Carrier Battles Mod

[geoschmo]

Nodachi said:
SJ said:

You can easily set it up so that even a ship that is fast on the strategic map is slow in combat (Imperial Star Destroyers come to mind). Just give the hulls the Combat Movement ability with a negative value (or a positive one for smaller ships). That's how I'm trying to do it in my mod.

Yeah, I don't think that works. You can set up the file with a negative value and all, interestingly it doesn't give you an error. But in combat it doesn't seem to have any effect. Ship still moves at strategic speed/2.

[VaultDweller]

Here's an idea:

Have weapons for fighters divided between ones that can attack seekers/fighers/small stuff and can attack ships or planets. This is working off of using either fighters or bombers, which I think adds a level of finesse to tactical fighting. Anti-ship weapons would take up large space on a fighter encouraging a specialized design, where anti-fighter/seeker weapons would be smaller allowing for more flexiblity.


I don't think that nerfing Point Defense or ship based weapons is a good idea.

Think about it like this: point defense weaponry is meant to be small, agile, and flexible. It would be insanity for large ships not to field it in some catagory or another. I'd think in a carrier focused environment there would be ships that their sole purpose is point defense to protect carriers and support ships from missiles or fighters that slip past your fighters.

In an environment like this I'd think that ship based weaponry would be longer ranged with higher damage. Reload times would be higher and the weapons themselves would be heavier though. Also, in this enviroment seekers need to be more flexible. Perhaps ships should be able to launch more of them and certain technologies could make them faster, more armored, or some combination of effects. It would keep non-carrier ships important for combat, IMO.

Imagine it like this: Fighters would either play fleet defense or provide cover for bombers. The bombers would attempt to destroy ships before they can fire their deadly long range weaponry and missile volleys at your fleet.

Sorry if that dragged on a bit.

[Nodachi]

Geo, I just checked it, you're right. It'll take a positive value and use it but not a negative one. Back to the drawing board for me.

[ZeroAdunn]

Well, I currently play a mod with similar ideas to this (though, it isn't as in depth as I want, so maybe your mod will be better)

First off: To encourage carrier use I made resource production far lower then normal SEIV, but cranked storage, then I made fighters slightly cheaper to build, while making ships much more expensive. I made two types of point defense, interceptor cannons for targetting just missiles/drones, and interceptor missiles that target any unit but are smaller and do less damage then regular missiles. Fighter defense is generally handled VIA a mount, the point defense mount that reduces size and range of weapons, but keeps damage the same. Then there are the "slugger mounts" which are standard ship to ship mounts, while they increase the damage (not on par with SEIV standard mounts, but increase them enough) they increase the cost exponentially.

Drones are similar to SEIV drones except they are half the size and have a mount that reduces component/weapon cost and size by one half. Makes them much more valuable.

I use leaky shields, but not leaky armor. Leaky shields are more easily penetrated by fighter weapons as all weapons fire as one for a group of fighters.

Fighter hulls have a combat movement bonus, however, I am currently modding fighters as follows:
Two components,
Standard fighter engines: 1kt, 1movement (plus bonus for high tech) 5 per fighter, must have 1. At most a fighter will have 8 system/4 combat.
Fighter Thrusters: 4kt, 6 combat movement (at max), one per ship.
Fighter hulls: small 6kt, medium 10kt, heavy 14kt. Weapons will range from 1kt (small guns) to 2kt (heavy weapons/missiles), fighters will only need cockpit (1kt), but can have a life support system that provides additional supplies (1kt). And then of course sensors. So a medim fighter could have:
1 Engine 1kt
1 thruster 4kt
1 cockpit 1kt
1 combat sensor 1k
1 ECM 1kt
1 heavy weapon or two light weapons.
(Short range fighter/bomber)

5 engine 5kt
1 cockpit 1kt
1 Combat sensor 1kt
1 life support 1kt
1 heavy weapon 2k
(long range bomber, or fighter if you replace the heavy weapon with a light weapon)

One question: Does anybody know for sure if the Combat Best Experience ability works for fighters. I had planed to use it on fighters to simulate the experience or training of a ships pilots, but don't know if it works.

I would also suggest using a proportions style economy, I use a watered down Version (way more watered down then I would like) and I think it works well.

[Nodachi]

I thought experience of any kind did not appy to units.

[Suicide Junkie]

Point defense does have to be nerfed significantly... Stock PD is an impenetrable wall.

Note: Just to be clear - Point Defense is comprised of Fighters, missiles, fighters and more fighters
An unopposed fighter screen should shoot down 95% of what the enemy capital ships can throw at you.

The way I see it working is the following:

A first wave of fast fighters from both sides will meet, and start duking it out.

The bombers will tend to be slower, and by the time they get through the skirmish zone your second wave of interceptors should be gunning for them. If they fail, and the bombers get in range, your capital ships will certainly take critical damage.

The capital ships could take down a few bombers with anti-fighter missiles, and should also be able to shoot down a few of the bombers' missiles with their own anti-missiles, but not many. Any remaining close-in fighter screens will have a small window of opportunity to shoot down the missiles as well, after which it is down to how much armor you have.

Once the bombers are spent, the remaining fighters will continue to dogfight and the capital ships will lob supporting missile fire into the fray.

When one side gains an advantage, their fighters may press on to strafe the hopefully crippled enemy capital ships.
The small fighter guns will certainly be much less effective than the bombers, and the missile fire will slowly whittle down the fighters, but they will keep shooting until the battle is over.

Your 50-200kt support ships should be positioned to protect your big expensive carriers as long as possible, but once your fighters are gone, you're in deep trouble.

Small numbers of fighters getting past the main lines are not too much of a threat.
Assuming the ships have good strategies, a group or two of fighters sneaking in will quickly find a pack of missiles locked on.
Missiles are most effective against small numbers of large stacks, so these situations are advantageous to the defender. The capital ships are shooting different enemies than the fighters are, and there is less wasted ordnance.

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Allowing ship-to-ship weaponry to target fighters as well is reasonable, but the accuracy should be pitiful. Only the smallest guns would have much chance beyond the 1% minimum.

It is the carrier battles mod, and fighters should be the primary weapons and defenses in combat .
Once your fighters have been defeated in space, your capital ships are all but lost.

[Kana]

geoschmo said:
I think you can give the point defense ability to pretty much any component, but the "oppotunity fire" that you are trying to gain wont work against ships. Even if the weapon can target ships, the point defense ability will only use the opportunity fire phase to shoot at seekers. Missles, fighters, drones.

Are you sure...? Most of the material I've read on the abilities and such says it is possible...it would suck if it isn't...cause then I would defintely wait until SEV comes out before finishing the mod...hopefully with user definable damage...

Kana

[tesco samoa]

The only thing I can see as a real problem to this mod is the micromanagement that will come in the later stages of the game.

To over come this i suggest you have the transport ships cargo increased quite a bit to ferry fighters up to staging areas.

Mind you i am assuming that the player would build a cargo ship and set it to load fighters from fighter producing planets and drop it off where your fleet is being trained.

This would help with the running out of space problems that players would have to hunt down on 100 + planet empires.

[Arkcon]

Here's another thing. In standard SE4, your carriers have to have loads of fighter launchers, and not waste too much space on big guns or shielding. For this new mod to be significantly different from SE4, we'll want to change how fighters are launched. They'll have to press the attack, and orbit the carrier on CAP.

One suggestion, the standard fighter group is 5 (some people use 10 or more, I know). The standard fighter bay launches ... 4. Now, I know, you just need 5 bays to get an even multiple, but I want the carriers to degorge fighters at the start of combat, so maybe its useful if the standrd bay could launch 10, or more.

[Suicide Junkie]

Arkcon said:
Here's another thing. In standard SE4, your carriers have to have loads of fighter launchers, and not waste too much space on big guns or shielding. For this new mod to be significantly different from SE4, we'll want to change how fighters are launched. They'll have to press the attack, and orbit the carrier on CAP.

One suggestion, the standard fighter group is 5 (some people use 10 or more, I know). The standard fighter bay launches ... 4. Now, I know, you just need 5 bays to get an even multiple, but I want the carriers to degorge fighters at the start of combat, so maybe its useful if the standrd bay could launch 10, or more.

Aren't those conflicting requirements, for the most part?
If you spew the whole lot of them on turn 1, then they'll all be zooming away to the main fight.

If you have slower launches, you'll get waves of fighters, and always have some nearby for defense.

Although, I suppose you could just design some that use the smaller engines, so they are the same speed as the carriers, and add heavier guns and/or armor...

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I suppose it would be really easy to have some regular-style bays, plus a superbay component that allows you to launch massive numbers at a time at the expense of some space and cargo.