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[Lucky33]

Condors are pretty weak. They pass the 'not useless' threshold, and can be an early game source of interceptors/bombers if you recover one without carrier D-mods, but they are about 2/3 as strong as a Drover offensively and about 1/3 as strong defensively because of their low speed, low OP, truly terrible flux/shields, and lack of fighter boosting ship system.

Fighters, especially fast ones like Thunders, have lower DPS than simply adding up the DPS of their weapons, because they spend a lot of time maneuvering around their target and not firing. As an example, look at Broadswords swarming a target - time on target firing guns is low. 2 Thunder wings has far lower DPS than a Storm Needler. Except for Sparks, which just store up the charges when not in range/facing and then dump them all at once, retaining near perfect DPS. Thanks Sparks.

With a few exceptions, fighters are balanced, with carriers being weaker than well built combat ships but capable of projecting force over allies. The issue of carriers is 3 fold: 1) AI is too scared of them, and will not go through fighters to kill the carriers (similar to a single Pilum or annihilator scaring off a cruiser and making it run far away) 2) Massed fighters can concentrate overwhelming force, and AoE weapons are a bit rare. Really only Devastators can handle true fighter death balls. 3) Carriers are very easy to build effectively, so people think they are stronger than they are.

Good to know that when Condor can stunlock and destroy most DDs. Bad carrier is well above its size class.

Looks like I need to remind that Strom Needler has zero DPS at 8000 range.

Fighters are balanced except that they dont because AI cant handle them. OK.

[TaLaR]

Good to know that when Condor can stunlock and destroy most DDs. Bad carrier is well above its size class.

Condor is easy opponent for Hammerhead, Enforcer and to somewhat lesser degree Sunder. These 3 can win on autopilot as long as they use decent builds.
Medusa can win under player control, but it's never pretty. Either you take a lot of damage, waste a lot of time or have to use deeply compromised build that is useless for anything except fighting Condor (well, I guess SO could work too, and is not as useless against other targets).
Shrike is much weaker than Medusa, so I didn't test it as much. Maybe it can barely win, maybe not. But it's weak in general, not just against fighters, so is not a good benchmark for opness.

[Lucky33]

Fighters flux stats are absolutely not equivalent to adding them to the carrier itself. Each individual fighter can overload, and each individually dies, which is much much weaker than if the carrier was given a bunch of extra dissipation, capacity and weapons. You can kill all of the fighters in a wing with a few shots whereas if the carrier had extra flux stats/weapons, shooting it a few times would not remove those flux stats and weapons. Trying to compare a fighter bay to a weapon mount it silly, they work very differently.

Also, doom mines obliterate fighters, and are one of the best counters. The doom is probably the best single anti-fighter ship in the game.

I usually have a few carriers of my own to deal with the enemy fighters and let my warships fight freely. I really don't struggle with enemy fighters, and I only dedicate 1/3 of my fleet to carriers (and usually less than that to interceptors). I don't find them oppressive at all, and I also don't feel like there's any need to abuse them. In my experience, combat ships still do more damage than equivalently sized carriers on average (based on numbers from the combat analytics mod).

Agree. They are absolutely broken by being separate entities with no feedback to the carrier. You do nothing to it by shooting at the fighters. And I agree again that you cant compare that to the classic integral design of a ship which will overload completely and get destroyed in all its entirety since it cant create another set of free flux and HP out of thin air.

Also, Doom (AI) gets completely obliterated by three Drovers with Wasps.

Same here. No troubles with AI fighters. Its the AI who have troubles with mine.

[Lucky33]

Good to know that when Condor can stunlock and destroy most DDs. Bad carrier is well above its size class.

Condor is easy opponent for Hammerhead, Enforcer and to somewhat lesser degree Sunder. These 3 can win on autopilot as long as they use decent builds.
Medusa can win under player control, but it's never pretty. Either you take a lot of damage, waste a lot of time or have to use deeply compromised build that is useless for anything except fighting Condor.
Shrike is much weaker than Medusa, so I didn't test it as much. Maybe it can barely win, maybe not.

I'm talking about autofitted (or sim if you want too) variants. Its just fighter fodder. However, just to be clear, all three of your Hammerheads lost to the Condor. SO Medusa too. You need both SO and ARU to pull this off.

[intrinsic_parity]

Fighters flux stats are absolutely not equivalent to adding them to the carrier itself. Each individual fighter can overload, and each individually dies, which is much much weaker than if the carrier was given a bunch of extra dissipation, capacity and weapons. You can kill all of the fighters in a wing with a few shots whereas if the carrier had extra flux stats/weapons, shooting it a few times would not remove those flux stats and weapons. Trying to compare a fighter bay to a weapon mount it silly, they work very differently.

Agree. They are absolutely broken by being separate entities with no feedback to the carrier. You do nothing to it by shooting at the fighters. And I agree again that you cant compare that to the classic integral design of a ship which will overload completely and get destroyed in all its entirety since it cant create another set of free flux and HP out of thin air.

It sounds like you've entirely missed my point...
If you shoot the fighters, then they are dead and stop shooting you, and it will take quite a while for them to respawn and come back to fight you. The carrier by itself doesn't do anything to you so killing the fighters is preventing the carrier from doing anything. Shooting a convention ship a little bit will not disable it for 20 seconds. You have to go through its whole capacity to do anything to it, while you only need to go through the fighters individual small capacities to prevent the carrier from dealing damage to you.

If you're shooting the carrier itself, the dissipation/capacity of the fighters do not help the carrier at all. You only need to go through the carriers meager capacity to kill it. Fighters capacity is very different from the carrier having more HP and flux. Carriers die much much more easily than warships, the problem is that the AI doesn't know how to go after the carriers to stop the fighters. AI problems are not balance problems. The fighters and carriers aren't too strong, the AI is just bad at dealing with them.

[TaLaR]

Good to know that when Condor can stunlock and destroy most DDs. Bad carrier is well above its size class.

Condor is easy opponent for Hammerhead, Enforcer and to somewhat lesser degree Sunder. These 3 can win on autopilot as long as they use decent builds.
Medusa can win under player control, but it's never pretty. Either you take a lot of damage, waste a lot of time or have to use deeply compromised build that is useless for anything except fighting Condor.
Shrike is much weaker than Medusa, so I didn't test it as much. Maybe it can barely win, maybe not.

I'm talking about autofitted (or sim if you want too) variants. Its just fighter fodder. However, just to be clear, all three of your Hammerheads lost to the Condor. SO Medusa too. You need both SO and ARU to pull this off.

Hammerhead, Enforcer, Sunder need Aggressive personality or Eliminate order to work on autopilot. Extended shield also help a lot at not getting Salamander-ed (but not quite obligatory).
Medusa works only under player control, as I've originally stated.

[Lucky33]

It sounds like you've entirely missed my point...
If you shoot the fighters, then they are dead and stop shooting you, and it will take quite a while for them to respawn and come back to fight you. The carrier by itself doesn't do anything to you so killing the fighters is preventing the carrier from doing anything. Shooting a convention ship a little bit will not disable it for 20 seconds. You have to go through its whole capacity to do anything to it, while you only need to go through the fighters individual small capacities to prevent the carrier from dealing damage to you.

If you're shooting the carrier itself, the dissipation/capacity of the fighters do not help the carrier at all. You only need to go through the carriers meager capacity to kill it. Fighters capacity is very different from the carrier having more HP and flux. Carriers die much much more easily than warships, the problem is that the AI doesn't know how to go after the carriers to stop the fighters. AI problems are not balance problems. The fighters and carriers aren't too strong, the AI is just bad at dealing with them.

Nope. They are not dead. They will come back in a matter of seconds. Its a zombie simulator, remember? You have to shoot them in the head.

A little bit? How is that? Have you seen that happens to a capital when ball of Thunders shoot at it? Its fully disabled in a second or two. No engines, no guns, only sporadical activity when stuff got repaired and before it got disabled again.

There is no other enemy in the game apart from the AI. If it doesnt work, balance is gone.

[Lucky33]

Hammerhead, Enforcer, Sunder need Aggressive personality or Eliminate order to work on autopilot. Extended shield also help a lot at not getting Salamander-ed (but not quite obligatory).
Medusa works only under player control, as I've originally stated.

Generally speaking you are talking about player's fleet. Im talking about AI one. Random personalities, random orders. How great is the percentage of AI forces with proper personalities, in the properly fitted ships and under proper orders? I think its kinda small. Like really small. So player's ragtag Condor works perfectly fine, orders or not. Why it works so good? Because it is not limited by the flux/range/dps balance of gun/missile ships. And not so ragtag Drover can break the game entirely. On the other hand, player is supposed to limit itself and not to use that exploit so as to keep balance and have some fun.

[TaLaR]

No, as you noted yourself what really makes fighters strong is enemy AI inadequacy.
AI just does worst thing possible with it's indecisive half-way attacks. Any of 3 ways works better:
- full berserk attack
- full timid avoidance
- grind down the fighters and attack the drained carrier (need to judge if match-up actually allows this and switch tactics midway, so AI can only occasionally blunder into rough approximation of this).

[intrinsic_parity]

Nope. They are not dead. They will come back in a matter of seconds. Its a zombie simulator, remember? You have to shoot them in the head.

Fighters have replacement times. 10-15 seconds is more than enough time to kill a squishy carrier and the carrier will not be able to stop you while its fighters are dead.

A little bit? How is that? Have you seen that happens to a capital when ball of Thunders shoot at it? Its fully disabled in a second or two. No engines, no guns, only sporadical activity when stuff got repaired and before it got disabled again.

What do thunders have to do with how easy it is to disable a warship vs a carrier... Shooting down fighters is disabling a carriers weapons, they don't have anything else to attack you with. It takes a lot more firepower to break through shields and disable a warships weapons, then it does to shoot down fighters.

There is no other enemy in the game apart from the AI. If it doesnt work, balance is gone.

If you have two guns with the same stats, but the AI is bugged and fires weapon B at half the max rate of fire, you don't double the ROF so the AI fires both at the same rate, you fix the AI. There's definitely room to tweak fighters but you're not going to fix the AI problems by balancing fighters differently.

Also, when I use condors, they just die. They don't work fine. They send their fighters off somewhere else and die to a frigate wandering around in the backline. Garbage ships not worth using, they can't escape anything and everything can kill them with minimal effort.

[Lucky33]

No, as you noted yourself what really makes fighters strong is enemy AI inadequacy.
AI just does worst thing possible with it's indecisive half-way attacks. Any of 3 ways works better:
- full berserk attack
- full timid avoidance
- grind down the fighters and attack the drained carrier (need to judge if match-up actually allows this and switch tactics midway, so AI can only occasionally blunder into rough approximation of this).

- You Medusa tried exactly that.
- Doesnt work. Fighters cant be ignored. They more than capable to break shields and disable engines.
- Your Hammerheads (mostly that one with the RFC) destroyed several waves of fighters and did get to the drained carrier.

[Lucky33]

Nope. They are not dead. They will come back in a matter of seconds. Its a zombie simulator, remember? You have to shoot them in the head.

Fighters have replacement times. 10-15 seconds is more than enough time to kill a squishy carrier and the carrier will not be able to stop you while its fighters are dead.

The most hilariuos thing has happened. I decided to test how many time it takes to replace loses for the top notch carrier but single Drover fully disabled the target Conquest without taken any loses. I wasnt capable to push tests any further due to uncontrollable laugher. Sorry.

A little bit? How is that? Have you seen that happens to a capital when ball of Thunders shoot at it? Its fully disabled in a second or two. No engines, no guns, only sporadical activity when stuff got repaired and before it got disabled again.

What do thunders have to do with how easy it is to disable a warship vs a carrier... Shooting down fighters is disabling a carriers weapons, they don't have anything else to attack you with. It takes a lot more firepower to break through shields and disable a warships weapons, then it does to shoot down fighters.

Thunders have 8000 range and 600 speed. Thats pretty serious battlefield presence. And no, shooting down fighters doesnt disable carriers capability to produce fighters. It only lowers rate of production. However, capabilities of warships to defend themselves are greatly exaggerated.

There is no other enemy in the game apart from the AI. If it doesnt work, balance is gone.

If you have two guns with the same stats, but the AI is bugged and fires weapon B at half the max rate of fire, you don't double the ROF so the AI fires both at the same rate, you fix the AI. There's definitely room to tweak fighters but you're not going to fix the AI problems by balancing fighters differently.

I'm pretty much sure that the problem of fighters will cease to exist if you will put carriers in line just as any other ships. The question is more about "how fun it will be after that". And "was it worth it"?

[TaLaR]

No, as you noted yourself what really makes fighters strong is enemy AI inadequacy.
AI just does worst thing possible with it's indecisive half-way attacks. Any of 3 ways works better:
- full berserk attack
- full timid avoidance
- grind down the fighters and attack the drained carrier (need to judge if match-up actually allows this and switch tactics midway, so AI can only occasionally blunder into rough approximation of this).

- You Medusa tried exactly that.
- Doesnt work. Fighters cant be ignored. They more than capable to break shields and disable engines.
- Your Hammerheads (mostly that one with the RFC) destroyed several waves of fighters and did get to the drained carrier.

- Medusa only barely works as player ship vs fighters, as AI it's mostly useless. But for Enforcer or Hammerhead rushing is good tactic.
- Most fighters have 4000 range, carriers themselves are not especially fast => stay 4k+ away and you'll be fine. I mean you won't win and probably will have to retreat, but it still beats dying.
- It's not quite same. AI just blunders into fighters and happens to kill them after taking some damage, then slowly approaches the carrier allowing it to rebuild fighters. Player backpedals to prolong approach, activates AAF and clears the fighters before they do significant damage, then rushes to carrier.

[Megas]

Really only Devastators can handle true fighter death balls.

This true?  When I used Needler and Devastator Onslaught, Devastator did not seem to be effective enough against fighters.  It seems to take the whole burst to kill a fighter or two.  It is not popping wings like Doom's mine strike.

[Lucky33]

OK. Took control of myself. Did some testing against Paragon.

Since it wasnt able to deploy its shields fully before Thunders arrival it got disabled right from the start. I could circle around it in the Astral and kite indefinitely without ever allowing replacement rate to get lower than 90%. If I would be allowed to call this a combat it was completely one sided. Each time Paragon traded part of its armor/hull for several fighters and thats all. Since it can only shoot down about 4 fighters on approach, you dont need Astral to make it work. Couple of Drovers is enough.