Fighters are broken. Can we fix them?

[Iron Giant]

Having played this game for 5 years now, I am convinced that Fighters are broken and just about useless. Specifically, I only play TDM Mod pack, single player but I believe this applies to just about every SEIV game.

I. Fighters in a stack can only shoot at one enemy ship. This is totally unfair to fighters. Satellites don't seem to work this way, why fighters? Is there a setting for this that I can change? I've had a stack of 1000+ fighters that can only shoot one ship per turn.

II. Fighters in a stack have damage flow from one to the next. Again, totally unfair. If a battleship has 5 weapons, it should only be able to destroy (at most) 5 fighters.

When you just combine I and II, Fighters against a small fleet of battleships have no chance at all. While a stack of 1000 fighters can destroy only one enemy ship at a time, I've seen battleships destroy as many as 25 fighters each, even though they only had 5 or 6 weapons (including point defence!). 10 battleships in one turn can then destroy 250 fighters, while the fighters cannot destroy as many ships as they should be allowed (probably ALL the battleships if the fighters have 1x 100 point missle and 1x 15 point Small DUAC)

Sure, you could micro manage them yourself and sometimes this helps, but its a nightmare of micromanagement and doesn't do much to stop number 2.

Can these be changed?

[TheDeadlyShoe]

It's hard to say they're inbalanced, though, given several game mechanics in their favor.

[Iron Giant]

TheDeadlyShoe said:
It's hard to say they're inbalanced, though, given several game mechanics in their favor.

Such as?

Getting 1000 Fighters together in one place is a logistical nightmare. It is far less work (and research) to put together a handful of capital ships with Point Defence V. Am I missing something? Can (at least) those 2 settings be made fair?

[Starhawk]

Fighters are not a logistical nightmare if you use them properly read my above post.

As far as their advantages:

Fighters= Cheaper, faster, harder to hit, more economical for planetary defense in force and properly supported.

Capital ships: Heavy firepower, expensive, slower, can't be everywhere at once, not good to use in groups smaller then 3 (in my experience). Can be easily seen at range (you can't ambush an enemy fleet in orbit of a planet).

[Iron Giant]

Starhawk said:
Fighters are not a logistical nightmare if you use them properly read my above post.

Posted while you were typing...

Ok, but when I'm putting fighters together over a planet, they mostly group together in a large force. How can I stop this? If I have a group of battleships, I set the formation and the tactics and have reasonable success. Again, its not fair to fighters that it is required to micromanage them to get them to work as designed, imho.

I have alleviated this somewhat by trying to use my fighters with their carriers so the carriers will launch them in smaller groups. But again, not fair. if I want to launch 1000 fighters from a carrier group and have them rampage through a system, I should not be forced to micromanage them.

Also, I hear what you are saying about "late game weapons should be able to destroy multiple fighters because of weapons advances, etc" and I disagree. The size of a weapon beam will never come close to the distances between objects in space. See "The Universe" in the Hitchhikers Guide to the galaxy.

I still don't think damage should flow. you said that fighters cannot shoot more than one object (unfair) and that can't be fixed, can damage flow be fixed?

Thanks for the tactical help, I'll try to include more bombers than fighters. My next gripe though is how much they can carry... But I would be content to fix these 2 issues...

[Starhawk]

Ok, but when I'm putting fighters together over a planet, they mostly group together in a large force. How can I stop this? If I have a group of battleships, I set the formation and the tactics and have reasonable success. Again, its not fair to fighters that it is required to micromanage them to get them to work as designed, imho.

Dock them at planet then order the planet to launch fighters ONLY IN COMBAT and launch them in groups of 20.
It's not quite "Micromanagement" anymore then controling that many capital ships would be it's just that instead of 1 capship you get 1 fightersquad of 20 fighters. If you want booste it up to 50 but that's uber overkill with rocket packs.

I have alleviated this somewhat by trying to use my fighters with their carriers so the carriers will launch them in smaller groups. But again, not fair. if I want to launch 1000 fighters from a carrier group and have them rampage through a system, I should not be forced to micromanage them.

Yeah that's your problem buddy Fighters are NOT system conquering tools they are FLEET engagement tools, if you want to send them against a planet keep them IN the carrier until that carrier is attacking said planet. Don't launch the fighters beforehand as it also uses up supplies in shedloads and can get you fragged.

A fighter squad won't even be able to take on late game planetary defenses, yeah a thousand MIGHT be able to do it but you'd lose so many that sending in a capital ship fleet would be more effective, less time and resource consuming and cheaper.

Also, I hear what you are saying about "late game weapons should be able to destroy multiple fighters because of weapons advances, etc" and I disagree. The size of a weapon beam will never come close to the distances between objects in space. See "The Universe" in the Hitchhikers Guide to the galaxy.

Fighters would still need to be "tightly packed" to effect a capital ship so a REAL warship firing a beam weapon into a squadron type formation SHOULD be able to do a "sweep" against the fighters thus destroying more then one at any time.

I still don't think damage should flow. you said that fighters cannot shoot more than one object (unfair) and that can't be fixed, can damage flow be fixed?

Not unfair, balanced if you had 1,000 fighters and it took 1,000 guns to beat them jack squat could stop you. Think of capital ships firing their guns at you as a "wash" effect over a squadron, ships would go BOOM in great numbers.
Also if you want to look at it this way think "AAA" in the form of pulsing the energy cannon against multiple fighters.

However you want to view it a cap ship killing only 1 fighter with EVERY shot is pathetic and unbalanced for that matter fighters in space is a stupid idea that will likely never happen for so many reasons it ain't funny Odds are they'd be more like large torpedo boats from WWII.

Thanks for the tactical help, I'll try to include more bombers than fighters. My next gripe though is how much they can carry... But I would be content to fix these 2 issues...

Can't fix what ain't broken You still need to realize that unless you play carrier battles mod FIGHTERS are not system conquest tools and nor should they be. Would you surrender to a fighter squadron? Uh no, for that matter most planets would have so much AAA fire a fighter FLEET would and should be toasted easily.

You don't like how much they carry lol the largest ones in Devnull carry FRIGATE level firepower if you put rocket pods on them

Heck design your own fighter if you want. But you still should realise that a capital ship should NEVER be beaten by less then a SWARM of fighters. And by swarm I mean several squadrons or a full carrier load.

[Starhawk]

Well hi Iron Giant I have some answers for yah I think

To answer your first quesiton no you can't alter your fighters to attack multiple ships because it is assumed they are acting in squadron level (makes no sense for 1 fighter to be able to hurt a capship)

1. Don't stack 1,000 fighters I stack at most 20 heavy fighters and find that MUCh more versatile especially with rocket packs.
Why on EARTH you would stack 1,000 fighters is beyond me and I didn't even know THAT was possible

2. Wrong again here, think about the size involved and in late game the weapons a beam slashing across a fighter group should be able to kill an entire fighter swarm if you have good sensors. It's a good balance and ensures if you use fighters you need to think before you swarm.

As far as fighters against a small fleet of battleships having no chance again wrong "depending on what you arm your fighters with."

You simply need to go for smaller squadrons instead of one UBERSTACK.

In my current game (the one my story is about) I repeatedly sliced through entire Phong Capital ship squadrons with small fast fighter squadrons of my own until shield tech came about and my PDF fighters became obsolete.

So many years later (game wise and about a year later RL wise) I designed a heavy gunship capable of hurting a capital ship, in fact 5 of my new gunships can destroy an SD. However they are only capship killers and would get eaten alive by fighters.

My advice to you is arm your fighters with rocket packs to act more like "bombers" then fighters.

If you want FIGHTERS go for guns and use these only to cover your bombers else wise you might as well not build sub-capital ships at all.

Also don't rely on fighters on a planet to save your butt unless that planet has weapon platforms, fighters are NOT meant to act on their own.

This isn't star wars or WWII where fighters have an uber advantage over cap ships SEIV is much more "realistic" in the sense that fighters and cap ships would in RL both move in 3 dimensions and have roughly equal maneuverability (given the proper engine/mass ratios). So a fighter cant just "dive bomb" a ship and get away with it.

A fighter in SEIV requires heavy guns or at least a mothership to back them up and get them close to the enemy before launch elsewise it's like sending an army of ants against a beatle with a flame thrower.

[PvK]

Fighters seem to have some uses in the unmodded game, particularly:

* early in the research progression
* in limited resources games
* in other low-resource situations, such as peacetime when fleet maintenance costs limit ship production
* in some late-game situations, to complement drones & seekrs, especially with shields on fighters
* when taking advantage of racial techs like organic components, crystalline system-wide shield reinforcement, and/or small temporal distortion bursts

Starhawk is right that it's therefore more like Star Trek, where captial ships can easily lock on and wipe out fighters.

Mods can address this though, e.g. Proportions Mod 2 and earlier, which can result in something a bit closer to Star Wars or Battlestar Galactica fighter/ship balance. Basically, unmodded PD is too accurate, too strong, and too efficient, unless you want fighters and seekers to become nearly obsolete in the mid-to-late techs. As the author of the venerable Space Empires III "Penultimate" mod commented, it seems like advanced fighters should be fragile but hard to hit, not marginally hard to hit, and simply able to take more damage at higher tech levels. Of course, since fighters are charged little or nothing in terms of maintenance and supplies, one has to be careful to avoid making fighters way too good. Unfortunately in toning fighters down a little in Proportions Mod version 3, I seem to have accidentally over-nerfed them. (Personally, I think Proportions 2.x fighters were about right except they started out really good really early.)

PvK

[Starhawk]

Yeah fighters are mainly in my early games a fast response force used for frontier protection while my fleet maint can't afford large formations of capital ships or Orbital fortresses.

A buddy of mine designed a mega fortress that can carry I think he said 500 heavy corvettes which are about 50 kt I think.

Anyway my own carrier design can carry 100+ gunships which are all 75kt they are expensive as all get out and could not be built in an unmodded game without taking decades but I love them so far

Fighters are force multipliers if used right, if used poorly they are scrap metal and a waste of good pilots

If you really want to be inventive use a "shield fighter" like I've heard of where the entire fighter is only shields and engines and is only designed to take fire from the enemy to save capital ships from taking that fire.

[Alneyan]

I believe the problem isn't that PDC is too strong(*), but fighters are too weak, and, more specifically, have a very hard defence vs damage balance. Those fighters are also expensive (particularly to research to high levels), and logistics for are a nightmare. Since you must gather thousands of them in any serious battle, getting enough Fighter Bays to do that is going to be tough. They make a very nice defence taskforce when set at a wormhole ward, though.

* PDC has a mere 3.5 damage ratio (damage/kt), where most other weapons are around the 1.5/2 mark, and aren't restricted in their targetting. PDC cannot be mounted, unlike those other weapons, so a heavy-mounted APB XII deals exactly as much damage per kt as PDC, and is always useful. PDC does get a +70 bonus to targetting however, whereas a ship will standard training and components will only fire at 65% accuracy. I am assuming the fighters are in a fleet of their own (seems reasonable enough), but that they also have ECM III: that seems less likely, given how much research is needed for those things.

So yeah, PDC is very strong when you don't have anything else, but I think it is pretty much balanced in the middle game: it is better than the APB at taking down fighters, but it doesn't do anything against ships. Seems fair enough to me.