Fighters are now unbalanced
 

I don't know if this changed since Version 1.35 or earlier, but the fighters are now extremly hard to hit: Even with point defense cannons you get only about 70% hit chance at distance 1 (Ships and fighters use maximum tech levels for ECM and combat sensors)! Even worse with standard weapons: you only get 1% hit chance at range 1!!
Did anyone else notice this and inform MM?

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

Fortunately I still had my Version 1.30 to test and indeed this is a problem of Version 1.35. Probably it has something to do with the fact that now the defense bonuses stack.
Anyway how it is now it is severely unbalanced and I mailed it to MM and hope it will be corrected in the next patch.
I like fighters a lot but if you can kill 4 fully armed baseships with 30-40 fighters it is not fair any more.

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

I just had a good sized carrier battle Last night, about 120-150 fighters per side, and didn't have any problems with the fighters not getting hit. I took out all of the computers fighters and lost about 3/4 of mine to PD and other fighters.

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

I've also seen the 1%, when I've got CS II, +10% Aggressiveness, and Warrior culture, versus large fighters with ECM I. Not worth firing main weapons at.

PD is now VERY VERY important. Attacking Rage planets, which are fairly frequently garrisoned by a few score of fighters, gave me a bit of trouble until I started amassing ships in tightly-grouped, mid-size fleets for concentrated PD.

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Atraikius:
I just had a good sized carrier battle Last night, about 120-150 fighters per side, and didn't have any problems with the fighters not getting hit. I took out all of the computers fighters and lost about 3/4 of mine to PD and other fighters.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Of course fighter against fighter is balanced!
It's fighter against ships that is the problem.

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

I think that a 70% hit rate with PD weapons is pretty good(acctualy I think it is too good). I know that the sci-fi movies are not a good measuring stick(but then what is?), but look at Star Wars and Battle Star Galactica movies, it took a lot of PD to kill fighters. Even in WWII it took a lot of AAA to kill planes. So if you are fighting a 'fighter' race, build a lot of PD ships!

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

My PD took out more fighters than my fighters did. I did notice your point with the main weapons on the ships not being able to hit the fighters though (misunderstood your comment at first). I though the anti-ship weapons only having about a 1% chance to hit the fighters makes sense though.

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

If regular (non-point defense) mounts are having a rough time killing fighters then I say, about time. It didn't make much sense having point defense if every other battery on a ship was just about as effective.

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

Yep, typically AAA relyed on a wall of lead to bring down targets. If you judged efficiency by number of shots per hit the AAA was one of the most in-efficient weapon designs ever.
I don't have 1.35 installed yet but this sounds like a great improvement. Maybe air (space?) superiority fighters will be needed more now.

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

I don't mind if the fighters are a little bit harder to hit by standard ship weapons or if the point defense cannons have not 100% hit chance. My point is just, that the way it is now the best strategy would be to almost totally rely on fighters for defense and attack. Attack ships, defense bases and even weapon platforms and satellites are not very interesting any more or just will have point defense cannons alone! That would greatly reduce the variety of the game IMO.

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

Just a comment, the religious talisman gives 100% hit chance to PD weapons, not just to direct fire weapons, like the description supposed... makes a mighty PD ship against flying units.

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

I have to agree with those who favour the new balance. I have always thought that fighters were too easily taken out. Moreover, I think that the main batteries of a capital ship should be almost useless against such small and manoeverable craft. This is both more realistic and places a heavier emphasis on PD weapons; which is a good thing because seekers will suffer too and they have been too powerful in the past against computer opponents.

[This message has been edited by Magus38 (edited 02 May 2001).]

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by PsychoTechFreak:
Just a comment, the religious talisman gives 100% hit chance to PD weapons, not just to direct fire weapons, like the description supposed... makes a mighty PD ship against flying units.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Note: PD weapons are direct fire weapons. Direct fire refers to any weapon that is not launched (i.e. seekers).


[This message has been edited by Magus38 (edited 02 May 2001).]

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Magus38:
Note: PD weapons are direct fire weapons. Direct fire refers to any weapon that is not launched (i.e. seekers).


[This message has been edited by Magus38 (edited 02 May 2001).]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

All right, ... but PD weapons have got an own weapon class IIRC: point defense, so I was not sure about that, formerly I have equipped my PD ships with combat sensor AND talisman, but the combat sensor can be dropped out.

P.S.: Until now, my guess was that every other weapon than PDF has NO impact on fighters. I agree with the 1% to hit chance, completely.

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

Imagine trying to hit a Stealth bomber with a 14" gun!
Is fighter vs fighter a good option now? I don't have 1.35 installed yet.

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

Agree with everything written so far http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/ima...ons/icon12.gif

Given the greater emphasis I think it's about time we had some choice within the point defence tech - I know many modders have come up with Point defence lasers, Point Defence missiles etc - any chance MM could drop a few of these into an official patch?

Perhaps balance the greater dificulty in hitting fighters by reducing fighters' firepower and / or improving emissive armour.

Apparently Emissive Armour is pretty much useless now, and the damage handling bugs^H^H^H^H features mean it's not safe to mix it with other armour types. Boost it's effectiveness and add things like organic emmissive, crystal emissive, stealth emissive to get rid of the incompatibilities.

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"Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?"
"Uh, I think so Brain, but how are we gonna teach a goat to dance with flippers on? "

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

what would be cool as if there was a type of armor that worked like metal armor in car wars. Simply put, metal armor was much heavier per point but such armor wasn't blown away. It was persistent (mostly).

For instance say your car had 3 pts of metal armor and some one hit you with an MG for three consecutive turns:

1) Turn 1 - He rolls 1d6 and gets a 2, which deflects off the armor. Armor is still 3 and no damage is done.

2) Turn 2 - He rolls a six for dmg. Anytime a 6 is rolled, the armor itself is also damaged a point so the armor is now at 2 points. Also 6 minus the original three is three, which is how much dmg gets inside.

3) Turn 3 - He rolls a 4. 4-2 = 2 so 2 pts get through and 2 are absorbed or ricochet off the armor. The armor is still at 2.

Make it similar here. It would have to be like devnulls ablative armor so it could be destroyed by the point. It would be very heavy say 10-20 kt per point. By having a band of "Metal" armor of say five points you would basically take 5 off of every weapon that attacks, at least until the band was worn down some.

The end results would be that large ships with "metal" armor bands would be much less vulnerable to lots of small weapons like from fighters.

I guess this was kind of the intention w/ emmissive armor, but this is different in that it is not destroyed when enough damage is done to penetrate. Instead it is just randomly chipped away as the battle progresses.

[This message has been edited by nerfman (edited 02 May 2001).]

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Marty Ward:
Yep, typically AAA relyed on a wall of lead to bring down targets. If you judged efficiency by number of shots per hit the AAA was one of the most in-efficient weapon designs ever.
I don't have 1.35 installed yet but this sounds like a great improvement. Maybe air (space?) superiority fighters will be needed more now.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Some of that "wall of lead" was to get the poilet scared so his aim was off too but yes it took a lot of lead to kill em!




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mottlee@gte.net
"Kill em all let God sort em out"

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

so far, this has beena really good discussion. As was pointed out, the typical (WWII-ish) walls of lead, did not do much fighter killing. Heck, for that matter, flak cannons firing into bomber Groups weren't that effective at killing. Instead, since the AA did pose a threat, the figher or bomber pilots would be less inclined to close into a range which would make their firing/bombing accurate, and thus the overall effect was to reduce the *effectiveness* of the fighters and bombers.

That said, I like the changes in PDC vs fighters and main guns vs fighters. One thing to consider as a "fighter defense" would be to charge maintenance for fighters. This would make it expensive to build and maintain billions of fighters (hundreds at each planet!). Fighters (currently) are very expensive to maintain, so with the new, more realistic role, make maintenance more realistic as well.

Major John

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

I find point defense versus fighters in Version 1.35 to be quite balanced. In my current game there are two AI players that are using fighters. I have 3 PD cannons on all of my current ship designs. It is possible for six or seven of my ships to annihilate a swarm of 40 to 60 fighters without suffering any damage. You say you want point defense to be MORE effective? It seems to work quite well as it is.

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

Has anyone tried my new default strategies (interceptor and fighter/bomber) for fighters yet? They’re in the data mod forum, a few Posts down. I’d like to know what other think of them as opposed to the standard strategies.

They work very well for me, so much so that I don’t need PD ships 90% of the time against the Earth Alliance or other fighter races as long as my carriers have enough interceptors. I think it makes more sense to have fighters do the bulk of the fighter killing instead of PD. I know its just a game, but that bit of realism makes it more interesting to me.

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Luke and the Deathstar <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>*cough**cough*plotdevice*cough*

Still, fighters definitely own when SF ships are unshielded, and it is a first-hit usually wins sort of battle.
With shields, fighters need to match tonnage (roughly 10 fighters to a frigate) and use heavy bombers. Then you need additional light interceptors to take out enemy interceptors so the bombers can get through.

[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 05 May 2001).]

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

It depends on the base ship design, really. One bit where fighters MIGHT be a bit strong, 'tho, is their ability to fly about a system and guard a warp point for years on end -- that seems a bit strange.

In 1.35 you still don't need fighters to beat fighters, if you have a mass of fast ships with a fair bit of PD. When at war with the Rage, Darloks, Narn and EA (all of whom use fighters to some degree, especially the first two), my usual attack fleet included only 10-12 attack BC/BBs (and occasionally a DN), with 3 or 4 PDC V's each (or 5 on the DN, methinks), with zero carrier support. There might have been a few more PDCs per fleet due to shipyard and sweeper ships (Darloks and EA were pretty mine-happy), but that's it.

In a massed formation like Dark Wing where the ships could cover each other, even strategic mode generally resulted in the thrashing of all planetary defenses including upwards of 60 fighters, and tactical mode guaranteed it.

One of my (then quite low-tech) fleets very early in the Never-Ending War had demolished a Darlok fleet with 2 CVs (w/ ftrs) and 13 LC/CAs in a battle that probably went a long way towards earning 'em all Legendary status, again without either carriers or dedicated point-defense ships. Admittedly, that was fought tactically. :-)


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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

The most important thing here is how fun the game is. Now if fighters become the only way to wage war its gets a bit dull. I'de rather play a game with NO fighters than a game with ONLY fighters.

As for realism I don't think you could ever settle the arguement either way. Its too easy to come up with a hundred arguements either way.
Here's a couple of arguements for the fighters are too powerful in the game case.

1. If you were the pilot of a fighter would you happily sit in a cramped cockpit for years (OK..time is SE4 is abstract) guarding a warphole? At least in an escort you can walk around a bit. Realistically I think fighters shouldn't fly around in space (except for short journeys) but have to be launched from planets/carries/bases for combat.

2. In space, ships aren't really bogged down too much by weight. I don't think its inconceivable that ships could be so heavily armoured that the puny weapons a fighter could be equipped with would do nothing.

3. As for the big guns not hitting a fighter I believe thats complete rubbish. The guns of the german battleship the Bismark had settings for each of the allied planes of the time. The guns could be aimed by pointing at the plane and then the automatic setting would fire based on the speed of the plane. (The Bismark was sunk by older planes that the Germans hadn't counted on being used anymore). Now given that a computer in a spaceship could track the movement of a fighter, I don't think its so inconceivable that a single bLast from a Meson cannon would reduce the hapless fighter into space junk.

Basically I think there are many possibilities how space combat could be actually like. There are no right and wrong answers.
I just want the game to be fun and to cater for varieties in strategies.


BTW - Does these new changes mean the religious talisman now kicks ***?

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

You bring up good points Askan. Fighters should just lower the accuracy of weapons a little, not so much that it is impossible to hit a fighter with a normal weapon.

I was a little surprised when I load the new patch and I go to play a game and all of a sudden I don't have enough PD in my whole fleet to deal with 2 carrier loads of large fighters.

Of course since fighters are now coming into some sort of position to be an extreme tactical advantage maybe it's time to have some new types of point defense. Like a PD repulser beam to keep fighter Groups from swarming a ship.

That's all I got for now.

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

Thank you askan and Baal. I already had the feeling I was completely alone with my judgement!

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

The point askan makes about fun is the most important point, I think. Since the game takes place in the future anything is possible. If one thing dominates the gameplay so much that the fun is removed then that is a problem.
I haven't installed 1.35 yet so I don't know how the changes will affect my style of play but I've always felt that PD was too effective. It sounds like the PD effect has been reduced and I like that.
What I would like to see is a need for more fighter vs fighter combat where you have to establish space superiority before you attack fighters are able to be effective. Maybe even two types of fighters, assault and space superiority where assault the fighter can do a lot more damage to ships. It would help define fighter roles.

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

Well, I believe that fighters should have two strengths vs. capital ships: numbers and maneuverability.

It seems that fighters it game are just about right.

The thing with the missing main weapons is also (mostly) a beginning game issue only. During game ships will receive Combat Sensors (up to 65% in accuracy), experience (up to 100% accuracy - 50% for individual and 50% for fleet experience) and PD weapons (always at least 70% chance to hit a target). The fighters, OTOH, only get Small ECM to improve their defensiveness (up to 30% of 'to hit defense').

If you want a real life example of fighters vs. ships in combat here is a short one:
- picture a WW2 ship trying to hit a fighter with his main guns. To say that ship has 1% chance to hit that fighter would be an overstatement.

Of course, the people that don't like fighters that can dodge main weapons can just edit vehiclesize.txt file and remove their defense bonuses, but IMHO it is just like it should be.

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

Uhm, the thingie with the Bismark and targeting planes is a 'bit' stretched in the means of star combat.
The Bismark used their guns in a FlaK manner - meaning they had time triggered shells that would explode after some flight hopefully at the correct estimatet hight/range of the aimed at plane. I can't think of a Meson Beam on a large mount trigger an explosion in empty space - so this option would left to 'explosive' kind of weapons.


murx

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

Q wrote:
I like fighters a lot but if you can kill 4 fully armed baseships with 30-40 fighters it is not fair any more

Uhm, Battlestar Galactica ? 3 Vipers and some Basestars ? Luke and the Deathstar ?

I think to get it realistic Fighters SHOULD own Ships. At least that's the look and feel from more 70% of SF movies and games in the past.

But I would like to see the Fighter School Facility together with Fighters gaining experience. Maybe even Fighter School Component to add on Carrier Class ships and have your Recruits hot 'in-field' training.

murx

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

Just my Last thoughts on this subject.

Equating spaceship vs space fighter with seaborne battleship vs airborne fighters is not very correct.

Spaceships would take advantage of the same zero-g conditions that fighters would. I imagine two starships facing off in combat would be a fast and dangerous affair. The weapons on these starships would already have to be able to deal with high speed, highly manueverable (I can't really spell) craft.

Now in space empires combat an Escort moves at 3, a fighter at 4. Not much of a difference there. And as for size an escort is 200kt and a fighter is 15kt. We are not talking about X-Wings vs Star Destoyers here. Its more like my bedroom vs the rest of the house.

And an example of sci-fi where fighters don't rule is Star Trek. Its always the bigger ships, with bigger guns and bigger shields. And in Phantom Menace the bad guys would have one if the robots remembered to close the door of their spaceship. The fighters there could do nothing vs the shields of that ship.

The only real reason I want capitol ships to obliterate fighters in space empires is just the cost. Make figthers cost maintenance or something and then I don't care either way.

And one Last thing is editing the text files isn't an option when 80% of my play is via email. Ten other players get suspicious when I suggest that I'm just going to tweak with one little thing before we start.

(And I guess when I talk about the AA guns on the Bismark its really what imagine point defence to be.)

Think fun.

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

The reasons fighters dominate Sci-Fi movies are:

1) Adventure-type movies need individual heros whose actions make a big difference. A lone fighter jock (Luke Skywalker) or two (Starbuck & Apollo) taking out the big bad guy threat to the galaxy fits the ticket. Bill the Galactic Hero and the Reverend First Class Fusetender Temba down in the bowels of a spacegoing battlewagon, replacing fuses in the shield system as the blow under enemy fire, does not. Star Trek works the way it does because Roddenberry's original concept was "Horatio Hornblower in space" - the model was naval combat in the age of sail, when by & large bigger was better. Small ships were more maneuverable, but their broadsides lacked both range & power to be a serious threat to a ship of the line. That is what "ship of the line" meant - a ship that was big enough to serve in the line of battle in a fleet engagement. The small stuff was used for scouting, patrolling remote secondary theaters, chasing pirates (who couldn't get their hands on a ship of the line), raiding enemy commerce and escorting your own merchants against enemy commerce raiders. That is mostly because ships of the line cost too much to use for every mission. This was pretty much how naval warfare worked from the advent of guns until the invention of the self-propelled torpedo (which made small nimble ships a threat to capital ships). However, in that kind of setting your heroes end up being establishment-type senior career officers, rather than farm boys in whom the force is strong or rogues who gamble & wench in between Cylon attacks http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

2) In the most recent large-scale naval war in history, carrier aircraft dominated and battlewagons were reduced to a secondary role. That is what is most fresh in the public's mind - that carriers have made battleships obsolete. Make different assumptions about the effectiveness of anti-aircraft defenses and this could change. For example, in the "Hammer's Slammers" stories tactical aircraft are hopeless. If armor/shielding makes battlewagons relatively invulnerable to any weapon small enough to mount on an aircraft, and automated high tech air defenses swat planes out of the sky before they can do any harm, suddenly the battlewagons make a comeback (if you also find a solution to the submarine threat, that is).

3) Moviemakers copy a successful film. Lucas is reputedly fascinated by WWII air combat, and Star Wars shows it (the Tie Fighter vs the Millenium Falcon sceen could have been ME109's vs a B-17, the Deathstar attack could have been any of the Pacific carrier battles). Star Wars made bigger $$$ than any movie up to that time. So, everybody else copied, except the Star Trek universe which already was locked into a different model.

In the end, it is a matter of how the designers want it to work, since there is no "reality" to model. I personally like a game where the battle line is at least a viable option. I'm OK with all carriers & fighters also being viable. I think having fighters sitting out in space forever "feels wrong", but I do it myself since it is advantageous http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif If I were the designer, I'd let fighters fly off on the system map the turn they take off but make them land by the end of the turn or be lost (like in Civilization).

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

Barnacle Bill - wow, great summary !

Maybe to balance fighters and capital ships better fighters should have Rules like following:

Fighters on planets have only 10% maintainance cost of the compared weight to capital ships.
Fighters on carriers have only 25% maintainance cost of the compared weight to capital ships.
Fighters in space have 50% maintainance cost of the compared weight to capital ships.

Fighters that stay five consecutive turns in space get automatically destroyed.

On the other hand fighters should get experience - at least squadrons should get experience.

Now why should fighters still be cheaper the capital class - fighters are really mass-production so repair, refit and the like is cheaper (at least as long as SE4 doesn't depict different econmy styles, right now it uses some kind of capitalism....) then the small series of capital ships. Just compare the numbers of capital ships produced during WW to the number of planes constructed. Same for the heavy tanks and smaller ones ...

murx

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

That was Reverend Tembo... not Temba. Get the facts straight bowb!

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

The is a note in one file, the vehicle file I think, that says fighters are destroyed when they are out of supply. I have never had my fighters run out of supply but if this worked you could cause the fighter components consume supplies. You would eventually run out of supply and the fighters would have to resupply or be destroyed. This would keep them from sitting on WP's forever.

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Marty Ward:
This would keep them from sitting on WP's forever.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Not if you put a horde of them in a fleet with a single small, cheap Quantum Reactor-equiped ship. I do that all the time. They never have to land. The effect is kind of like a cheap carrier that can't travel interstellar. If you make the ship a transport, it can also take the show on the road as long as you have a colony in the system on either end - the fighters land at the colony, the transport loads 'em up & hauls them to a colony in another system & drops them off, the colony launches 'em and you fleet 'em up with the transport again. Of course, the fleet can't move first turn after the launch, but what do you expect for nothing?

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by wierd bob:
That was Reverend Tembo... not Temba. Get the facts straight bowb!

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Maybe I'm a Chinger spy...

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

BB,
At least you would have to pay maintenance on the QR ship.
I think the way it is there will always be a way to keep them in space forever. There should be ways of making this expensive though.
One way would be to make their engines consume a lot of supplies, maybe 50 times what they do now. Then at least you would need a carrier or transport to move them into position. Making their weapons consume more supplies might cause them to run out after a particulary long or difficult fight too.
I don't even know if they are destroyed if they run out of supply, I've never had one run out. Does anyone know if this works?

[This message has been edited by Marty Ward (edited 06 May 2001).]
Another thought would be to eliminate the standard move from fighter engines. This would give them combat move and eliminate fighters flying through space by themselves. I know some people do think that suggestion is bad but I've never liked the idea of fighters cruising around the solar system by themselves.

[This message has been edited by Marty Ward (edited 06 May 2001).]

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

I think fighters are just fine being the way they are, my reason:

Manuverability.... Engines on fighters are exposed to more "surface area" than the capital ships, this means they have more finite control over the direction of their thrust, allowing them to adjust their direction more profoundly in short periods of time.

Of course size plays an important part, I can't see fighters as a single 25KT fighter... that's ludicrous! A 50 MILLION pound fighter, come on... instead they probally refering to fighter squadrons (I changed the description in my game to just this)... you're talking about dozens of fighters, thus their actual size is MUCH smaller.

Finally their speed although similar, is probally generated diffrently between fighters and capital ships.... Capital Ships have slower Engines/Drives that can continuosly operate due to efficient use of fuel.... fighters are more likely to use rockets, very fast accelerating engines that burn large amounts of fuel, thus they accelerate and coast. I know the SE4 system dosen't represent this, but the SE4 system dosen't represent any realistic form of space movement (unless all the ships were equipped with an inertialess drive).

Personally, I would love to see that "combat movement" could STACK in a future patch... (give Afterburners the "one per ship" restriction), and make all fighter need 3 engines per move, but give all fighter engines 1 combat speed. Thus if you've got 9 Contra-terrene engines on a fighter + afterburners III, you'd have a combat speed of 14! but a normal move of only 4. Much better in my opinion. (Maxes would be 15 & 6 w/ quantum engines & AB3)

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

I like the idea to kill the strategical move of fighters to zero and only have them combat movement.
They still could stay in space forever - but only at the point their carrier released them.
At a planet or at a carrier this would depict the fighters are 'on patrol' and just make short landings on the planet/carrier for crew shifts and resupply.
Another way could be to cut their movement to only 1 or maximal 2 spaces away from a landing point (or maybe 1/2 their maximal move) - depicting the same 'patrol' mechanism as before, but the 'main patrol' is at the location where the squadron is shown on the map.
But will be hard to programm, as the fighters should be destroyed when their 'landing base' moves away or is destroyed.
murx

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

I like the idea about not being able to see the whole system without sensors or patrols. In Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (SMAC), cities can see 3 spaces around them, units (troops, ships, etc) can see for 2. They also have sensors that you can build to increase range and monitor perimeter, etc. You NEED to patrol and build sensors to defend your territory.

This IMO would definitely increase the importance of long-range scanners, fighter patrols, etc. in SE4 - especially around the fringes of your empire. Right now, long range scanners, etc. are useful, but not vital. It would IMO add a nice touch....

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

1-3 squares sighting range:
an excellent idea. You should suggest MM this. Hidden movement rules are a must for any intelligent strategy game.

bye
Klaus

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

I think his idea was that there is a lot more then what you actually see. Like how he explains the way resources get to your homeworld by merchant ships that you can not see. So it could be that your planets may have radar or some other way to track movement in the system and can see uncloaked ship movements. Kind of like were do all your people live? In houses, condos, etc.

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

I'd actually like to go the other way. I'd prefer a system in which you had a short detection range (not able to see ships everywhere in the system, just within 2 sectors or so of your ships), let fighters move on the system map but make them land by the end of the turn. This would allow Midway-like carrier battles.

Re: Fighters are now unbalanced
 

Go idea BB.
It does seem odd that you can always see an uncloaked ship from anywhere in a system. I guess that is hardcoded though.
If it could be changed it could give a use for the long range scanner. If basic ships and planet could only see 1-3 spaces then researching the long range scanner would give you a big strategic advantage. It would make planets located near a WP more valuable early in the game and probably make First contacts harder.