to your fleet :D also did i mention they are the FASTEST fighter in the game? in fact at a top speed of 225, they beat hounds, tempests and hyperions in speed as well, ( okay nothing can really be faster than a hyperion because it teleports massive distances in a flash but you get the point) frigates need modifiers just to keep up with the little beasties

Thay are apparently also the cheapest to field since the supply costs are apparently multiplied by the # of fighters in the wing... and Thunders only have 2 leading to relatively manageable costs.
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Alfalfa

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Re: Are fighters supposed to be so costly?
« Reply #17 on: September 16, 2013, 10:03:00 AM »

trying out the less survivable fighters eh? have you tried out the ridiculously op Thunder wing? They have a great theme song too. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2AC41dglnM     Get 3-4 of them and their ion cannons will literally rip apart anything, from fighter wings to capital ships, well you need a bit more to take capitals but they are great at keeping entire ships completely offline, and they each carry a harpoon which they can reload so it basically adds infinite harpoons to your fleet :D also did i mention they are the FASTEST fighter in the game? in fact at a top speed of 225, they beat hounds, tempests and hyperions in speed as well, ( okay nothing can really be faster than a hyperion because it teleports massive distances in a flash but you get the point) frigates need modifiers just to keep up with the little beasties

Thay are apparently also the cheapest to field since the supply costs are apparently multiplied by the # of fighters in the wing... and Thunders only have 2 leading to relatively manageable costs.

I've always loved Thunders: stupid fast and fairly powerful; a little fragile, but their speed keeps them out of trouble more than, say, Warthogs.  I've currently got 4 wings in my fleet; I use them as chasers.

The only expensive fighters right now are the interceptors (mainly due to their numbers, though a talon currently costs as much as a Xyphos which, considering the former is about as advanced as a dude with a machine gun with a couple bottle rockets strapped to his thighs, is a little steep) and the Tridents, which cost 2 supply each.

I modified the ship_data.csv to make supply costs more in line with their battlefield impact/tech level.  Interceptors were halved in cost, Broadswords and Piranhas were slightly reduced, almost everything else saw a slight to significant increase in cost.
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DatonKallandor

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Re: Are fighters supposed to be so costly?
« Reply #18 on: October 01, 2013, 01:38:10 PM »

This is a repost since I didn't find this thread when I wanted to post on the fighter CR/supply mechanics:

So after getting to the "endgame" a couple of times in 0.6a, I gotta say while most of the new CR/Supply/Carrier mechanics are great there's something off about fighter logistics and supply costs.

First of all one of the big problems is that fighters cost a lot of supplies - and it's based purely on wing-size which is weird as hell. Fighter types that are specifically intended to be fodder that swarms (the 6-per-wing Wasps, the 4-per-wing Mining Pods, the 4-per-wing-Talons) are more expensive, by a large margin, than elite super-high-tech fighters (2-per-wing Xyphos, 2-per-wing Tridents, etc.).

Then there's the fact that fighters tend to lose a lot more CR per deployment than other ships when they take casualties (which is the whole point of the new fighter mechanics! they are supposed to take casualties!) which drives the maintenance costs up even more.

I'm wondering if there shouldn't be some sort of benefit to carriers in general or flight decks in particular that gives you fighter wing supply/logistics discounts. Maybe even bring back the old Hangar stat on select destroyers and bigger. Something like a large decrease (50% at the least) or even a free maintenance for a wing of fighters per hangar would really help the swarming large-amount-per-wing fighters. Hell it'd be a great way to give an advantage to "true" carriers like the Condor (more hangars) compared to the combat carriers like the Venture (1 flight deck, but only a small amount of, maybe 1, hangar/s).
Plus it gives you a neat tool to bring the less-used capital ships up to spec.

If that's too radical even just a rebalance in fighter supply costs to make crap-but-swarming fighters not a gigantic waste of money would be really great. Especially the Mining Pods - I mean come on: They're supposed to be converted mining equipment, they shouldn't be more expensive than a freaking Xyphos Wing.

As an aside I wonder if we'll ever see a Phase-Fighter or Phase-Bomber wing. There's precedent with the Terminator Drone after all.

Thoughts?

Now that said, I guess we'll get reduced costs in the next patch. That's okay I suppose though a more in-depth mechanics solution would have been nice. Hell even just a fighter/carrier related skill in logistics would have been neat. "Experienced Flight Deck Supervisor" for more efficient strikecraft management?
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Gothars

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Re: Are fighters supposed to be so costly?
« Reply #19 on: October 01, 2013, 02:08:52 PM »

Hell even just a fighter/carrier related skill in logistics would have been neat.

Pretty sure fighter skills will come eventually.

As you might have gathered from the thread by now, Thunders and Gladius are cost efficient and a good investment until the fix.


Kinda unrelated, but I noticed that some fighters are pretty viable without a carrier deployed. It just changes there role from active combat to recon, initial point capture and pursuit. But since they can only lose one wing that way their CR regeneration costs are very limited. And unlike frigates they can't be really lost as long as there is a (undeployed) carrier, like the Atlas.
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Hotshot3434

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Re: Are fighters supposed to be so costly?
« Reply #20 on: October 01, 2013, 03:13:00 PM »

As an aside I wonder if we'll ever see a Phase-Fighter or Phase-Bomber wing. There's precedent with the Terminator Drone after all.

Thoughts?
Oh god, I hate Terminator Drones. Their speed and phase make those things damn near immortal. Imagine having 4-10 of them loaded with even more firepower buzzing around and generally being untouchable. Phase ships are some of the most annoying things in the game IMHO, requiring an almost dedicated anti-phase ship loaded with beam weapons to deter them from harassing you to death. A swarm of phase fighters could probably destroy an entire fleet if they were able to be repaired and re-armed the current way fighters are.
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DatonKallandor

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Re: Are fighters supposed to be so costly?
« Reply #21 on: October 01, 2013, 04:12:36 PM »

Well Terminator Drones are more than a little absurd - they're tiny, have a teleporter, a phase cloak, two energy weapons and a frigate can replicate them during a fight.
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Histidine

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Re: Are fighters supposed to be so costly?
« Reply #22 on: October 04, 2013, 02:02:09 AM »

An issue that's bothering me:
Currently, in addition to reflecting logistics cost of maintaining and fielding a ship, CR for fighters also pulls double duty in representing how many spare fighters a wing can have, and (with the CR recovery/day value) how fast it can manufacture those spares. This leads to silly things like Mining Pods having the second highest per-battle cost (10% CR craft -> 40% CR per wing; 5% CR recovery per day) and Thunders having the second-lowest despite their relatively high CR per craft deployed (7% CR per craft -> 14% CR for the wing; 5% CR recovery per day).

Some of this could be solved by number tweaking, but as long as CR means so many different things there are probably going to be cases where it's a problem (e.g. you can't have a fighter wing that's cheap to run but expensive to replace, or has a low number of replacements).

One idea I came up with: undestroyed fighters refund half their CR deployment cost at the end of the battle; reduced if they take armor/hull damage. This fixes the silly immersion breaker of fighters that return intact having exactly the same CR cost as those that get destroyed, and makes certain fighter wings (like the aforementioned Mining Pod) more affordable without having to change other key characteristics. It doesn't solve all the aspects of the issue I described above, though.
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Alfalfa

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Re: Are fighters supposed to be so costly?
« Reply #23 on: October 04, 2013, 06:53:52 AM »

An issue that's bothering me:
Currently, in addition to reflecting logistics cost of maintaining and fielding a ship, CR for fighters also pulls double duty in representing how many spare fighters a wing can have, and (with the CR recovery/day value) how fast it can manufacture those spares. This leads to silly things like Mining Pods having the second highest per-battle cost (10% CR craft -> 40% CR per wing; 5% CR recovery per day) and Thunders having the second-lowest despite their relatively high CR per craft deployed (7% CR per craft -> 14% CR for the wing; 5% CR recovery per day).

Some of this could be solved by number tweaking, but as long as CR means so many different things there are probably going to be cases where it's a problem (e.g. you can't have a fighter wing that's cheap to run but expensive to replace, or has a low number of replacements).

One idea I came up with: undestroyed fighters refund half their CR deployment cost at the end of the battle; reduced if they take armor/hull damage. This fixes the silly immersion breaker of fighters that return intact having exactly the same CR cost as those that get destroyed, and makes certain fighter wings (like the aforementioned Mining Pod) more affordable without having to change other key characteristics. It doesn't solve all the aspects of the issue I described above, though.

If I recall correctly, CR recovery rate is directly tied to repair rate, and the CR recovery cost is tied to repair cost.  To make a wing that's low-maintenance and expensive to replace, give them a low supply/day and a high repair cost (or high CR/deployment for low number of replacements).  As for Mining Pods, I imagine their CR values are probably a bit off in this version.

Lessened CR for intact fighters makes sense, though.
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Gothars

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Re: Are fighters supposed to be so costly?
« Reply #24 on: October 04, 2013, 08:36:48 AM »

I'd guess mining pods will get another function that justifies their cost. Which one should be obvious.
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Vind

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Re: Are fighters supposed to be so costly?
« Reply #25 on: October 05, 2013, 11:18:06 AM »

The main problem even not fighters supply cost  but their speed of CR recovery. I got 3-4% CR recovery on basic talons/broadswords per DAY. At this cost and delay they are worthless. New mechanic also kills fighter crew at amazing rate.
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