Fighters and Missiles
 

Ok, I have two questions.

1) Fighters:
Has anyone come up with a viable fighter using strategy where fighters represent at significant threat throughout the game? OR has anyone got any good ideas for modding fighters to make them more effective main combat units?

2) Missiles.
Has anyone thought of modding in "Decoy missiles" to help saturate PD cannons? My idea is to have a low cost / low space missile component that does 1 point of damage at the same range as the various missile techs. Missile Users could load these on thier ships in the hopes that the PD cannons would target them instead of the REAL missiles.

Rob

Re: Fighters and Missiles
 

Decoy missiles sound like a very good idea... but would have to take care not to make it too powerful, since you would always put the decoys on the ship first so they would always be targeted first (right?) ... so all decoys would be destroyed before any real missiles, which isn't very realistic...

--
AeoN2
--
Eat a live toad the first thing in the morning
and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.

Re: Fighters and Missiles
 

Maybe making a max number of decoy missile mounts that can be on a single ship...

Re: Fighters and Missiles
 

About the only fighter strategy usefull long term is one that I have heard called the "Big Wing" strategy, although I do not remember who I heard call it that.

Basically you need the largest fighters you can build with the best shields and strongest weapons. Build them and launch them in massive Groups. 100 is optmimal if you can do pull it off. Since each group acts as one vehicle for combat purposes you will have in effect a vessel that can deliver a respectable amount of firepower with each shot. And the large size of the group and heavy shielding will allow them to withstand more than a few shots form the advanced PDC cannons and other weaponry you are likely to face.

Even with this though they are going to take heavy losses. They will do some damage going down though and allow your capital ships a few extra combat rounds to do their thing.

Geoschmo

Re: Fighters and Missiles
 

I think both of your questions are asking how to keep fighters and missiles valuable in the late game.
You might have a look at the QMod I posted in the Mod section: increased fighter size and increased missile damage resistence do the job quite well IMHO.

Re: Fighters and Missiles
 

I posted a different idea to fix figter/missile-pd balance some time ago, I'm not sure if it's possible to mod this right now though.

http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin...=005762#000000

Re: Fighters and Missiles
 

With a little modding fighters are quite survivable into the late game. I've added small phased shields to go with the small standard shields. Apparently 'phased' shields have no effect on units but the higher shield points are still effective. I've also increased the size/range of fighter weapons slightly. They do suffer losses unless you completely out-class your opponent(s). That's the nature of fighters. If it were like Battlestar Galactica where none of the 'good guys' get killed that would be unbalanced, too. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

And fighters are supposed to operate in Groups, remember. MM has changed the default group size to 10, up from 5, but I don't think even that is large enough. I use a default group size of 20 and find Groups of 20 fighters to be fairly dangerous. Boosting that a bit higher would start to reduce flexibility because you'd have so few Groups in any given tactical situation but it might be appropriate depending on what you are up against.

[ June 17, 2002, 21:47: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: Fighters and Missiles
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I seem to recall more than a few colonial fighters getting zapped, just never one of the main three guys. It was like the red shirts in Star Trek. If a fighter jockey you had never seen before all of a sudden had a central role in the plot at the begining of the episode, you knew he was in trouble. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Didn't happen as often as on Trek though. They didn't really have all that many fighter battles after the pilot. But when they did they usually lost a couple guys that you had never seen before IIRC.

Geoschmo

Re: Fighters and Missiles
 

You have to look at fighters as more or less expendable. Like missiles that get to come back if the pilot brought his rabbit's foot http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Phoenix-D

Re: Fighters and Missiles
 

Well, of course there is the 'redshirt effect' on TV shows. Someone has to die once in a while for dramatic effect. But if you think about the situation being depicted they could not afford even the occasional loss of trained pilots, so the 'real' situation being depicted there is a bunch of super-hotshots who can each bLast legions of 'stoopid' robotic attackers while not getting hit.

I would say this is completely unrealistic but the recent US combat record indicates it might not be so crazy as it sounds, given a good technological advantage. Without that technological advantage, be prepared to replace losses.

Re: Fighters and Missiles
 

Decoy Missiles:

Name := Decoy Missile I
Description := Missile fired to 'soak up' point-defense so the real missiles get through. Causes minimal damage itself.
Pic Num := 156
Tonnage Space Taken := 10
Tonnage Structure := 10
Cost Minerals := 75
Cost Organics := 0
Cost Radioactives := 75
Vehicle Type := Ship\Base\Sat\WeapPlat\Drone
Supply Amount Used := 0
Restrictions := None
General Group := Weapons
Family := 7034
Roman Numeral := 1
Custom Group := 0
Number of Tech Req := 2
Tech Area Req 1 := Missile Weapons
Tech Level Req 1 := 1
Tech Area Req 2 := Military Science
Tech Level Req 2 := 2
Number of Abilities := 0
Weapon Type := Seeking
Weapon Target := Ships\Planets
Weapon Damage At Rng := 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Weapon Damage Type := Normal
Weapon Reload Rate := 1
Weapon Display Type := Seeker
Weapon Display := 1
Weapon Modifier := 0
Weapon Sound := capshpms.wav
Weapon Family := 87
Weapon Seeker Speed := 12
Weapon Seeker Dmg Res := 25

From my 'D-Mod', gold Version. To get the desired effect you want just mess with the rate of fire and damage resistance to make them less/more powerful. Also range (less or more) can be a good 'leveler' of power. Speed of the seeker is also a good way to make them more/less powerful in that they can be slower/faster than the normal missiles depending on their level of tech. To get an idea of where these fit in my modd the rest of the missiles were changed as well.

Short Range Missiles- Rate of Fire of 1, range of 6.

External Mount Missiles: Rate of Fire of 30, range varied with tech.

Normal Missiles: ROF reduced to 2

Plasma Missiles: ROF of 2, Skipped Normal Shields.

GodHammer Missiles: ROF of 4, 100-500 damage depending on level.

Armor Skipping Missiles: ROF of 2.

[ June 17, 2002, 23:49: Message edited by: Deathstalker ]

Re: Fighters and Missiles
 

Hey guys,

As well as point-defence cannons, what about some sort of anti-missile missile? You could balance them up so you would still need PD cannons (e.g. they need to reload just like regular missiles) but you'd be able to pick off a couple of missiles at range too.

I wouldn't mind seeing some modded PD cannons with pre-requisites from other tech e.g. a bank of meson PD, or graviton PD, or psychic PD, with their own particular strengths and weaknesses.

Re: Fighters and Missiles
 

The main difficulty with PD missiles is that they all tend to get fired at the same target.
The AI will keep firing more weapons until the target is destroyed, but since the missiles take time to arrive, the AI launches all the PD missiles.

Re: Fighters and Missiles
 

IMHO, one way to possibly increase ftrs somewhat would be to restrict more of the beam weapons that could fire on them. As it is now, PD weapons along with other types are allowed to fire on them, thus increasing the hit odds and reducing their survival rate. Instead maybe just allow PD and maybe only 1 other type to be used against them. Reasoning, possibly, the larger types are to slow to follow the speed of the ftrs.??? In my opinion only

just some ideas mac

Re: Fighters and Missiles
 

I may do just that in my mod. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Big guns with their big inertia shouldn't hit fighters that easily anyway, unless you are very lucky. I believe you can't assign valid target types according to the mount right? Too bad.

[ June 18, 2002, 18:58: Message edited by: CW ]

Re: Fighters and Missiles
 

CW, I'm not a modder, but in my opinion, I believe you can restrict what the weapons could fire on with or with out mount sizes, I know in the game when you pick a weapon type it tells you what it can target, don't know if this area is modable but I would think so...

But if your right and you can't set mounts to target specifics, then how about reversing the range. In other words, small more mobile type hit farther with more damage against say ftrs/missles. the larger the weapon and/or mount the less range and smaller amount of damage done, reasoning, the larger the weapon, the heavier, same with mounts, thus bigger would not be better in regards to ftrs/seekers

just some ideas mac

[ June 18, 2002, 19:31: Message edited by: mac5732 ]

Re: Fighters and Missiles
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">You can get close to this in effect by setting a minus to hit on larger mounts rather than a plus. Combined with smaller vehicles having defensive bonuses this makes it increasingly hard to hit small ships or drones/sats/fighters with larger weapons. There never was any logical explanation for the 'to hit' bonuses on mounts anyway.

[ June 18, 2002, 20:53: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]