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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Author Topic: Fighter rework  (Read 4511 times)

SaberCherry

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Re: Fighter rework
« Reply #45 on: October 08, 2020, 10:03:06 AM »

Maybe Expanded Deck Crew should just be removed.  Dedicated carriers are the best kind of carrier.  It's mandatory for dedicated carriers.  It costs a lot of OP, making the carrier even more of just a flying runway instead of a fighting ship.  Do they make the game more fun?  Everything about them seems to make the game less fun.
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Megas

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Re: Fighter rework
« Reply #46 on: October 08, 2020, 11:10:18 AM »

I think you just get less bonuses from carrier skills if you have too many flight decks.
What I like to know is if that will be enough.  I remember the 0.6 releases where player got bonus stats from unused Logistics, but more ships were better enough that is was worth taking penalties at times (for example, extra Atlases to haul more food).  In other words, it may still be worth taking more ships instead of getting maximum bonus on fewer ships.

Maybe Expanded Deck Crew should just be removed.  Dedicated carriers are the best kind of carrier.  It's mandatory for dedicated carriers.  It costs a lot of OP, making the carrier even more of just a flying runway instead of a fighting ship.  Do they make the game more fun?  Everything about them seems to make the game less fun.
I remember reading that Alex weakened it some way for next release.
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Morrokain

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Re: Fighter rework
« Reply #47 on: October 08, 2020, 01:03:01 PM »

Sounds like yet another reason to go back to fighters-as-ships.  With fighters-as-missiles, it seems so tempting to reduce the range until they are little more than Gradius options orbiting the ship just to appease the so-called god of balance on its altar.  And then they do not feel like fighters anymore.  (They feel more like missiles than fighters already.)

Hmm, I'm not connecting the dots here. More specifically, how will going back to fighters-as-ships solve spam? Nothing about fighter dynamics as they currently operate would change from that as far as spamming them is concerned... do you mean because they will eat too much supplies to be spammed? To me, that isn't any fun either. In fact, that's worse. I'd rather spam just be a thing if that is the alternative.

The only two benefits from fighters-as-ships was more specific fighter assignments because they could be selected and ordered around and the separation of fighter bays and weapons (what I suspect is the real goal here). One of those actually is a double-edged sword: selecting and ordering fighters in a large scale battle could become very tedious even to me - and I'm an RTS fan!

Other downsides?
 - Operating carriers cost exponentially more supplies that combat ships.
 - Players could operate large numbers of fighters with a single carrier on the field since wings weren't tied to the carrier in any way.
 - There was little way of knowing which wing got priority of replacement unless, again, you heavily micromanaged everything.
 - From the opponent's perspective - the only way to actually stop a particularly dangerous bomber was to kill every carrier on the field.
 - No actual range limits on wings. (So in reality spam gets worse not better)
 - No visual of seeing wings deploy in the beginning of battle. (Its fluff but it was suggested many many times before the rework)
 - A case could be made to never deploy the carrier on the field - only wings - in order to limit the supply drain from losses.
 - I'm pretty sure it was abusable to do the above and then right before losses would occur if any DP is free to deploy a carrier if a ship retreated or was destroyed.
 - Absolutely no thought was needed when choosing what wings to bring. You just brought the best ones and paid a supply/day penalty if you went over hangar space iirc. If you are operating carriers you better not care about supplies.
 - The ship cap would have to be removed or changed because wings would count as ships towards to cap - and clutter up the fleet screen because there is no real need to look at them but they are still there.

I could probably think of more if I really tried and this was years ago but the downsides are still stuck in my memory because they really bugged me at the time.

So yeah carriers could brawl slightly better, but at what cost??
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Morrokain

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Re: Fighter rework
« Reply #48 on: October 08, 2020, 02:05:28 PM »

What about bringing hangar space back on the refit screen and having wings cost that instead of OP? It solves the weaponless/dedicated carrier issue and could be used to prevent over-spamming expensive wings like the Spark because something like the Drover wouldn't have the necessary space to equip it in both bays, for instance, without impacting weapons or hullmods.

Very rough mock-up: (Please ignore the crazy OP values and pretend the bar says "Hangar Space" etc. I am in the middle of doing things and didn't want to revert everything. :P)

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Megas

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Re: Fighter rework
« Reply #49 on: October 08, 2020, 02:09:27 PM »

Quote
Hmm, I'm not connecting the dots here. More specifically, how will going back to fighters-as-ships solve spam?
You cannot bring or deploy as many carriers and fighters, if fighters are like ships.  If you want fighter spam with fighters-as-ships, that will be your entire fleet (not two-thirds of your fleet plus the rest other ships of your choice).  With 30 slots, the most fighter power the player can bring is a single Drover, twenty-something Sparks, and some logistics ships to feed the swarm.  With current fighters-as-weapons, player can deploy twenty Drover and forty Sparks and sweep multi-Ordos fights as shown by goduranus.

Yes, fighters-as-ships ate supplies too.

I am not going to lie.  I like classic armed carriers being used like a battlestar, and I am annoyed that fighters-as-weapons have mostly killed such carriers as a good option.

Quote
- No actual range limits on wings. (So in reality spam gets worse not better)
That is a point of using fighters.  I would say it is a good thing.

Quote
- Players could operate large numbers of fighters with a single carrier on the field since wings weren't tied to the carrier in any way.
While possible that was not a good idea because most of the wings would be eliminated.  However, it would be possible to steadily deploy a trickle of wings, although that is not much different than deploying more frigates.  The advantage in some releases was fighters were effectively auto-recovered as long as the carrier was alive, which was a big deal when ships and weapons were much harder to find or replace.

Quote
- From the opponent's perspective - the only way to actually stop a particularly dangerous bomber was to kill every carrier on the field.
An easier way would be to kill a bunch of fighters so fast that some wings were destroyed and kicked out of the fight.  If it is a single wing, yeah, it could be hard to kill, although at that point, it is probably a minor threat.

Quote
- No visual of seeing wings deploy in the beginning of battle. (Its fluff but it was suggested many many times before the rework)
You do not see anything deploy in the beginning of battle ever since the name change from Starfarer to Starsector, but the AI sees what you deploy.  You can get blindsided by everything, from fighters to Onslaught burning in from the side with both TPCs and Annihilators blazing.  Meanwhile, AI deploys ships after you deploy.  If anything, this is the case of "AI is a cheater" trope.

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- A case could be made to never deploy the carrier on the field - only wings - in order to limit the supply drain from losses.
This is a good thing, and I miss this after the 0.8a release!  This is like the fiction of X-wings operating solo, or Colonial Vipers and Cylon Raiders having dogfights far from their mothership (Battlestar Galactica and Cylon basestar or outpost).  In Starsector, the disadvantage of doing this is if the wing was wiped out, they were kicked out of the fight.  However, it was fun deploying only fighters to mop up pursuits.  Made my Odyssey feel like Battlestar Galactica sending out Vipers to take out the Cylons.  A case where fighters-as-ships win.

Quote
- Absolutely no thought was needed when choosing what wings to bring. You just brought the best ones and paid a supply/day penalty if you went over hangar space iirc. If you are operating carriers you better not care about supplies.
Almost no different than post-0.8a, when I would bring Sparks (or Warthogs in 0.8.1a) for non-bombers, and bombers are some combo of Longbow/Khopesh/Cobra/Dagger.  Only difference is the best fighters today eat too much OP and (combined with Expanded Deck Crew which eats more OP) we have unarmed carriers being the best carrier.  If anything, fighters-as-ships win here because it did not gut carrier loadouts.  (It cost fleet resources, not carrier's OP.)

Quote
- The ship cap would have to be removed or changed because wings would count as ships towards to cap - and clutter up the fleet screen because there is no real need to look at them but they are still there.
During 0.7a, 25 ships was too low a cap, but 30 is tolerable as long as the enemy does not violate that cap (which it blatantly did until 0.9.1a, and now we get capital spam instead of the hundred frigate horde).  During 0.65a, with the way Logistics worked, fleet cap was effectively 40 for frigates (and much less for bigger ships).  I do not see a need to mess with the ship cap much, although I would not mind a slightly higher cap, since the enemy loves to spam several capitals and a bunch of cruisers in each endgame fight.  If fleet cap is too low for fighters as ships, it is too low for everything else.
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Morrokain

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Re: Fighter rework
« Reply #50 on: October 08, 2020, 02:18:31 PM »

@Megas

I'm not going to derail the thread with an itemized rebuttal war that noone wants to read, but suffice it to say I don't agree with your opinion of what is fun. All of the things that you see as good things I see as major detriments or abusable gimmicks. Not every carrier has to be a battlestar imo. Some are actually designed to be similar.

I don't like weaponless carriers or Drover Spark spam, sure, but as I already posted above I think there are other ways to do that. See: Hangar Space idea.
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SaberCherry

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Re: Fighter rework
« Reply #51 on: October 08, 2020, 02:38:13 PM »

A big problem with fighters currently, IMO, is a lack of an effective counter, and no role differentiation.  By that, I mean - go to the simulator, and deploy a Falcon with 2 wings of interceptors (say, Talons) against a Falcon with whatever, and put it on AI control.  Each ship will launch fighters at the other.  They will briefly and halfheartedly fire weapons at each other at the midpoint, then continue on to the main business of attacking the enemy ship until they die from PD or return to reload, depending on the type.  So there is no true air-superiority fighter, or interceptor; everything is just a bomber or distraction, which is why fighters with flares are so good.  A Falcon with a couple wings of Sparks will still get bombed (by Piranhas, for example) since the Sparks don't really care about the incoming bombers.  The Spark Falcon will win because Sparks are strictly superior, not because they have a different role and actually neutralize the enemy bombers by killing them.

I can design dedicated AA support ships and put flaks, frag weapons, IPDAI, and so forth on them, but the AI will just treat them as bad warships and either keep them out of combat entirely or have them attack enemy ships with their flaks, rather than heading toward areas with lots of enemy fighters.  The end result is that the only useful support AA seems to be tactical lasers on cruisers, since they cover areas the ship is ignoring or avoiding.

If it was possible to designate orders like "Intercept Fighters" on a per-ship or per-wing basis, and/or if interceptors did this exclusively and non-bomber fighters prioritized this behavior, I think the fighter metagame would work better.  Currently fighters/interceptors are just bombers that do direct damage instead of stronger but intercept-able damage.
« Last Edit: October 08, 2020, 02:41:43 PM by SaberCherry »
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SafariJohn

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Re: Fighter rework
« Reply #52 on: October 08, 2020, 03:07:43 PM »

On the same note, Accelerated Ammo Feeder won't activate on fighters. Makes the Roider Union's Firestorm-class destroyer not quite as good at anti-fighter as it ought to be.
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Morrokain

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Re: Fighter rework
« Reply #53 on: October 08, 2020, 03:37:38 PM »

Important related point:

It seems like the AI keeps its wings on "Engage" even when the housing carrier is under attack by other fighters/bombers and even when the carrier in question is equipped with mostly interceptors. So the interceptors die to enemy PD while the carrier dies from the enemy wing strike.

If the carrier would regroup to defend itself using the interceptors it would probably live. Or at least live a lot longer.

*Edit* It's kind of what SaberCherry is referring to, and I agree with the idea of an "Eliminate Enemy Strike Craft" like order, but with the added idea that AI should be aware of when a Fighter Strike order has been issued on it and respond if it has the appropriate wings to do so. Ideally, it would have never issued the Engage toggle in the first place once the enemy Fighter Strike order was given. It would only issue an Engage toggle on allied ships under enemy Fighter Strike orders.

The AI needs to be aware of what type of strike craft it is carrying and how to use them in regards to their role.

How-To-Reproduce:

Equip a Heron with 2 Wasp and a Lux and have it fight an Astral Strike stock variant. The Heron only Regroups when the wings are mostly dead from the Astral's PD instead of when an incoming bomber wave is upon it. It is also reproducible with a Strike Heron stock variant instead of an Astral - but it's not as obvious because the Strike Herons PD isn't powerful enough to defeat the Wasps quickly. Still, you can clearly see the Wasps prioritize the Heron over protecting their carrier from the incoming Daggers unless the bombers are literally right next to the Heron.

(The Heron also charges towards the Astral at first which is a little weird considering the strength/speed difference between the two ships.)
« Last Edit: October 08, 2020, 03:45:58 PM by Morrokain »
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Warnoise

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Re: Fighter rework
« Reply #54 on: October 11, 2020, 02:53:35 AM »

Fighters currently are OP. Especially spam dagger or those sabot equipped ones. No matter how much dp you cram into one ship, it will get absolutely overwhelmed simply by the sheer number of missiles.

I just came from a fight vs a fighter spamming fleet, it felt like playing some sort of survival mode where you have to survive the longest times possible. Carriers like Astral for example can throw at your ships wave after wave the most cancerous bombers (dagger and sabot) making it impossible for your ships to advance.

High yield missile bombers should have their numbers reduced and their op cost upped in such way that it would be hard to make full high yield bomber squad without sacrificing weapon slots.

Edit:I forgot to mention the Thunder, that thing can disable a capital ship just with a couple of shots. It is hell made into a small ship. Completely remove that emp nonsense and make it do hull dmg instead.
« Last Edit: October 11, 2020, 02:58:26 AM by Warnoise »
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shoi

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Re: Fighter rework
« Reply #55 on: October 12, 2020, 03:11:43 AM »

edit:misread post
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TaLaR

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Re: Fighter rework
« Reply #56 on: October 13, 2020, 04:08:44 AM »

It seems like the AI keeps its wings on "Engage" even when the housing carrier is under attack by other fighters/bombers and even when the carrier in question is equipped with mostly interceptors. So the interceptors die to enemy PD while the carrier dies from the enemy wing strike.
When only carriers are present in fleet, AI will engage by default and regroup to repair when low on fighters.
If there are any direct combat ships or combat carriers, interceptors will mostly spend their time escorting these.

That's all, AI doesn't consider anything else.

(The Heron also charges towards the Astral at first which is a little weird considering the strength/speed difference between the two ships.)

AI doesn't ask 'can I really defeat this?' question. Steady and above AI always try to approach, even if doing so gets them melted by 4xTL Paragon in seconds.

Cautious will only approach smaller or shorter ranged enemies, which is generally good for carriers. But they still can end up approaching due to escort behavior (when ship they try stick to went to other side of enemy Onslaught, etc) or going berserk in presence of enemy station.
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