Emissive Armour/Fighter Stacking

[oleg]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
Fighters are so totally inept in mid to late game as it is, making them not stack would make them totally irrelevant. I see what you are saying in theory CS, but in practice the effectiveness of PDC and regular weapons against fighters totally makes up for any on paper advantage the damage stacking should give them. A large stack of fighters against one or two capital ships possibly, but against a fleet, even a small fleet, of capital ships is going to not live long enough to do any significant damage. Maybe it's not realistic, or maybe it is, but it's more of a game play thing really. Trying to keep fighters viable later in the game so that the end game doesn't become more vanilla than it already is.

I have been thinking about posibilities throguh game setup or a mod that will permit a game that is geared more towards the capital ships. To have ship to ship combat be more one on one, or just a handful of big ships. Where one capital ship unsupported, or maybe just a couple, basically is responsible for an entire system. But to do it would make them very suceptable to fighter stacks. What I was thinking is in such a mod you could eliminate the fighters ability to move about stragecially, only allow them combat movement. So they would have to be supported by carriers, or stationed on planets.

Geoschmo

In Proportions, fighters are very hard to kill even in late game (well unless you have Religious Talisman VI (takes forever to research). They can be nasty even against big fleet.

It is easy to mod "combat only" fighters - reduce allowed number of engines and increase afterburners bonus.

[geoschmo]

[quote]Originally posted by sachmo:

Geo,

Since I haven't really made it to the endgame stage yet, can you tell me in what way point-defense becomes so effective that it nullifies the fighter advantage? Does it get more shots, or a longer range?

They get longer range and more damage per shot at the higher tech levels. They always fire once per turn, only take 20KT of space and are relativly cheap to buy as weapons go, and they are cheap to research. And they get to fire as soon as the fighter or missle moves into range, instead of letting the fighter get off a shot first. Add to this that regular direct fire weapons can target fighters, and do much higher damage.

There is no hard and fast rule about when the fighters become non-viable. But unless the enemy is using a LOT of fighters, like hundreds per combat, you can get away with just including a 2 or 3 PDC on your capital ships. And even if they are using hundreds, throwing one or two all PDC ships in the fleet takes care of that.

Fighters are good for some things. They are very good early, and very good for defense in less critical areas. They will keep your enemy honest and not allow them to wipe out a bunch of colonies in your rear with a couple of light raiders. But against the strength of your enemies frontline warships late in the game they serve at best a supporting role. If they do well by themselves your enemy isn't all that good and not much of a threat anyway.

Geoschmo

[PvK]

Originally posted by Captain Kwok:
How about emissive armor on fighters, will that stack too?

No, but it probably does share, though I haven't tested that.

That is, launch 99 fighters without EA, followed by 1 fighter with EA, into the same group, and probably the 99 will all benefit from the EA on the Last fighter.

PvK

[Spoo]

I thought EA didn't work on units.

[PvK]

I thought it did, as of 1.78.

(Edit: said 1.87 but meant 1.78...)

[ November 21, 2002, 19:40: Message edited by: PvK ]

[Mephisto]

PvK, do you get special beta updates? 1.87?

[PvK]

No, I was sleepy and transposed numbers. I mean't 1.78. The latest beta I have is 1.82.