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[CrashToDesktop]

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I like all of this - it's awesome.  You really do get a sense of the power of fighters when you see 4 wings swarming around it's base ship fly out at the same time to engage a target.  Really gives that swarm feeling that fighters are supposed to give.

[Megas]

While the ideas have potential, there is one possible thing they can interfere with, if fighters need their carriers on the field - simply deploying fighters and not the carrier (and watch the battle on cam feed).  Back when I experimented with lone Odyssey plus lots of fighters (in post-0.6), I simply deployed only fighters in many fights because Odyssey was too expensive to deploy.  Also, the AI frequently deploys fighters without a carrier on the field.  Also, just deploying a wing of fighters to capture points while you pilot your big cruiser or battleship to destroy whatever you find, but leave the carrier off the field (because you only need it to make fighters immortal).

Flight deck is worth about six small slots.

Erm, what do you mean?  A figher wing is worth 6 small weapon slots, that kind of thing?

Yes.  Look at the weapon mounts a dedicated combat ship has compared to an equivalent-sized carrier.  The missing mounts are roughly six per flight deck.  Also think how many weapon mounts worth of weapons fighter wings have.

Fighters would need to be separate from OP or else players like me would select one wing of fighters and put the rest of the OP (i.e., leave additional decks empty) into making the carrier a stronger and/or more resilient combatant.

[Tartiflette]

While the ideas have potential, there is one possible thing they can interfere with, if fighters need their carriers on the field; that is, just simply deploying fighters and not the carrier (and watch the battle on cam feed).  Back when I experimented with lone Odyssey plus lots of fighters (in post-0.6), I simply deployed only fighters in many fights because Odyssey was too expensive to deploy.  Also, the AI frequently deploys fighters without a carrier on the field.

That's precisely the kind of exploits that proposition is supposed to prevent. Note that the carriers would have a cheap deployment cost (equivalent to a combat ship of the same power) that would raise only when rebuilding wings, but you'd need to deploy a lot of them to swarm an enemy ship however, thus balancing the cost.

[Clockwork Owl]

Or leave the CR cost as is, and transfer that 'replacement chassis' thing to carriers, like 20 for Condor, 16 for Gemini? And more for proper(and larger) carriers. It should be tweaked to be independent of CR and cost extra supplies to replenish, though. Depending on the size, the cost for replacing varies - 1 for a Wasp, 2 for Talon, 3 for most fighters, and so on.

I strongly support the idea.

[Darloth]

I came into this thread skeptical, but after reading all the posts and thinking about it I think I'd certainly like to try it this way.

I most agree with the statement that fighters are functional, but I think they're not quite as polished as much as everything else.

[Thaago]

MAn I really like the idea of fighters/weapons being integrated. With a combination of some revisions you could actually control fighters via carrier attacks. Basically, a carrier would have a new set of orders, "fighter assault" or "fighter escort" or "bomber run" or "squadron assault"  which would direct fighter/bomber in ITS hanger toward a certain target, but the carrier could still move and engage its other weapons independently. Fighters would no longer have individual orders, they would simply automatically engage a target, and retreat once damaged enough for repair or out of ammo. Their CR would be based on carrier CR, which makes 100% sense since what degrades a fighter wing isn't the spare chasses but a carrier's ability to maintain and deploy those chasses. After all, logically, a fighter wing should have the same CR from beginning to end of battle, 4 are destroyed, then 4 more of the same caliber, then 4 more until there are none left, at which point CR drops from 90% to 0%. But it's NOT the fighters that degrade with each deploy, its the carriers, the deck is getting fouled with flux, the ammo loaders are overheating, safety corners are cut to make room for new fighters and to take in damaged fighters, crew trip trying to manage all this under fire, haha all of which results in fighters being damaged or unmaintained AS they launch

And the great thing is, you could design an AI for the fighters, all of them, that would work well and not require any orders. Basically at the beginning of the battle fighters would spew out and surrond their "mothership" the way drones do, but unlike drones they could be assigned to long range escort or attack, then automatically retreat when damaged enough, would regenerate and then be deployable again once they were fully assembled.

And it would also have the neat effect of destroying a wing immediately by killing its mothership. Once its gone, the figthers assigned to that carrier lose command and control and just randomly engage targets individually until destroyed. You could also add command and control bonuses for fighters operating within a carrier's "vision" range.

And it just makes sense all around, fighters really shouldn't be their own units. They're so cheap and flimsey, even the tanky ones. They're more like missiles with guns attached to them. It would clear out a lot of clutter from the battlespace interface. You could even add a lifesupport time limit where fighters must return to the ship every once in a while even when not engaging because their little hulls can't survive the vaccuum of space during sustained manuever. It would be a good nerf if you buffed them by allowing them to regenerate all at once, that is to say, once a wing has been destroyed/redocked.

I disagree with this because I very much think that fighters should be there own units and have their own orders. I frequently give out lots of orders in my fighter heavy fleets. Try it out sometime, you can do absolutely amazing things with hit/run/concentration tactics or by assigning the "correct" fighter to its target (as long as you use "Defend" to pull ships back - until the AI update in the next patch (I hope) it is the only good way to get ships to actually disengage.)

Mainly I think its a difference in vision; I see fighters like from star wars, where they are fully independent, powerful space ships, rather than something like MOOII or Nexus, where they are truly tiny.

[SafariJohn]

The first line of the Mercury-class shuttle says "One of the smallest ships in the sector equipped with an on-board hyperdrive actuator". The Mercury is significantly larger than any fighter. When combined with the very general WW2 IN SPACE theme, I feel we can safely conclude fighters are, in-lore, not capable of independent operations.

Mainly I think its a difference in vision; I see fighters like from star wars, where they are fully independent, powerful space ships, rather than something like MOOII or Nexus, where they are truly tiny.

Fighters in Star Wars are on both sides of the line. For example, X-Wings have hyperdrives while TIE Fighters don't. Fighters are pretty tiny in Star Wars, actually; smaller than modern fighter jets. I have no idea what the sizes of MOOII or Nexus fighters are.

[CrashToDesktop]

I think in Star Wars, only really the Rebel fighters had jump drives - but that was because of an intense lack of larger ships to transport the fighters the Rebel fleet had.  They pretty much had nothing in comparison to the massive Star Destroyers, which also served as massive fighter bases, so they had to equip fighters with jump drives in order for them to escape with the rest of the fleet.

In here, carriers are fairly common, and thus fighters don't really need jump drives.  Saves on space, and probably a lot of credits.

[Megas]

Mercury was smaller when it used to be called "Shuttle" and had only two weapon mounts.

@ Tartiflette: I do not see what you call exploits as such (no more than not deploying civilians).  If I must deploy a carrier on the field just to use fighters, then fighters become glorified missiles.  I might as well call the two MIRV launchers on my Conquest flight decks that launch unmanned suicide drones.  Part of the reason to use fighters is safe, renewable assets without necessarily putting a carrier at risk.  I would probably stick with dedicated combat ships that can win combats more efficiently than carrier-and-fighters.

[Schwartz]

I disagree with this because I very much think that fighters should be there own units and have their own orders. I frequently give out lots of orders in my fighter heavy fleets. Try it out sometime, you can do absolutely amazing things with hit/run/concentration tactics or by assigning the "correct" fighter to its target (as long as you use "Defend" to pull ships back - until the AI update in the next patch (I hope) it is the only good way to get ships to actually disengage.)

Mainly I think its a difference in vision; I see fighters like from star wars, where they are fully independent, powerful space ships, rather than something like MOOII or Nexus, where they are truly tiny.

Agreed. Battlefields are tiny - of course fighters should be free to roam it, otherwise they'd be seriously crippled. Turning them into 'carrier weapons' that just fly back and forth between the carrier and the target would be extremely limiting and boring.

Fighters *should not be restricted in any way* because they're fine as they are. Someone commented that they weren't worth it - I can only disagree. They're worth it and they're fun to use. To me, the cool part of the OPs suggestion was that carriers act as dedicated spawn points for particular, pre-selected wings. Everything else is once again taking something away.

[Thaago]

Whoops, let me clarify! By like star wars, I wasn't even thinking of the jump drives. I was thinking about how powerful individual fighters are - they have major impacts on the course of battles. A couple of X Wings can take down frigates, while a trio of B Wing bombers can take down a Star Destroyer. When fighters are that powerful, I want to be able to give them orders.

[CrashToDesktop]

Whoops, let me clarify! By like star wars, I wasn't even thinking of the jump drives. I was thinking about how powerful individual fighters are - they have major impacts on the course of battles. A couple of X Wings can take down frigates, while a trio of B Wing bombers can take down a Star Destroyer. When fighters are that powerful, I want to be able to give them orders.

Heh, Broadswords and Daggers seem that powerful in Starsector, so that's fine.

By the way, I don't see any problem with giving orders to fighters.  I think Tartflette has still kept that mechanic in - I see no reason to take it out, and I hope he shares the same viewpoint.  When I mentioned fighters prioritizing the carrier's target, I meant fighters without current orders from the player (obviously they'll prioritize the player's orders).

[Unfolder]

While the ideas have potential, there is one possible thing they can interfere with, if fighters need their carriers on the field - simply deploying fighters and not the carrier (and watch the battle on cam feed).  Back when I experimented with lone Odyssey plus lots of fighters (in post-0.6), I simply deployed only fighters in many fights because Odyssey was too expensive to deploy.  Also, the AI frequently deploys fighters without a carrier on the field.  Also, just deploying a wing of fighters to capture points while you pilot your big cruiser or battleship to destroy whatever you find, but leave the carrier off the field (because you only need it to make fighters immortal).

While these tactics are fun and I use them it really doesn't make sense in terms of game "lore" which basically stipulates that frigates are the flimiest ships in terms of CR whearas capitals are the strongest. According to this logic fighters have terrible CR, basically it's a surface area to volume thing, the smaller the unit gets relative to its surface area the more flimsy its flux/life support system gets. Fighters NEED carriers or they die.

But w/e that's esoteric. But I would rather have carrier CR costs lowered then just cheese deploying a swarm of interceptors to chase down fleeing ships. Or maybe add a dedicated interceptor that is basically unarmed but extremely fast, the thunder on crack, that could rapid deploy from a carrier over and over again and be able to "lasso" many fleeing ships until frigates caught up. Or maybe CR penalties for deploying fighters without support? Dunno...

I disagree with this because I very much think that fighters should be there own units and have their own orders. I frequently give out lots of orders in my fighter heavy fleets. Try it out sometime, you can do absolutely amazing things with hit/run/concentration tactics or by assigning the "correct" fighter to its target (as long as you use "Defend" to pull ships back - until the AI update in the next patch (I hope) it is the only good way to get ships to actually disengage.)

Mainly I think its a difference in vision; I see fighters like from star wars, where they are fully independent, powerful space ships, rather than something like MOOII or Nexus, where they are truly tiny.

You could still have dedicated swarms moving rapidly from target to target with the carrier focused commands. Just rather than having to manage five wings you just have to click one unit, the carrier, to order the attack. You would have less flexibility since you couldn't "divide" the swarm to attack two targets simeltaneously (though you could still have a bomber attack button and fighter attack button division, or a squadron attack for all) but I would trade that flexibility for a more automated, innutitive retreat/repair/arm function of fighters. After the wing or wings are defeated/badly damaged/out of ammo/recalled they fall back and once they dock the carrier spits out a new wing/wings immediately, ready to deploy en masse again.

I know what you're talking about how fun it is to just have a bee swarm of 50 talons or diptheria absolutely wrecking everything just hopscotching from one ship to the next popping destroyers/frigates but honestly that crap only really works when you've already got the advantage. In sustained, even matched fleet level engagements fighters can really, really suck and just be terrible because A. there's so much going on you really don't want to micromanage 10 wings in addition of everything else, especially when B. overlapping long range anti-fighter screens will just OBLITERATE all but the tankiest flighters, which are so slow as to basically be microfrigates rather than unique tactically.

BUT THAT'S OKAY! That's the point, fighters, like missiles, are disposable chaffe weapons, they're SUPPOSED to die. If this is Star Wars they'd be Tie-fighters or droid ships, lel. Basically, under a carrier oriented rather than fighter oriented system, fighters would be granted the ability to "die well." They would go, engage the enemy and either win, be destroyed or recalled for rearm repair. In the case of total wipeout they would IMMEDIATELY respawn at carrier, at a hefty CR cost to the carrier relative to just rearm and repair, and immediately be able to re-enage EN MASSE, which is the only time they even stand a chance in dedicated fleet engagements. This contrasts strongly to the current system, where a glorious fighter fleet goes forth, immediately gets whelped by dual flak cannons or whatever modded anti-fighter horror (radioactive neodyniam shrapnel bomblets lel) and then spends the rest of the battle drip drab deploying out to be, you guessed it, whelped by the flak even more dramatically. I guess as individual units you can pull them aside to regen but that's crap, it takes too long, time is too critical, you've got all kinds of issues with whether or not some fighters are still engaged, some are limping back, some are regening from separate carriers, lame. If they don't make it back after like a minute or w/e (high end fighters get longer) they just self-destruct  The wing flies, dies, then flies again (at lower CR, CARRIER CR).

Another cool thing of joining carrier and fighter CR at the hip would be a versatility in how you want the CR spent. Does your astral have nine wings of high end superfighters that give incredible alpha but rapidly drain the carrier's CR (therefore the wings' CR) or do you have one wing of talon, spread across nine different launch bays, meaning that though the talon is very weak it can be deployed essentially without limit, basically, the same wing insta regenated 100 times in the same battle with very slow CR degrade SOOOO COOOL AAAAA

[Thaago]

Well, I will disagree on fighters not being useful in evenly matched fleet battles - thats exactly where I use them! Except for the evenly matched part, as the player is usually heavily outnumbered to keep things fun. The fighters I use as frigate replacements, and in the same way I don't use them alone - they supplement destroyers and cruisers. I rarely run into long ranged anti-fighter screens (aka tac lasers); when they are around its a perfect time to move fighters to secondary targets and have destroyers kill the screens (which have given up firepower for anti-fighter weapons). To be honest in fleet battles fighters are much better than frigates in terms of surviving - they are small enough to dodge large weapon fire and have enough health that flaks take them out slowly (and fighters usually get away to repair if they have the cover of their wing mates). The only exception I've run into are Paragons with tac lasers, but they're freaking Paragons.

Ordering fighters can also go a long way beyond just the old ball O' death (though it is fun). Its more about managing the pace of combat - choosing when to have the fighters fly into the enemy, when to have them escort, and when to have the whole lot of them pull back to by the carriers in order to rebuild. Enemy ships just aren't fast enough to chase them, so you can dictate when they engage. Reinforcing a cruiser or destroyer with a well timed pair of fighter wings and watching it turn the tables is very fun for me .

It is micro yes, but in general I'm issuing orders to the whole action group of my fighters at once. My usual ratio is 5 fighter wings or 3 bomber wings per flight deck, which I can manage with low losses by pulling fighters back when they get hammered. Sometimes I screw up and a wing gets removed from combat, but I'm ok with that.

...
You could still have dedicated swarms moving rapidly from target to target with the carrier focused commands. Just rather than having to manage five wings you just have to click one unit, the carrier, to order the attack.
...

Quick question - are you aware of the action groups set by selecting multiple ships and control clicking? The groups last between battles and can be used for deployment as well. They aren't very well advertised, but they make controlling fighters even easier than clicking on the carrier would be - I just hit a number key then right click on a target.

[Aeson]

As for the whole "fighters as weapons of carriers," I'm at best ambivalent. I don't like the part about replacing lost fighters degrades the carrier's combat readiness, nor do I like the idea that I'd lose the ability to give orders to individual flights of fighters (implied by the fact that they're to be treated as weapons rather than as separate entities). The whole requiring a carrier for long-distance travel thing with regards to game lore I don't care about; I personally feel that fighters are virtually unusable without a carrier in the fleet anyways, so I almost never have a fighter wing in my fleet if I don't also have at least one carrier; explicitly requiring that each fighter wing be associated with a given fighter wing doesn't change much for me other than preventing me from grabbing a nice fighter group when I see one and want to transition towards a more fighter-based fleet unless I already have or can acquire a carrier at that time, and as far as the long-distance travel thing goes, fighter racks, anyone? Strap the things onto the hull; sure, it's a bit inconvenient to service the fighters or get the fighter crews in or out of their fighters in a hurry, but it's probably doable; I think it's even mentioned in the old unofficial manual as an explanation for why a Hound had fighter capacity.

Regarding Star Wars fighters:

Spoiler

Whoops, let me clarify! By like star wars, I wasn't even thinking of the jump drives. I was thinking about how powerful individual fighters are - they have major impacts on the course of battles. A couple of X Wings can take down frigates, while a trio of B Wing bombers can take down a Star Destroyer. When fighters are that powerful, I want to be able to give them orders.

Sorry, but that bit of the EU is virtually unsupported by the movies. When we see large-scale space battles, what are the fighters doing? Engaging other fighters and occasionally harassing capital ships. Do they do any significant damage? Only by luck (Executor was only lost at Endor to that A-Wing because it crashed into the Death Star before the crew could regain control over the ship, and moreover only lost its bridge shields after taking the combined fire of the Rebel fleet and an unknown amount of fire preceding that order, and it still took at least 12 missiles to destroy the globe atop the tower despite this appearing to be a relatively soft target on the ship; the Trade Federation "battleship" at Naboo, which is really an armed freighter rather than a battleship and is used more like a carrier, is only lost because a kid loses control over a starfighter and flies into the open hangar bay, crash-landing more or less completely operational at the rear of the hangar bay after following a path around roughly a third of a circle, fires a torpedo and misses the intended target but instead hits something important that makes the ship blow up, after the movie clearly demonstrated that the Naboo fighters are otherwise incapable of harming the ship).

Beyond that, look at the Clone Wars in the prequel trilogy. The Republic fleet has a significant number of the closest thing to a dedicated carrier we see in the Star Destroyer line, the CIS fleet has a significant number of Trade Federation "battleships" which are really more like carrier, and at least one other large CIS ship class demonstrably has a sizable hangar (implying a large fighter complement). What lesson appears to have been drawn from this war, in which fighters should have played a prominent role? Battleships are better. The Republic's Venators are replaced by the Imperial Star Destroyers of the original trilogy and the Empire considers the starfighter to be at best a marginal threat. Revenge of the Sith shows us a major space battle where both sides at least theoretically brought significant fighter forces to the battle. Do we see any significant attacks by fighters on capital ships? No, we do not. We in fact hardly see any fighters engaging capital ships at all (granted, given the relative scale and the distance from the ships engaged, it's entirely possible that the fighters are there but virtually invisible, but the Battle of Endor, the other major space battle that we get to see in any significant detail, also lacks significant fighter attacks on capital ships and shows the fighters as being used at most in a harassment role against heavy ships while primarily engaging one another or the occasional light warship); the only example I saw in the videos available online was Anakin disabling the hangar shield. This despite both sides bringing a significant fighter force to the battle and at least one of the sides having a bomber-type fighter (ARC-170) available in reasonably large numbers (supposedly 36 per Venator according to Wookieepedia, assuming standard fighter complements, and there are at least dozens of Venators participating in the engagement, implying at least mid-hundreds of ARC-170s, supported by at least mid-thousands of Eta-2s and V-Wings to deal with the opposing fighter forces going by the listed standard fighter complement).

Small numbers of fighters being a credible threat to capital ships in the Star Wars setting is an invention of the Expanded Universe, brought about by people wanting to write stories which feature an iconic Star Wars warship (the Imperial Star Destroyer) while focusing on fighter aces and not wanting to have to involve any significant warships on the Rebel side.

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