Fighters are now unbalanced

[Nitram Draw]

Imagine trying to hit a Stealth bomber with a 14" gun!
Is fighter vs fighter a good option now? I don't have 1.35 installed yet.

[dogscoff]

Agree with everything written so far

Given the greater emphasis I think it's about time we had some choice within the point defence tech - I know many modders have come up with Point defence lasers, Point Defence missiles etc - any chance MM could drop a few of these into an official patch?

Perhaps balance the greater dificulty in hitting fighters by reducing fighters' firepower and / or improving emissive armour.

Apparently Emissive Armour is pretty much useless now, and the damage handling bugs^H^H^H^H features mean it's not safe to mix it with other armour types. Boost it's effectiveness and add things like organic emmissive, crystal emissive, stealth emissive to get rid of the incompatibilities.

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"Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?"
"Uh, I think so Brain, but how are we gonna teach a goat to dance with flippers on? "

[nerfman]

what would be cool as if there was a type of armor that worked like metal armor in car wars. Simply put, metal armor was much heavier per point but such armor wasn't blown away. It was persistent (mostly).

For instance say your car had 3 pts of metal armor and some one hit you with an MG for three consecutive turns:

1) Turn 1 - He rolls 1d6 and gets a 2, which deflects off the armor. Armor is still 3 and no damage is done.

2) Turn 2 - He rolls a six for dmg. Anytime a 6 is rolled, the armor itself is also damaged a point so the armor is now at 2 points. Also 6 minus the original three is three, which is how much dmg gets inside.

3) Turn 3 - He rolls a 4. 4-2 = 2 so 2 pts get through and 2 are absorbed or ricochet off the armor. The armor is still at 2.

Make it similar here. It would have to be like devnulls ablative armor so it could be destroyed by the point. It would be very heavy say 10-20 kt per point. By having a band of "Metal" armor of say five points you would basically take 5 off of every weapon that attacks, at least until the band was worn down some.

The end results would be that large ships with "metal" armor bands would be much less vulnerable to lots of small weapons like from fighters.

I guess this was kind of the intention w/ emmissive armor, but this is different in that it is not destroyed when enough damage is done to penetrate. Instead it is just randomly chipped away as the battle progresses.

[This message has been edited by nerfman (edited 02 May 2001).]

[mottlee]

quote:

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Originally posted by 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.

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Some of that "wall of lead" was to get the poilet scared so his aim was off too but yes it took a lot of lead to kill em!




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mottlee@gte.net
"Kill em all let God sort em out"

[Lerchey]

so far, this has beena really good discussion. As was pointed out, the typical (WWII-ish) walls of lead, did not do much fighter killing. Heck, for that matter, flak cannons firing into bomber Groups weren't that effective at killing. Instead, since the AA did pose a threat, the figher or bomber pilots would be less inclined to close into a range which would make their firing/bombing accurate, and thus the overall effect was to reduce the *effectiveness* of the fighters and bombers.

That said, I like the changes in PDC vs fighters and main guns vs fighters. One thing to consider as a "fighter defense" would be to charge maintenance for fighters. This would make it expensive to build and maintain billions of fighters (hundreds at each planet!). Fighters (currently) are very expensive to maintain, so with the new, more realistic role, make maintenance more realistic as well.

Major John

[Omega]

I find point defense versus fighters in Version 1.35 to be quite balanced. In my current game there are two AI players that are using fighters. I have 3 PD cannons on all of my current ship designs. It is possible for six or seven of my ships to annihilate a swarm of 40 to 60 fighters without suffering any damage. You say you want point defense to be MORE effective? It seems to work quite well as it is.

[DaftWager]

Has anyone tried my new default strategies (interceptor and fighter/bomber) for fighters yet? They’re in the data mod forum, a few Posts down. I’d like to know what other think of them as opposed to the standard strategies.

They work very well for me, so much so that I don’t need PD ships 90% of the time against the Earth Alliance or other fighter races as long as my carriers have enough interceptors. I think it makes more sense to have fighters do the bulk of the fighter killing instead of PD. I know its just a game, but that bit of realism makes it more interesting to me.