Making Carriers and Fighters more usefull.

[dmm]

To me, it seems that real world fighters have 4 advantages over ships:
1) Much faster. This should be easy to implement in a mod.
2) Much harder to hit, due to: a) small size, b) speed, and c) maneuverability. This should also be easy to implement in a mod.
3) Separate units, so you have to kill them one at a time. IRL, big guns are useless agains fighters, not just because they can't track the fighters, but also because this tactic is incredibly wasteful of supplies. This could also be implemented in a mod. Ideally, the hard code would be changed to prevent any weapon from killing more than one fighter at a time. But one could simulate the effect by giving fighters and missiles a very high defensive bonus and giving PDC a partly offsetting offensive bonus. The net effect would be that regular weapons would still kill a whole lot of fighters in a group if they hit, but they would almost always miss, thus canceling out the mass-kills on the average. (So if your dreadnought had lots of shields+generators or organic armor plus it had a quantum converter, then maybe you could plan on using regular weapons as fighter defense, but otherwise this would be a sure-fire losing tactic.) A simpler solution is just to not let regular weapons target fighters at all, ever. IRL, if you have an all-battleship fleet with no APC and get attacked by a carrier group, you're dead, end of story.
4) They can get close and choose the exact target area for their weapons. In SEIV, there are no "critical hit" rules, so this translates as much higher damage for a given vehicle size. This is readily modded.

On the other hand, IRL fighters have these disadvantages:
1) Much more limited supply. This has two effects: a) They have to be transported to a battle by a carrier (or refueled enroute, with advanced tech), and b) Long battles require re-supply by the carrier, which takes time. In SEIV, we have a difficulty, because we want fighters to have a high speed (e.g., 10 just for starters so they have a battle speed of 5) but we don't want fighters zooming around systems. Part of the solution is to give them small supplies and make their weapons use small supplies. Thus, they can zoom around during a 30-turn battle but can't go more than a few sectors before running out of supplies. The other part of the solution is to make fighter weapons of three kinds:
Large size, large damage, large reload time, and medium tech weapons that can only target ships (i.e., torpedoes, anti-ship missiles);
Small size, medium damage, large reload time, high-tech weapons that can only target fighters (i.e., air-to-air missiles); and
Small size, small damage, firing every turn, small supply use, low-tech weapons (i.e., machine guns).
2) Much more fragile. Fighters should be hard to hit but easy to destroy. (Same with missiles BTW. Drones too?) Since SEIV insists on grouping fighters, you'd have to reduce the damage done by PDC also. The reason for doing this is to allow fighters to destroy each other in dogfights with their "machine guns" but not allow "machine guns" to take out a heavily armored/shielded dreadnought.
3) Their carriers are fragile, not very fast, single-use vessels. They don't have the internal structure to carry heavy guns. If you can mod in a rule that carrier hulls can only carry regular-size weapons, then that would make things more real and also help with the exploit mentioned by someone.

That's all I can think of for now. Hope this helps.

[Fyron]

In SEIV, we have a difficulty, because we want fighters to have a high speed (e.g., 10 just for starters so they have a battle speed of 5) but we don't want fighters zooming around systems.

That is easily solveable. Separate the movement and supply abilities of engines. Works great for all vehicles, not just fighters. Divide size, cost, etc. of engines in half and remove supply abilities. Add "reactors" that are the same size as the new engines, and have those removed supply abilities. This works especially well in a QNP engine system, where there is no silly 6 engine per ship limit, as it provides even greater flexibility in vehicle design. For fighter reactors, just give them lower supply storage than the equivalent stock fighter engines would give them.

3) Their carriers are fragile, not very fast, single-use vessels. They don't have the internal structure to carry heavy guns. If you can mod in a rule that carrier hulls can only carry regular-size weapons, then that would make things more real and also help with the exploit mentioned by someone.

This is also fairly easy to accomplish. It requires setting the sizes of all carriers to _never_ be the same size as a warship. Then, you need to add a lot more copies of large, heavy and massive mounts, giving them ranges of minimum and maximum ship tonnage that do not include the carriers. So, you might make the Light Carrier 810 kT instead of 800 kT. Replace the stock Large Mount with 2 large mounts. One has a min size of 400 and max size 800. The second has a min size 811 and no max size. This effectively cuts off the aforementioned 810 kT Light Carrier from using the large mount.

[Suicide Junkie]

4) They can get close and choose the exact target area for their weapons. In SEIV, there are no "critical hit" rules, so this translates as much higher damage for a given vehicle size. This is readily modded.

Or, why not use armor/shield skipping damage?

[dmm]

Suicide Junkie said:

Or, why not use armor/shield skipping damage?

Very interesting suggestion. Really changes the nature of fighters. I think the weapons in that case would need to be range 1 only (since you are close enough to be "inside" of their shields and/or pick out "seams"). You could even combine this with a weapon that targets a specific component, like shield generators or self-destructs or bridges or PDC. So your strategy might be to have some very fast fighters with close-range weapons that disable the enemy somehow, then you bLast them with powerful stand-off weapons (from ships or "torpedoe-bomber" fighters) or maybe board them or maybe just leave them stranded. Meanwhile you defend yourself from enemy fighters with "interceptor" fighters. If the enemy fleet doesn't have good fighter defense, it will never reach you with its big guns. Of course, if the enemy has anticipated your strategy and has good fighter defense, you are doomed. Maybe your fighters should all have a secondary strategy of "kamikaze."

[Yef]

Well, what I did with the modified Version of Proportions that I'm using, was to give the fighters' engines a combat movement of 6, separated from their strategy movement, so if they would move 10 strategy, which would be 5 tactical, they would get 6 more movement points in combat for a total of 11.
It looks awesome in combat, with the defending fighters launching out of a planet to intercept an incoming fleet, but it have a little side effect: since the fighters only fire before movement or after movement, when the target is halfway their total movement points, the fighters tend to move back and forth between two combat squares until they use up all the movement points, and only then fire their weapons.
It's kind of annoying, but you can think of it as dogfighting.

I liked the idea of adding to their hull defense bonus, so I will add some more of it, so the regular ships' guns can't hit them at all, while adding to the fighters weapons hit bonus, so they can still be effective against other fighters.

I also twiked the Fighter Attack strategy, so that fighters would engage other fighters first, achieving air superiority, and only then attacking the enemy capital ships, and leaving planets for Last.

-I reduced the small rockets and small torpedo components to 3 kt, so that every fighter can carry 2 guns (damage between 2 and 4) and 1 missile/torpedo component (damage between 30 and 60).
- The life support component got eliminated, since I thought it was irrevelant for a short range fighter (I don't use fighters strategically because the AI doesn't) To make it sound better, I added to the description of the Fighter cockpit that it "contains advanced targetting systems and limited life support equipment".
- Addittional hit and defense bonus to the afterburners, since their combat movements doesn't add up to the engines combat movement.
- Fighter hull price lowered to 1 mineral per kt to allow for mass production.


I also twiked the carriers a bit:
- The fighter bay component to 20 kt, so you can carry 100 fighters in the Light Carrier, and still have room for 3 shield generators and 3 PDCs.
- Fighter bays can now carry the 4 fighters it can launch, without need for cargo components.
- The Light Carrier to 820 kts, to add 1 more crew and one more life support components, since I thought a wing of 100 fighters should use quite a number of tech and maintenance personal.

And that's about it.
I liked several of the ideas in this thread, so I will probably add some of them.

One problem I have though, its that I haven't quite managed to make the AI to mass-produce the fighters.
Last weeek I put in the build file to "build at least 100", but I don't know yet if it's working. The other entries says "Build per planet", I think, but I don't know how that works exactly (20 means 2 per planet?)
Help here please.

[Aiken]

Yef said:
Last weeek I put in the build file to "build at least 100", but I don't know yet if it's working. The other entries says "Build per planet", I think, but I don't know how that works exactly (20 means 2 per planet?)
Help here please.

If AI has 10 planets under control and Planet Per Item := 50 used in construction file then it will build 2 ship/unit. With 20 planets it will build 4 ship/unit. In short: ships_to_build = total_planets/(PPI/10).

Imo, Planet Per Item entry is not very comfortable for mass unit construction, because even with 100 planets and PPI := 1 AI can build 1000 units max, which is quite small amount for such a developed empire. Gradually increasing amounts in Must Have At Least entries is better for this purpose.

[Patroklos]

I am not really sure what you guys are talking about, I find fighters to be an unbalancing element in the game. Even in the latter stages they can more than deal with conventional vessels. The problem is you have to micromanage your economy to build, transport, and load fighters to your carriers as they are destroyed. Most players just don't excersise the control to keep it rolling.

Conventional ships are build and forget.

[Fyron]

Add 4 PDC cannons to each larger warship. Fighters fall in droves...

[Patroklos]

Which of course the AI does almost universally, and I can still own them everytime. Sure I lose alot of fighters, but they don't take up maintenence, so there is really no upper limit to me swarming any size fleet.

And that isn't to say conventional warships are worthless, and I use them in conjuction. However, I can always win with fighters.

But you have to be willing to manage the constuction queues of a hundred planets, manage a transport fleet to get them to the battle fleet, and keep that system safe. I am anal enough to do so, most aren't.

[Grandpa Kim]

Imperator Fyron said:
Add 4 PDC cannons to each larger warship. Fighters fall in droves...

Patroclus was much to gentlemanly. I say "Balls!"

It's all a matter of how you use them and how many.