Emissive Armour/Fighter Stacking

[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

[Suicide Junkie]

Well, without it stacking, 90% of fighter weapons would be completely useless against EA level 1...

As it is now, fighters can hurt ships, and Emissive armor is still useful in many situations.

[Captain Kwok]

How about emissive armor on fighters, will that stack too?

[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.

[CombatSquirrel]

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.

Geoschmo

I also see what you are saying, Geo, and in SEIV standard I agree that it is a largely irrelevant point. But the fact remains that you can make considered adjustments to PD damage, size, accuracy, cost, difficulty to research. You can make choices in the defensive (or offensive) bonuses of manueverable fighters, and lumbering Capitol Ships. You can limit weapons, design special mounts... you have a staggering host of variables at your command to poke and tweak to adjust most any parameter.

You could design a ship that is 20% resistant to the toughest weapon mountable on a Cruiser. You could, if you wanted to, make it invulnerable to an infinite number of Cruisers, or design it so that the average Cruiser will inflict 10 points on its armor per combat turn. One thing you cannot do, however, is make a standard ship's hull able to bounce fighter weapons like peas off a brick wall. Even if those weapons only do 2 points of damage each, enough 25 kT fighters and your vessel will take full damage from every single one of them beyond the threshold.

The possibility to model a particular genre, or design and implement a particular "cosmic slant" is my absolute favorite aspect of SEIV. The ability to totally remodel the basics of design or combat is a real treat for me. I know that many, many participants on this board have more knowledge and experience than me, so I enter the debate to learn.

I just don't see the stacking of damage by units ignoring considerations of the individual effects of each combat hit as a feature. I perceive it as a limitation... maybe a necessary limitation. Clever design can incorporate and enhance a feature. Clever design is required to contain and diminish the effects of a limitation.

CombatSquirrel

[Krsqk]

It would be wonderful to have our cake and eat it too--i.e., Fighters (like drones) don't stack, but they can share a sector in the combat map (like SE3 ships). (For that matter, I'd like to see ships stack, too, up to a reasonable limit.) PDC could only hit one at a time, but fighter weapons would be somewhat limited by EA.

This would encourage wider use of higher damage/higher reload fighter weapons. Alternately, fighters wouldn't cause much damage until capital ships or bombers stripped the EA away.

I guess one alternate modding route to this is to give each fighter hull a shield generation ability of 10-30 pts (maybe goes up by fighter level?) It would limit the ability of PDC to destroy several fighters at once, but large and heavy mount capital weapons would still be able to kill them en masse. Still leaves some problems, but maybe better than nothing.