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[Dark.Revenant]

Perhaps a -1 fleet point cost to any fighters housed within the Astral's hangar?  E.G. if you have 5 Broadswords and 5 Wasps they'd count as 5 and 3 FP each for a total of 40 FP towards your overall limit and your combat deployment.  Maybe some other carriers can have similar cost reductions (like the Odyssey being a -1/4 and a Condor being a -1/3 or something).

[Sunfire]

Perhaps a -1 fleet point cost to any fighters housed within the Astral's hangar?  E.G. if you have 5 Broadswords and 5 Wasps they'd count as 5 and 3 FP each for a total of 40 FP towards your overall limit and your combat deployment.  Maybe some other carriers can have similar cost reductions (like the Odyssey being a -1/4 and a Condor being a -1/3 or something).

I like that idea, but I think fighters need a total re-balancing. I think (this is my opinion) that the FP cost of a fighter should be how hard it is to maintain the fighter, and hanger points should be how much space is there to store them. Flight decks should represent what they do now. The FP costs should be determined by the tech level of the fighters, the complexity of those fighters, whether or not they need to be manned or not, and the number of fighters in a wing.

So, under this news system, talons should still take three. One because they are manned and two because there are four fighters of low tech level and complexity. A xyohos wing, on the other hand would be five, one for being manned, and two per fighter because there are two in the wing and they are extremely complex. Some might say, "what about wasp wings?" Well, they are drones, but drones are complex. However, my impression of them is that they are quite simple, so how about a FP rating of four, three because there are six fighters in a wing, so two per FP, and one because they are drones, and thus are complex. Now, this seems silly to have a FP added for being manned and one added for being drones, but the FP for manned is added to everything, so that balances, however, if it is possible, wasps should have a lower FP cost if there is a carrier of a high enough tech level in your fleet. I dont think that is possible though, so I dont really know exactly what to do with them.

(Comments, criticism, and jokes are all appreciated)

[Wyvern]

Sadly, wasps are manned now.  Used to really like using them.  Now they just eat crew (unless you're really really careful about repairing them before the battle ends).  >.<

[BillyRueben]

I've actually recently fallen in love with the Warthogs. True, they aren't worth their FP cost, but they are still awesome.

[Sunfire]

Sadly, wasps are manned now.  Used to really like using them.  Now they just eat crew (unless you're really really careful about repairing them before the battle ends).  >.<

WHAT??? Man, using all low tech ships or a wolf pack sure does leave out a lot of stuff. Well that is unfortunate, ahh well, just ignore that part then.

[Aleskander]

I think if Alex makes carriers more complex(Which has been suggested a lot, and alex seems to be pretty receptive towards the forum) the higher tier ones will be more valuable.

[Gothars]

I think if Alex makes carriers more complex(Which has been suggested a lot, and alex seems to be pretty receptive towards the forum) the higher tier ones will be more valuable.

I choose to believe that if an all around good idea has no dev comment the reason is always that there are already better plans in that direction

[hadesian]

This is a pretty hard topic actually, since dozens of times in my memory it's resurfaced, been discussed and nobody can think of a good solution.
Remember guys, the difference between tech levels is how they get the job done - not how they actually perform. High tech does not defeat low tech, etc. It's not a rock paper scissors affair.
But as it does stand currently, I think that perhaps this rule could be broken for the Astral and fighters - if an ancient tarsus can be converted into a makeshift carrier, a condor, that can repair the hyper advanced xyphos fighters, then what's the point of colossally expensive, massive, slow and combat weak high tech capital carrier? Epeen? Showing off? Why would they create something like that? Even if it does have 3 flight decks, the high tech fighters that would theoretically be used with it are hard to kill and it'd only ever see one deck used at a time I believe.

[Cycerin]

What if the Astral deployed one or two PD/attack drones alongside every fighter wing you had, up to a certain number?

[Histidine]

I'm in the "carrier mechanic doesn't really work as-is" camp and the "fighters are too weak" camps.

For carriers, perhaps make bigger/higher tech/dedicated carriers repair much faster than small/low-tech/multirole ones. So a fighter wing in a Condor (small, low-tech) or an Odyssey or Venture (combat ships that happen to have flight decks) has a much longer downtime for repairs than an Astral.

Oh, here's an even more radical idea: Fighters don't take up fleet size points, only hangar points (although they still require FP to deploy). So because carriers tend to have huge hangar space, the more (and bigger) carriers you have, the more wtfhuge fighter swarms you can bus around.

[Wyvern]

Oh, here's an even more radical idea: Fighters don't take up fleet size points, only hangar points (although they still require FP to deploy). So because carriers tend to have huge hangar space, the more (and bigger) carriers you have, the more wtfhuge fighter swarms you can bus around.

Thematically I like that idea, but I don't think it'd work too well in actual game mechanics.  The problem comes in when you look at non-carriers with hangar space, and realize that your options boil down to the following:
1: Don't allow non-carriers with hangar space.  Definitely not ideal - disallows things like small patrol groups with a mix of frigates & fighters.
2: Allow non-carriers with hangar space.  Still not ideal, because then hangar space would become part of the combat value of the ship, and players who prefer not using fighters would be at a disadvantage.  (I.E., if fighters don't take up fleet points, then Apogee + fighters would be strictly better than solo Apogee, rather than having a tradeoff in terms of fleet point cost.)

Basically, making fighters "free" in terms of fleet points invalidates any play style that avoids fighters, rendering it clearly suboptimal, unless the player manages to stick exclusively to ships with no hangar space.  And there aren't that many of those.

A better notion might be making carriers grant discounts to FP cost of fighters, or bonus fleet points that can only be used on fighters, or something like that.  That keeps the essence of your notion, without the drawbacks.  Probably be tricky to display in an intuitive manner in the UI, though.

[Sonlirain]

Well then maybe there should be an option to trade hangar space for something else similar to hull mods (and maybe an actual hullmod).
Trading the hangar space for extra flux dissipation/capacity or even turning the hangar into OP points.

I also really liked the idea of giving Astral a bigger/better posse of drones as it would give it far more bang for the buck while keeping the carrier vessel feeling to it.

[Thaago]

Oh, here's an even more radical idea: Fighters don't take up fleet size points, only hangar points (although they still require FP to deploy). So because carriers tend to have huge hangar space, the more (and bigger) carriers you have, the more wtfhuge fighter swarms you can bus around.

Thematically I like that idea, but I don't think it'd work too well in actual game mechanics.  The problem comes in when you look at non-carriers with hangar space, and realize that your options boil down to the following:
1: Don't allow non-carriers with hangar space.  Definitely not ideal - disallows things like small patrol groups with a mix of frigates & fighters.
2: Allow non-carriers with hangar space.  Still not ideal, because then hangar space would become part of the combat value of the ship, and players who prefer not using fighters would be at a disadvantage.  (I.E., if fighters don't take up fleet points, then Apogee + fighters would be strictly better than solo Apogee, rather than having a tradeoff in terms of fleet point cost.)

Basically, making fighters "free" in terms of fleet points invalidates any play style that avoids fighters, rendering it clearly suboptimal, unless the player manages to stick exclusively to ships with no hangar space.  And there aren't that many of those.

A better notion might be making carriers grant discounts to FP cost of fighters, or bonus fleet points that can only be used on fighters, or something like that.  That keeps the essence of your notion, without the drawbacks.  Probably be tricky to display in an intuitive manner in the UI, though.

Oh! I really like that! If only carriers had that then it doesn't matter for players who don't like fighters (as they wouldn't be using carriers).

[Vind]

Maybe each flight deck will give bonus to fighter wings? After all carriers must have some flight assist and coordination equipment to improve fighter performance -> Range or speed - something beneficial to fighter survival beside just repairs because fighter AI rarely make it back to repair especially heavy wings and bombers. Flat fleetpoints bonus will not make too much difference - fighters will still die very quickly.

[Gothars]

From all the ideas I still like the one developed back in the from-carrier-deployment thread best. It was that you can associate a number of wings with a carrier, as many as its hangar space allows. These can then be launched during combat directly from the carrier for reduced FP (and can dock again without immediate re-launch).

Aside from looking cool, that means that its hangar space has direct influence on the value of a carrier. (ATM it makes no difference whether it is directly on a carrier or distributed on other ships.) Also maintaining Fighters is just as FP costly, but launching is easier. And that's the main point of a carrier, launching fighters, isn't it?
With this an Astral class with its 50 FP hangar would be vastly superior to a condor with 15. It would be able to launch 50FP worth of fighters for only ~40FP


E/ Found it: http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=5018.0