Fractal Softworks Forum
Starsector => General Discussion => Topic started by: Grievous69 on May 28, 2020, 11:16:12 PM
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Even better if fighters became ships again so carriers can spend OP on guns and warship hullmods like they used to. I am tired of the optimal carrier being the unarmed one that runs from everything while elite fighters do everything. Also, commanding fighters to do stuff if player wanted.
Yep. That's one popular community suggestion that I have not seen bring any improvement to the game. May be pointless to argue against it now, but the game is worse off than it was before the change was introduced both concerning balance and combat depth.
I really wanna talk about this. I always knew some preferred the old fighter system but I thought those people were rare. Because personally I think the new system is miles better than the old one. I'm not gonna spend time convicing you since Alex already wrote a blog post about that. What I want to discuss is how some things remained the same after the rework and how it might be improved to reduce the ''spend all OPs on fighters and leave mounts empty'' problem I and a few others clearly don't like.
First, the goal of the fighter rework, among others, was to make the fighters feel more useful and stronger (well that's clearly achieved). But the problem I have is them having the exact same weapons as the ships many times bigger than them. This obviously has balance issues where it's hard to nerf/buff one without messing up the other but also having the same weapon being limited on one platform, but then absolutely unlimited on the other. Yea I know there's a thread for that, I'm just stating there could be a way to solve that logical obstacle. High delay type weapons of existing ones is a good start, more fighter weapons should be ''this weapon but weaker''.
Second thing, the OP going all into one basket. I reread the blog post just to get into the mindset of Alex again and there seems to be something that's bothering me. Originally, you have a decision on carriers between having almost free fighters with weaponry, and being virtually naked but with mean little bastards around. The base cost should've been 0 OP, but since Talon was obviously worth more it was buffed to 2 OP so I'm gonna use that as a baseline (it's hard to count Mining pods into this, having 0 enagement range and all that). So the caveat is, you should theoretically end up with same relative strength using both ''playstyles''. Now try having a Mora with nothing but Talons. Sure they still end up doing something and you have more room for weapons, but the difference between 3 wings of them and 3 wings of anything decent is astronomical. That's one less filled small mount on a Mora having the impact of a 4 times stronger fighter wing. You could do the same with Mining pods just to prove my point. Same with Drover, no point in having cheap fighters (I know that's a whole other can of worms). Sadly there's no 0 OP bombers or close so you can't really test Astral or Heron with those but I'm sure you would end with same differences in power.
And the last thing that's making the current meta annoying: AI
The cursed state of limbo where they just have to keep smacking fighters at 0 speed over and over again almost as they have been punished by the gods. I know going Leeroy Jenkins into a carrier immediately isn't a solution but this part is what makes fighters ultra annoying to deal with. I don't know how AI should exactly react in each situation so probably someone smarter than me has an idea.
As for those who swear by the old system I say, take off your nostalgia glasses. I completely agree that there was more depth because of the extra commands but as the whole package, the current system beats it out of the water. I just can't see it coming again because of the numerous problems already addressed by the Big Kahuna himself.
Short version: Make fighter less stronk, carrier great holy machines of war again
EDIT: Another great example of a weapon that shouldn't be the same on a fighter >> Xyphos
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Old fighter system allowed the player to use fighters like most other ships, with no specified mother carrier and unlimited range. They were a lot less powerful, though. Now they are quite strong and the drawback is that carriers themselves have to pay for that out of their own budget, so that power at range equals weakness in close quarters.
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At first, I had no problems with the new fighter system, especially when 0 OP Talons with double Swarmers acted like classic Broadswords and performed as well as any 8-10 OP fighter, while my carrier armed with guns could brawl. That was good! Carriers were useful after the disaster of 0.7.x where officers made carriers without skills (because there were no fighter skills during that time to begin with) obsolete. However, (especially after the Talon nerf forced me to look for other fighters) I noticed that my carriers did not have enough OP for both good fighters and guns (except Legion), and that unarmed carriers are more effective than classic battlecarriers with guns plus fighters, I became annoyed. Carriers became less fun to pilot because I need to either sit and wait far from battle or I need to run for dear life until my fighters kill everything. Carrier skills make it worse because without respec, my flagship is locked into three useful choices - Drover, Heron, and Astral.
For those who want weaker fighters because they dominate too much, I think that making fighters as ships as before 0.8a would kill two birds with one stone. Fighters are weaker and carriers use OP for guns like they should. Carriers should be able to bully smaller ships in a slugfest. A lone Lasher against a Mora or Heron, or even Hammerhead versus Astral. Carriers have those gun mounts for a reason, and they should use them, and they used to, but the current gameplay makes that clearly sub-optimal due to OP cost of fighters and Expanded Deck Crew. This has nothing to do with nostalgia glasses.
If carriers cannot use guns effectively because fighters are so much better, why bother with drawing mounts they will never use on them? To turn NPC carriers into punching bags on par with pirates?
I think the fighter weapons would be useful on bigger ships. I am jealous that fighters get unlimited Swarmers but not bigger ships, and there were times I wanted the high-delay weapons as low OP cost energy light mortar for some high-tech ships. Mining Laser is not a cheap weapon; it requires too many hullmods to raise up to be something remotely useful.
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I built plenty of fighter-heavy and fighter-only fleets with the old system. They weren't weak at all. There was an upside to swarms, so the more fighters you had, the better overall they became, similar to how it is now. I'm arguing that they didn't need to be made to feel stronger at all, and as far as usefulness is concerned... having designated targets for bombing runs or designated targets for fighters to defend, points to capture, even staging points for bombing runs to me defines usability. Having a system where you have per-carrier fighter clouds that can't do anything but attack or not attack is, well, workable but a big step back in usability.
For example, we see the system struggle when there's a lot of debris across the battlescape. Bombers now decide to start their bombing runs from a flanking position to other allied ships - but they don't know when they're firing their torpedos directly into debris just inches away from allies. Torpedos have AoE. Everything about fighters is now tied to hopping from ship to ship. Empty space basically doesn't exist for them as far as navigation is concerned. This is a downgrade.
Fighter weapons were in a better place when they were still smart lone wolves roaming the battlescape. You expected a squad of 3 Broadswords to threaten a frigate if they happened to come across one. They weren't punching above their weight because their weight (getting to and from objectives, and recovering losses slowly and at a large distance) was less.
I don't see how the current system beats it. It's much more straightforward and it gives carriers fast swarming attacks. Like Megas says, it's fighters-as-missiles. With the old system, when you defeated a fighter squad or had fighters run into flak, you had these fighters off your backs for a little while. Sometimes they even lost the squad. Right now they regenerate fast and are on you fast, weakening a lot of PD (because fighter ordnance basically never stops) in favor of accurate regular weapons.
Basically I'm saying: The new system has been built on top of the old and has not seen the deep balance pass it needs. If it gets one - and if we get a useful fighter command or two back on the tactical map - then we may get somewhere that's as good as the old system was.
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I think you're just expecting the new fighters to work the same as the old ones but with a little change. Alex stated he wanted them to be more like supports, and not just mini ships. Because it was kinda absurd you could have 15 fighter wings and only one or two carriers. Also to be real, there's not that many tactical commands that we now lost a huge integral part of combat. With the old system you just selected all your anti ship fighters, right click on a target, rinse and repeat. Sure you could defend points with them and assign as escorts, but you can do that now as well, it's just the carrier has to be close by. If anything, I feel like the old system was more abusable.
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Right now, fighters behave like missiles++, and because they cost OP, carrier spends OP on them and Exp. Deck Crew instead of guns because fighters are better on the ships designed to carry fighters. Legion is the exception that (with LD3) has barely enough OP to afford decent fighters and enough guns plus hullmods to work. (Odyssey is now a capital-sized Shrike that has fighter bays as a vestige of what it was from the pre-0.8a days.)
Fighters are not support. They are weapons that have too many similarities to missiles, which is why I say fighters are missiles even if others disagree with that notion. Alex may have intended fighters to be support, but that is not how things worked out. They became super Pilums.
Before 0.8a, carriers were still mostly carriers, but could fight in a pinch if an enemy got through to the carrier. Sure, Condor (or anything else that was not much bigger than attacker) was dead, but anything else could fight back and do some damage. Now, carriers are basically missileships like Gryphon, but better. But in order to be superior fighter platforms, they need to give up all other weapons to do their job.
I suppose I could object less to the modern carrier mechanics if current bays were scrapped and the gun mounts were changed to accept only fighters - a mount that accepts only fighters (or other weapons in case of universal mount), and fighters docked on those mounts like fighters and drones do in Endless Sky. It looks intimidating when a bunch of Kor Sestor fighters and drones launch from a carrier and start tearing your fleet of Hai and Wanderer ships to pieces. However, even the carriers in Endless Sky had room for some guns, just not enough to match a proper warship of its size, and ship equipment did not compete with fighter capacity. (They also were flimsier and could not use as many powerful engines as warships can.)
One more thing, the current system only beats the old system because the current system can smash enemy fleets while the old way could not catch up without skill support when officers came.
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EDIT: Another great example of a weapon that shouldn't be the same on a fighter >> Xyphos
I do not get this. If making Ion Beam different for fighters means they get more range than normal to match a warship's long-range ballistics so that Legion can pound enemies with the likes of Mark IX or Gauss (or Eagle/Dominator/Paragon with Converted Hangar and HVDs) at max range while Xyphos zaps them with unblockable EMP from behind the mothership, then sure, I buy that. Otherwise, Xyphos seems mostly useless for most carriers that want to stay back and fling long-range missiles fighters at the enemy. Xyphos seems only useful for Odyssey that may be forced to brawl in a melee like a Shrike, and current Xyphos is good for that.
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Oh come on dude, you're saying x thing is not broken because it's not very strong on everything. Should the AC then remain the same even tho it's only good on Hammerhead and some other SO builds? I really don't like the balance where a weapon is unusable on 95% of the ships but then is downright stupid on one or two. Thank god the AC is getting nerfed.
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Xyphos is rather wonderful when its orbiting an attack ship, but its unreliable because I don't have any good way of telling the AI to do that.
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Oh come on dude, you're saying x thing is not broken because it's not very strong on everything. Should the AC then remain the same even tho it's only good on Hammerhead and some other SO builds? I really don't like the balance where a weapon is unusable on 95% of the ships but then is downright stupid on one or two. Thank god the AC is getting nerfed.
I still fail to see how Xyphos is overpowered. When is it overpowered? When a flagship Astral grabs six of them and then kisses the enemy like what Monitor did with (fortress) shield ramming cheese back several releases ago? That seems incredibly risky and inefficient. If I need to use Astral for that, I am better off with bomber spam. Nearly as overpowering, but much safer and easier to use.
Xyphos is not doing any miracles for Odyssey. It blocks some missiles and zaps the occasional enemy, and it better be for the expensive 15 OP cost. (Longbows and Daggers instead are nice for chucking some missiles at targets of opportunity during a flyby.) If all I want is a meat shield, Mining Pod can do that for free, and it is not awful at the job (it just has no significant offense to speak of).
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When is it overpowered?
On any decent battlecarrier, which is currently only Legion but still. Mora could kinda count but it has pretty weak weaponry and not enough range with small ballistics. If we get another battlecarrier you bet it's gonna be bonkers there also. The very fact that you have free unblockable ion damage is enough. Mix that with kinetic weapons on your own and you can stunlock most ships easily. Now look at ion options for ships, either a weapon has short range so it isn't abused much, or it has a very high cost for its damage. You may not see as a problem because you're not gonna be fighting enemy Legions with Xyphos wings in campaign but it has the potential to be super annoying if something new comes along.
Actually I think the Brilliant would be crazy good with Xyphos.
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On Legion, Xyphos does not have enough range to hit the enemy I am shooting at. The Legion's ballistics outrange the Xyphos' Ion Beams. And unblockable ion beam and kinetics combo is not overpowered. If anything, that is the only thing going for Ion Beam; otherwise, it is weak. I would use Ion Beam Sunders and Paragons a lot more if Ion Beam and ballistics combo was really overpowered. At least Tachyon Lance and ballistics are very strong, and four lance Paragon is my loadout of choice until I bump against Ordos with multiple Radiants.
In case of Odyssey, if my ship is that close, it is overpowering things with plasma cannons and the enemy will be dead soon enough.
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Xyphos don't stack with themselves - single wing is enough to keep enemy mostly disabled, if you can keep the shield down. And since their shield damage is negligible, bringing more doesn't help with shield.
They also do not stack with other fighters, since they can't engage.
Imo they are only good on an Odyssey (1 Xyphos + 1 Longbow) or converted hangar Enforcer. And Brilliant, right.
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I'll say it for the 50th time: the reason the current system of fighters feel like "missiles on steroids" is because the system meant to keep them in check (replacement rate) benefits from 1.) PD being geared toward killing missiles, not fighters and 2.) no "partial" destruction of fighters (it's a binary system). You simply can't reduce the replacement rate fast enough to make fighters worse than standard weapons in the current version. This isn't a fault of the current fighter system but the meta-game around it.
Regarding #1 - If you kill the fighters faster, replacement rate goes down and the next swarm of fighters is slower/less effective. Mitigating the fighter swarms is something that I've felt has been relatively unchanged since 0.8 and fighters with shields make a lot of PD much less effective at outright killing fighters. Since killing the fighters is the only recourse an opposing ship has to slowing fighters' perpetual waves, this leads to carriers having a perennial advantage that can be multiplied if you keep adding carriers.
This is the distinguishing feature between a fighter and a standard missile weapon: missiles may not be replaced but they are (generally) available on command. The player can judge opportune times while the fighters just kind of shoot whenever. There's a lot to be said for striking at the precise moment. If replacement rate could be reduced more effectively, the fighter vs. missile debate would become apples vs. oranges. Fighters would be perpetual but haphazard and could be almost completely neutralized vs missiles which are limited, can't be stopped short of destroying the missile itself, but when used properly, can completely swing a battle.
Regarding #2 - A fighter with 1 HP has no impact on replacement rate. Or to put it another way, flux is being spent by the opponent but if it doesn't kill the fighter, the flux doesn't actually do any damage to the system meant to keep fighters from overwhelming the opponent. The carrier benefits from forcing flux from an opponent at no cost to itself.
If replacement rate was based off of fighter wing HP, instead of merely wing size, an opponent could still reduce replacement without having the binary system of "killed/not killed." This could be handled a few ways. Forcing fighters to return to the carrier at some HP % (like 33%) would not only force them to peel off but it would also force the carrier to spend replacement rate to repair them. Or, you could have a gradient system that some % of overall wing HP would have a detrimental/beneficial effect on replacement rate. Either way, doing damage to fighters would have a direct effect on replacement rate, which would, in turn, slow their advance and give fighters a true downside.
Or, you could tweak the replacement rate on all ships and simply lower it until there's a general feel of balance vs. standard warships.
I didn't like the old system particularly and the only thing that was lost, in my mind, was the ability to command the fighter wings directly. Other than that, I find the current system drastically better than the old. I don't agree with Megas that carriers should also have some fighting capability independent of their fighters. Most carriers are poor warships anyway and that sounds to me like shoehorning a square peg into a round hole. I would prefer tweaking the current system rather than going back to the old.
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My only thought is i've always felt it was somewhat weird that any ship with a hanger can run any fighter/bomber.
I get that on some level that's intended so you don't just wind up with small/medium/large hangers and have it be identical to weaponry, but at the same time I can't help but wonder if some limitation should be used.
Maybe do S/M/L hangers, or some sort of definition, but have it be more flexible. You can still put almost any ship in any hanger, but your wing sizes/replen rate might be smaller...maybe call it logistical capability or tech level or something. Just something to push across the idea that mass producing sparks takes more than just OP when compared to talons.
Maybe that's not the answer, but some sort of handle/limitation would really help balance the entire weapon type, and probably help promote more varied builds as well.
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Just double the replacement time for all of them.
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If you kill the fighters faster, replacement rate goes down and the next swarm of fighters is slower/less effective. Mitigating the fighter swarms is something that I've felt has been relatively unchanged since 0.8 and fighters with shields make a lot of PD much less effective at outright killing fighters. Since killing the fighters is the only recourse an opposing ship has to slowing fighters' perpetual waves, this leads to carriers having a perennial advantage that can be multiplied if you keep adding carriers.
I agree that there is a problem with replacement rates being too high resulting in a feeling of 'endless waves of fighters'. I think one root cause of the high replacement rates from a balance perspective is more that the mechanisms in place to coordinate fighters and bombers are somewhat bare. It's nearly impossible to time/coordinate bombers, and as far as I can tell, the AI has very little high level perspective, and mostly just focuses its fighters on the nearest enemy (or sometimes escorting the player). I think a result of that is that the fighters and bombers have to be over-tuned to consistently get good value without coordination. Since they can't be ordered to attack at the right moment like missiles can, they have to overpower the enemy with brute force/endless waves. I think if the player (and AI) had more ability to coordinate fighters, they could be tuned to be much weaker while still being influential. The old system had some significant advantages in that area: the fighters/bombers for the entire fleet could be ordered to group up/wait/engage by the players. Even some basic strategic commands like 'hold fire/regroup' and strike for the entire fleet would make a big difference. I know the game really wants to steer the player away from an overly micro-managy style of play, but I think this is one place where giving the player a lot of strategic control is fun and satisfying. Without that control, weaker/nerfed fighters will feel useless because they attack at the wrong moment and die too easily.
Most carriers are poor warships anyway and that sounds to me like shoehorning a square peg into a round hole. I would prefer tweaking the current system rather than going back to the old.
Completely agree, I like that new carriers are a completely unique class of ship with a unique play style rather than bad warships. I think giving the player more control over the fighters would make them actually fun to pilot which is my main complaint about them.
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Pre 0.6a releases had a hangar stat which affected how many fighters the fleet could use. It still required Fleet Points or whatever Logistics was called before 0.6a. Hangar stat was less than Fleet Points, and it meant the player could not fill up the entire fleet with fighters. At that time (before immortal fighter wings), most ships had some hangar stat (Hound had enough to bring Talons in the fleet). All that carriers did was repair and regenerate damaged wings in battle, which was handy (but it consumed supplies).
Just double the replacement time for all of them.
I would remove Expanded Deck Crew first then see what happens (which I support if it means carriers have enough OP to properly support guns like they used to, although more likely means ship will get Daggers instead of Piranhas). While the hullmod may or may not be overpowered, it boosts the carriers' prime fighter stats and is on par with ITU in importance. It is a no-brainer hullmod for dedicated carriers to take, to the point of being an OP tax.
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Completely agree, I like that new carriers are a completely unique class of ship with a unique play style rather than bad warships. I think giving the player more control over the fighters would make them actually fun to pilot which is my main complaint about them.
But this kinda goes against the whole point of fleet customization, build variety. You're just gonna end up with similar-ish fighters every time and exact same mounts (basic PD). This is even worse with carriers that have systems which punish a certain type of fighters. Like Megas said, might as well remove mounts completely from all dedicated carriers and give them some built-in PD just so they're not pinatas.
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It's easy to demonstrate in sim duels that weapons on an optimally-piloted carrier are not just for show. Carrier weapons may not be much, but can easily tip the fight from state where enemy is able to counter fighter strikes to one where they already can't.
... But doing that obviously puts carrier into more risk than standoff style, so i don't expect that from AI ships.
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I remember in previous releases when I ordered a Heron with Heavy Blaster and some burst PD to rally at a relay in the rear, and two enemy frigates (or maybe Enforcers) tried to attack the lone Heron and steal the relay, while my flagship and other ships were far away busy in separate duels and no help would come. After a few minutes, the Heron killed them both (one at a time), though took some armor damage (I think)! An enemy cruiser would probably slaughter the Heron (that I did not pilot), but some small fry, it could defend itself.
That said, Heron in those days had machine gun drones as a ship system.
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Completely agree, I like that new carriers are a completely unique class of ship with a unique play style rather than bad warships. I think giving the player more control over the fighters would make them actually fun to pilot which is my main complaint about them.
But this kinda goes against the whole point of fleet customization, build variety. You're just gonna end up with similar-ish fighters every time and exact same mounts (basic PD). This is even worse with carriers that have systems which punish a certain type of fighters. Like Megas said, might as well remove mounts completely from all dedicated carriers and give them some built-in PD just so they're not pinatas.
So add more variety to fighters? There's only one or two fighters per role right now (with the exception of HE bombers), so of course you will only see one or two load outs. This ties into some other threads about adding more ways to differentiate and balance fighters though. In order for there to be more variety, there needs to be more ways that fighters can be different from one another while also not being strictly better or worse. I guess engagement range is an existing stat that could be used more than it is. There could be fighters tuned for aggressive carrier load outs by having very low engagement ranges. I still think an additional mechanic like adding flux cost to fighters or adding bay sizes would go a long way towards adding diversity.
I remember in previous releases when I ordered a Heron with Heavy Blaster and some burst PD to rally at a relay in the rear, and two enemy frigates (or maybe Enforcers) tried to attack the lone Heron and steal the relay, while my flagship and other ships were far away busy in separate duels and no help would come. After a few minutes, the Heron killed them both (one at a time), though took some armor damage (I think)! An enemy cruiser would probably slaughter the Heron (that I did not pilot), but some small fry, it could defend itself.
That said, Heron in those days had machine gun drones as a ship system.
If current herons were smart enough to recall fighters to protect themselves, they would have no trouble killing a few frigates. Even then, a beam heron will easily hold off a few frigates without dying until fighters or other ships come to help.
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Completely agree, I like that new carriers are a completely unique class of ship with a unique play style rather than bad warships. I think giving the player more control over the fighters would make them actually fun to pilot which is my main complaint about them.
But this kinda goes against the whole point of fleet customization, build variety. You're just gonna end up with similar-ish fighters every time and exact same mounts (basic PD). This is even worse with carriers that have systems which punish a certain type of fighters. Like Megas said, might as well remove mounts completely from all dedicated carriers and give them some built-in PD just so they're not pinatas.
Or put weapons on your carriers, along with flux stats, so that they can fight off smaller enemies.
I'll repeat myself from previous threads: The idea that carriers can't mount weapons is wrong. Claiming a carrier can't mount weapons because doubling down on fighters is "better" and then claiming that build is the only possible one is an example of false optimization.
Mounting bombers + expanded deck crew takes a huge amount of OP so weapons are scarce, but gives a huge amount of possible strike package. A vulnerable but powerful ship.
Mounting heavy fighters or interceptors often doesn't even require EDC, and even including it the OP costs have gone down enough to allow weapons and flux/hullmods (depending on missile or gun armaments). Now the ship has swarming lockdown/anti-frigate capabilities and can fight off smaller enemies that get through. A less vulnerable ship but also less immediately impactful fighter package. In this case make sure the rest of the fleet still has enough kill power to take down hard targets.
Or on battlecarriers go nuts and go all the way down to Talons or Mining Pods. Both are perfectly valid choices on the Legion and Mora, letting them dedicate their OP purely to offense Mora will usually also use SO, to odd but effective results, while the Legion is just a straight up battleship in this configuration that happens to have 4 interceptor wings for hunting down frigates/defense drones.
I wouldn't mind EDC going away because it is too powerful of a hullmod for bombers and vastly skews carrier power towards players (AI autobuilds often don't use it). That said, the OP system for fighters is working perfectly, creating a system with tradeoffs, which IMO is much more interesting than a system that allows for simply stuffing the best of everything onto every ship.
I remember in previous releases when I ordered a Heron with Heavy Blaster and some burst PD to rally at a relay in the rear, and two enemy frigates (or maybe Enforcers) tried to attack the lone Heron and steal the relay, while my flagship and other ships were far away busy in separate duels and no help would come. After a few minutes, the Heron killed them both (one at a time), though took some armor damage (I think)! An enemy cruiser would probably slaughter the Heron (that I did not pilot), but some small fry, it could defend itself.
That said, Heron in those days had machine gun drones as a ship system.
Heavy Blaster Heron is still a fine build for making smaller ships back off. I posted one in the other thread that works great. As a player ship you can hunt cruisers because you can control the fighter targets. As an AI ship it will hang back (CARRIER tag) but will be able to push frigates and destroyers back easily.
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I'll repeat myself from previous threads: The idea that carriers can't mount weapons is wrong. Claiming a carrier can't mount weapons because doubling down on fighters is "better" and then claiming that build is the only possible one is an example of false optimization.
I cannot agree with this for carriers not named Legion. (Although the point of Legion is battlecarrier; Astral is a superior carrier.) Whenever I tried unarmed (or armed with basic PD) carriers versus battlecarriers with Talons and the like, the unarmed one performed better every time. That does not mean battlecarriers loadouts do not work, just not as well as pure carrier (or pure warship if I want guns). Inferior enough that I will take unarmed loadout every time if I want to win, or at least if I want a carrier instead of a warship.
Legion is an exception. It can squeeze four or so 8-10 OP fighters (no bombers because Astral is much better at that game) and Deck Crew, plus two heavy weapons, two flak, and ITU. Then again, if Legion was not a good enough battlecarrier, it would be utter rubbish because Astral does fighters better than Legion, and Onslaught brawls better than Legion. Well, that is already true, but Legion can do both well enough to go toe-to-toe with a capital or sweep space with non-bombers to pick off the cowardly AI.
But something like Heron? Too OP starved to get everything I want, so now I spec it for pure fighters. Drover looks like a ship that could lightly brawl in a pinch, but there is no point.
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Posting in a fighters thread
I want to reiterate what I think might help balance fighters out and generally improve their effect on gameplay.
1) Only bomber primary weapons do 100% damage against full-size ships. Other fighter classes do roughly 25%, more for gunships. EMP weapons only have 10% effectiveness vs full-size, unless it's a bomber's primary weapon.
In other words, full-size ships should be able to largely ignore all but the strongest fighters/gunships unless they're severely damaged or very close to overload - while bombers retain the same threat level.
2) Reduce fighters' health/armor to the point that most 5OP+ ballistic/energy weapons can two-shot most of them, with some generally more resilient. Give them a probability of dodging hits. This would largely be an aesthetic change, it makes little visual sense for tiny fighters to stand up to as much fire as they can. The practical volume of fire required to kill them would be roughly the same, but it gives them a bonus against heavy single-shot weapons that aren't intended for combating fighters; It also means that fighters would less often block a high-power shot meant for a full-size target which is often frustrating.
3) Weapons targeting fighters (and missiles) can fire over friendly ships - maybe only for PD weapons/small weapons with IPDAI or small weapons in general. Fighters are more likely to take fire from multiple sources, PD-heavy ships can do a better job of covering their wingmates.
4) Fighters must dock to replenish their wing. Instead of steadily trickling out and being a near-constant annoyance, fighters can be more easily suppressed by whittling their numbers - Attacking in waves rather than maintaining a relatively consistent presence.
5) Tie replacement rate to carrier's CR - Replacing fighters diminishes the carrier's CR. Not too sure on this one.
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Astral is another casualty of the ships-as-missiles change. Before, I would arm it with three heavy blasters, ITU, and maybe some missiles, and try to brawl anything that was smaller than a capital. Today, because bombers are SO expensive (and Warthogs were nerfed to uselessness), there is no way I can afford weapons beyond minor PD on Astral, along with ITU and high flux stats high-tech ships need (and Expanded Missile Racks if I think about missiles for it). (Aside: Other than Legion14, Astral was the only other candidate for aiming dumb-fire missiles, but why would I give up fighters to turn it into a Hammer boat? So glad that the classic Aurora is being reborn as a new midline ship next release.) Tridents are so expensive that if I want six of them, I probably have to skimp on the PD and/or flux to squeeze them on in. (I do not use Tridents, but I use Daggers, Longbows, and maybe others.) In exchange, Astral can reload bombers at will and destroy nearly anything fast. It works better without weapons because bombers are infinite missiles. My typical modern Astral build is five heavy burst lasers and everything else is bombers and Deck Crew.
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My typical modern Astral build is five heavy burst lasers and everything else is bombers and Deck Crew.
Give it 2 Pulse Lasers and they will do wonders at clearing enemy fighters and frigates (to some degree).
Give it a few LRPD and they will help building fleet wide cover against stray missiles.
Give it 2 Pillum launchers and you'll gain some long range pressure and effective finishers against pinned targets. Large missile options are also to be considered.
My point being: yes, even on an Astral, guns matter if you so choose.
Using 6 Trident wings on Astral certainly is not mandatory, nor using hullmods X and Y. If you choose to do so, well, it's on you - that's your balance decision. This, is my understanding of the current design, player has a lot of options and ... this is great!
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Pilums on an Astral... I see great meme potential there. And your last sentence is exactly what I want, options! Currently you can choose to fill Astrals with guns but why would you do that when fighters do that work for you at much greater range and no risk to the carrier? It's not really an ''option'' if you're choosing to shoot yourself in the foot on purpose.
I think intrinsic_parity is right in the end, we just need more decent fighter options with varying costs and roles. Right now the bombers you're gonna use 99% of the time on an Astral are all between 12 and 18 OP for example.
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I haven't read the whole thread, but yeah a problem I have with the astral and drover is throw they kinda limit themselves to either bombers or fighters/interceptors by design.
Fighter astrals seems like a waste of time, as do bomber drovers.
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Fighter astrals seems like a waste of time, as do bomber drovers.
It is today, but it was not in 0.8a releases when Remnant fighters and Warthogs (and carrier skills) were stronger. Sparks had two burst PD, and could solo any campaign challenge, even a full strength Remnant Nexus. Warthogs were very strong, cutting down ship after ship in seconds. With non-bombers, Recall Device was a defensive power. If a fast ship got close and ready to tear Astral a new one while fighters were halfway across the map chewing on bigger ships, Recall Device would recall them all and engulf and destroy any assailants, then those fighters can go back to where they left off.
@ pairedeciseaux: Daggers are effective against frigates too! It is the main reason to use Daggers instead of loading up on cheaper bombers like Cobras, Perditions, and Khopesh. Daggers are useful against a wide range of targets. I am not too worried about fighters from the enemy. NPCs do not mass fighters like the player can.
Pilums are useless like old pre-0.8a Thumper was. No weapon is better than Pilums. When I build a Pilum spam fleet and the best they can do is kill one ship before the Pilums run out then wait to regenerate, it has problems. Meanwhile, I can build an unskilled Spark spam fleet and wipe out a single max strength Ordos fleet. Also, Pilum spam tends to make the enemy more cowardly and run away more. AI already griefs enough with its cowardice and turtling, and I do not want to make that annoying behavior even worse!
Conventional missiles that are useful enough do not last long enough, except maybe Locusts with Expanded Missiles Racks (which is a big chunk of OP). But, if I want Locusts, Conquest can do that job better. Also, why would I use normal missiles when I have even better missiles called fighters? On a ship designed to use said fighters or especially bombers?
Guns can be used on Astral, but that is clearly sub-optimal to the one that does not use guns at all. I have used unarmed Astral and it wrecks fleets efficiently, and at range! I do not want to trade that away for shorter-ranged guns and weaker fighters! That was not the case before 0.8a when fighters did not cost the ship anything to use (but it did cost the fleet resources like Logistics, and carrier stats were inferior to those of proper warships), even if it was worse than Odyssey in every way except number of decks at the time.
About Drover, at least when needlers had 800 range, needlers and annihilators was a viable build to brawl with. It was inferior to the one that had no weapons and ran away while better fighters killed.
Currently you can choose to fill Astrals with guns but why would you do that when fighters do that work for you at much greater range and no risk to the carrier? It's not really an ''option'' if you're choosing to shoot yourself in the foot on purpose.
This is sooo right!
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Fighter astrals seems like a waste of time, as do bomber drovers.
Drover has interesting synergy with Cobras. A bomber that fired it's load is considered 'dead' for reserve deployment purposes and half of 1 is still 1, so you can immediately launch 2 more Reapers.
Problem is, AI doesn't actually understand mechanics here, and just mashes system as soon as it's off cooldown, often getting wrong timing.
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What are people's proposals to balance fighters or bombers on an Astral, Heron, or Drover, versus on ships like a Mora, Legion or Odyssey? The former ships have bomber and fighter focused ship systems, while the others don't. If bombers are balanced on a Legion, then the Astral is going to want to spam them compared to normal weapons, simply because the ship ability can effectively double the damage delivered. What should the Astral sacrifice relative to the Legion for that effectively doubled bomber damage? Is it the brawling capability? Or do we want to make fighters a sub-optimal choice if you don't have a related ship system, so that the decision to take a heavy blaster over a bomber on the Astral makes sense?
The fact that people don't tend to load Legions up with Tridents or Daggers (I'm assuming a lot with that statement) indicates we're kinda close to where you want to be in terms of a balance point.
The Astral, Drover, and Heron tend to put the most OP into fighters and/or bombers because they have ship abilities which magnify the benefits of fighters and bombers. If a Hammerhead had universal mediums, you'd still put ballistics in those medium slots because the ship system does so much more with them. Even with access to mod energy weapons or missiles. The ships you don't see sacrificing everything for more fighters are exactly the ones you wouldn't expect to. The ones that don't have bonuses to fighters or limited slots relative to their class size.
Given not every player slaps converted hangars on every destroyer and above and drops a Trident in there, clearly at some point fighters/bombers do become too expensive relative to guns for a given ship hull. The game design question is, what is that point? And how does it slide with fleet size and fighter concentration. A single flight of talons isn't that powerful in 1 on 1. 40 flights of talons becomes a large force multiplier in a fleet situation. A single flight of Sparks in a 1 on 1 is a nice damage source. 40 flights of Sparks in an end game fleet vs fleet will wipe the opposition.
Do you balance for the beginning of the game or the end game? Do you balance for the carrier specialists or the carrier generalists? Do you introduce some new mechanics to prevent fighter concentration at end game?
Right now, I see the options and choice coming at the level do I pick an Astral, a Legion, or an Odyssey for my fleet. The Astral is a specialized carrier, and is great at that job. The Legion gets no bonuses to bombers, but has a maneuverability system which can strategically reposition itself to chase or get to support range of allies quickly when pulled in mid-battle as reinforcements. An Odyssey has both strategic and tactical speed superiority, with better flux stats than either, but fewer fighters and shorter effective range on its big guns. I see nothing wrong with ships that want to focus on fighters. We have ships that want to focus on missiles, or large mount weapons, or speed.
Fighter balance overall probably needs some tweaking, but I'm not sure it necessarily needs to be tweaked to the level of making the Astral want to mount more flux dissipation/capacity and heavy blasters instead of daggers and tridents.
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Why are we trying to make an Astral a warship? It, along with the Drover, is the most-dedicated pure carrier in the game. All of its weapon mounts are designed for self-defense, not offense. It has enough firepower to fend off Frigates and Destroyers but why is there an expectation for it to outgun a Cruiser without fighters? It even has a built-in Advanced Optics hullmod which tells the player "Hey, you'd do well to stack this thing with Beams." Beam PD, Tac Lasers, Gravitons, etc. It can defend itself (at range) but won't beat back a concentrated attack. That's the point.
Even pre-0.8, the Astral was never a good warship. It was a beam platform with missiles that you tried to keep behind your main lines. Even if you stripped all the OP intended for fighters, what could an Astral accomplish? It has subpar flux stats and is relatively fragile compared to the other Capitals. It also has very poor weapon arcs for frontline assault.
Why are we trying to make any of the pure carriers warships? That's an unreasonable expectation in the name of "build variety." Carrier play (for the player) could be improved with more direct control but the "carriers were better when you could load them with guns" argument is weird to me. Making a sub-optimal warship into a better sub-optimal warship seems...silly?
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You two are completely right but what I and a few others are trying to say is why are there even mounts if those carriers only use them for PD. It's just a chore filling those mounts since there's zero thought process.
Also LOL at saying Astral mounts are designed for self-defense. 2 large missile mounts on a dedicated carrier... I mean you're technically right, best self-defense is just to outright delete the enemy ships.
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Why are we trying to make an Astral a warship?
Because before 0.8a, the carriers had no other choice, aside from not using them at all in favor of more warships or Atlas. They have gun mounts, and mounts are meant to be used. They could not spend OP on better fighters, so might as well spend them on guns so they can pop a smaller ship that feels lucky. Like Gryphon, their stats are worse for their class, but by no means so bad that they were unusable. I really, really miss this in modern releases. At the same time, I will not use classic loadouts instead of more effective modern loadouts even if the latter look ridiculously stupid. (Stupid loadouts are not just unarmed carriers, but also high-tech ships (like Aurora or Odyssey) with one or two blasters/plasma and every other energy mount empty because they need all other OP in either Sabots and Missile Racks or capacitors/vents/flux and shield hullmods to offset weapons' horrid inefficiency and range.)
Sure, Astral was worse brawling, but it could still fight and was no slouch, which was handy if an enemy Dominator or weaker got through to slug it out. Sure, if a battleship reaches Astral, yeah sure, Astral dies. But a cruiser or weaker? No problem. Just blast them!
Astral has been in the game since at least 0.53. Fighters were not bought with OP, just Fleet Points (0.5) Logistics (0.6) or fleet slots (0.7). There were also no fighter hullmods like Expanded Deck Crew until 0.8a. Also, there were fewer campaign mods, and Automated Repair Unit had a awful penalty during 0.6 (+50% Logistics). Nearly all OP was spent on warship stuff because that was it.
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I'm down for carriers being the reverse of phase ships, counting as a gunboat of the next level down. So an astral is otherwise like a cruiser, and a drover as a frigate in terms of guns and stuff.
Which they kinda are at the moment, but they could stand to be a little bit better even still.
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Balance fighters and carriers separately.
Look at which carriers are great for the price (Drover, Mora), look at which ones could use a little more love (Condor, Gemini?) or a few more OP (Heron).
Then nerf fighters. Various ways to do this. I still think a speed and respawn speed nerf would be in order for all fighters, as well as an adjustment pass for some OP costs.
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Balance fighters and carriers separately.
Look at which carriers are great for the price (Drover, Mora), look at which ones could use a little more love (Condor, Gemini?) or a few more OP (Heron).
Then nerf fighters. Various ways to do this. I still think a speed and respawn speed nerf would be in order for all fighters, as well as an adjustment pass for some OP costs.
Speed nerf would defeat the purpose of interceptors and pursuit projection, especially interceptor wings with greater maximum distance from the carrier.
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Posting in a fighters thread
I want to reiterate what I think might help balance fighters out and generally improve their effect on gameplay.
1) Only bomber primary weapons do 100% damage against full-size ships. Other fighter classes do roughly 25%, more for gunships. EMP weapons only have 10% effectiveness vs full-size, unless it's a bomber's primary weapon.
In other words, full-size ships should be able to largely ignore all but the strongest fighters/gunships unless they're severely damaged or very close to overload - while bombers retain the same threat level.
2) Reduce fighters' health/armor to the point that most 5OP+ ballistic/energy weapons can two-shot most of them, with some generally more resilient. Give them a probability of dodging hits. This would largely be an aesthetic change, it makes little visual sense for tiny fighters to stand up to as much fire as they can. The practical volume of fire required to kill them would be roughly the same, but it gives them a bonus against heavy single-shot weapons that aren't intended for combating fighters; It also means that fighters would less often block a high-power shot meant for a full-size target which is often frustrating.
3) Weapons targeting fighters (and missiles) can fire over friendly ships - maybe only for PD weapons/small weapons with IPDAI or small weapons in general. Fighters are more likely to take fire from multiple sources, PD-heavy ships can do a better job of covering their wingmates.
4) Fighters must dock to replenish their wing. Instead of steadily trickling out and being a near-constant annoyance, fighters can be more easily suppressed by whittling their numbers - Attacking in waves rather than maintaining a relatively consistent presence.
5) Tie replacement rate to carrier's CR - Replacing fighters diminishes the carrier's CR. Not too sure on this one.
This is basically it. All of those are (except maybe number 5) are the solution.
I'd also add, give non-bombers the correct AI rather than making them act like wanna-be bombers. Interceptors should be intercepting other strikecraft and munitions (and obviously, would need to be made fast enough to do so - a fighter version of 0-flux speed boost for them would accomplish this), Fighters should be escorting bombers and go after other strikecraft.
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This is basically it. All of those are (except maybe number 5) are the solution.
I'd also add, give non-bombers the correct AI rather than making them act like wanna-be bombers. Interceptors should be intercepting other strikecraft and munitions (and obviously, would need to be made fast enough to do so - a fighter version of 0-flux speed boost for them would accomplish this), Fighters should be escorting bombers and go after other strikecraft.
Why limit them to PD? They are good for killing ships, especially the smaller ones (though I will take big ones too), and I use them mainly for that purpose to counter the cowardly, turtling AI which has become a real annoyance since 0.8a.
And long as AI plays like dirty cowards that want to stall until heat death of the universe (or CR time out), I want to send every last fighter to focus-fire and murder those stinking cowards!
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The fact that people don't tend to load Legions up with Tridents or Daggers (I'm assuming a lot with that statement) indicates we're kinda close to where you want to be in terms of a balance point.
You are assuming a lot seeing how my favorite Legion build involves 2 Daggers and 2 Longbows.
I only started the game recently so I don’t know what fighters were like prior to 0.9, but I will say I do like how the system currently works. I do understand people’s complaints, fighters are powerful and most carriers are OP starved. However, on the whole carriers and fighters seem balanced. The best way I can see to give the crowd that wants more OP to kit out their carriers is reduce the OP cost of fighters and instead have fighters increase the recovery cost of its parent carrier.
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The best way I can see to give the crowd that wants more OP to kit out their carriers is reduce the OP cost of fighters and instead have fighters increase the recovery cost of its parent carrier.
A suggestion I made earlier elsewhere was make fighters free (for ships with normal fighter bays, at least). Anything less than 8 OP is considered underpowered trash for pirates (though Wasps have their uses) similar to pirate Wolves and phase ships, and the two Atropos user wings worth more than 15 OP can be scaled down (two Daggers instead of three, one Trident instead of two).
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I think if you just remove EDC and nerf outliers like the Drover, Thunder, and potentially the Spark, fighters become mostly balanced. After that, the best way to nerf fighters is to improve the default variants, throw in some good IPDAI variants, and potentially add new dedicated anti-fighter weaponry. Right now there's a serious gap between anti-missile PD and anti-ship guns, where there's no extremely accurate low-recoil low-damage small HE gun for ripping apart unshielded fighters. I'm imaging something like the LAG but 500 range, perfectly accurate and dealing 20-ish HE per shot, 100 DPS 75 flux? Mix some IPDAI variants using that gun and some railguns or the new low-recoil single light autocannon into regular fleets and they'd create a death zone that fighters can't enter.
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Fighters are primarily dangerous in large swarms, not few at a time. In which case hitting is mostly non-concern - just shoot in general direction of approaching fighter swarm. What you really need to counter them is high, flux-efficient dps. Passthrough weapons like Plasma or Hellbore are especially good.
Accurate weapons are only needed to mop up few remaining fighters, so are ultimately secondary.
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Why limit them to PD? They are good for killing ships, especially the smaller ones (though I will take big ones too), and I use them mainly for that purpose to counter the cowardly, turtling AI which has become a real annoyance since 0.8a.
Yes they are good at killing ships. But they shouldn't be. Interceptors and (and to a slightly lesser extent) Fighters shouldn't be ship killers - that's what bombers are for. Right now all strikecraft simply shoot ships and because of that, most of them are garbage. When only your ship-shooting ability matters, most of the strikecraft that have stats designed for not-ship shooting tend to be trash.
And yeah the reason weapons designed for anti-strikecraft are problematic right now is because strike craft work on the same hp and damage scales as regular ships, so any weapon that's amazing against fighters is also gonna be amazing against ships.
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Fighters killing ships has been a sci fi staple of the last 50+ years, with both missiles/torpedoes and also with gun type weapons.
There are several weapons already that are quite good at fighter killing: Flaks, Devastator for AoE, accurate weapons like railguns and phase lances for picking them off at range, and then closer ranged dps guns like vulcans , light assault guns, or dlmgs (better against shielded fighters). Other than railguns, I don't think any of those are considered that OP for ship-ship combat.
There are a few fighter wings that are very tough, like broadswords and warthogs, but most are pretty reasonably shot down. Huge swarms are a big problem, and its both too easy for the play to amass such a swarm and too rare for the AI to be using anti-swarm weapons.
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Fighters killing ships has been a sci fi staple of the last 50+ years, with both missiles/torpedoes and also with gun type weapons.
That is the point of classic shmups, most of which are generally more guns, with few smart bombs per life in some games to erase chaff for a few seconds.
Warthogs fell hard. They went from too powerful to too weak for their speed and cost. They cost as much as a bomber but not as easy to use. They are so slow, and if they finally catch up, they do so little damage before most enemy ships (anything smaller than a capital) run away from them or shoot them down. If Warthogs will not become cheaper or get stronger, they need to move faster to match other fighters. Currently, they combine the worst of gun fighters (low sustained DPS) and bombers (slow speed, high OP cost).
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I agree that Warthogs are undertuned. IIRC, there was a bug that somehow tripled their damage output when skills were applied. I suspect that was more responsible for their feeling OP, and nerfing them from 9 light mortars per wing to 4 light mortars per wing was a bit much.
For warthogs, I can see 3 approaches to fixing them:
1) Bring them up to Broadsword speed, reduce OP to 8, and have them be HE heavy fighters. This is a rather boring approach, but at that speed they would be fine 2/wing IMO, because they would be easy to pair with a kinetic source.
2) Bring wing size to 3, lower HP/armor a small amount.
3) Increase damage output of each Warthog by adding back the third light mortar.
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I hold the view that introduction of any anti-simulationist behaviors that break WYSIWYG and/or create rules not used elsewhere in the game (special damage modifiers for fighters vs. ships, RNG-based chance to avoid visually hitting shots) are fundamentally undesirable and should only be used when other options have failed or been rejected.
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I hold the view that introduction of any anti-simulationist behaviors that break WYSIWYG and/or create rules not used elsewhere in the game (special damage modifiers for fighters vs. ships, RNG-based chance to avoid visually hitting shots) are fundamentally undesirable and should only be used when other options have failed or been rejected.
Is the view of the sane.
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I hold the view that introduction of any anti-simulationist behaviors that break WYSIWYG and/or create rules not used elsewhere in the game (special damage modifiers for fighters vs. ships, RNG-based chance to avoid visually hitting shots) are fundamentally undesirable and should only be used when other options have failed or been rejected.
Agreed.
I grew up with the Freespace games and when I think of Fighters attacking Frigates, Cruisers, Destroyers, etc. I don't see them taking down big ships with guns. That caliber of weaponry has almost no effect on warship-grade armor and it takes torpedoes or other capital-grade firepower to truly harm the big ships. In the same vein, if your fighter gets in the crossfire of capital ships, you get one-shotted. That's a reasonable expectation when you're talking giant cannons intended to melt through thick armor. Granted, Freespace was more about dogfighting other fighters and interceptors were rightfully intended to really only deal with incoming fighters/bombers. SS Fighters seem much less concerned with dogfighting and interception so their primary use is almost always attacking warships.
However, I don't think it's a huge stretch to nerf fighter DPS across the board and label them "Fighter versions" of the weapon that are less effective than warship-caliber weapons, if that was the route to take. Likewise, if Armor/Hull values were reduced across the board for Fighters because they're not made to withstand warship-caliber weaponry. All the same rules are being applied to fighters as standard shpis (no RNG, no hidden modifiers), it's just they're less effective by virtue of being smaller/more vulnerable weapons platform. Fighter-vs-fighter combat would remain relatively unchanged but against larger targets, they would need more time-to-kill (and take more losses) without the use of actual ship-killers.
I'm not sure if I'm really advocating that but I wouldn't disagree with it on principle as I would throwing in hidden modifiers or RNG.
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I would not want non-bomber fighters to be good only at killing other fighters, when fighters have been reduced to being another class of missiles. Seems like I would rather have another warship that is capable of killing fighters AND other ships. At least bombers are infinite missiles, which is why I haul an Astral or two around.
So far, most of the fighter-only weapons looks like stuff I want my ships to have, especially the unlimited Swarmers.
If we get more fighter-only equipment, I want current Atropos made fighter-only while the ship version gets stronger ones that hit as hard as a Hammer (1500 damage). 1000 damage for 2 OP, short-range, and cannot be used at point-blank range, unlike Harpoons.
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im reluctant to back a lot of these suggestions since they seem to be based in scenarios where there is an inordinate amount of fighter spam. directly altering performance of fighters based on extremes feels weird. nerfing every fighter because of drover and astral capabilities is like treating the side effects and ignoring the cause
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I wouldn't mind seeing a couple of medium-slot PD_ALSO weapons geared towards destroying fighters - one Ballistic and one Energy would do - or even repurposing weapons like the Heavy Machine Gun with the addition of the PD_ALSO tag.
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I agree that Warthogs are undertuned. IIRC, there was a bug that somehow tripled their damage output when skills were applied. I suspect that was more responsible for their feeling OP, and nerfing them from 9 light mortars per wing to 4 light mortars per wing was a bit much.
For warthogs, I can see 3 approaches to fixing them:
1) Bring them up to Broadsword speed, reduce OP to 8, and have them be HE heavy fighters. This is a rather boring approach, but at that speed they would be fine 2/wing IMO, because they would be easy to pair with a kinetic source.
2) Bring wing size to 3, lower HP/armor a small amount.
3) Increase damage output of each Warthog by adding back the third light mortar.
I mean I know how crazy this sounds but an assault chaingun gives thematic sense given the name. Maybe just balance around very short bursts (also thematic).
As for the rest-
It seems silly if fighters can't do decent damage to something like a destroyer. There's no obvious reason that should be the case an it makes sense that they're not large enough that weapons shouldn't be able to damage them.
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I would prefer dedicated PD slots since the concept of not building PD in a fighter/missile dense environment is too far fetched. Even coked-out raiders would strap something on when their self-preservation instincts kicked in.
Honestly, sometimes OP limits design. It encourages heavy offense but rarely offers a meaningful trend to defense especially during your first playthrough. Would it make sense to have PD use its own OP system as a hard nudge to teach people the glories of not dying to one reaper volley?
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I would prefer dedicated PD slots since the concept of not building PD in a fighter/missile dense environment is too far fetched. Even coked-out raiders would strap something on when their self-preservation instincts kicked in.
Honestly, sometimes OP limits design. It encourages heavy offense but rarely offers a meaningful trend to defense especially during your first playthrough. Would it make sense to have PD use its own OP system as a hard nudge to teach people the glories of not dying to one reaper volley?
I'm heavily against this simply because I think one of the cool "ah ha" moments of star-sector is when you kit out one ship to the gills with weaponry and then kit out one or two more with a bunch of defensive stuff and have it escort the first ship. That's arguably more realistic, but it should be demonstrated better (tutorial/skirmish thing?).
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PD not being able to shoot over friendlies and having generally very short ranges means dedicated PD escorts isn't really a thing. The most effect way to use them is wild weasel-esque, on a fast ship that runs upfront and attracts all the missile fire. That's not really the classic PD escort though.
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PD not being able to shoot over friendlies and having generally very short ranges means dedicated PD escorts isn't really a thing. The most effect way to use them is wild weasel-esque, on a fast ship that runs upfront and attracts all the missile fire. That's not really the classic PD escort though.
I don't know what to say. I do it all the time and it works fine. Yes you generally need two pd escorts so they'll cover both sides, but the AI does quite a good job and defends well.
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If one of the biggest problems with fighters is amassing huge numbers of them, couldn't we just make some penalty against this specifically? Like each additional fighter deployed after ~10 fighters (not wings) reduces max engagement range for all fighters by 50 units, due to comm complexity. This will leave carriers more vulnerable if the entire fleet is carriers, while leaving "standard" fleets unaffected.
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In actual combat, you don't saturate airspace due to "blue on blue" concerns. Just like mister grenade mister missiles is not your friend once it has armed its warhead. There are other concerns such as cost, logistics, and overkill as well.
You could apply some form of fratricide to massed fighter wings though from the scifi angle this doesn't make as much sense since its common to see writing about huge 600+ wing sizes(also space is big)