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Author Topic: Fighters, Carriers, and Schematics  (Read 14106 times)

Wyvern

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Fighters, Carriers, and Schematics
« on: March 27, 2013, 12:42:01 PM »

So, thinking about some of the planned stuff... I have a question to ask:  What would be the balance concerns if you could, at any time, start construction of a fighter squadron you have the schematics for?  I'm not entirely convinced this is a good idea, but... it might be, and seems worth bringing up for discussion.

Say, for instance, I have the plans for broadswords.  If I have enough supplies, and crew, and available fleet points, and a carrier - what would happen to the game if I could, during combat, order a carrier "Start building another wing of broadswords"?  (This would, presumably, be slower than repairing even a heavily damaged broadsword wing.)

Some obvious effects:

If you have enough freighters to carry supplies, you can always pull out more fighters during combat - up to the current deployment limit.  Large battles would tend to stay large.

There would be much less incentive for the player to chase down the last fighter in a wing, since a destroyed wing can still be replaced.

Crew losses in a pitched battle where both sides are building fighters as fast as they can... might get kinda absurd.  Skills to reduce casualties from fighter squadrons would be a good idea.

An "undefended" ship with a flight deck could pop out several squadrons of fighters when they see a hostile fleet approaching... and, if necessary, scrap those again after the threat is dealt with; not very efficient on supplies compared to carting a few wings around all the time, but still a potentially interesting tactic, especially if you're running near your fleet point limit.
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phyrex

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Re: Fighters, Carriers, and Schematics
« Reply #1 on: March 27, 2013, 01:33:26 PM »

So, thinking about some of the planned stuff... I have a question to ask:  What would be the balance concerns if you could, at any time, start construction of a fighter squadron you have the schematics for?  I'm not entirely convinced this is a good idea, but... it might be, and seems worth bringing up for discussion.

Say, for instance, I have the plans for broadswords.  If I have enough supplies, and crew, and available fleet points, and a carrier - what would happen to the game if I could, during combat, order a carrier "Start building another wing of broadswords"?  (This would, presumably, be slower than repairing even a heavily damaged broadsword wing.)

Some obvious effects:

If you have enough freighters to carry supplies, you can always pull out more fighters during combat - up to the current deployment limit.  Large battles would tend to stay large.

There would be much less incentive for the player to chase down the last fighter in a wing, since a destroyed wing can still be replaced.

Crew losses in a pitched battle where both sides are building fighters as fast as they can... might get kinda absurd.  Skills to reduce casualties from fighter squadrons would be a good idea.

An "undefended" ship with a flight deck could pop out several squadrons of fighters when they see a hostile fleet approaching... and, if necessary, scrap those again after the threat is dealt with; not very efficient on supplies compared to carting a few wings around all the time, but still a potentially interesting tactic, especially if you're running near your fleet point limit.

thats actually an interesting idea. i feel like the concept of manufacturing things on the fly is something that should be explored (the most obvious application being your suggestion of course).

something i think would be interesting to see are "factory ships", huge carrier-freighters hybrids that can refit ships in theire fleet extra-fast (like when you go to the space-station).
to that end, i'd like to point at erick's doe antediluvian ships. theres one in particuliar (the Atoll-class capital ship i think) who's very sprite show the ship building another

think about it
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Aethelric

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Re: Fighters, Carriers, and Schematics
« Reply #2 on: March 27, 2013, 01:36:52 PM »

I like the idea a lot.  It would be even more potent with the removal or near removal of fleet points for fighter squadrons (I think the number of hangar decks is already an effective limit on the amount of fighters you can bring to bear).  Given how underpowered fighters are at this point, it would be great to see them readily usable.
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JT

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Re: Fighters, Carriers, and Schematics
« Reply #3 on: March 27, 2013, 01:46:10 PM »

Crew losses in a pitched battle where both sides are building fighters as fast as they can... might get kinda absurd.  Skills to reduce casualties from fighter squadrons would be a good idea.

This, a thousand times this. I'll start a new thread.
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BillyRueben

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Re: Fighters, Carriers, and Schematics
« Reply #4 on: March 27, 2013, 04:42:18 PM »

I think it would be fine if it took a massive amount of supplies to do it. That way you don't just pump out a *** ton of fighters whenever you want.
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Wyvern

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Re: Fighters, Carriers, and Schematics
« Reply #5 on: March 27, 2013, 04:54:17 PM »

Well... that's actually the question I was trying to ask: namely, if you could generate fighters whenever you want, what problems does this introduce?
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CrashToDesktop

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Re: Fighters, Carriers, and Schematics
« Reply #6 on: March 27, 2013, 04:58:04 PM »

As an avid user of fighters, I'd say go for it. :) For a large amount of supplies, yea, I'd think it's balanced.  Though, this would still be a powerful advantage for fighter users.  Perhaps the actual purchasing of a Fighter blueprint might allow this?
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Gothars

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Re: Fighters, Carriers, and Schematics
« Reply #7 on: March 27, 2013, 04:58:10 PM »

Uh, maybe I am missing something, but...how would this not make fighters completely overpowered? All you need is a carrier and a fighter wing plan and you can fill all your FP (or whatev the new system will be) with fighters at the beginning of the game.

And you can't really make fighters cost enough supplies to balance this out.  A freighter holds 300 supplies. You get 300 supplies for 1800 credits. So even if you make a wing cost as many supplies as a whole freighter can hold (which would be ridiculous), it still costs only 1800 credits. No other ship could even compare to that.
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CrashToDesktop

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Re: Fighters, Carriers, and Schematics
« Reply #8 on: March 27, 2013, 05:00:05 PM »

But taking supplies into account, you can only carry so much.  That would limit how many fighters you could bring into the field in one battle, or string of battles if you don't resupply.
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Gothars

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Re: Fighters, Carriers, and Schematics
« Reply #9 on: March 27, 2013, 05:04:15 PM »

What would stop you from maxing out your FP with fighters directly next to a station where you can buy supplies?


And that's just one thing, I also don't like the idea that a battle is decided simply by "who brought the most supplies". Nothing more boring than two carriers slowly burning trough their supplies, and the player can just watch. Sorry Wyvern, I really don't think this leads in the right direction.
« Last Edit: March 27, 2013, 05:09:45 PM by Gothars »
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BillyRueben

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Re: Fighters, Carriers, and Schematics
« Reply #10 on: March 27, 2013, 06:06:09 PM »

Oh, I guess I was imagining something like temporary fighters. Something you could spawn in the middle of an engagement, but you couldn't take with you back in to the campaign map.
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Histidine

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Re: Fighters, Carriers, and Schematics
« Reply #11 on: March 27, 2013, 06:15:44 PM »

Or bill the player the credit cost as well.
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Wyvern

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Re: Fighters, Carriers, and Schematics
« Reply #12 on: March 27, 2013, 06:19:28 PM »

Hm.  So, first thing we'd need is more expensive supplies - building fighters yourself shouldn't be a discount off the list price.  (Or at least, shouldn't be a discount when using limited ship-based autofactories; I'd imagine the economies of using an actual space station based autofactory would allow a discount, but those aren't in game yet.)

Simply increasing the cost per unit of supplies would also require reducing the rate at which it drops, & the rate at which it's consumed.  Possibly multiple types of supplies?  Not in yet, but kinda have to have that for commodity trading to make sense...
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Gothars

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Re: Fighters, Carriers, and Schematics
« Reply #13 on: March 27, 2013, 06:27:12 PM »

Before we try to find solutions to the potential problems of it, why don't we first talk about what benefits it would have? Till now I don't really have read in what way this would be an improvement over the current system, except from "makes fighters/carriers stronger" for which there are many less radical ways.
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Wyvern

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Re: Fighters, Carriers, and Schematics
« Reply #14 on: March 27, 2013, 06:44:15 PM »

The main benefits are lore & feel - at some point, you will be able to acquire blueprints, and construct your own ships - when that happens, it doesn't make much sense to not be able to construct fighters while underway, since we can demonstrably already do so.  Thus, my question of what problems does it cause if you could.

So far the biggest one I've seen is the supplies vs. supplies question - if the main force in each opposing fleets is a carrier, and fighter construction during combat is possible, then you could easily get into a battle of attrition.  (This would mostly happen if, say, you only had a schematic for Talon interceptors, or something else that's unlikely to be able to pull off a strike against an enemy carrier.)
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