Fighters should pay support!

[Elwood Bluze]

Mah fellow galaxians.... let them pay maintenance instead of support, then. No supportation without maintenancation!

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Elwood Bluze

[Baron Munchausen]

This is another case of the difference between a human and an AI making problems for game play. Only a human knows how to mass fighters cleverly, at least right now. I think the best idea so far is to limit the time they can spend away from a "dock" of some kind. Change them to be automatically destroyed if not recovered a certain number of strategic turns after launch and many of these problems are reduced. Especially the bit about building them and pushing them out into space until you've got 10 times the planet's/base's capactiy sitting there in the sector.

[Daynarr]

It would be also nice if the AI would launch fighters in orbit as they are built, just like he does with satellites.

[Zanthis]

First, I'd like to say I support unit maintenance. I like the separate definable categories in the Settings file. I don't think mines should pay maint. tho, I just think they should have a really low percent chance of dying each turn in space.

I also think fighters need limited "flight" time. It could easily be done by adding two abilities and placing them on the fighter bodies.

1) Unit uses supply every turn. Fill in a number for this ability and every turn that unit/ship uses that many supplies, whether or not it moves.

2) Unit destroyed when out of supplies. Simple, when it runs out of supplies, it dies.

[DirectorTsaarx]

I like BarnacleBill's idea of a "fighter base" on the planet. Maybe take this further, and force fighters to be stored in fighter bays, not as generic "cargo". The planetary fighter base would be a facility (not a weapon platform) that had a specific capacity and launch rate. You could even set it up so the only place to BUILD fighters was at a planetary fighter base, and/or a specific shipyard-type component; this "fighteryard" could only build fighters (and maybe satellites), not ships or mines or WPs.

This would force us to make more strategic decisions about using fighters (instead of maintenance cost, we're using facility spaces and/or building expensive bases in space).

BTW - if we're going to force fighters to use supply every turn, we should probably make ships use supply every turn as well. As it is now, I can park ships in remote places for long periods of time, which makes just as little sense as parking fighters for long periods of time. I'm willing to accept that a base doesn't need resupply, since the base hull probably includes the ability to turn life support components into self-sustaining life support systems...

[raynor]

These are some great ideas.

I agree that it doesn't make a lot of sense for ships to sit idle for years on end without using at least *some* support.

I missed it earlier when BarnacleBill suggested a WEP or facility that hosts fighters. The idea of a fighter base is pretty interesting.

I also like someone's idea to make the fighters land again every turn. The idea to make them die when they run out of supplies is similarly excellent.

[SunDevil]

What about facilities? They should cost some amount of upkeep on each planet.