Fighters are now unbalanced

[Q]

I don't know if this changed since Version 1.35 or earlier, but the fighters are now extremly hard to hit: Even with point defense cannons you get only about 70% hit chance at distance 1 (Ships and fighters use maximum tech levels for ECM and combat sensors)! Even worse with standard weapons: you only get 1% hit chance at range 1!!
Did anyone else notice this and inform MM?

[Q]

Fortunately I still had my Version 1.30 to test and indeed this is a problem of Version 1.35. Probably it has something to do with the fact that now the defense bonuses stack.
Anyway how it is now it is severely unbalanced and I mailed it to MM and hope it will be corrected in the next patch.
I like fighters a lot but if you can kill 4 fully armed baseships with 30-40 fighters it is not fair any more.

[Atraikius]

I just had a good sized carrier battle Last night, about 120-150 fighters per side, and didn't have any problems with the fighters not getting hit. I took out all of the computers fighters and lost about 3/4 of mine to PD and other fighters.

[Taqwus]

I've also seen the 1%, when I've got CS II, +10% Aggressiveness, and Warrior culture, versus large fighters with ECM I. Not worth firing main weapons at.

PD is now VERY VERY important. Attacking Rage planets, which are fairly frequently garrisoned by a few score of fighters, gave me a bit of trouble until I started amassing ships in tightly-grouped, mid-size fleets for concentrated PD.

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[Q]

quote:

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Originally posted by Atraikius:
I just had a good sized carrier battle Last night, about 120-150 fighters per side, and didn't have any problems with the fighters not getting hit. I took out all of the computers fighters and lost about 3/4 of mine to PD and other fighters.

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Of course fighter against fighter is balanced!
It's fighter against ships that is the problem.

[Davout]

I think that a 70% hit rate with PD weapons is pretty good(acctualy I think it is too good). I know that the sci-fi movies are not a good measuring stick(but then what is?), but look at Star Wars and Battle Star Galactica movies, it took a lot of PD to kill fighters. Even in WWII it took a lot of AAA to kill planes. So if you are fighting a 'fighter' race, build a lot of PD ships!

[Atraikius]

My PD took out more fighters than my fighters did. I did notice your point with the main weapons on the ships not being able to hit the fighters though (misunderstood your comment at first). I though the anti-ship weapons only having about a 1% chance to hit the fighters makes sense though.

[nerfman]

If regular (non-point defense) mounts are having a rough time killing fighters then I say, about time. It didn't make much sense having point defense if every other battery on a ship was just about as effective.

[Marty Ward]

Yep, typically AAA relyed on a wall of lead to bring down targets. If you judged efficiency by number of shots per hit the AAA was one of the most in-efficient weapon designs ever.
I don't have 1.35 installed yet but this sounds like a great improvement. Maybe air (space?) superiority fighters will be needed more now.

[Q]

I don't mind if the fighters are a little bit harder to hit by standard ship weapons or if the point defense cannons have not 100% hit chance. My point is just, that the way it is now the best strategy would be to almost totally rely on fighters for defense and attack. Attack ships, defense bases and even weapon platforms and satellites are not very interesting any more or just will have point defense cannons alone! That would greatly reduce the variety of the game IMO.