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[AcaMetis]

Maybe it's just me, but "the fighter replacement rate both decays and recovers 1.5x more slowly" reads a bit odd to me? Like the replacement rate goes down more slowly, but also recovers more slowly? Is that intended? Also "The improvised flight deck, its crew, and the related machinery all lack the speed and precision found on a dedicated carrier" reads like the crew itself is also improvised, but than I need extra skeleton crew to account for (I assume) dedicated pilots and flight crew?

Pardon if this is just being nitpicky, but, well, curious.

[FooF]

Yeah, minimum +1 DP was my original suggestion.

If the S-mod bonus shouldn’t feel mandatory… hmm. Fighters deal an extra 10/15% damage to missiles? Reduces the bomber rearm time penalty?

Probably too involved but S-modded CH has no rearm/replacement time penalty for the first 100 seconds of combat before reverting to 1.5x. It’s like the converted hangars are overdriven at the start but can’t maintain it for extended periods before reverting to degraded performance.

[Caymon Joestar]

I like it, but that’s going to be one heck of a tooltip to explain.

So, converted hangars are essentially 50% of standard in terms of rearm/replace. Bombers have 5 seconds tacked on to their times. +1 DP per OP spent on the wing.

Combined, that all seems pretty harsh and yet it still has some value for certain wings and hulls. The OP cost will be much less severe than current so, yeah, I can see it.

Hmm, hmm - let's try a little tooltip-driven design!

Converts the ship's standard shuttle hangar to house a fighter bay. The improvised flight deck, its crew, and the related machinery all lack the speed and precision found on a dedicated carrier.

Increases fighter refit time by 1.5x, and the fighter replacement rate both decays and recovers 1.5x more slowly. In addition, bombers returning to rearm take 5 seconds longer to relaunch. Increases the minimum crew by 20 to account for pilots and flight crews.

Increases the ship's deployment points and supply cost to recover from deployment by 1 for every 5 ordnance points spent on fighters (3 points for the currently installed fighter wing).

Something like this, perhaps? Maybe with a little different way of showing what it is for the current wing. I could be biased, but this seems like a pretty straightforward tooltip.

Not sure what the s-mod effect would be - if there was one, it'd be cruiser (slight) and capital (significant), and no effect for destroyers, based on how the OP cost differs from the baseline. Not every hullmod strictly speaking *needs* one, even if its cheaper than the 5/10/15/25 baseline, though.

Personally, I think the new CH should be 8 OP (with scaling for cruiser/capital obv) since 10 means it’s asking if you think a fighter bay is better than bulkheads or blast doors or other hullmods at that price. Which throw in the cost of the fighter and it just starts becoming a “Lol no not really” situation

I don’t think the new CH is gonna hurt dedicated carriers at all, the DP increases means it’s always gonna more efficient to just grab a condor or heron or mora instead of slapping converted hanger on some destroyers (especially when you using a good chuck of op just on the hullmod+ fighter itself) sure, the condor/drover kinda sucks but when it comes to projecting fighters, they are serviceable and doesn’t gimp the ship.

 Sure you COULD put CH on that enforcer, but you’ll find that the enforcer ends up dying more in fights since you spend like 20ish OP on 1 fighter bay instead of Heavy armor/Bulkheads/Vents/Etc.
You unironically give your normal ship the battlecarrier problem in most cases. Throw in that DP increase and at that point you would have to ask yourself:

“Is it really worth all this investment just so I can say I have infinite missiles because I put a dagger on my enforcer/fury?”

I think the answer is no in most cases

Also for smod bonus: changes the replacement rate thing to 1.25 from 1.50 would be neat

[Doctorhealsgood]

This converted hangar rework that tracks OP used on the added fighter bay to determine the Deployment point penalty reminded me of a suggestion i did ages ago about changing the fighter skills to track OP used on fighters instead of fighter bays in your fleet to determine when diminishing returns should kick in. It is kind of off-topic though and i apologize for that.

[Timid]

Maybe it's just me, but "the fighter replacement rate both decays and recovers 1.5x more slowly" reads a bit odd to me? Like the replacement rate goes down more slowly, but also recovers more slowly?

Gameplay-wise it means you're not punished for losing fighters in the short-term but rather more in the long-term. It's a bit fuzzy and I had Alex explain to me how something surprisingly so simple works.

[FooF]

This converted hangar rework that tracks OP used on the added fighter bay to determine the Deployment point penalty reminded me of a suggestion i did ages ago about changing the fighter skills to track OP used on fighters instead of fighter bays in your fleet to determine when diminishing returns should kick in. It is kind of off-topic though and i apologize for that.

Honestly, that makes sense too, though it’s not quite as simple as counting flight decks. I think the counting of decks inadvertently equivocates all fighters, which is simply untrue. A flight deck with Wasps is not as powerful as one with Tridents but the skills seem to think so.

It would be a change for sure but one with more granularity. If you went really wide with carriers but filled them with Talons, you could theoretically support more wings than if you used Daggers. I suppose that begs the question of what a “average” hangar is worth under the new system. I.e. if 8 decks gives you X% how does that translate to OP in the new? For example, if the average was 12 OP, you could support 96 OP worth before diminishing returns (why not just round that to 100 for easy math?). So while that’s only 5 Dagger wings (10 OP leftover), it is also 12 Broadsword wings.

My fear would be infinite Mining Pods in this scenario or 50 Talons…you’d need guardrails against that.

[Alex]

How is the Vast Hangar interaction working at this point? In the relevant blogpost, you talked about it negating penalties on top of adding a second bay - it might be a good idea to slap that on a couple of smaller ships that make for better carrier conversions. That would keep Converted Hangar mostly not worth it, with a few situational choices.

It'd negate the +DP penalty and still add a second bay, since the Invictus is designed to have "two bays regular carrier style" as an option.

I'm not sure I'd really want to put it on smaller ships; it'd really put the Condor in a bad spot.

Maybe it's just me, but "the fighter replacement rate both decays and recovers 1.5x more slowly" reads a bit odd to me? Like the replacement rate goes down more slowly, but also recovers more slowly? Is that intended?

Well, you're interpreting it correctly, so that's good! The idea is that basically all of the operations of the flight deck are slowed. If the replacement rate only went down more slowly, but recovered at the same rate, that'd be a pretty massive bonus.

Also "The improvised flight deck, its crew, and the related machinery all lack the speed and precision found on a dedicated carrier" reads like the crew itself is also improvised, but than I need extra skeleton crew to account for (I assume) dedicated pilots and flight crew?

I think the "its crew" bit makes it clear that the crew is not improvised. (Even though it kinda is But just proper-English-wise.) And as the tooltip mentions later, you do require more crew.

Pardon if this is just being nitpicky, but, well, curious.

Not at all, I appreciate you looking it over!

Yeah, minimum +1 DP was my original suggestion.

If the S-mod bonus shouldn’t feel mandatory… hmm. Fighters deal an extra 10/15% damage to missiles? Reduces the bomber rearm time penalty?

Probably too involved but S-modded CH has no rearm/replacement time penalty for the first 100 seconds of combat before reverting to 1.5x. It’s like the converted hangars are overdriven at the start but can’t maintain it for extended periods before reverting to degraded performance.

Interesting idea! Probably a bit involved, yeah - would also need to convey this to the player (I mean, during combat, as the effect runs out) etc.

Also for smod bonus: changes the replacement rate thing to 1.25 from 1.50 would be neat

That'd be a bit of a nerf, I think! At least, unless the refit time was also reduced. Otherwise, the replacement rate would tick down faster while new fighters are being prepared.

Gameplay-wise it means you're not punished for losing fighters in the short-term but rather more in the long-term.

Applying the same modifier to all of these (well, the inverted modifier to the rates) keeps the dynamics the same in terms of how much the replacement rate suffers over the course of replacing a single fighter. Basically it's like the fighter bay is working in slow motion, but everything else is the same.

This converted hangar rework that tracks OP used on the added fighter bay to determine the Deployment point penalty reminded me of a suggestion i did ages ago about changing the fighter skills to track OP used on fighters instead of fighter bays in your fleet to determine when diminishing returns should kick in. It is kind of off-topic though and i apologize for that.

It's an interesting idea, but I think it gets pretty complicated. I'm not so sure that OP is a reliable measure of how much a fighter wing should be worth to the skill - or, rather, I'm sure it's *not*! It'd need to be something like "fighter OP cost plus 10" (which would also build in those guardrails FooF is talking about), but it's just... a bit too fiddly for my liking.

[Harmful Mechanic]

How is the Vast Hangar interaction working at this point? In the relevant blogpost, you talked about it negating penalties on top of adding a second bay - it might be a good idea to slap that on a couple of smaller ships that make for better carrier conversions. That would keep Converted Hangar mostly not worth it, with a few situational choices.

It'd negate the +DP penalty and still add a second bay, since the Invictus is designed to have "two bays regular carrier style" as an option.

I'm not sure I'd really want to put it on smaller ships; it'd really put the Condor in a bad spot.

Oh, to be clear I was thinking it might go on one or two cruiser-sized ships - maybe the Dominator, or the Apogee. Definitely not on a destroyer, or replacing any existing hulls.

[FooF]

Yeah, “smaller than an Invictus” is basically everything! The only ships that seem likely candidates would be other Battleships, which dilutes the distinguishing feature the Invictus has over them.

Maybe an Atlas Mk. II?

[Alex]

I think feel-wise it should remain Invictus specific - it *is* a Dreadnought, in a class of its own!

Mechanics-wise, too, the Invictus has very limited OP (but it also doesn't *need* that many, due to heavy ballistics integration), setting up a choice of what to invest in - the large missiles, or CH with 2 decks. I think it would be too strong on anything else that can afford the CH + fighter wings OP cost more easily.

[SafariJohn]

Something like this, perhaps? Maybe with a little different way of showing what it is for the current wing. I could be biased, but this seems like a pretty straightforward tooltip.

Seems straightforward to me. (Much better than Ballistic Rangefinder!) And definitely minimum +1 DP. If it were min 0 it would be too easy to dip for Talons.

[Alex]

Seems straightforward to me. (Much better than Ballistic Rangefinder!) And definitely minimum +1 DP. If it were min 0 it would be too easy to dip for Talons.

Excellent! (And, haha, can't really argue there.)

[BaBosa]

(First, just want to say thank you to everyone for your thoughtful feedback! I really appreciate it and it feels like it's really helping refine what started out as a half-baked idea.)

I think CH should have a fire rate/damage penalty. No other stat except possibly weapon range will evenly affect all fighters. Like even replacement time isn’t universal because long range support fighters like Xyphos are much less likely to be destroyed and so replacement time is less relevant.

It's a fair point, but I think the replacement rate is still pretty important. If a ship is hard-pressed, even the Xyphos will go down, and it'll still matter. And no one stat is going to be perfect! Even damage dealt is going to barely affect something like Mining Pods.

In regard to force concentration, after the initial wave, even with fighter strike orders, those bombers are going to be coming in piecemeal

I'm fairly sure carriers wait until they have enough fighters back to send them out again, so I don't think it'd be piecemeal - maybe not *quite* at 100%, but close enough to it. Not for battlecarriers, though; as you say there's a big difference there.


Regardless, though, just the fact that there is an argument to be had about CH supplanting regular carriers is not a good sign; it seems like some kind of fighter debuff is still in order to make sure there's a good amount of separation between the two.

An idea occurs - what about increasing the fighter refit time, but *also* reducing the rate at which the fighter rate both decays and recovers? That way, an increased refit time isn't going to have compounded effects in nuking the replacement rate - rather, the entire bay will just function "same as normal, except slower" (by, say, 1.5x). And then you could add something like 5 extra seconds to the "rearm and relaunch bomber" time, to tone down the "infinite missiles" case while keeping bomber OP costs the same - mitigating the "hollow out the rest of the build for infinite missiles" case.

And with that, a flat 10 OP across the board, no damage/speed penalties, and something like +1 DP per 5 OP spent on fighters. This seems like it might work well, and amount of rules is about the same as now - replacing "+fighter costs and -fighter stats" with "+refit/rearm time and +DP".

While not totally ineffective, I still think replacement rate debuffs don't affect long range support fighters like Xyphos enough as while it does have an impact if an enemy ship gets close and takes them down, if you can make them drop shields before then they get ionned and they can't take out Xyphos and the replacement rate debuff has no effect. Thinking about it, the issue is really the range allowing them to have an effect while being far out of PD range. Maybe one more penalty to half range above 400 or something like that. There's a reason Xyphos are the most common CH fighter.


As for the s-mod bonus, there's a lot of options. A small percentage speed boost would be nice but not huge and maybe a small PD damage boost like FooF suggested for the capital bonus.

Yeah, “smaller than an Invictus” is basically everything! The only ships that seem likely candidates would be other Battleships, which dilutes the distinguishing feature the Invictus has over them.

Maybe an Atlas Mk. II?

That'd step on the Prometheus MK. II as it has two fighters. I don't see any ship that could have Vast Hangars added on.

[Doctorhealsgood]

It's an interesting idea, but I think it gets pretty complicated. I'm not so sure that OP is a reliable measure of how much a fighter wing should be worth to the skill - or, rather, I'm sure it's *not*! It'd need to be something like "fighter OP cost plus 10" (which would also build in those guardrails FooF is talking about), but it's just... a bit too fiddly for my liking.

Fair enough. I personally think it would be neat if the skill had a bit more granularity than it currently has, but if this way is too fiddly it is too fiddly.

Yeah, “smaller than an Invictus” is basically everything! The only ships that seem likely candidates would be other Battleships, which dilutes the distinguishing feature the Invictus has over them.

Maybe an Atlas Mk. II?

Dunno if there is any current ship that could have it. It is not only a massive ship, it is also the most demanding ship in terms of crew  by a disproportionate degree (The monthly salaries i will have to pay to field one make me tremble) so it makes sense for it to have a massive hangar the size of a dedicated carrier perfect to be repurposed for combat operations. In an Atlas Mk. II it would be more fitting to use the Converted Cargo Bay mod that is currently exclusive to the Colossus MK. III (I have zero idea on how to fit that ship for combat to begin with though). That being said the Prometheus MK. II already exists if you want a capital civilian repurposed combat carrier and the fighter bays on this one are perfectly integrated too!
That is what i think at least.

[FooF]

Thinking more on what S-mods might do to CH… just spitballing.

- reduce installed fighter cost by 5 (Cruiser) and 10 (Capital). Kind of lame but its always nice to have more OP without being mandatory. Can grant a “free” interceptor or halve Bomber costs, though the +DP cost isn’t affected nor is the reduced replacement rate.

- Increases Sensor Range on the ship by X units or some %. Rationale is that the ship has flight control and patrols now when it didn’t before. (Begs the question why other carriers don’t have above average sensor range but…)

- Previously mentioned but some +% damage to fighters/missiles (on the base hull, for the fighters themselves, or both perhaps)

- +15/30% Fighter HP (better construction?)