I just wish fighters behaved more like they do "in real life" naval engagements, particularly WW2 naval engagements (the one and only sustained carrier warfare historically) Right now, fighters are basically just tiny somewhat fast tanky/dodgy frigates. It's okay I guess, but it's kinda boring.
I agree. Admittedly, they are more dodgy frigates than tanky, seeing even fragmentation damage is able to deal with them without too much issue.
1. Fighters could be faster, twice as fast, at least in terms of "fast traveling" from one side of the battlefield to the other, they slow down once they engage their opponent for "maneuver." Or you could have very fast fighters, like the thunder, that don't slow down but "strafe" their opponent while just flying straight through their AA defense, then circling round to strafe again, maybe hitting the enemies rear before it has a chance to pivot. Maybe these fighters have a chance to hit "behind" shields, kind of like the Exigency cannons from mods. This would be the equivalent of the fighters attacking in three dimensiosn rather than two, basically being able to strike at the inefficient "poles" of the shield
It should be possible to alter fighters to get a higher boost from zero-flux. The skill that gives the player's ship the zero-flux bonus at 10% (or something) and +25 speed, could be set to apply to fighters. Might require a skill for that to work, but might be possible as innate. Not really sure how it is implemented.
Fighters as is are extremely slow, at least compared to what you would expect. I would think fighters should be pretty much impossible to outrun without a frigate with significant speed mods, and even then only if that frigate is built for speed innately as well.
Strafing behavior would be an AI adjustment more than an actual alteration to fighters. That one would sort of require fighters with turreted weapons (I don't actually know if any currently have them) and enough speed for it to help.
Ability for any weapon to ignore shields could cause balance issues.
2. Fighters could ignore zone of control behavior and just fly straight through enemy formations with no regard for self peservation, would be particularly useful for suicide bombing capital ships with a few wings of torpedo bombers, particularly enemy carriers.
Thats another AI suggestion, admittedly. It depends on whether or not the fighters are cheaply replaceable, which, admittedly, they currently are and would still be with the general proposed changes in this thread.
3. Fighters could be regenerated in batches, rather than one at a time, to maximize their effectiveness and minimize the AI weirdness trying to "average together" fighter wings on opposite sides of the map. After a minute or whatever, the fighters return (or failing to return, die) the new batch is released immediately with CR penalties based on how many made it back.
You mean, they all dock together to repair and rearm, and all fighters in a wing can fit into a single deck. Then, they all launch after they finish at the same time (plus a short delay, .5 sec or so for dramatics/whatever)
And, if they don't make it back, or are too far away/enemies are in the way they explode and get rebuilt, possibly with a CR penalty.
4. Fighters in general more weakly armored and armed, but faster and in aggregate more quick to regenerate. Rather than being a concrete unit fighters would behave more as
an "area effect" that continuously harasses their target. OR, for torpedo bombers, you could have them still be tanky and slow, but they attack in a giant wing, like of six to ten, that is the equivalent of an all or nothing gamble of the carriers resources to destroy the other enemies capital ship, used once it is engaged. This "weapon" can only be used once per battle or maybe once every five minutes in sustained engagements. This is definitely how torpedo bombers were used "in real life" - 2-4 or even 6-8 were pretty useless since half would miss and the other half would get flaked to death. But 20! Or 200! One will get through and win the whole battle.
Making them less durable but faster/more manuverable would make beam weapons more effective and projectiles less effective, Hence forcing some rebalance.
As for the massed attack, well, that kind of thing would be possible to do if we had better control over AI ships. The current command system leaves a lot to be desired, which goes with the impressive but still weak AI.
5. The fact that fighters have their own CR is weird and I imagine a gigantic programming headache. Just make it derivative of carrier CR. Of all my suggestions I'm pretty sure this one will be in the final version.
Well, the main thing is that all manifested ships, including fighters have a CR. I have no idea if fighter wings share the CR or not, but they probably do.
The CR I was talking about earlier was the whole "120 seconds until CR starts degrading" which after it runs out of time it starts to use CR, and loses effectiveness. But, once it docks with the carrier, it pretty much goes back to the original state, possibly costing the Carrier some CR, or whatever price is associated with launching fighters.