Beef #2: Fighters

[dmm]

WOW, is this a great game! Only played the demo so far. Intend to buy. But, as an American I demand my right to complain. So here goes:

Fighters are expensive to research, and then they are cruddy! Why are they slower than freighters in combat mode??? And why are they so easy to hit, even from far away??? And how can a single shot from a big gun kill more than one fighter at a time? Fighters are not done realistically. Remember Pearl Harbor, Midway, the Coral Sea (not to mention Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, Buck Rogers, and every other sci fi book or movie ever made)?? The only things that should be able to hit a fighter reliably are weapons specifically designed to hit small, fast-moving targets (i.e., AA, SAMs, and other fighters). A carrier with fighters should always wipe out a fleet of battleships, if the big boats don't have some sort of AA defense.

[Psitticine]

I agree it'd be nice to have fighters beefed up a bit, especially in terms of speed. The classic picture is of speedy craft that can outrun capital ships over short ranges. I don't really understand the speed limitation and plan to tweak it, if possible, in my copy of the full release Version when it arrives.

And, actually, I'd rather *not* remember Buck Rogers, but that's just me.

[Tampa_Gamer]

I agree.

[Noble713]

"And why are they so easy to hit, even from far away???"

For some reason fighters don't have a to-hit penalty like escorts, frigates, destroyers, and light cruisers do.

"A carrier with fighters should always wipe out a fleet of battleships, if the big boats don't have some sort of AA defense."

Fighters may need to be beefed up a bit, but this is going too far. Even big guns can hit little targets, just not as well. When the Yamato was destroyed, I've read she was even using her 18" guns to try and shoot down fighters. With 18" HE rounds you don't exactly need to _hit_ a fighter to rip it to pieces.

Also, keep in mind that the tech in the demo is fairly primitive. Of course the first fighters should be pretty useless, but as your tech gets higher they should become a serious threat.

[Taqwus]

Perhaps the single-hit-versus-stack rules need to be modified. It's quite possible that a single attack would destroy multiple fighters (assuming that various weapons actually have a decent sweepable continuous or rapid-fire attack), but it should probably be based on fighter density.

That is, something like a DU cannon spraying rounds into a cloud of 80 fighters should probably have a better chance of hitting multiple targets than the same cannon attacking 5; the 80 have less space each for manuevering, and perhaps are more likely to retain some formation in order to avoid collisions...

One hacky system would be

It's very hacky. But a Perl script averaging results over 500 trials yields results like

(DMG = base damage inflicted
FHT = per-fighter hits
NUM = number of fighters
MIN/AVG/MAX = minimum, average or maximum number of fighters hit)
DEV = standard deviation

So using something like this, fighters are a bit less vulnerable. Changing (hit+1) to, say, (hit+1)^1.5 (ugh!) would make them more resilient still. Another approach would be making prob depend on the normal hit prob...


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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[Psitticine]

quote:

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Originally posted by Noble713:
When the Yamato was destroyed, I've read she was even using her 18" guns to try and shoot down fighters. With 18" HE rounds you don't exactly need to _hit_ a fighter to rip it to pieces.

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Gee, you'd think the Wave Motion Gun . . . oh, *that* Yamato . . . never mind!

Seriously, I think part of the concept of PD weaponry, and the reason for its exceptionally high damage, is a high rate of fire that can be distributed across a number of targets, like the members of a fighter squadron. Those 18" shells still needed to tap into something to be set off, and a concentrated energy beam, even if it does produce a splash effect upon impact, still needs to connect to "detonate".

This is completely my individual interpretation, of course, but I picture anti-ship weaponry as being designed for maximum penetration against armour and shields - one big bLast instead of multiple small ones. I also see them as being mounted in ultra-precise mountings for targeting over extremely long ranges, not in quick-aim "swivel mounts" like PD weaponry would use.

With all the room in space to fly in, fratricide can't be much of an issue and there's no point in flying close formation under the situations modelled in the game. I think it makes both logical and game-balance sense, especially considering the cost of fighter research, to make most weaponry able to take out only one fighter per hit and I think there should be a decent to-hit penalty assessed for trying to nail such a small target. I can see how there might be other cases, such as the capital ship missiles, as well as the PD cannon which could qualify for killing [damage/fighter strength] fighters in one blow but I don't think the majority of weaponry should be able to perform that feat.

As for how the improved fighters available in the full game will change things . . . well, I'll have to wait and see, or take the input of the beta-testers, to know about that. It might well change the whole balance issue but somehow I doubt it unless they are really *much* faster.