Fractal Softworks Forum

Starsector => Suggestions => Topic started by: Soda Savvy on May 11, 2021, 11:18:15 AM

Title: Fighters and Bombers should be remote operated drones.
Post by: Soda Savvy on May 11, 2021, 11:18:15 AM: Fighters and Bombers in the game are literally made by autoforges on the carriers and sent off to get blown up in short order. They don't have a lifespan beyond ordnance delivery half the time, and I'm pretty sure none of them ever actually survive an entire fight outside of really small skirmishes.

This doesn't make sense in a setting that has factions fielding fleets of thousands out of populations of in many cases less than a few million. Signing up to be a pilot, or being drafted to be one, is basically a literal death sentence and just throwing lives away from a constantly shrinking pool.

All fightercraft should be drones remote piloted from the carrier. Maybe the further away from the carrier they get, the worse their performance can get due to light lag and enemy ecm/eccm. Actual drone fighters could avoid any such negatives by virtue of having an onboard ai core.
Title: Re: Fighters and Bombers should be remote operated drones.
Post by: Sutopia on May 11, 2021, 11:36:16 AM: advertisement
Try Skirmish Core from Modern Carrier mod today!
Enhanced agility helps your heavy fighters really run under enemy guns.
Suggestions for new hullmod is welcomed
[close]

I feel it’s a mix of fighter AI not auto return for repair on heavy damage and the fighter themselves just die too easily most of the time.
That said I can probably dish out a hullmod to deliberately ask fighters to return for repair on a damage threshold, but it will be very hard to determine and probably is not going to work if I just slap in a constant value threshold regardless of enemy AA ability.

Long bow and dagger do often come out alive though.
Title: Re: Fighters and Bombers should be remote operated drones.
Post by: Tecrys on May 11, 2021, 11:38:12 AM: I always "convinced" captured crew from enemy ships to pilot my fighters :D
Title: Re: Fighters and Bombers should be remote operated drones.
Post by: Pratapon51 on May 11, 2021, 05:23:32 PM: I don't mind this little retcon. It helps us justify the removal of Recovery Shuttles since no one practical uses it anyway. ;D
Title: Re: Fighters and Bombers should be remote operated drones.
Post by: Thaago on May 11, 2021, 05:25:49 PM: I've found one use for recovery shuttles: early game Talon Condors. So many lost crew otherwise.
Title: Re: Fighters and Bombers should be remote operated drones.
Post by: KDR_11k on May 12, 2021, 07:03:50 AM: You can get Fighter Uplink to increase the survivability. Probably not worth it though. The losses hardly matter. The increased speed could help with letting bombers catch up to faster targets though.
Title: Re: Fighters and Bombers should be remote operated drones.
Post by: Aratoop on May 12, 2021, 07:58:55 AM: People throwing their lives away in fighters is a pretty common trope in sci fi and I do enjoy it here. The issue is that fighter behaviour is basically the same as a kamikaze pilot and they won't return to the carrier before total destruction of the fighter since they can't run out of ammo, which kinda breaks immersion. I don't think the solution is to simply remove crewed fighters, though, as they'll always be super cool
Title: Re: Fighters and Bombers should be remote operated drones.
Post by: Igncom1 on May 12, 2021, 01:20:31 PM: My brave luddite WARRIORS refuse to use anything remotely sensible and instead will maximise the use of Perditions to show the devil foe the HAMMER OF LUDD!

(Nah I mean, I like the crew cost to using normal fighters, that can then be avoided with AI/drone fighters like the Wasp. It's not like most ship weapons are automated either, unless you have that Integrated Point Defense AI, so you are still using human gunners for the ships weapons in most cases.)
Title: Re: Fighters and Bombers should be remote operated drones.
Post by: JUDGE! slowpersun on May 12, 2021, 10:10:01 PM: Quote from: KDR_11k on May 12, 2021, 07:03:50 AM
You can get Fighter Uplink to increase the survivability. Probably not worth it though. The losses hardly matter. The increased speed could help with letting bombers catch up to faster targets though.

Fighter Uplink is a skill, not a hull mod. I got better skills to waste skill points on... which is why Fighter uplink should be scrapped as a skill and made into a hull mod! Actually, some skills in general seem like they should have been hull mods, but Alex was hard up for skills at the last moment before dropping beta...

Also, fighters shouldn't necessarily always be affected by any ship weapons except point defense and special anti-fighter missiles. So sometimes the fighter flies "under" the railgun or beam weapon fire. Also be nice if fighters and interceptors could shoot down missiles and torpedoes (wouldn't matter if short-range, but would affect long-range shots).
Title: Re: Fighters and Bombers should be remote operated drones.
Post by: SafariJohn on May 13, 2021, 05:29:38 AM: Fighters with PD weapons do shoot at missiles. They just don't attack missiles proactively. tbf most of the time they have no chance of intercepting a missile.
Title: Re: Fighters and Bombers should be remote operated drones.
Post by: SCC on May 13, 2021, 06:25:10 AM: Fighters could probably dodge projectiles by strafing, were they instructed to do so.
Title: Re: Fighters and Bombers should be remote operated drones.
Post by: shoi on May 13, 2021, 06:02:25 PM: Quote from: SafariJohn on May 13, 2021, 05:29:38 AM
Fighters with PD weapons do shoot at missiles. They just don't attack missiles proactively. tbf most of the time they have no chance of intercepting a missile.

Interceptors are the ones that go out of their way to attack missiles
Title: Re: Fighters and Bombers should be remote operated drones.
Post by: Burvjradzite on May 14, 2021, 12:02:37 AM: It's a war, son. People are dying here. What costs a life of a soldier anyway. A bunch of credits and even lesser bunch a month. A drones, really? It's some kind of utopia vanilla extract strawberry fairy tale? It's a cosmic dark age. Tri-tach suddenly becomes the most humane faction for inventing drone ships, it didn't go out well it seems.