An important question to hardcore SEIV strategists
 

Alright as you know I am attempting to make a completely new mod for SEVI to make it a very new experience with many many new styles of play with each different race.

Well this question is possibly one of the most important combat based questions I can pose.

I was going to have it that most races standard "fighter craft" weapons can only target fighters, drones an satelites since if you think about it a small fighter wouldn't likely be able to breach a multi-million ton starships armor much less destroy it.

Also most fighters would be very small to represent their fighter killing role instead of these huge 20 gun assault bombers we see now.
Some races WILL have fighter weapons capable of crippling or even killing a cap ship, though these will mainly be Swarmers and Hunters.

Anyhoo.

Re: An important question to hardcore SEIV strateg
 

Yaay! My idea got 33% of the vote! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: An important question to hardcore SEIV strateg
 

Hey, mine too! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: An important question to hardcore SEIV strateg
 

Yes but you didn't explain why you feel that every race have capital ship killing fighters :p

Re: An important question to hardcore SEIV strateg
 

Well, if fighters couldn't kill capital ships, they wouldn't be very useful. They are already kind of weak in the stock game against ships armed with PDC's. So if fighters couldn't damage big ships, you just send in your single PDC-armed warship to attack your enemy stack of fighters and destroy them all without being damaged yourself.

Re: An important question to hardcore SEIV strateg
 

Actually thing of it is for the general races I was going to remove fighter killing PD weaponry and have it only missile/mine specific. Basically their fighters would act as point defense.

While races like the swarmers and hunters woul have capital ship hunter/killer fighters that would threaten your capital ships.

But I guess what I could do is for the general races that use fighters have a fighter and seperate bomber tech area if that is possible?

Re: An important question to hardcore SEIV strateg
 

Kamog said it.

Sure.

Re: An important question to hardcore SEIV strateg
 

This sounds like a great idea to me. I'm waiting eagerly for your mod to play!

Oh, and by the way, look back at the first line of your original post...you're already making a mod for SE6 ?? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: An important question to hardcore SEIV strateg
 

(yoda voice) The future revealed it's self has to me yesss(/yoda voice)

lol Okay so I'll work on making fighters and bombers if I can make two seperate tech lines for it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Thanks for adding more work to my list lol.

Re: An important question to hardcore SEIV strateg
 

Sounds interesting... Personally, I play with a mod that does the opposite. Fighters can target capitol ships, but cap ships can't target fighters except with PDCs. Of course, only Rocket Pods & a couple energy weapons can be used against cap ships, and the PDC tech tree is a bit bigger, but it works out quite nicely. I figure, in the navies of the world today, a carrier is scarier than a battleship, so I've tweaked things to reflect that in SE4 as well.

Re: An important question to hardcore SEIV strateg
 

Yes, that's come up once before. Either SciFi is "WWII fighter pilots in space" - example, Star Wars deathstar destroyed by one well placed shot, or it's "ships of the line faceing off" a la Honor Harrington books or Star Trek's "yes space is 3 dimensional, but let's line up and shoot each other in the same plane anyway"

The great thing about SE4 is you don't have to pick just one. The standard game has some balance in this regard. A few ships with high level PDC can pretty much defeat any size carrier fleet. But earlier in the game, fighters can take out medium sized ships.

'Course with a mod, you can make either of the two sets of conditions outlined above apply, as you like it.

Re: An important question to hardcore SEIV strateg
 

Well for races like the Terrenesi for example (reason I keep using them as an example is because they are going to one of "3" races in the Alpha release of the game) use light fighters as their main source of point defense against fighters while their PDTs are used mainly for missile intercept duty.
See what I was going for was so that (some races) Capital ship fleets would still need at least a squadron of intercept fighters to guard them from enemy bombers and fighters.

THEN you've got races like the swarmers (later release) who will have huge carriers and large numbers of (cheap but effective) fighters but their largest combat warship is a destroyer.


So you would have a large number of tactical doctrines available to you.

Oh and the "ship of the wall facing off" makes sense for the HH universe http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: An important question to hardcore SEIV strateg
 

Actually, DW did base Honerverse ship combat on wooden cannon ships.

Re: An important question to hardcore SEIV strateg
 

I like the idea of something like:
Ship-based PDCs are ineffective (1-5% accuracy) to nonexistent.
Ships can perhaps use some small anti-fighter missiles, but as missiles they tend to all fire at one stack, making for a lot of overkill and not much stopping power.

Fighters can target other fighters fine.
Bomber designs could carry limited anti-ship missiles at the expense of engines and defenses. Vulnerable to regular fighters.

Re: An important question to hardcore SEIV strateg
 

Didn't AIC have this stuff? Dedicated anti-fighter fighters or dedicated anti-ship fighters but no all rounder fighter. Whatever happened to it? It was a Version of Proportions optimized for SP.

Re: An important question to hardcore SEIV strateg
 

SJ, your quote reminds me of something right out of the MOO2 manual that had me confused for years before I figured it out:

"Ships can bomb planets directly, but other ships only indirectly, via bombers."

OK, I was wondering, what KIND of ships can bomb planets directly, given that some other (unspecified and nonexistent as far as I could tell from playing the game) kind of ships can bomb planets only indirectly via bombers... then after SO long I finally figured out that "other ships" was part of the OBJECT of the sentence, not the SUBJECT... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: An important question to hardcore SEIV strateg
 

So; Ships can bomb planets...
Fighters can bomb ships...
But ships can't bomb other ships?

Re: An important question to hardcore SEIV strateg
 

They can shoot torpedoes, missiles, and beams at them. Bombs would be redundant.

Re: An important question to hardcore SEIV strateg
 

Nope. Torpedoes are self-propelled, missiles are self-propelled and self-guided and beams are focused energy. Bombs are in free-fall. Clearly not redundant, they just don't make sense for ships.

Re: An important question to hardcore SEIV strateg
 

Launch bombs using the catapults. They are pretty effective in vacuum thus make sense.

Re: An important question to hardcore SEIV strateg
 

Could catapults fire the bomb fast enough?

Re: An important question to hardcore SEIV strateg
 

If the catapult is not fast enough, then the problem lies in your target, which goes too quickly. Therefore, slow down the target, and all shall be fine.

*Casts the handy "Protection against Hammering" cantrip*

Re: An important question to hardcore SEIV strateg
 

And it depends of the catapult's machinery, really. Spacefaring civilization won't bother with springs and levers. But electromagnetic accelerating catapults are quite another matter.

Re: An important question to hardcore SEIV strateg
 

I think the way ships could launch bombs is by just letting go of them, allowing the bomb to use the momentum of the ship to hit the target, and the ship quickly changes course at the same time. Hence why fighters can "drop" bombs on ships but larger ships can't in MOO2 - a larger ship couldn't change course quickly enough and we'd call that "ramming" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: An important question to hardcore SEIV strateg
 

mmmm... clockwork starships.

Re: An important question to hardcore SEIV strateg
 

Tick...tock...tick...Clung...