Print

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

[Schwartz]

I can only repeat the gist of what I think would take the fighter meta in a better direction:

1) Make fighters weaker (for example slower, less agile). Make them cost less OP.

alternatively,

2) Give carriers two separate OP pools for fighters and for itself. Make these OP pools able to be exchanged for the other at a 2:1 ratio or something like that. So a carrier with 40/60 OP who only uses 38 OP for fighters gets 61 OP points to use for itself. The point of this would be that carriers across the board can get more OP (because they need it). At the same time, fighters can still be made weaker.

Currently, carriers feel okay but quite handicapped. Fighters feel good but not like fighters. More like swarm missiles. The old autonomous fighters felt like fighters. The only improvement fighters-as-weapons has brought, IMO, is making them more powerful.

Btw, at least the Reliant HMG is quite useless as PD. I'd rather leave it off and give the point to the shield.

[Plantissue]

There's no need for complicated game mechanics when simple elegant stat changes can better solve perceived problems.

This is a stretch to me. Easy isn't "elegant" its easy. Very different things. I'm not saying your logic isn't sound or that the suggestion is bad, but don't try and disguise it as "better design" just because its a couple spreadsheet changes instead of implementing new mechanics or improving AI.

*EDIT*
Tiny nitpick, but when I said alpha strike I wasn't talking about bombers, though it is true I should have clarified that. It just means the initial damage of the strike remains the same for whatever viable duration the craft can stay on target without getting destroyed, retreating or otherwise losing its ability to attack. Lowering defensive stats effects the first of those scenarios- and that is the most damaging to the carrier itself because it affects replacement rate the most.

no-one has problems with leaving empty mounts in normal warships, only on carriers. I feel like that changing the OP of warships, could make carriers, especially the combat carriers better warships than actual warships.

*Raises hand* I do. I hate empty weapons for "optimal builds" and wish it just wasn't a thing that was ever encouraged, but that is a separate discussion. As far as your concern, I think it is definitely a valid one.

*EDIT*
Though I also think there are solutions that would not result in that happening, too, if that wasn't clear. The point is for me: I would rather have all carriers have built in weapons than no weapons because you feel encouraged to have to spend all your OP on fighters and fighter improving hullmods. It's just plain silly to me. 

In this case what is easy is also elegant. There's no need for complicated -10% effective within a certain range, or only a set amount of fighters can attack a ship, or fighter weapons do double damage to other fighters, if you can adjust pre-existing values of HP or flux capacity or fighter replacement rate.

If you are concerned for the" initial" damage of the strike for the viable duration the craft can stay on target, "alpha strike" is kind of the opposite of that in common gaming parlance. In any case, that is kind of the point. By reducing values of HP or flux capacity is just an alternative to reducing the fighter replacement rate. Both are a suggestion with similar aims. To reduce the rate of auto regenerating fighter "cloud". The first has a bonus in reducing the ability of fighters to simply destroy frigates with ease.

To be honest, I'm fine with carriers to have more OP as long as it excludes the possibility of making them better combat warships than dedicated combat warships. However, with a fighter slot being the most OP efficient weapon in some respects, even without hullmods, I would think it seems a bit much to essentially buff carriers in the current state of the game. I think that all carriers should be slower, to be the speed of the slowest ship of their hulltype. The Heron and Drover is a outlier to the paradigm of the relationship between weapon range and ship speed. Fighters generally outrange everything, yet those ships are fairly speedy themselves. Though if opposing ships cannot move past fighters that is a moot point anyways.

As for weapon mounts being left, most often they are small weapon mounts on ships that have medium and large weapon mounts available. Small weapons are costed for as if they are compared to other small weapons, but their worth decreases vastly once larger weapon mounts are available. LDMG and PD Laser might be worth 4 OP due to small frigate to frigate combat it might have a dual role, but in larger ships, it would be rare to see them being worth that OP, short of perhaps destroyers with safety overides hullmod. It's like another version of the frigate vs capital problem. It probably doesn't help that for instance that many small weapon mounts have small coverages that overlap with larger coverages. For instance I advocate that a Dominator can leave 2 or even 4 of its side small mounts empty, as it simply doesn't need that many if equipped the the PD-specialised vulcans. Perhaps empty weapon mounts should be automatically filled with almost useless PD mount for free. Or perhaps Cruisers can have a -1 OP and Capitals have a -2 OP reduction to small mounts, but that come with the disadvantage of being a significant boost to cruiser and capital power, when they do not need it.

But in the case of carriers, it is due to the carrier themselves don't need weapons. They have a range 4000 weapon in the form of fighter bays. At the moment, carriers have a weapon count as if they were one hull size lower. Why would you want them to move closer to a range they can barely fight at? If carriers were given more OP, that OP can be used to make carriers better weaponless carriers.  Or if they could use their OP to fight like them, and with their fighter complement as well, all carriers, being viable as combat carriers would eclipse warships as combat ships. The carrier OP / empty weapon mounts on many warships is a separate issue and a fairly complicated one at that.

[SanHolo]

Maybe the problem comes from fighters not being subject to "pressure" (when ship decide to move back).

I mean, they do apply pressure and force ennemy to pull back. So there certainly are 2 thresholds of the "spam" : Wheter or not the "pull back" is sufficient in terms of time it takes to come forward to cover up for the loss of fighters creating respawn timer reduction, and beyond that threshold, wheter or not the pressure is sufficient to cause persisting damage to ennemies.

In which case fielding fighters allow to trade time (Respawn reduction) against time, armor, ammo in some cases, flux and hull damage. Beside, forcing the ennemy to keep the shield up due to being pressured by the fighters can by itself nullify a target.

It's the only element of battle that doesn't really trade any permanent resources for their utility : even shield and non-ammo weapons are parts of tradeoff at some point (hard flux and flux consumption forcing some balance between permanent armor/hull damage and firepower output, mobility and maneuverability being the balancing point between hull sizes that implements very different amount of those permanent ressources)

If fighters wings were susceptible to "pressure" (that is, the AI craft willing to trade some of its firepower and presence to stay alive), it would bring them back into something more manageable without the need to change stats values ? I.E. fielding PD weapons would become more effective even when they are not enough to take down every fighters allowing to counter "more fighters" with "more PD".

That is, to allow fighters to use their nominal range, it would be necessary to pushback any anti-fighters ships that prevents them to move freely and this could only be achieved with "normal" warships that aren't as afraid of the pressure from PD weapons and can outrange them.

This would also make the "unused small mounts" far more valuable when it comes to designing bigger ship as a balance between pressure against heavy warship and pressure against smaller ships including fighters.

[Megas]

As for weapon mounts being left, most often they are small weapon mounts on ships that have medium and large weapon mounts available. Small weapons are costed for as if they are compared to other small weapons, but their worth decreases vastly once larger weapon mounts are available. LDMG and PD Laser might be worth 4 OP due to small frigate to frigate combat it might have a dual role, but in larger ships, it would be rare to see them being worth that OP, short of perhaps destroyers with safety overides hullmod. It's like another version of the frigate vs capital problem. It probably doesn't help that for instance that many small weapon mounts have small coverages that overlap with larger coverages. For instance I advocate that a Dominator can leave 2 or even 4 of its side small mounts empty, as it simply doesn't need that many if equipped the the PD-specialised vulcans. Perhaps empty weapon mounts should be automatically filled with almost useless PD mount for free. Or perhaps Cruisers can have a -1 OP and Capitals have a -2 OP reduction to small mounts, but that come with the disadvantage of being a significant boost to cruiser and capital power, when they do not need it.

But in the case of carriers, it is due to the carrier themselves don't need weapons. They have a range 4000 weapon in the form of fighter bays. At the moment, carriers have a weapon count as if they were one hull size lower. Why would you want them to move closer to a range they can barely fight at? If carriers were given more OP, that OP can be used to make carriers better weaponless carriers.  Or if they could use their OP to fight like them, and with their fighter complement as well, all carriers, being viable as combat carriers would eclipse warships as combat ships. The carrier OP / empty weapon mounts on many warships is a separate issue and a fairly complicated one at that.

I would not fill small mounts on some bigger warships because either range do not match or I already have flux problems with the bigger weapons, especially with Dominator or Onslaught.

I would not be worried about carriers fighting as well as warships.  They did not in the pre-0.8 releases, except maybe Heron, and that was in part due to overpowered skills and (for Heron) heavy blaster hitting for hard flux even during fade-out... against enemies without skills.

As for "Why would you want them to move closer to a range they can barely fight at?"  Easy, the enemy comes to the carrier (especially enemy frigates against your carrier) and carrier will die if it cannot defend itself, or I want to pilot a carrier and smash things.  Maybe not smash things as well as a battleship, but I would like to smash weak stuff of opportunity.  It feels silly fleeing from a frigate because my carrier has no guns because all OP was spent to make the carrier competent with fighters better than Talons or Mining Pods.  I would like to see something like Heron pop that frigate with Heavy Blaster spam like in the later 0.6.x releases.

[SCC]

There are two notable differences between warships and carriers. The first one is that fighter bays have no size restrictions. They are small, medium and large weapon mounts all in one. They are supposedly treated as giving 10 points, when assigning OPs, but the numbers are more in line with other ships, if you treat fighter bays as weapon mounts adding no OP at all. This means that not only they have less OP per weapon mounts (and fighter bays) than warships by default, they also... perhaps not have to, but can mount fighters that are relatively way more expensive, than expensive weapons.
The other thing is that adding more fighters doesn't make any other fighters worse. If you add too many weapons, you might not have the flux to fire all of them, while also not having as much dissipation, as some more modest designs. When it comes to fighters, though, the only negative effect other fighters can have is limiting the entire formation's speed. Other than that, performance of other fighters is never worsened. You might not end up synergising, but that's way less important, than too many weapons on a ship getting in one another's way with flux, while also reducing how much flux there is to go around.

To be honest, I'm fine with carriers to have more OP as long as it excludes the possibility of making them better combat warships than dedicated combat warships. However, with a fighter slot being the most OP efficient weapon in some respects, even without hullmods, I would think it seems a bit much to essentially buff carriers in the current state of the game. I think that all carriers should be slower, to be the speed of the slowest ship of their hulltype. The Heron and Drover is a outlier to the paradigm of the relationship between weapon range and ship speed. Fighters generally outrange everything, yet those ships are fairly speedy themselves. Though if opposing ships cannot move past fighters that is a moot point anyways.

This is an issue, too. Fighters are counterable, but not always. Carriers in a mixed force can hide behind warships or buy some time with their swiftness. And on their own, they can be really hard to catch, without you also taking damage from fighters, too.

[Megas]

The other thing is that adding more fighters doesn't make any other fighters worse. If you add too many weapons, you might not have the flux to fire all of them, while also not having as much dissipation, as some more modest designs.

That is a thing I do not like about warships.  Onslaught really suffers here.  (Legion, even more, but at least it has fighters.)  Back when skills were overpowered, I could fill up every mount on most warships with whatever weapons I wanted and have some OP to spare for the essential hullmods.  Today, most warships need to skimp a little to be optimal.  Few warship loadouts need to skimp too much on weapons to be optimal, and they are just as guilty as unarmed carriers when optimal looks ugly or feels silly.

[Lucky33]

Ability to fill all mounts with any weapons robs the player of the real choice. You can just remove fitting option altogether. At least now Onslaught is not some abstract "DP slot" (like carriers) but very distinctive melee brawler with the memorable character.

[Morrokain]

Some of these replies seem to indicate a misunderstanding of how carriers should fit into the the tactical battlefield- at least traditionally in these types of games. Many people take issue on the "fighters as weapons" part of the design destroying warship viability unless carriers are actually made to be bad. They are willing to sacrifice carriers' overall viability because they like flying warships more than carriers (gee I wonder why? Maybe because carriers as glorified fighter barges that can't even pick multiple targets to attack are boring compared to the flux war?  ) and range and eternal wing replacement seems too powerful. It really isn't though. I mean, I get why that mentality exists when used to flying a warship, but you are trying to make carriers balance along the same operating principles as warships. That will quite frankly never work without a complete redesign. At least right now flying a carrier lets you do something (press z on a targeted enemy) whereas in pre-.8 flying a carrier was even more boring. Fighters were separate entities so you could control them without any need for flying the carrier itself. Not ideal.

Aircraft (and their modern version- drones), as a concept and historically have always been "OP". That doesn't mean they have to be from an overall design standpoint, however. To make a good strike craft/warship balance you make the carrier vulnerable but still able to use its strike craft effectively. That is what results in good gameplay tactics. Weaponless carriers do have that effect, true, but it is a boring and off-putting way of implementing that. There are much better ways.

If the Heron has enough guns to destroy a frigate in the flux war, that does not make carriers OP even if its strike craft can kill a destroyer or damage another cruiser at range. Its a cruiser. It should kill a frigate almost no matter the circumstances and destroyers should mostly lose as well. That is how the Eagle operates too... there really isn't a difference except since strike craft have so much range they are the priority threat. That point, in particular, is the main issue I think some players struggle with. They don't want that to be the case but it has to be for strike craft to feel worth it to use. Otherwise, they will be mostly flavor- like they have been for every update pre-.8 imo. I used them because I liked them, not because they felt good. The only way back then to make them work was, ironically, picking the most optimal ones and mono-spamming them (remember the old Thunder?). In small numbers they were borderline useless.

Now an Eagle vs a Heron? First of all, the Heron should be at least 1/3 or more weaker defensively. The carrier has less flux stats and defense. It should also be quite a bite slower. Quite honestly, if two Herons are fighting an Eagle without escorts.... the Eagle should barely win most of the time. But a Heron and a destroyer escort to screen it? Much different story.

Fighters are counterable, but not always. Carriers in a mixed force can hide behind warships or buy some time with their swiftness. And on their own, they can be really hard to catch, without you also taking damage from fighters, too.

Yeah, this is a big part of the problem. On their own, they should be sitting ducks to anything their hullsize. They should, however, be capable of lightly defending themselves against smaller threats. Smaller threats should rely on wolf-pack tactics to combat them (just like when fighting a regular warship of a larger hull size) but have such higher speed that the fighters can't pick too many of them off before they close the distance.

In this case what is easy is also elegant. There's no need for complicated -10% effective within a certain range, or only a set amount of fighters can attack a ship, or fighter weapons do double damage to other fighters, if you can adjust pre-existing values of HP or flux capacity or fighter replacement rate.

Ok then, I'm open to your interpretation though I don't agree right now. Give me an example of how that would operate once implemented. What is your "vision" (be as specific as possible) of how stat changes will solve these problems?

If you are concerned for the" initial" damage of the strike for the viable duration the craft can stay on target, "alpha strike" is kind of the opposite of that in common gaming parlance. In any case, that is kind of the point. By reducing values of HP or flux capacity is just an alternative to reducing the fighter replacement rate. Both are a suggestion with similar aims. To reduce the rate of auto regenerating fighter "cloud". The first has a bonus in reducing the ability of fighters to simply destroy frigates with ease.

The first sentence makes me think you don't quite understand what I am saying unless I have been misunderstanding alpha strike- which I certainly could be. In military terms, its just how many fighters/bombers (really just damage) you can field in a single sortie on one target. The limited ammo idea I suggested relates to this because alpha strike for fighters, atm, is unlimited because it relies on fighter losses in order for it to be reduced in any way (bombers notwithstanding) Limited ammo makes interceptors like the spark and thunder also follow this rule and makes it easier to balance massed fighter clouds. This would be a huge nerf to the staying power of all fighters which don't currently have limited ammo because it reduces the alpha strike vs time- which makes large fighter clouds so effective since they can just move to a new target without providing a window of opportunity for any counter reaction.

If interceptors and anti-fighter fighters better followed their role, that nerf wouldn't really matter. We don't want interceptors to be ship killers any more than we want a cruiser sized carrier killing a cruiser in close combat. Strike craft killing frigates with ease (should they hit them) is as it should be. To make them not do that would make them incredibly bad against larger ships. Frigates must rely on larger targets acting as shields, positioning, numerical superiority and allied fighters to survive. That's what its speed and maneuverability is for. It's on-board PD is a deterrent and additional support- not a solution in and of itself. A frigate is a tactical combat vessel whereas a battleship is a brute force combat vessel.

As for weapon mounts being left, most often they are small weapon mounts on ships that have medium and large weapon mounts available. Small weapons are costed for as if they are compared to other small weapons, but their worth decreases vastly once larger weapon mounts are available. LDMG and PD Laser might be worth 4 OP due to small frigate to frigate combat it might have a dual role, but in larger ships, it would be rare to see them being worth that OP, short of perhaps destroyers with safety overides hullmod. It's like another version of the frigate vs capital problem. It probably doesn't help that for instance that many small weapon mounts have small coverages that overlap with larger coverages. For instance I advocate that a Dominator can leave 2 or even 4 of its side small mounts empty, as it simply doesn't need that many if equipped the the PD-specialised vulcans. Perhaps empty weapon mounts should be automatically filled with almost useless PD mount for free. Or perhaps Cruisers can have a -1 OP and Capitals have a -2 OP reduction to small mounts, but that come with the disadvantage of being a significant boost to cruiser and capital power, when they do not need it.

But in the case of carriers, it is due to the carrier themselves don't need weapons. They have a range 4000 weapon in the form of fighter bays. At the moment, carriers have a weapon count as if they were one hull size lower. Why would you want them to move closer to a range they can barely fight at? If carriers were given more OP, that OP can be used to make carriers better weaponless carriers.  Or if they could use their OP to fight like them, and with their fighter complement as well, all carriers, being viable as combat carriers would eclipse warships as combat ships. The carrier OP / empty weapon mounts on many warships is a separate issue and a fairly complicated one at that.

That's a good analysis. It also means small weapons aren't doing their job correctly- or large weapons are doing their job too well. Larger weapons should not be able to hit frigates or fighters reliably unless they are specifically balanced to do so by being weaker in their primary role.

Take the dominator example: The small weapon mounts you advocate are unnecessary should be necessary to prevent a frigate surround from pinning the dominator. For a warship, it shouldn't be about just PD. Small assault weapons should hit fighters more reliably as well, its just that PD is equally as good or better and can also stop missiles. I digress...

The point is, even if its true that more OP just leads to better weaponless carriers, then other solutions should be considered. It can't just be left how it is, imo.

Ability to fill all mounts with any weapons robs the player of the real choice. You can just remove fitting option altogether. At least now Onslaught is not some abstract "DP slot" (like carriers) but very distinctive melee brawler with the memorable character.

Agreed, though I don't think that is what anyone is trying to advocate. Its more that a player is encouraged to fill all weapon mounts with something.

[iamlenb]

What about setting a max op per hanger bay?  Separate from the weapon, vent/cap, and hull mod general pool.  Say, 30 OP per bay for the astral, and maybe 24 OP per bay for the heron.  This will limit smaller carriers to fielding smaller fighters.  If you elect to load smaller fighters than the max bay size, shuffle the leftover hanger OP to the general OP pool at a balanced ratio, or even at a variable rate as you move more hanger OP into the general pool.  This gives a design choice to put less fighter power in return for diminishing increase in regular warship capabilities.  You can have your close combat Astral with an all mining drone loadout.

Maybe create a hull mod that adds hanger OP and allows smaller carriers to field larger wings.  Or a hull mod that removes a hanger bay in return for increasing the OP size of the remaining bays.

It'll require a bit more balancing but will add more design freedom with additional constraints on the maximums.  Not sure how to balance it against drover/sparks spam but it'll give us a few more ways to nudge it into balance.

[Lucky33]

Fighters, as a concept and historically have always been "OP".

They never were op. Especially against warships. The best strategic achievement of the carrier based fighters is the penetration of the Japanese defence system based on the land based long range torpedo-bombers (situation turned upside-down and the hunters became the prey). Have little to do with the warships. And for a good reason. Antiship capabilities of the early-mid war fighters were limited to luck as if hitting onboard unprotected ammunition storage. Latewar saw the introduction of medium caliber general puropse bombs on fighters however the problem was training of pilots. There was barely enough time to train fighter pilots and ability to hit a moving ship with a bomb required even more skill. This is why fighter-bombers were mostly limited to strafing (no need for complex targeting) and ground-support (fixed targets). While bulk of the anti-ship work was done by the specialized attack craft.

Situation didnt change much even after war and not taking into account the nuclear strike capabilities. Last Intruders were phased out in mid 90th. Super Étendards in the 2016. The main reason being the indroduction of the new advanced avionics with the mostly automatic anti-surface targeting and autonomously guided munitions. However even that cant fix the inability to change the aircraft's loadout in flight. Going full strike leaves only limited air-to-air options, mostly self-defence.

Going full gun-ho against large warship? Welp.

Thats modern 25-mm and 30-mm ammo. Against a boat.



25-mm had difficulties of penetrationg the shell plating (of the boat...) 30-mm did some local damage.

Using this to blow up an armored battleship!? Nonsense. Its still limited to lucky shots against unprotected ammunition storage. You can imagine how much sorties had to be done to dig through heavy armor plate with fighter guns. Even given the most capable APFSDS ammo.

[Morrokain]

@lucky33

Sorry, I mean't to say "strike craft" or "aircraft." I sometime use "fighters" as a catch-all to mean "things that come from a carrier." Its a bad habit.

So mostly bombers and torpedo bombers are what I'm referring to here (edited the original post to clarify)- but that's related to the concept of the interceptors > bombers > warships kind of relationship. Bombers could be stopped from dealing much damage if enemy fighters/interceptors caught them without an escort before they reached an optimal range because they had such poor mobility compared to fighters or interceptors. This has happened to my knowledge during both land based and sea based aircraft assaults. You make some valid points, certainly, and I wasn't really trying to get into these kinds of specifics because they somewhat derail the conversation, but:

Using this to blow up an armored battleship!? Nonsense. Its still limited to lucky shots against unprotected ammunition storage.

Probably from my wording error, but you are talking about mm cannons when the power of aircraft came from bombs and torpedoes. Some of the largest and most fearsome warships in history have been harassed and sunk by aircraft due to the ability for them to evade ship based defense systems and land devastating strikes to ammo storage (as you said), communications towers or create a large enough amount of breaches to the hull with torpedoes that the vessel could no longer sustain water influx damage control and sunk. It was largely felt, at least according to what I have read, that warship based anti-aircraft guns were sub-optimal and rarely could stop a sortie from causing critical damage even if it caused a few losses to the wing in return. Smokescreens were actually far more likely to work in comparison due to the training issue you have already mentioned.
---

Now, all of that said, I don't want "aircraft" (what I will use to avoid confusion) to be that strong, but they should be intimidating enough to warrant pursuit and priority of the carrier and force the engagement of the warship protective screen.

[Plantissue]

The other thing is that adding more fighters doesn't make any other fighters worse. If you add too many weapons, you might not have the flux to fire all of them, while also not having as much dissipation, as some more modest designs.

That is a thing I do not like about warships.  Onslaught really suffers here.  (Legion, even more, but at least it has fighters.)  Back when skills were overpowered, I could fill up every mount on most warships with whatever weapons I wanted and have some OP to spare for the essential hullmods.  Today, most warships need to skimp a little to be optimal.  Few warship loadouts need to skimp too much on weapons to be optimal, and they are just as guilty as unarmed carriers when optimal looks ugly or feels silly.

Strange, I feel like that the Onslaught has way too much OP. I can fill it up with plenty of hullmods. it's good that you are forced to choose how you want to fit your ships. What's the point of having OP for customisation if you can have all the options you want and more?

Spoiler

Some of these replies seem to indicate a misunderstanding of how carriers should fit into the the tactical battlefield- at least traditionally in these types of games. Many people take issue on the "fighters as weapons" part of the design destroying warship viability unless carriers are actually made to be bad. They are willing to sacrifice carriers' overall viability because they like flying warships more than carriers (gee I wonder why? Maybe because carriers as glorified fighter barges that can't even pick multiple targets to attack are boring compared to the flux war?  ) and range and eternal wing replacement seems too powerful. It really isn't though. I mean, I get why that mentality exists when used to flying a warship, but you are trying to make carriers balance along the same operating principles as warships. That will quite frankly never work without a complete redesign. At least right now flying a carrier lets you do something (press z on a targeted enemy) whereas in pre-.8 flying a carrier was even more boring. Fighters were separate entities so you could control them without any need for flying the carrier itself. Not ideal.

Aircraft (and their modern version- drones), as a concept and historically have always been "OP". That doesn't mean they have to be from an overall design standpoint, however. To make a good strike craft/warship balance you make the carrier vulnerable but still able to use its strike craft effectively. That is what results in good gameplay tactics. Weaponless carriers do have that effect, true, but it is a boring and off-putting way of implementing that. There are much better ways.

If the Heron has enough guns to destroy a frigate in the flux war, that does not make carriers OP even if its strike craft can kill a destroyer or damage another cruiser at range. Its a cruiser. It should kill a frigate almost no matter the circumstances and destroyers should mostly lose as well. That is how the Eagle operates too... there really isn't a difference except since strike craft have so much range they are the priority threat. That point, in particular, is the main issue I think some players struggle with. They don't want that to be the case but it has to be for strike craft to feel worth it to use. Otherwise, they will be mostly flavor- like they have been for every update pre-.8 imo. I used them because I liked them, not because they felt good. The only way back then to make them work was, ironically, picking the most optimal ones and mono-spamming them (remember the old Thunder?). In small numbers they were borderline useless.

Now an Eagle vs a Heron? First of all, the Heron should be at least 1/3 or more weaker defensively. The carrier has less flux stats and defense. It should also be quite a bite slower. Quite honestly, if two Herons are fighting an Eagle without escorts.... the Eagle should barely win most of the time. But a Heron and a destroyer escort to screen it? Much different story.

Fighters are counterable, but not always. Carriers in a mixed force can hide behind warships or buy some time with their swiftness. And on their own, they can be really hard to catch, without you also taking damage from fighters, too.

Yeah, this is a big part of the problem. On their own, they should be sitting ducks to anything their hullsize. They should, however, be capable of lightly defending themselves against smaller threats. Smaller threats should rely on wolf-pack tactics to combat them (just like when fighting a regular warship of a larger hull size) but have such higher speed that the fighters can't pick too many of them off before they close the distance.

In this case what is easy is also elegant. There's no need for complicated -10% effective within a certain range, or only a set amount of fighters can attack a ship, or fighter weapons do double damage to other fighters, if you can adjust pre-existing values of HP or flux capacity or fighter replacement rate.

Ok then, I'm open to your interpretation though I don't agree right now. Give me an example of how that would operate once implemented. What is your "vision" (be as specific as possible) of how stat changes will solve these problems?

If you are concerned for the" initial" damage of the strike for the viable duration the craft can stay on target, "alpha strike" is kind of the opposite of that in common gaming parlance. In any case, that is kind of the point. By reducing values of HP or flux capacity is just an alternative to reducing the fighter replacement rate. Both are a suggestion with similar aims. To reduce the rate of auto regenerating fighter "cloud". The first has a bonus in reducing the ability of fighters to simply destroy frigates with ease.

The first sentence makes me think you don't quite understand what I am saying unless I have been misunderstanding alpha strike- which I certainly could be. In military terms, its just how many fighters/bombers (really just damage) you can field in a single sortie on one target. The limited ammo idea I suggested relates to this because alpha strike for fighters, atm, is unlimited because it relies on fighter losses in order for it to be reduced in any way (bombers notwithstanding) Limited ammo makes interceptors like the spark and thunder also follow this rule and makes it easier to balance massed fighter clouds. This would be a huge nerf to the staying power of all fighters which don't currently have limited ammo because it reduces the alpha strike vs time- which makes large fighter clouds so effective since they can just move to a new target without providing a window of opportunity for any counter reaction.

If interceptors and anti-fighter fighters better followed their role, that nerf wouldn't really matter. We don't want interceptors to be ship killers any more than we want a cruiser sized carrier killing a cruiser in close combat. Strike craft killing frigates with ease (should they hit them) is as it should be. To make them not do that would make them incredibly bad against larger ships. Frigates must rely on larger targets acting as shields, positioning, numerical superiority and allied fighters to survive. That's what its speed and maneuverability is for. It's on-board PD is a deterrent and additional support- not a solution in and of itself. A frigate is a tactical combat vessel whereas a battleship is a brute force combat vessel.

As for weapon mounts being left, most often they are small weapon mounts on ships that have medium and large weapon mounts available. Small weapons are costed for as if they are compared to other small weapons, but their worth decreases vastly once larger weapon mounts are available. LDMG and PD Laser might be worth 4 OP due to small frigate to frigate combat it might have a dual role, but in larger ships, it would be rare to see them being worth that OP, short of perhaps destroyers with safety overides hullmod. It's like another version of the frigate vs capital problem. It probably doesn't help that for instance that many small weapon mounts have small coverages that overlap with larger coverages. For instance I advocate that a Dominator can leave 2 or even 4 of its side small mounts empty, as it simply doesn't need that many if equipped the the PD-specialised vulcans. Perhaps empty weapon mounts should be automatically filled with almost useless PD mount for free. Or perhaps Cruisers can have a -1 OP and Capitals have a -2 OP reduction to small mounts, but that come with the disadvantage of being a significant boost to cruiser and capital power, when they do not need it.

But in the case of carriers, it is due to the carrier themselves don't need weapons. They have a range 4000 weapon in the form of fighter bays. At the moment, carriers have a weapon count as if they were one hull size lower. Why would you want them to move closer to a range they can barely fight at? If carriers were given more OP, that OP can be used to make carriers better weaponless carriers.  Or if they could use their OP to fight like them, and with their fighter complement as well, all carriers, being viable as combat carriers would eclipse warships as combat ships. The carrier OP / empty weapon mounts on many warships is a separate issue and a fairly complicated one at that.

That's a good analysis. It also means small weapons aren't doing their job correctly- or large weapons are doing their job too well. Larger weapons should not be able to hit frigates or fighters reliably unless they are specifically balanced to do so by being weaker in their primary role.

Take the dominator example: The small weapon mounts you advocate are unnecessary should be necessary to prevent a frigate surround from pinning the dominator. For a warship, it shouldn't be about just PD. Small assault weapons should hit fighters more reliably as well, its just that PD is equally as good or better and can also stop missiles. I digress...

The point is, even if its true that more OP just leads to better weaponless carriers, then other solutions should be considered. It can't just be left how it is, imo.

Ability to fill all mounts with any weapons robs the player of the real choice. You can just remove fitting option altogether. At least now Onslaught is not some abstract "DP slot" (like carriers) but very distinctive melee brawler with the memorable character.

Agreed, though I don't think that is what anyone is trying to advocate. Its more that a player is encouraged to fill all weapon mounts with something.

[close]

We all have thoughts on how carriers should fit into the the tactical battlefield. You don't get to say how others misunderstand how they should. What I am interested is in how carriers are used in the game and how they can or should be used. Same as with all fighters and with frigates and battleships. I'm not particularly interested in your personal interpretation of inaccurately perceived historical roles of ships and your assignation of such. In game there are frigates intended to fight fighters, frigates that are brute force and capitals which are "tactical combat vessels". Your personal interpretation of ship hulls and their roles does not matter. Fighters countering frigates contributes to the feeling that frigates are nearly worthless in the later game.

Alpha strike in common gaming parlance refers to a first and sudden high damage attack. You can see that usage constantly all over the forum, referring to missiles like Reapers or ships like Harbinger or Aurora, so I don't know why you are acting so confused for. Using it to describe variable damage over time that could extending all the way till the battle ends is the very opposite of that. I am not interested in discussing etymology to be honest. We are playing a game, not playing a specific military arm of a specific side in a war 40 years ago; it shouldn't really need to be said which usage is which.

What about setting a max op per hanger bay?  Separate from the weapon, vent/cap, and hull mod general pool.  Say, 30 OP per bay for the astral, and maybe 24 OP per bay for the heron.  This will limit smaller carriers to fielding smaller fighters.  If you elect to load smaller fighters than the max bay size, shuffle the leftover hanger OP to the general OP pool at a balanced ratio, or even at a variable rate as you move more hanger OP into the general pool.  This gives a design choice to put less fighter power in return for diminishing increase in regular warship capabilities.  You can have your close combat Astral with an all mining drone loadout.

Maybe create a hull mod that adds hanger OP and allows smaller carriers to field larger wings.  Or a hull mod that removes a hanger bay in return for increasing the OP size of the remaining bays.

It'll require a bit more balancing but will add more design freedom with additional constraints on the maximums.  Not sure how to balance it against drover/sparks spam but it'll give us a few more ways to nudge it into balance.

Schwarz suggested the same thing. It's a good idea but I feel like at this point we are all discussing several areas of discussion at the same time. If the ideal is to make carriers not have empty weapon slots, it is difficult to say what the impact will be as any spare OP can be used for hullmods and caps and vents and not go into weapons at all. It'll have to be a lot of spare OP to force a player to fill all weapon slots so as not to waste the spare OP. Personally I would suggest that whatever the OP transferance ratio should be, it shouldn't be possible to exceed whatever the player can do currently by filling its fighter bays with Talons or the 0 OP mining pod auxiliary. As it is I think carriers could do with +8 OP per fighter bay to make them more comfortably fit weapons of the player decide to do so, but since people think carriers are powerful at the moment, it must be accompanied by other balance changes at the same time.

[Megas]

Strange, I feel like that the Onslaught has way too much OP. I can fill it up with plenty of hullmods. it's good that you are forced to choose how you want to fit your ships. What's the point of having OP for customisation if you can have all the options you want and more?

In case of Onslaught, it is in part due to dissipation.  It is too hard to use heavy weapons with it.  As for OP, since Onslaught needs missiles and Expanded Missile Racks, I have no problem guzzling all of its OP even with Loadout Design 3, and this is leaving the small (insignificant) mounts empty.

I think all mounts should be filled, and it is a crying shame that the game discourages this, either through lack of OP, dissipation, or both.  It is really awful for some ships, such as Odyssey with two plasma cannons and almost nothing else, Atlas 2 with two gauss and two MIRVs, or the unarmed carrier.  I do not care if it is optimal, it looks very stupid and ugly.  What is the point of mounts if we cannot use them?  It would be better if the mounts were not there.

However, I doubt merely adding more OP will fix the problem, as that will be shoved into flux stats or hullmods or bigger fighters, instead of more weapons to fill up mounts.

[Morbo513]

I've not been satisfied with fighter mechanics since I started playing. I don't have an exact understanding of the current fighter mechanics, but I've always found them to be exceedingly powerful compared to non-carriers of equivalent OP/DP. They can successfuly counter most dangers the game can throw at you in sufficient numbers, and losses in combat have close enough to zero bearing on the outcome of a battle when stacked up against an opposing fleet's CR and composition. In other words, they almost always outlast an enemy fleet that lacks a significant complement of fighters.

I'm also very much against hard limits. My idealised version of fighter mechanics would entail another overhaul, but would end up somewhere between the current and old implementations.

The least intrusive "buff" against fighters I can think of, is allowing weapons directly targeting them (and/or PD weapons in general) to pass over/through other non-fighter ships.

The next is giving all fighter weapons limited ammo, which once depleted forces them to return to the carrier.

Not sure exactly how to go about it, but there should be much greater consequence to fighter losses within combat. Crew losses mean nothing to AI and are irrelevant during the battle, and right now it feels like destroying fighters has no real effect on the overbearing presence they have in combat

 UI concerns aside, I think it'd be very important to be able to give commands to each fighter wing deployed, as well as being able to issue them as  targets - especially with the above changes. This would make PD-heavy ships much more valuable, and allow players with carriers to assign each to appropriate targets - ie being able to tell your fighters to escort your bombers, or intercept an enemy fighter wing.
This also means that commands given to the carrier can be deconflicted from those given to its fighters.

[Lucky33]

@lucky33

Sorry, I mean't to say "strike craft" or "aircraft." I sometime use "fighters" as a catch-all to mean "things that come from a carrier." Its a bad habit.

Thats much better.

So mostly bombers and torpedo bombers are what I'm referring to here (edited the original post to clarify)- but that's related to the concept of the interceptors > bombers > warships kind of relationship.

Strike craft were op even before they learned how to fly. Torpedo boats forced the Dreadnought revolution and finally made line tactics obsolete. And the earliest examples of the torpedo craft were actually carried by the larger ships (the very first successful torpedo attack was launched in this manner).

Bombers could be stopped from dealing much damage if enemy fighters/interceptors caught them without an escort before they reached an optimal range because they had such poor mobility compared to fighters or interceptors. This has happened to my knowledge during both land based and sea based aircraft assaults.

Yes. Thats my whole point. Fighters are viable since they can stop strike craft. Before aircraft era that role was occupied by the torpedo boat destroyers.

But.

Here goes our game.

Real interceptors and destroyers were balanced by the fact that their guns although perfectly capable of destroying strike craft were too weak to endanger larger ships. In Starsector, strike craft once were ships. And still are. For example, Trident can survive the direct hit of the most powerfull guns supposedly designed to punch holes in the battleship plating. To cope with it you have to buff interceptor's capabilities. Making him dangerous to the warships. Here you go. Battleship eating fighters.

Probably from my wording error, but you are talking about mm cannons when the power of aircraft came from bombs and torpedoes.

Yes. Very limited ammunition. Not guns.

It was largely felt, at least according to what I have read, that warship based anti-aircraft guns were sub-optimal and rarely could stop a sortie from causing critical damage even if it caused a few losses to the wing in return. Smokescreens were actually far more likely to work in comparison due to the training issue you have already mentioned.

For the pilot without special training warship under way was almost impossible to hit with the bomb or torpedo. It was very difficult either way. It took about 100+ torpedoes to sink Yamato. As you can guess, most of them have missed. Thats why japanese introduced kamikaze tactics. Removed the need to keep certain bearing, speed and altitude for a weapon deployment. Without it... Only spray and pray.

Now, all of that said, I don't want "aircraft" (what I will use to avoid confusion) to be that strong, but they should be intimidating enough to warrant pursuit and priority of the carrier and force the engagement of the warship protective screen.

I'm completely ok with our current state of the attack capabilities of the strike craft. Since they have limited ammo their dps is limited too based on the range. Thats balanced. My problem is anti-ship capabilities of the fighters.