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[Gothars]

Flight Decks are currently very limited in their flexibility, a ship either has one or not. (With the exception of the Astral, which has three.) The lore speaks of different flight deck sizes, wherein the Gemini has a "tiny" one originally intended for mining drones, but that has no actual game play consequences. It repairs a wing just as fast as the Astral.


Would it not be more interesting when composing a fleet, if carriers would actually differ in what is  after all their main functionality (or exactly not, but just a byproduct)?

A pretty obvious solution would be to give the carrier decks different repair times, or rather different modifiers for fighter repair times. So a talon wing takes about 5 seconds to repair, if the Gemini had a repair speed factor of 2,0 it would take it 10 seconds. Or a piranha wing takes about 15 seconds, maybe the super automated Astral with a factor of 0,66 could service them in 10. (Btw. it would be nice to see the base repair times of fighter wings in their description, it's quite relevant.)

It seems to me as clueless non-programmer a relatively simple thing to add, which would make carrier choice much more interesting. Right now it's for example a no-brainer to ditch my condor as soon as I get a Venture or Gemini, and the Astral is just unnecessary costly for everything but very heavy bomber runs.

Spoiler

A more elaborate expansion of that approach would be to introduce holding capabilities to flight decks. Maybe a condor could service two wings at medium speed, while the venture could handle just one, but slightly faster. That would allow to fine-tune carriers further, and it would go well with the those older suggestions of being able to park currently useless wings inside a carrier instead of sending them irrevocable off map (or for surprise attacks). Well, to much effort for the current development stage, I guess, so let's focus on the main suggestion.

[close]

[BillyRueben]

+1.

Another way you could differentiate carriers from each other is to give them each their own unique combat modifier. Something like:

Condor:   None
Gemini:    +50% capture rate for fighters
Venture:  50% less supplies used for fighter repair
Astral:     +15 speed & +50% capture rate for fighters
and so on...

[CrashToDesktop]

+1
Sounds good, I might actually have to spend some time deciding between the Gemni and the Condor.

[Gothars]

Another way you could differentiate carriers from each other is to give them each their own unique combat modifier. Something like:

Condor:   None
Gemini:    +50% capture rate for fighters
Venture:  50% less supplies used for fighter repair
Astral:     +15 speed & +50% capture rate for fighters
and so on...

Mh, why should a carrier influence captue rate? Do this bonuses stack, what happen if you have three Geminis? That would open up new lore questions, instead of ending old ones (like why no speed difference?).

[BillyRueben]

Simple: More effective communication systems on the more advanced carriers to coordinate fighters more efficiently, granting them said bonuses.

Do this bonuses stack...

If I was to implement the change, I'd make it so carrier bonuses stacked with different carriers (Astral + Gemini = +15 speed & +100% capture rate), but not with identical carriers (Gemini + Gemini = +50% capture rate).

I thought it would be cool if your carrier choice actually had an affect on your fighters, hence the suggestion. You could even let certain carriers give a fleetwide bonus (+5% armor on all ships). It's a thought, I have no clue how OP this would be.

[Gothars]

 Mh, I think different repair times are very much to be expected of different carriers, so they would seem natural. Those bonuses seem a bit constructed to me, I'm not sure. But I feel that fleet-wide (or wing-wide) effects are more suitable for the upcoming character or officer system.

[Hyph_K31]

I'm not too sure about the whole idea of carriers giving fighters a buff, I might expect slightly varied hull integrity and armour 'toughness' and engine efficiency from repaired fighters, but not freshly deployed fighters.

As for why I wouldn't expect fighters to receive a buff of any sort from a carrier would be that they weren't built by the carrier, only deployed.

Of course they may well be able to strap on a few extra engines, ammunition or add a better set of sensors, but thats besides the point.

[Brainbread]

Maybe... well. If you had "Open" Flight Decks, it would improve the repair speed of ships in the occupied deck? So if you had an Astral repairing one fighter, it'd give it 100% increased repair speed (because of the two empty decks), if you had one open deck, it'd give both the occupied decks +50% repair speed.

Then we could toss in a Hull Mod that increases the repair speed of fighters, or one that adds an additional Flight Deck to the carrier to acheive the same process?

[Gothars]

Maybe... well. If you had "Open" Flight Decks, it would improve the repair speed of ships in the occupied deck? So if you had an Astral repairing one fighter, it'd give it 100% increased repair speed (because of the two empty decks), if you had one open deck, it'd give both the occupied decks +50% repair speed.

Then we could toss in a Hull Mod that increases the repair speed of fighters, or one that adds an additional Flight Deck to the carrier to acheive the same process?

That might work for the Astral, but it would not help to set all those one-deck-carriers apart...

[K-64]

For the non-repair bonuses, I think that stuff like capture is going about it wrong in my opinion. Perhaps within a certain (large-ish) sphere of influence around the carrier, the fighter is classed as one crew-level up in terms of accuracy for one of the carriers. Another could provide greater sensor range. Stuff like that.

[Ghoti]

Hey I like this idea. There's nothing wrong with carriers giving ships buffs. It's not very advantageous to deploy more than one carrier, and it's not like the concept of something that improves the stats of all your ships is exactly foreign to starfarer.
extra range, extra speed, 20% more fighters in a wing? All kinds of possibilities. This is a clever idea.

[MidnightSun]

I like the different repair rates; that could be tied into the different tech levels (ie, Astral and Odyssey repair fastest, Gemini and Venture second-fastest, etc.) to lend greater clarity.

Don't really like the various bonuses, though. I think that it's perhaps a bit silly that for a constructed reason, fielding two high-tech supercarrier Astrals is less effective than fielding an Astral, a Gemini, and a Venture.

[K-64]

It makes sense though. Three different standardised hulls will have 3 different C&C apparatuses. That will apply 3 different enhancements to fighters in range. Of course, with my suggestion with the circles of influence (yeah, I put sphere back there, rather inaccurate for a 2D game ), having those 3 circles intersecting enough for them all to apply at once consistently would be gravely misusing the main advantage of multiple carriers: keeping a large zone where fighters are reliably supported and can catch their breath after taking a beating.

It does open up the avenue of "Do I want to put all my eggs in one basket for a mighty hammer, or spread out in a large net?"

Ah crap, I've started my ramblings again. Whoops.

[Rowanas]

I like the idea of carriers giving different buffs more than having faster or slower repair rates. It adds more variation (which is the entire point, right?) and it makes perfect sense that carriers should be providing C&C to the fighters deployed locally.
However, I think the faster capture rate would be a little useless. If we assume that carriers provide a bonus to fighters nearby, there will rarely be a time when fighters are capturing with a carrier in range, since fastcapping is a large part of fighter utility. Also, increasing engine speed in range of the carrier makes absolutely no sense. How would the mothership provide additional software or data that can make the engines suddenly faster?

I think that varied carrier bonuses would be best, but only if they apply over the entire battlefield (otherwise most of them will be completely useless).

[GUNINANRUNIN]

+1 I have nothing to add, you guys have pretty much covered all the bases. Mostly just posting to get it in my reading list.