Carrier Battles Mod

[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...

---

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.

[ZeroAdunn]

Actually, I would set it up so each fighter bay can basicly hold one fighter of the corresponding highest available tech for the bay. That way, you can have two doctorines, either disgorge all your fighters at once, or relly on larger fighter numbers being disgorged in waves.

That is basicly the way it is in my mod, my friend I was playing against developed a tactic where he used massive baseships with hordes of fighters, but instead of ever seeing combat he used long range fighters entered a system launched all his fighters and then various targets in system, with his carriers never even seeing combat.

[ZeroAdunn]

Also: in regards to scaling components up and only having certain base components, I love it!

[Arkcon]

Yeah, that's the thing. Suppose I'm playing standard SE4, and I'm playing with fighters. I try to make attack fighters and interceptors with max engines and 1, maybe 2 tiny antiproton beams. The CAP fighters have the rocket pods, and that leaves space for only one engine, so they stay closer to the carrier. *SIGH* It doesn't matter really, in standard SE4, its hard to get enough fighters on a carrier -- much less enough of two types, and then they combine into groups at random.

But if you mod is inroducing new weapons, engines and propulsion rules, you could fine tune this some more. Give fighters specific anti-ship weapons, and specific anti-fighter weapons, to try to give them individual roles.

Another idea, when you get a halfway working mod. Setup a PBW game around it. That way it stays fresh in people's minds. For example, like with the small ships mod.

[ZeroAdunn]

I would also add combat to hit bonuses for smaller ships (escort - destroyer) to represent small antifighter gunboats that support the fighter screens.