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Author Topic: Fighters should have bigger hitboxes  (Read 2475 times)

Morgan Rue

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Fighters should have bigger hitboxes
« on: November 21, 2019, 10:22:29 PM »

If they're going to have 750 hull and 100 armor like Broadswords, they need to be big enough to reasonably hit with ship weapons. If they're going to be small, they need to have low enough hull to reasonably kill with PD weapons, like Wasps with their 100 hull and 10 armor. Though Wasps are a bit extreme, I'd guess 300 hull and 50 armor is a reasonable upper limit for 'small' fighters.

I don't think there should be a 'sorta small but sorta big so it's got 500 hull and 75 armor' type of fighter which you might hit sometimes with ship weapons. I think some fighters should be balanced around being hit by ship weapons and others should be balanced around being hit by PD weapons. I don't think there should be an in between.
« Last Edit: November 21, 2019, 10:25:50 PM by Morgan Rue »
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TaLaR

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Re: Fighters should have bigger hitboxes
« Reply #1 on: November 21, 2019, 10:42:35 PM »

PD is for missiles, against fighters themselves you need fast rotation weapons with higher dps, which means IR pulse in case of small energy slot.

AI's interaction with fighters ends at retreating from carrier once ship gets to high flux. That's the real problem.
- Properly focus firing approaching fighter group (while kiting to prolong approach, if ship speed allows) is very efficient tactic that only player can currently use.
- AI also doesn't use all available weapons. Plasma Cannon is the best anti-fighter weapon in vanilla (due to power combined with pass-through), yet AI won't ever use it to attack fighters.
- Retreating at high flux is also wrong in 2 ways: either you go berserk on the carrier and try to kill it before it kills you or fall back to allies/out of carrier range as soon you see that you can't handle the fighters (before they build flux on you and wreck any parts not covered by shields). Sitting at medium range while getting pelted by fighters and eventually retreating to repeat approach is the worst possible course of action.
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Morgan Rue

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Re: Fighters should have bigger hitboxes
« Reply #2 on: November 21, 2019, 11:29:29 PM »

'Light' fighters like Wasps, Talons or Borers can be dealt with by weapons which would normally be PD, heavier fighters need actual ship guns to break them. But most actual ship guns have issues hitting fighters. I don't want to have to fill a cruiser's small ballistics with Light Assault Guns specifically to kill fighters, because that is almost certainly going to cause a bunch of other issues, but with how fighters currently are it feels like I should do that.

One of the big reasons I'm complaining about this is most vanilla loadouts aren't built with the current fighters in mind, and thus don't have many 'proper' anti-fighter tools
« Last Edit: November 21, 2019, 11:32:21 PM by Morgan Rue »
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Grievous69

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Re: Fighters should have bigger hitboxes
« Reply #3 on: November 21, 2019, 11:55:19 PM »

'Light' fighters like Wasps, Talons or Borers can be dealt with by weapons which would normally be PD, heavier fighters need actual ship guns to break them. But most actual ship guns have issues hitting fighters. I don't want to have to fill a cruiser's small ballistics with Light Assault Guns specifically to kill fighters, because that is almost certainly going to cause a bunch of other issues, but with how fighters currently are it feels like I should do that.

One of the big reasons I'm complaining about this is most vanilla loadouts aren't built with the current fighters in mind, and thus don't have many 'proper' anti-fighter tools
Alrighty then, here's every vanilla non-small weapon I consider to be good vs fighters:
  • Energy: Pulse laser, Heavy Blaster, Graviton beam (you're usually gonna have it more than one on a ship), Ion Beam, Phase lance (melts any fighter), Heavy burst laser, Autopulse laser, HIL, Tachyon lance with a swipe, Plasma Cannon (some consider this to be the best fighter killing weapon) and Paladin PD but no one uses that so who cares.
  • Ballistics: Assault chaingun, Heavy mauler, HVD, Heavy Mortar, Thumper kinda (but again why even have this), Devastator cannon, Mjolnir, HAG and lastly Gauss cannon which can snipe any fighter a mile away but isn't the best option for the job.
This enough for ya?

EDIT: And let's not forget the best large missile weapon that annihilates everything it sees.
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TaLaR

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Re: Fighters should have bigger hitboxes
« Reply #4 on: November 22, 2019, 12:03:10 AM »

@Grievous69

Heavy Blaster is bad idea. Likely to miss/overkill/waste shot on some swarmer in the way and spikes too much flux to allow it autofire.
Devastator cannon is a surprise disappointment due to being completely stopped by flares - even if you have IPDAI shots still detonate due to proximity trigger.
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Grievous69

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Re: Fighters should have bigger hitboxes
« Reply #5 on: November 22, 2019, 12:10:54 AM »

@Grievous69

Heavy Blaster is bad idea. Likely to miss/overkill/waste shot on some swarmer in the way and spikes too much flux to allow it autofire.
Devastator cannon is a surprise disappointment due to being completely stopped by flares - even if you have IPDAI shots still detonate due to proximity trigger.
Yea I know about the Heavy blaster, I was just saying that there's a lot of weapons that can do the job, but not every one there is ideal of course. Ok why do so many people talk *** about the Devastator? My right side of the Conquest has two of them and they never let me down. They slaughter anything smaller than a cruiser and I don't remember the last time I had issues with flares. Sure their accuracy is god awful but they're cheap, easy to find, and get the job done.
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Igncom1

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Re: Fighters should have bigger hitboxes
« Reply #6 on: November 22, 2019, 09:24:10 AM »

Their flux isn't all that great, but then again the are shooting HE flak.
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Morgan Rue

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Re: Fighters should have bigger hitboxes
« Reply #7 on: November 22, 2019, 10:11:22 AM »

'Light' fighters like Wasps, Talons or Borers can be dealt with by weapons which would normally be PD, heavier fighters need actual ship guns to break them. But most actual ship guns have issues hitting fighters. I don't want to have to fill a cruiser's small ballistics with Light Assault Guns specifically to kill fighters, because that is almost certainly going to cause a bunch of other issues, but with how fighters currently are it feels like I should do that.

One of the big reasons I'm complaining about this is most vanilla loadouts aren't built with the current fighters in mind, and thus don't have many 'proper' anti-fighter tools
Alrighty then, here's every vanilla non-small weapon I consider to be good vs fighters:
  • Energy: Pulse laser, Heavy Blaster, Graviton beam (you're usually gonna have it more than one on a ship), Ion Beam, Phase lance (melts any fighter), Heavy burst laser, Autopulse laser, HIL, Tachyon lance with a swipe, Plasma Cannon (some consider this to be the best fighter killing weapon) and Paladin PD but no one uses that so who cares.
  • Ballistics: Assault chaingun, Heavy mauler, HVD, Heavy Mortar, Thumper kinda (but again why even have this), Devastator cannon, Mjolnir, HAG and lastly Gauss cannon which can snipe any fighter a mile away but isn't the best option for the job.
This enough for ya?

EDIT: And let's not forget the best large missile weapon that annihilates everything it sees.
The AI has to be effective with them against fighters. A lot of that is only really effective against fighters when used by the player in specific ways fairly certain. The 'best' solution I've found for fighters so far is actually Scarabs with Tactical Lasers and Advanced Turret Gyros, but that's rather specialized. Beam weapons are generally pretty effective against fighters because they can't really miss.

I'm not convinced Maulers Heavy Mortars can reliably hit fighters. Gauss absolutely cannot under AI direction hit fighters reliably. Heavy Blaster is... it can probably hit fighters but is not exactly something you want to fire at fighters. Thumpers are generally good and probably effective against most fighters, especially when stacked.
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: Fighters should have bigger hitboxes
« Reply #8 on: November 22, 2019, 10:54:36 AM »

The AI has to be effective with them against fighters. A lot of that is only really effective against fighters when used by the player in specific ways fairly certain.
This 100%

Plasma cannons are definitely one of the weapons where the player can easily identify situations where they are very good at killing fighters (the fighters are grouped and flying directly towards the ship). If fighters are not flying directly at the ship, the combination of low shot speed and slow turning rate make it very difficult to hit fighters meaning lots of missed/wasted shots. In addition, firing a PC costs A LOT of flux so hitting only one fighter is not good enough, you need to hit a whole group.

Making PC good against fighters is practical for a human, but the AI firing PC at fighters would almost certainly give very bad results most of the time. As far as I can tell, the AI behavior is 'fire at targets in range, in order of priority, unless the flux is too high' except for strike weapons.

I don't think the AI is anywhere near making those kinds of decisions well, and my guess is that it would require an impractical amount of computational resources to make that sort of decision in real time for every weapon on every ship.
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Megas

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Re: Fighters should have bigger hitboxes
« Reply #9 on: November 23, 2019, 05:00:48 AM »

Devastator is better at anti-frigate and anti-destroyer.
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Igncom1

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Re: Fighters should have bigger hitboxes
« Reply #10 on: November 23, 2019, 05:02:51 AM »

It's unreliable range often makes it waste shots and thus flux to RNG however, which can make it unreliable as a source of HE.

Against smaller targets, even large KE weapons should be able to batter down frigate and destroyer armour without too much trouble.
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Megas

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Re: Fighters should have bigger hitboxes
« Reply #11 on: November 23, 2019, 05:10:30 AM »

For other large HE, Hellbore is too slow for anti-small ship (great for blowing holes in capitals though), and HAG may cost too much flux for the likes of Onslaught and Legion to support, depending on other weapons they use.
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TaLaR

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Re: Fighters should have bigger hitboxes
« Reply #12 on: November 23, 2019, 05:48:39 AM »

For other large HE, Hellbore is too slow for anti-small ship (great for blowing holes in capitals though), and HAG may cost too much flux for the likes of Onslaught and Legion to support, depending on other weapons they use.

Thing is, HE is optional against frigates/DEs. Larger kinetic guns get through their paltry armor easily enough. Hellbore has no problems hitting CR/Caps, where it's actually needed.

So getting all-kinetic + single Hellbore is valid and good loadout for some ships (vanilla ships don't have slot layouts optimal for this, modded Shadowyards Elysium(P) makes much better example).
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bobucles

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Re: Fighters should have bigger hitboxes
« Reply #13 on: November 23, 2019, 06:00:11 AM »

Thing is, HE is optional against frigates/DEs. Larger kinetic guns get through their paltry armor easily enough. Hellbore has no problems hitting CR/Caps, where it's actually needed.
Maybe that's true for big kinetics, but small ones suffer greatly against the 5% armor floor. It's even worse against ships with officers, because the +150 armor and -50% KE effectiveness perks do a great job at keeping KE damage permanently low. It's not worth spending all that extra time plugging KEs against the hull, you still want energy or anti-armor weapons or torpedoes to score the kills.

Megas

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Re: Fighters should have bigger hitboxes
« Reply #14 on: November 23, 2019, 06:01:06 AM »

Thing is, HE is optional against frigates/DEs. Larger kinetic guns get through their paltry armor easily enough. Hellbore has no problems hitting CR/Caps, where it's actually needed.
Not very well with needlers.
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