[PvK]

Hi Hippo - thanks for the feedback! Pardon my rambling reply, but it's late and I'm tired.

The main purposes of the fighter changes are:

* Remove their power vs. ships in early-game. You used to be able to get Fighter Level I, some DUC tech, and mass some fighters for a pretty good anti-ship force if the enemy didn't have fighters themselves. I think this is well taken care of, even without the ROF reduction you're concerned about.

* Increase the diversity, interest and depth of the fighter tree, so there are various options and they can be viable weapons in late game, but only if they are researched to high levels. They should also improve fairly constantly with research, so stockpiled peacetime fighters will be meaningfully out-of-date compared to new purchases. Again, I hope I've managed this, and again, ya it doesn't need the lowered ROF.

* Change role of most fighters to tactical rather than strategic. The supply limits tend to remove or greatly limit their ability to be used without carriers, as they were in 2.5, where they could for example be massed at warp points without a carrier. Again, not related to ROF.

The more relevant part:

* Reduce the ability of "anti-fighter" weapons to blow away lots of ships quickly, with enough fighters. While I think Proportions 2.5 fighters are ok on this score when everything's taken into account, I also notice the frequent feedback that a large number of fighters with common anti-fighter weapons like DUCs, MBs, APBs, can bLast a large number of ships even if they have a good amount of PD. Doing the math, you could put 2-3 such weapons on a not-so-high-tech 2.5 fighter, and then a few dozen of them could add up a lot of damage and be hard to hit. You're right that high-tech well-designed 2.5 ships can hold their own on a cost basis if using shields and armor, but it was still quite a strong technique. Although I have addressed much of that in other ways, I thought I wanted to reduce the damage these weapons could do to ships, but not have to divide down the damage to the point that the weapons started being hard to tell apart. Halving ROF keeps the weapon damage relationships to each other, while reducing the damage to ships (except for the first volley, which remains as strong). To keep fighter-vs-fighter damage strong enough, I greatly reduced the damage capacity of fighters by changing the shields to deflectors (as you saw) and also reducing the structure Ratings of many of the components (I was thinking of reducing the weapon structure a lot too, but didn't get to that). Someone some months ago suggested using higher ROF, with the idea it could represent the time taken for fighters to maneuver onto a new target, and at first I resisted that, and still am not sure I entirely like it, but I thought it was worth a try for the reasons I just mentioned.

I have been so busy with this that I have only briefly tested the results. I think it could use a bunch of testing to see how it really turns out in practice. It's a lot more complex than before, because there are many more levels of fighter tech, and more possible designs, and I'm not sure how they might tend to encounter different ship tech levels. It will no doubt need some tweaks.

I do know that the first fighters available will now stink. They'll be like a goofy shuttlecraft with one weapon attached launched to distract the enemy and get killed. But the higher tech fighters get to be just as respectable, or more, than the 2.5 fighters... except for the ROF change.

A good testing niche is probably to look for fighters that can avoid PD easily and still mount 2-3 Meson BLasters and have supplies to fire them a lot (say 50-75 supplies).

Oh, and I had some Point Defense changes I meant to make but didn't put in yet. That will also affect the other half of the above thought problem, which is, by the time you can get those fighters without neglecting other stuff too much, how advanced are typical enemy ships? That's going to take a bit to figure out, and also depend a bit on what I do to the PDC.

In sum, I think your concern is on-target, but I don't know yet if it hits the mark! Needs testing!

(I don't think mounts can reduce ROF, but yes it is an idea to have higher-tech weapons have lower ROF.)

Time for sleep... I hope that was coherent enough. Thanks again for the feedback!

PvK