Print

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

[NephilimNexus]

Hello!  I have a question or two.  I've noticed that fighters, bombers, both manned and unmanned, seem to all have a range limit of 4000 or less.  While this gives them the ability to strike outside the range of conventional weaponry, it is still a rather limited number when compared to the overall combat map.

My question is thus: Is it possible for fighters/bombers/drones to have a range limit beyond 4000 units?  Or that a hardcoded cap within the game engine itself that nothing can exceed?

I'm wondering because I'm considering trying my hand at this whole modding thing myself and the first thing that I wanted to attempt was creating long ranged fighters that could range across an entire combat map.  Naturally these would have very high OP costs to balance that out, thus forcing carriers that used them to be (as in real life) units that hide the corner due to being excessively vulnerable themselves.

[BringerofBabies]

Some fighters, like the Thunder or DME's Harridan have a range of 8000, so 4000 isn't global limit.

[Harmful Mechanic]

It's less 'can it be done?' (yes, trivially, it's a single stat in a csv file) and more 'is it a good idea?' (not really). 8000 range is probably the largest number it's smart to put in that field, but try it out; I predict that it'd be hard or impossible to balance a fighter with more range, but you may not care about balance.

[BringerofBabies]

And as a reference for how those two fighters I mentioned are currently balanced:
The Thunder has a wing size of 2, is classed as a heavy interceptor with a light machine gun (kinetic damage), anti-fighter missiles, and an ion cannon for utility.
The Harridan (Soren can correct me on any of this) also has a wing size of 2, is classed as something of a jack of all trades scout interceptor, and has mixed weaponry that I can't remember but is probably similar to the Thunder (minus the ion cannon).

Both have the speed to make use of the 8000 range in a reasonable amount of time, but lack the weaponry to do significant harm to most military frigates, much less anything larger. They allow a carrier to, from a great distance, provide fighter cover for defense or an attack (or just harass the enemy during an attack) but would take a significant amount of spam to have killing power on their own - a carrier with 4 wings of either probably wouldn't have much too trouble taking out individual frigates or even some destroyers, but that is a significant mismatch of deployment points.

[Harmful Mechanic]

Harridans have missiles, an ion weapon (Hybrid Scrambler), and a PD beam.

A good rule of thumb is that if a fighter is individually very strong (we're talking 1/wing gunships, not things like Remnant fighters), it should have a shorter leash range - to make it harder to spam/coordinate multiples on multiple carriers and reduce the impact of the 1/wing limitation.

Similarly, if you want a fighter with an especially long range, it's a good idea to cut down its effectiveness - Thunders have a combo of high speed and forward-facing weapons that makes them less effective, Harridans are fragile, etc - so that it doesn't make it easier for a carrier to kill everything from twice the range with effective invincibility. Beyond 8000 range a fighter should be individually weaker and no more numerous than Thunders - so hypothetically, a high-delay ion cannon and a PD Laser, 2/wing, 12000 range, might just work for that.

[NephilimNexus]

Naturally I'd want it balanced; my initial idea was to greatly increase their OP cost, thus forcing the carrier itself to stripped down to nothing but PD weapons.  The fighters would remain fairly strong - it's the OP cost that balances them out (we're talking 30+ per wing).

Specifically, I had the idea to do two version of the same craft: One that was manned and another that was an unmanned drone.  The manned version would have a one-shot missile, long range and a high OP cost.  The drone version would have an even higher OP cost to compensate (more equipment needed on the carrier to control them at range).  Escort fighters would come later, assuming I can even get the 1st draft working.

[Harmful Mechanic]

OP cost isn't the best balance lever for this particular design problem.
If a fighter or a weapon or a ship is good enough, just making it more expensive isn't a solution. That just constrains the range of optimal builds to choose from.

[NephilimNexus]

Well yes, that was the idea: A carrier using high OP fighters wouldn't have room for anything else in the way of weaponry.  Maybe some PD guns at best, and for the smaller (battle) carriers that would be a deal breaker.  Thus, very large, very slow capital class carriers only - as it should be, as they're the ones that need the range boost the most to compensate for their slow speed.

[Harmful Mechanic]

That's what I mean. It doesn't matter if it makes the carrier weaker if it can strike effectively from three times the range; the fighter doesn't need to be expensive at that range, it needs to be incapable of inflicting serious damage.

[NephilimNexus]

But if that's it's only weapon system then it does need to be capable of doing serious damage, just like any other ship.

Ever play EvE Online?  When drones are all you have, or at least represent 90%+ of your firepower, you don't want to be forced into the exact same "circle strafe" playstyle as all the gunships out there.  You want to use your drones, and you want to use them to out-range your opponent.  They are a completely alternative combat style that has it's own methods & strategies and - this is the important part - those strategies would be completely invalidated if the carrier's fighter DPS was nerfed to the point where any enemy could just bull rush them without facing any real risk from those fighters.

[Codyrex123]

I like it, but I understand why its a big deal. PD in Starsector is... really meh overall on most ships, most ships can't handle a entire wing of heavy fighter/interceptors, and will insistently get harassed by them constantly, the PD is definitely more calibrated to dealing with ordinances or fragile bombers rather than heavier, staying power of interceptors and pests like them

My suggestion is if you want long range fighter craft, ensure they're strikecraft rather than interceptor/harass craft. Thats the simpliest and probably still unbalanced thing you could do. Now if you want long range interceptors, make them more support based, PD or shield/kinetic focus. I run a typically heavy carrier fleet and already with what we have can find my fleet easily overwhelming bigger ships because their PD just isn't strong enough, their armor keeps them safe for only so long before enough of the shots are getting through and the strikecraft has managed to get into a cycle of keeping their flux up so they don't shield.

[NephilimNexus]

Yes, you are right - they'd need to be one strike craft.  Approach, fire one missile or whatever, and then retreat.  Torpedo bombers, basically.  As you said, the ability to lay down constant DPS at range might be a bit too much... but hang on, what if the fighters also had limited ammo?  As in "you have to return to the carrier when it runs out just like the bombers do" limited ammo?  Say a single 20 or 30 round magazine for their machine gun or whatever?