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.

[MaxOMan]

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.

I agree that fighters should have some modification to make them harder to hit (in the same vein as small ships are harder to hit), but I think we also have to consider that the final Version of the game will have medium AND heavy fighters. If they follow the same design patterns as ships, the systems they use will be the same as the ones used by light fighters, but they will of course have more "space". Thus they should have more room for more (and better) weapons and, more importantly, more engines. This in turn would make the larger fighters most likely as fast (maybe faster?) than the ships they fly off of.

Even the light fighters would seem to have their place as cheap and expendable "extra" weapons in the battle field. The heavy fighters on the other hand might be used more like PT boats or small ships in their own right. And they'd have the advantage of being grouped into squadrons, thus allowing for more concentration of fire.

QUICK NOTE: Does anyone know if the fighters are more limited in the number of engines they are allowed to have than a conventional ship (i.e., max 6)? I don't remember right off hand what the limit is on fighter engines.

[Baron Munchausen]

The default number of engines for a fighter is nine. This hardly matters with the SMALL fighter, though, since it has only 10kt of space and needs 2kt to be filled with mandatory components. In my custom set, I have changed small fighters to be 15kt, medium fighters to be 20kt, and large fighters to be 30kt. This makes sense to me because "small" components tend to be 1/10th the size of standard ship components. What is the size of the smallest ship? 150kt, NOT 100kt. If an escort was 100kt you'd have the same problenm with it as with a small fighter. Can't get basic equipment AND weapons into it! So, my fighters parallel the three small ship classes, escort, frigate, and destroyer. Additionally, I have given fighters a 50 percent defensive bonus. If an escort can get 40 percent, a tiny little fighter can darn well get 50 percent. Finally, I have given them a +2 movement bonus. I'm not so sure about this, since fighters with full engines at high tech get to be pretty fast and can also have combat thrusters ('after burners' they are currently called. bleah. kerosine burning jets have after burners, not ion engines!). Anyway, the speed of fighters needs some more testing. This is especially tricky with regard to stationary targets. You think SHIPS have an unfair advantage against bases? Imagine a fighter with a combat speed or 10 or better. Zooooom. Pow! Zooooom. Bases and planets might never get a chance to fight back if they don't have point defense weapons.

[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 20 September 2000).]

[General Hawkwing]

Fighters do need some tweaking before the final Version. Increasing fighter speed must be balanced by increase range of point def. guns. Increasing size is a valid option, also giving a def. bonus.
However, I have yet to met AI that uses fighters. Does anyone have any examples to share of AI using them?

[Darwin]

I encountered some fast moving AI fighters in the demo got to looking at them and it was a cockpit, life support and the rest engine. Un-AI'ed his empire and found it was that way on all his fighter designs.