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[Grievous69]

Drover just keeps getting more useless hehe.

But it's really a cool idea, it was something that was proposed for SO many times in the past, never thought the big guy would think about such mechanics himself. One counter argument for "it's unfair to dedicated carriers": Keep in mind that carriers launch all their fighters at once, meaning full power with coordinated attack. Each ship having one wing probably means much more losses and less effective strikes.

That said I'd also be very careful with the balancing so a cheap ship doesn't become a must have quasi carrier.

[Thaago]

I suppose one other way of maintaining the niche of carriers with "real" decks might be to only have those deck benefit from, and count towards, the fighter skills. There's a big difference between a "bare" deck and one with a +75% replacement rate.

[Amoebka]

What if Converted Hangar cost something like 5 OP across the board, the fighters had no penalties (increased cost or otherwise), but it increased the ship's deployment points by something like "+3 or 10%, whichever is higher"?

Nobody would use it, +3 DP is an absurdly high price. OP/DP is the most important ship metric, and the proposed CH would ruin it way too badly.

[Amazigh]

What if Converted Hangar cost something like 5 OP across the board, the fighters had no penalties (increased cost or otherwise), but it increased the ship's deployment points by something like "+3 or 10%, whichever is higher"?

Nobody would use it, +3 DP is an absurdly high price. OP/DP is the most important ship metric, and the proposed CH would ruin it way too badly.

When you're not running into the DP limit, paying 5 OP to get a mining pod wing on a ship? that's a massive bargain, and a great force multiplier.
Yes it stops being quite so appealing once you hit the DP limit, but it would still have points where it'd be worth using.

And rating ships purely on OP/DP is a bit reductive, because by such logic the dram at a mighty 15 OP/DP is better than the Falcon (P) that sits at a mere 6.25 OP/DP, or the Doom, a measly 4.14 OP/DP, and let alone the clearly worthless and unusable Ziggurat at an utterly pathetic 3.46 OP/DP

[gG_pilot]

thinking about Converted Hangar recently and how maybe pure OP is not the best balance lever for it.
What if Converted Hangar cost something like 5 OP across the board, the fighters had no penalties (increased cost or otherwise)

Yes ! Thank you  for response. It  is quite radical approach, but helps cut out all old convoluted tweaks which were piling up for for years. Now you can  look back and  make nice clean rule-set.

Hangar is a large construction, (  see Battlestar Galactica series  - landing rack plus workshop means thousands cubic meters of space) therfore OP price should mirror that. I always thought OP is merged value of space&energy. 20 OP fixed for all ship sizes  sounds right, with rule : mother-ship has base at least 20 DP.

, but it increased the ship's deployment points by something like "+3 or 10%, whichever is higher"?

Consider Fighter bay as a special weapon slot. Then Fighters are ships which fits into the weapon slot. Therefore
- Fighter cost DP as ship! As any other ship.  But Zero OP. (OP price is  paid  for  space for hangar and energy  of  life support  for technicians, it is the same value for any fighter type, garage for The Porshe is the same as garage for a Fiat.) Which means, all fighter roster have to be refactored  to fit into 0,1,2,3,..DP Brackets.
- Fighter cost maintenance as any other ship. This  number should be counted from DP value. By  a simple: DPprice times One_constant_for_all equals maintenance. Delicate Machinery is systematic optional modifier to  add maintenance to  some high tech fighters.

Dedicated carrier  ships like Astral,  (lots fighter bays and few weapon slots) should get base DP  cut like 50 >>> 35. And slight OP cut like 10 OP per bay. (because OP are no  longer needed to fill up the bays)

Also please consider add other simplifications and AI toggle feature  from my previous post, coping only relevant headlines:

- Make clear naming convention:
-  Make OP price spread evenly AND in  pairs,  (well, now it means rather spread evenly DP than OP)
- Make "Base_replacement_time" standard 10s for EVERY fighter.Consider Fighter bay as a weapon with rate of fire once per 10seconds.
- add toggle Fighter AI behaviour on  Ship refit screen - Weapons groups

----------------------------------
Do you think, the possible new fighters&hangar version should keep  declining replenish as feature of  specific weapon type, or make clean sweep and cut to the point that fighters keep the same replenish rate all the time  ? 
Fact to consider, PD weapons has constant dmg output all the time, when fighters replenish rate go down, it means fighters  hit the point when they are few, so all threat is hold by PD then  fighters do zero dmg and almost zero threat because flux of PD is dirt cheap.

[Timid]

Yep.


This is kinda half-hijacking this thread, but I've been thinking about Converted Hangar recently and how maybe pure OP is not the best balance lever for it. I mean, it works, but - how to best put it. It feels like for balance reasons, the OP cost (of the fighter, especially) is high - it has to be - and so the rest of the build is hollowed out by this a bit, when it's something like a Xyphos. This isn't the case when it's used to mount some cheaper interceptors such as Wasps, and that's viable, and in general this *does* work. It just feels like a "this hull is weak, so let's replace a good portion of its potential with a Xyphos wing to bring it up to par" kind of situation sometimes. (And the Buffalo Mk.II herd strategy, while highly amusing, is the distillation of this idea that the ship mainly becomes just a way to get the fighters on the field.)

What if Converted Hangar cost something like 5 OP across the board, the fighters had no penalties (increased cost or otherwise), but it increased the ship's deployment points by something like "+3 or 10%, whichever is higher"? It would be something that unquestionably augments the ship's capabilities, but "is this worth using on this ship" becomes a more interesting fleet-wide question. I'm still thinking on this, but the more I think about it, the more appealing it seems.

I want to quarter-hijack the thread to talk about Converted Fighter Bays. I wish Converted Fighter Bays did this as well with a low OP across the board, being able to remove empty bays and not just built-in fighter bays while decreasing the ship's deployment points by something like "3 or 10%, whichever is higher"  as well as being able with something extra for a combat buff (like maybe the return of Assault/Escort Package in a way) in being able to use carriers into a more combat-heavy role if the player is not used to carrier playstyle.

On the Converted Hangar rebalancing, I think it's a good approach of increasing DP for non-nerfed fighters with higher OP cost. Could add a debuffed version of Recovery Shuttle and Expanded Deck Crew so that even though the fighters are similar to their carrier's counterparts, the Converted Hangar has great difficulties in replenishing their numbers. The question also remains what would Vast Hangar do if this approach was taken?

[Megas]

I suppose one other way of maintaining the niche of carriers with "real" decks might be to only have those deck benefit from, and count towards, the fighter skills. There's a big difference between a "bare" deck and one with a +75% replacement rate.

This is irrelevant for those without fighter skills.  I use carriers sometimes despite having no Leadership skills, or more likely, I use a capital-sized warship that has proper bays (Odyssey or Legion XIV) and I might as well use the bays.

[smithney]

That said I'd also be very careful with the balancing so a cheap ship doesn't become a must have quasi carrier.

Double careful, in the worst case a tweak like this might become adding an evil semi-carrier twin to each hull, as in CH becoming so ubiquitous that it could overshadow unmodded versions, not unlike SO. I'm personally skeptical about fighters becoming more commonplace. Besides the mentioned Xyphos issue, there's still that of bombers contesting missiles for usage and battlecarriers lacking teeth.

[SafariJohn]

(And the Buffalo Mk.II herd strategy, while highly amusing, is the distillation of this idea that the ship mainly becomes just a way to get the fighters on the field.)

Condor should be the pinnacle of that idea IMO. Converted Hangar should be a stopgap in comparison.

[SCC]

Condor doesn't provide enough bodies, fighters or missiles to be comparable.

[IonDragonX]

I want to quarter-hijack the thread to talk about Converted Fighter Bays. I wish Converted Fighter Bays did this as well with a low OP across the board, being able to remove empty bays and not just built-in fighter bays while decreasing the ship's deployment points by something like "3 or 10%, whichever is higher"  as well as being able with something extra for a combat buff (like maybe the return of Assault/Escort Package in a way) in being able to use carriers into a more combat-heavy role if the player is not used to carrier playstyle.

On the Converted Hangar rebalancing, I think it's a good approach of increasing DP for non-nerfed fighters with higher OP cost. Could add a debuffed version of Recovery Shuttle and Expanded Deck Crew so that even though the fighters are similar to their carrier's counterparts, the Converted Hangar has great difficulties in replenishing their numbers. The question also remains what would Vast Hangar do if this approach was taken?

I second the motion. I agree with Timid and would like to see a DP drop with Converted Fighter Bays if CH gets the DP increase.

[SafariJohn]

Condor doesn't provide enough bodies, fighters or missiles to be comparable.

Precisely.

[FooF]

Adding DP is interesting. My fear is that it will diminish the battle carriers that don't have ship systems that buff fighters. I mean, you can't directly compare a CH ship with something like a Heron or Drover that have ship systems dedicated to improving fighters but a Condor? I mean, would you rather have a Condor + Enforcer for 19 DP or two Enforcers with CH for 24 DP with virtually identical performance vs. the "pure" carrier? At least right now, if you put CH on two Enforcers, the fighters themselves underperform a bit.

Also, "+3 or 10% whichever is higher" just made putting CH on Capitals kind of silly. A Paragon is now 66 DP just because it wants some Wasps that the above Enforcer gets for 3 DP? That doesn't make any sense. It would make more sense if the DP increase was based on the fighter mounted and that was universal across all hulls. Maybe the DP increase is [Fighter OP cost/5, rounded up, minimum 1). You'd have some breakpoints in there but, in general, the budget stuff is +1 DP, interceptors are +2, low-tier bombers are +3, high-tier bombers/Xyphos are +4, and Tridents are a whopping +5 DP.

I would also second that Converted Hangers do not receive any bonuses from Skills or going above 70% CR. I think it will be optimal to add CH to most ships early unless there are indirect buffs to "normal" standard Hangars. So, in the example I listed first, if two Enforcers wanted to mimic a Condor with a wing of Broadswords and a Dagger via CH, they'd still end up at 24 DP but the Condor would have the benefit of being able to use Fighter Uplink or Carrier Group, along with any CR bonuses. I think there's a bit more meaningful choice in there (though not much!)

[SafariJohn]

What if Converted Hangar's penalty was longer replacement times?

Roider Union's Fighter Clamps hullmods gives a wing with no replacements (bombers are blocked, also). CH with a replacement penalty would function somewhat similarly: initially it could compete with a normal flight deck, but the replacement rate would reach 30% sooner resulting in CH having a soft limit on how many fighters it can replace.


Not giving CH skill or CR bonuses is similar in effect, but I don't like how it gives CH the same base stats as normal flight decks. I'm also not sure buffing fighter spam fleets (by letting them have CH ships AND concentrate their skill bonuses on their best carriers) is a good idea.

[FooF]

Interestingly, CH could count toward Skill caps without actually benefiting from them. Kind of a double whammy but it would disincentivize spamming CH if you use those skills on actual carriers.