Fighters! What are they good for?

[Puke]

everyone seems to think that PD is too strong, and missiles too weak. even the DevNull mod made missiles more powerfull.

right now, you can stop a barrage of missiles if you have at least as much point defense. point defense is smaller than a missile, so with equal size ships a point-defense / direct fire ship could in theory hold back everything a dedicated missile ship can throw, and then return fire.

this means that to make a sucessful strategy, you have to do one of two things. one, swarm with fighters and missiles, using superior numbers and larger fleets. two build ballanced fleets so that your enemy must waste space on point defense, but you take advantage of direct fire weapons and combined arms.

either of those make for good gameplay. reballancing the game so that an equal sized missile only ship can take out an equal sized point defense ship does not, in my opinion, make for good gameplay.

[Suicide Junkie]

If you've reduced the size of a weapon that already does more than any other AND fires faster, you've lifely got a major balance problem.

Compare the Damage/Kt/turn reload, and see if they are still reasonable (between 0.75 and 1.5)

PS: Could you post the stats for these missiles?

[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 02 October 2001).]

[Intruder13]

Could ECM or shields be added to CSMs?

[Phoenix-D]

"Could ECM or shields be added to CSMs"

No. EDIT: Clarification: there is no way to do that without a hard code change. The only attributes you get for the missles are speed, damage, and damage resistance.

Personally, I went the Decoy/devnull (haven't played devnull, but I heard it does this) and put in decoys (1 damage missile with really jacked up damage resistance) Also a AutoMissile launcher, which fires once per turn, but at the cost of larger size and lower damage.

You really have to be careful with the decoys though. The missiles move in order of launch, which is the order you put them on the ship. PD engages the first missiles. So if you put the decoys on Last, they're pretty useless.

I also added fighter missiles and fighter decoys, and more PD. *Big* pain to balance this stuff..

Phoenix-D

[This message has been edited by Phoenix-D (edited 03 October 2001).]

[CW]

quote:

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Originally posted by DirectorTsaarx:
You'll also find that seeking parasites fire every TWO rounds, vs. THREE rounds for other seekers. And the parasites are faster too. Don't recall how much damage they can take, nor how much they do, but I REALLY dislike fighting against organic races because of the seeking parasites.

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It also means that I could build my DNs (with 11 parasites each) faster than others could build their PD ships! On the other hand I don't think it is faster than a Plasma missile, a parasite does a lot less damage too.


[This message has been edited by CW (edited 03 October 2001).]

[dogscoff]

Actually Devnullmod maks mor than a few changes to missiles and PD:

First, he added extrnal mount Versions of all missiles - less space but only one shot per combat.

Second, he added sprint missiles.

I haven't seen any decoys yet.

Third, he split PD into 3 distinct Groups.

Fightr point defence: Long range, 20 kt, can hit fightrs and seekers.

Regular point defnce: Medium size, medium range, and the first tech level is available at the start of the game. Cannot target fightrs.

Mini point defence, which takes up 5 kt and has a range of one or two. These are good for defending yourslf but no good for defending your fleet. Again, can't target fighters.

It's a good systm, and well balancd IMHO. I'v played it pretty extensively and I find that there is no clear winnr between seekers, fighters and PD.


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[Rhinestone Cowboy]

Has anybody tried this fighter strategy?

Build massive amounts of your favorite fighters in a border system, Pre-invasion time. When the time is rightmove them to the wormholes and use carriers/transports to drop them on the other side. (after the wormhole defenses are taken care of)

Instead of tying up your carriers in the fleet they can keep dumping fighters into the front lines.

If you really like micromanagement you can have a string of fighters moving from ALL your colonies towards a front line.

Carriers strictly become Ferries (don't need a lot of engines or weapons or armor)

I have not tried this vs a human opponent yet, but it certainly overwhelms the AI's.

It really helps keeping the big warships in one piece while the unused colony build queues pump out the fighters.

Just a thought.

RhineStone Cowboy