Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Goumindong]

We are getting to the point in development where it’s worth going back and making things distinct. When a game or project is started the entire scope of the project often isn’t known. As a result many things are added or integrated into the game without a full accounting of how they interact with others on a taxinomical basis.

That is, we have fighters, and then we have fighter fighters, fighter interceptors, and fighter bombers. This is confusing and makes it hard to talk about the game and be understood. Both in giving advice and casually.

Similarly “energy” is both a damage type and a weapon slot type. “I like energy weapons” can mean anything from “I like weapons that go in energy slots” to “I like weapons that do energy damage”.

So I propose that the baseline for the all encompassing term for “fighters” becomes “normal space craft” of “n-space craft” or “sub hyperspace craft” or “sub space craft” or “sub craft”. These ships aren’t capable of hyperspace travel on their own and need support bays. Hence the name. Thus when talking about everything we can refer to n-space craft and when talking about something specific we can say interceptors, fighters, bombers

I similarly propose that the damage type “energy” becomes “particle” damage. And you might say that this makes no sense but neither does anything else and it’s the best I’ve got.

If you’ve got something better then please propose it.

[SCC]

I don't feel like there's a confusion about fighters at all. If there are skills influencing fighters, they're invariably influencing all of them. When talking about different fighters, then interceptors and bombers have distinct roles, while the other fighters might do a bit of both of these or something else. You can say "but fighters encompasses too many kinds of fighters", but unless you define "fighter fighters", non-interceptors/bombers indeed comprise several different roles.
Energy mount and energy damage can be changed, but I don't think it's annoying either.

[Argonaut]

In my humblest of opinions the problem is due to many seemingly redundant units and weapons combined with the high numbers of ships even in mid-game engagements. The gameplay difference between Fighters, Heavy Fighters, Interceptors and Drones is often very hard to see and very circumstantial. It's a safer bet to simply equip more expensive fighters and/or overwhelm with numbers. The finer points of combat (like allied fighters and carrier synergies) take too much effort to manage in comparison. Better nomenclature could help, but i don't think it solves the issue. For a solution, i would remove redundant fighter roles, like "generalist" ones, leaving only  clearly defined roles such as "interceptor" and "bomber". The same applies to weaponry. "LR PD" and "PD" have their differences, as well as "vulcan" and "autocannon", but the practical result seems to be an excess of salvage to clear out, mismatched performances due to insufficient stock at a given port and a number of other game-long small annoyances for little gameplay relevance past the early game.

[Inventor Raccoon]

In my humblest of opinions the problem is due to many seemingly redundant units and weapons combined with the high numbers of ships even in mid-game engagements. The gameplay difference between Fighters, Heavy Fighters, Interceptors and Drones is often very hard to see and very circumstantial. It's a safer bet to simply equip more expensive fighters and/or overwhelm with numbers. The finer points of combat (like allied fighters and carrier synergies) take too much effort to manage in comparison. Better nomenclature could help, but i don't think it solves the issue. For a solution, i would remove redundant fighter roles, like "generalist" ones, leaving only  clearly defined roles such as "interceptor" and "bomber". The same applies to weaponry. "LR PD" and "PD" have their differences, as well as "vulcan" and "autocannon", but the practical result seems to be an excess of salvage to clear out, mismatched performances due to insufficient stock at a given port and a number of other game-long small annoyances for little gameplay relevance past the early game.

The only "generalist" fighters in the game are the Gladius and Lux. Every other one has a pretty defined role - Broadswords soften up ships for heavy-hitting allies, Warthogs tank damage and kill armor, Claws disable ships, Thunders hit-and-run. Interceptors kill other fighters. Bombers blow ships up with bombs, missiles and torpedos. Support fighters protect friendlies. Mining Pods are used when you can't afford anything else.

Similarly, most weapons have a pretty defined role, although maybe some of them could lose the fact they have 2 versions (LMG and dual LMG, missiles and single-shot versions, light autocannon and dual light autocannon). Even with the light dual autocannon, railgun and needler, all are small light kinetic ballistic weapons but they are all distinct - light dual autocannon for budget kinetic, railgun is a premium option that also does decently versus light armor, Needler is a premium option that focuses everything on killing shields and nothing else.

It would be very difficult to seriously cut back on weapons/fighters without killing variety and leaving large roles unfilled (you can't remove Broadswords, for example, because now you don't really have anything to prime ships for getting bombed, or the Claw because now you have nothing dedicated to EMP, or Daggers because now you don't have a super-consistent bomber that can kill frigates)

[Argonaut]

I don't deny that each fighter functions differently, but that has little to do with their described roles. Average engagements have so many fighters that the differences between Warthog, Gladius, Thunder, Broadswords and a few others are impractical to manage, especially if basing decisions primarily on their given roles. You can't pilot more than one carrier yourself. You also have to look at the game from the perspective of occasional and new players. I got the game at 0.7, played every new version since and many weapon and fighter differences are arcane to me. I've been testing (having to "test" game mechanics being somewhat of a chore) different fighter loadouts in 0.9 and "interceptors" often fail to intercept enemy fighters compared to some fighters and heavy fighters in various circumstances, even in 1v1 fights. Once you sum the fighters' assigned role nomenclature, their specific loadouts, different fighter synergies, the limited command points to command carriers with, AI behavior and the chaos of large engagements, i believe an average player finds dealing with carriers little different from "the biggest stack wins". Removing some fighter role overlap won't even solve the issue, but it would start to alleviate it.

The issue with weapons is not as bad, but it exists. I don't think an average player enjoys choosing between early weapons with identical roles and subtle practical differences. (How is a regular player supposed to understand the practical differences between vulcans, the two LMGs and their energy counterparts when wanting an early PD weapon? Having many similar choices is frustrating.) An involved player might be used to the variety, but to me it seems excessive, especially between early weapons.

[Megas]

The damage names and mounts were clear enough when I first played.  It is simpler than other games.  I had more problems with soft and hard flux than I did with damage types, names, and mounts.

Fighters are basically two major types:  fighters (that use guns) and bombers (that use missiles), and OP cost generally determines how good they are.  What they are good for will be evident through their equipment or their in-game performance.

Particle damage, I probably would think kinetic or fragmentation, if not energy.  If there really needs to be a different name than energy, then heat, fire, light, radiant, radiation, or generic.  I think "energy" is fine.

[Goumindong]

I don't feel like there's a confusion about fighters at all. If there are skills influencing fighters, they're invariably influencing all of them. When talking about different fighters, then interceptors and bombers have distinct roles, while the other fighters might do a bit of both of these or something else. You can say "but fighters encompasses too many kinds of fighters", but unless you define "fighter fighters", non-interceptors/bombers indeed comprise several different roles.
Energy mount and energy damage can be changed, but I don't think it's annoying either.

To old players who have been here as things have evolved to add skills.

Its not that "fighters encompasses too many things" its that "fighters means two different things". You could change the subgroup of fighters that are in the fighters tab to be "superiority" or just remove the tab all together and put them into interceptors (or call the heavy interceptors) and you would produce the same result

[DatonKallandor]

I call the general category of small launchbay launched ships "Strikecraft". Fighters are the ones with flares, bombers are the ones that carry big missiles and interceptors are the ones without flares that go fast.

[TrashMan]

So I propose that the baseline for the all encompassing term for “fighters” becomes “normal space craft” of “n-space craft” or “sub hyperspace craft” or “sub space craft” or “sub craft”.

There is already a better term that is already used - STRIKECRAFT.

[TrashMan]

I don't deny that each fighter functions differently, but that has little to do with their described roles. Average engagements have so many fighters that the differences between Warthog, Gladius, Thunder, Broadswords and a few others are impractical to manage, especially if basing decisions primarily on their given roles. You can't pilot more than one carrier yourself. You also have to look at the game from the perspective of occasional and new players. I got the game at 0.7, played every new version since and many weapon and fighter differences are arcane to me. I've been testing (having to "test" game mechanics being somewhat of a chore) different fighter loadouts in 0.9 and "interceptors" often fail to intercept enemy fighters compared to some fighters and heavy fighters in various circumstances, even in 1v1 fights. Once you sum the fighters' assigned role nomenclature, their specific loadouts, different fighter synergies, the limited command points to command carriers with, AI behavior and the chaos of large engagements, i believe an average player finds dealing with carriers little different from "the biggest stack wins". Removing some fighter role overlap won't even solve the issue, but it would start to alleviate it.

I don't see a problem. If anytihng, the problem is the loss of abillity to micro-manage fighter wings nad give them individual orders.

If anything, creating super-specilized strikecraft is a BAD things, because there is a need for generalists (otherwise, no military would ever use them).
Also, note that changing the fighters description does diddly squat to actual fighter performance.