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[Bummelei]

Great respawn time. Impressive durability. Heavy firepower. Cheap OP cost. And there is three of them! God loves trinity! But their max range is only 2000...
Coupled with the snail's speed, Warthogs is just unable to engage the target. Frigates, destroyers, and even light cruisers are completely unreacheble for these fighters.

The moment when enemy ship sees them flying towards, he just takes one step back and the fighters can no longer follow him so they changing target while he just comes back like nothing happen. So 99% of the time they just helplessly hover around from target to target, or stick to the allied ships.

I tried almost all variants, but they just doen't work.
Fast destroyers and cruisers? Check. Herons and Moras? Check. Heck, even fleets made entirely of them! Only piloted Legion seems to work.
On paper they looks great, but on practice they are a great disappointment.

Dunno, maybe my hands growing out of my arse (sorry for my french) and i'm doing everything wrong. In that case, i humbly invite you to teach me how to cook them, and will be extremely grateful for this.

But if it's not the case, then i have a couple of suggestions:
1) Restore their range back to 4000, a bit boring but atleast they will work.
2) Replace their system for Burn Drive or Plasma Burn, and add 500-1000su (needs playtesting) so they will at least be able to engage enemy.
3) Add even more weapons! Vulcan turret, or Dual Machinegun from the front, turn them into little Death Stars which ferociously defends their mothership!

I would like to hear your opinion.

[Igncom1]

They used to have three mortars I believe and were hilariously powerful.

But yeah their best use is as bomber escorts for fighting stations and enemy capital ships or slow cruisers. They are quite tough and can adsorb plenty of point defence.

I'd see them, along with most fighters, as a force magnifier to other kinds of strike craft like bombers or other fighters and interceptors. Where a swarm of wasp drones might get shredded a warthog wing will give the rest more time to work while they are slowly killed. Stacking different fighter types together can help cover for one or another's weaknesses. A broadsword wing can't deal with armour, but warthogs can, and both are far tougher then a gladius with it's small pulse laser.

[FooF]

They’re ok, but only that. I’ve always thought they don’t really live up the Warthog name (inspired by the A-10, no doubt). The A-10 is built around a massive Gatling gun and the Starsector version has a pair of slow-firing, highly inaccurate Light Mortars. It’s the inaccuracy that kills it the most for me. I’ve seen Warthogs circle a ship and miss 75% of their shots, even against large targets.

Suggestion: give them a single LAG and make them have more of a strafing behavior instead of circling. I think this fits thematically but also makes them less prone to missing. The LAG is just far more accurate. 3x LAG for the Wing isn’t a whole lot of HE (penetration is worse than Mortars) but it will add up over time.

In a perfect world, I’d actually arm them with a modified Assault Chaingun (maybe halve the rate of fire) and let them go to town but I don’t want to get carried away.

[Bummelei]

They’re ok, but only that. I’ve always thought they don’t really live up the Warthog name (inspired by the A-10, no doubt). The A-10 is built around a massive Gatling gun and the Starsector version has a pair of slow-firing, highly inaccurate Light Mortars. It’s the inaccuracy that kills it the most for me. I’ve seen Warthogs circle a ship and miss 75% of their shots, even against large targets.

Suggestion: give them a single LAG and make them have more of a strafing behavior instead of circling. I think this fits thematically but also makes them less prone to missing. The LAG is just far more accurate. 3x LAG for the Wing isn’t a whole lot of HE (penetration is worse than Mortars) but it will add up over time.

Have you tried Fighter Uplink? It helps a bit, so it's not that bad.

Don't know if behavior change will really help, but it's interesting.

[Megas]

Warthogs are too slow and have (too) short roam range.  I treat them like Xyphos with a bit of roam range, or like the Shepherd's Borer drones.  Basically a cloud centered on the carrier.  With its current stats, Warthogs are borderline support fighters, probably meant for battlecarriers.

I would not call 12 OP cost cheap.

They used to have three mortars I believe and were hilariously powerful.

They were.  I used to put six on Astral, wait until an enemy ship got close to Astral, hit Recall Device, and watch the swarm of Warthogs engulf an enemy and tear it apart fast.  In hindsight, five Warthogs and one Claw was probably more effective.  Warthogs were about as overpowered as Remnant fighters at the time.

[IonDragonX]

I’ve always thought they don’t really live up the Warthog name (inspired by the A-10, no doubt). The A-10 is built around a massive Gatling gun and the Starsector version has a pair of slow-firing, highly inaccurate Light Mortars.

I agree about the A-10 reference. A-10s were a favorite of mine as a youth. Their durability is as famous as their firepower. Less well known is their extreme range.

Suggestion: give them a single LAG and make them have more of a strafing behavior instead of circling. I think this fits thematically but also makes them less prone to missing. The LAG is just far more accurate. 3x LAG for the Wing isn’t a whole lot of HE (penetration is worse than Mortars) but it will add up over time.
In a perfect world, I’d actually arm them with a modified Assault Chaingun (maybe halve the rate of fire) and let them go to town but I don’t want to get carried away.

I like the modified Assault Chaingun idea. Alternatively, LAG+single Hammer would fit the theme. Either way, put their range back to average.

[BCS]

My experience with Warthogs is that they do not die. I would say that's pretty good.

[IonDragonX]

My experience with Warthogs is that they do not die. I would say that's pretty good.

Win More is always better than Lose Less

[FooF]

I’m going to experiment with changing the weapon a little. I don’t think giving them any kind of payload is good idea. They don’t need to be bombers.

The ACG idea would necessitate them getting even closer than current, meaning they might need a slight speed bump or armor increase. I’ll try the LAG first though and see. I really would love the Warthogs to go BRRRT but gameplay comes first.

[Thaago]

IMO they could use a small speed bump (though that would make the mortars even less accurate, and they are already quite prone to missing, so a tweak there as well). Their raw stats are really strong, it's just that they have so much trouble catching anything.

Replacing the dual mortar with a LAG would be in some ways a downgrade, in some ways an upgrade. They would also need a small boost to dissipation to compensate for the lower efficiency I think. It would 'feel' more like a chaingun than the current mortars.

[Igncom1]

I don't think they really need to have a chaingun just because of the name.

[Thaago]

Thats fair, I guess

[Igncom1]

My first experience with the 'warthog' was in Command & Conquer. But there it just dropped a carpet of naplam bombs.

But yeah having a gimped medium weapon for a fighter might suit a bomber more then a fighter.

[Candesce]

I'm now imagining a bomber armed with a Thumper that needs to dock to reload the magazine.

[FooF]

So, funny thing: Alex already tried all these because they all appear in the Variant file. But, I tried them anyway.

LAG was ok but I had to give the Warthog a few Vents to sustain fire. The Assault Chaingun was pretty interesting because the Warthogs were flux-locked for most of it. I think you wouldn't even have to mess with the main weapon stats, just dial-in the amount of shots it can burst out before overfluxing.

Then there was the Thumper... I had to give the Warthogs some Capacitors otherwise it wouldn't fire at all but even with all the capacity it could ever want, it was extremely underwhelming. It fit the MO of the Warthog to a "T" (bursts of gatling fire) but doing Flak damage was just really unimpressive. It looked pretty cool, though!

Morale of the story, there was a reason Alex didn't go with these. It looks like the original loadout was 2 LMGs and a Thumper and he tried a single LAG at one point. This was actually pretty decent! I had to give it 5 Vents and 3 Capacitors but they were actually kind of effective.