Destroyer-sized Carriers?

[Cordane]

Should hangars be available for Destroyers? I'm bringing this up is in part because hangars are essentially balanced out as a Medium slot "weapon", and even when paired with PD are the same size as similar bow modules in Destroyers, and because Strike Craft start showing up for stations at around this general tech level.

 

[Mitchz95]

Escort carriers used to be a thing, so why not?

 

[LordMagus]

Hangars are useless at the moment, it takes too long for them to reach the enemy and deal damage, and usually by that point a number of the carriers are already destroyed. If they would survive the destruction of their carrier until the end of the battle, they'd be more useful.

 

[Cordane]

I'd like to add that I'm not advocating for Destroyer-sized carriers in a vacuum (no pun intended) - there are a number of other balancing efforts that need to take place, including hangar regeneration, flight speed increase, significant PD revisions, which would help make strike craft viable regardless of where they're launched from. I just wanted to split this one piece out to see if there is an interest in an early-game small carrier.

 

[Xantec]

It would be interesting, and the destroyer's role as picket defense in the game could be nicely augmented by loading it with fighters. But without
limiting them to only carrying fighters and without forcing their fighters to behave as a CAP versus regular strike fighters, I think that adding a hangar slot to the Destroyer class would be too overpowered.

 

[genrtul]

Hangars are actually a "large slot weapon", taking the equivalent of four small slots. Not a big difference, since destroyers can also mount large weapons. Maybe you just made a typo.

 

[dying0d]

Why is it, the 2 realistically plausible weapons types suck the most?

Kinetics I leave in a grey area because the issue with targeting and some of the theorized physics regarding them, but they're also a realistic possible space weapon.

But, if space emperium is what we do, fighters would be cheap screens necessary to that branch of warfare. As well as an in atmosphere contingent where large ships possibly could not go( barring some crazy anti grav or huge struts or something so it didn't crash, plus engineering troubles of applying the gravitational stress to the hull)

Missiles being self guiding and super long range would probably be a large ships main weapon, easiest to implement etc.

But to the point, yes I'd love fighters on everything, and for fighters not to suck completely (same with missiles).

Would be interesting in the early game to see vettes plus small strike carriers flying about vs whatever is meta now (Kinetics Kinetics and more kinetics...)

 

[Summin Cool]

I was thinking a drone variant ie a medium sized fighters might be something worth throwing in. Something for Corvettes and destroyers.

 

[dying0d]

I'd personally like to see the corvette class made into anti fighter picket ship, rather than just a cheap moving hp ball with quills it sits in in the game when the other ship types are introduced.

Tbh, I want fighters on every ship, not as a weapon per se, but representative of what would plausibly be included in a fleet in space. Most Sci fi tropes are present but the lack of the intermediary craft central to space combat across most Sci fi world's, that is the small fighter craft, makes me sad.

Could be the basis of a combat rework, each ship has a contingent, you select what that contingent is made of, be it fighters bombers whatever, and they're part of the combat potential of the ship. Like how auras are on spaceports, something simple like 1,2,3,4 wings or whatever you wish to call them on ships, to represent their presence.

Ship vs ship combat would remain the same, but you could have fighter superiority buffs to combat if you have better or more fighters good pdfs coverage etc.

Problem 1 with this would be it removes the hangar bay completely (which I don't mind, it's about useless as it stands now) and one less line of tech to research

 

[aprogressivist]

Escort carriers used to be a thing, so why not?

Technically you already kinda have escort carriers in there as cruiser-sized carriers.

 

[Cordane]

A Destroyer with a single hangar would not be overpowered, regardless of what strike craft are aboard or in what roles.

First, a Cruiser has access to the Hangar module in the Core section of the ship. This has a single hangar and two PD mounts - hangars grade out at maybe a touch larger than a Medium slot, while PD slots are just under a Medium each. Vanilla-Stellaris has three different Bow sections for Destroyers - both the Artillery and Gunship modules have the equivalent of 2 Medium slots offensively and 3 utility, while the Picket Ship module has equivalent of 2 Medium slots "offensively" (one M-slot is PD) and 4 utility. If the Destroyer Hangar module has 1 hangar and 1 PD slot, it's right in line with the first two Bow modules - if the insistence is on having 2 PD slots with the hangar, you could reduce the utility slots to 2 Medium and possibly a single Small. Regardless, all that's left for a vanilla Destroyer is a Stern module with either a single Medium mount or two PD mounts - even if they go with the Medium offensive mount, it's not much of anything.

Second, even with significant improvements including in-combat hangar regeneration, strike craft are still vulnerable to PD and so their burst damage-per-day is not going to carry through comparative to that which can be done by other Medium-slot mounts on Destroyers throughout a fight.

Third, especially early on, Destroyers won't be able to launch their fighters from extreme enough range to keep themselves from enemy fire, especially once the fight starts and they follow everyone into the furball anyway (at least in vanilla).

Last, having some versatility with Destroyers, to where they're useful against something other than Corvettes and smaller, would I think be of benefit to the game.

 

[The Founder]

Should hangars be available for Destroyers? I'm bringing this up is in part because hangars are essentially balanced out as a Medium slot "weapon", and even when paired with PD are the same size as similar bow modules in Destroyers, and because Strike Craft start showing up for stations at around this general tech level.

This has a single hangar and two PD mounts - hangars grade out at maybe a touch larger than a Medium slot, while PD slots are just under a Medium each.

All my calculations say hangars are large Slots equivalents and have always been:
http://www.stellariswiki.com/Talk:Ship_designer#Slot_theory_for_class.2Fsection_balance
XL = 2 Large
Hangar = 1 Large, 2 Medium, 4 small
Torpedo = 1 Medium, 2 small
Point Defense = 1 Small

 

[Cordane]

Technically you already kinda have escort carriers in there as cruiser-sized carriers.

But those are just Cruisers that traded in a gun or two for a flight deck - a Destroyer with a hangar would be almost exclusively a carrier, much closer to the ratio of a Battleship with hangars in each of the first two sections. I'd prefer to see that Cruisers get a Bow module with a hangar to give them a more hangar heavy build or just an available hangar that doesn't dominate the big part of the ship.

 

[Cordane]

All my calculations say hangars are large Slots equivalents and have always been:
http://www.stellariswiki.com/Talk:Ship_designer#Slot_theory_for_class.2Fsection_balance
XL = 2 Large
Hangar = 1 Large, 2 Medium, 4 small
Torpedo = 1 Medium, 2 small
Point Defense = 1 Small

If Hangars are a Large-slot, then Destroyers could still mount a Hangar with no PD alongside in the Bow section and then have either a Medium or a pair of PD in the Stern. If the thought is that a Hangar cannot exist without PD in the same module, then trim back a Medium utility slot to pay for 2 PD.

 

[BrokenSky]

It might be cool to have hangers on a destroyer, but it might well be it's only weapon, so the Destroyer AI might need a special case for having hanger+PD only.

 

[dying0d]

I'd say it would be carrier + the rear 2 pd/M slots.

Carrier module fore would be the same utility as the M slotted fore, but only have hangars as armament

 

[The Founder]

It might be cool to have hangers on a destroyer, but it might well be it's only weapon, so the Destroyer AI might need a special case for having hanger+PD only.

The destroyer is already using "Stand off" setting. The ideal one for carriers.

 

[Mitchz95]

Technically you already kinda have escort carriers in there as cruiser-sized carriers.

That's more like a light carrier. Escort carriers were used solely because they were cheap and easy to produce. According to Wikipedia: "Of the 151 aircraft carriers built in the U.S. during World War II, 122 were escort carriers."

On the other hand, escort carriers were slower than light carriers despite being smaller. So maybe add a speed penalty to the destroyer if it uses a hanger? Players could still counter this with afterburners, of course.

 

[Cordane]

On the other hand, escort carriers were slower than light carriers despite being smaller. So maybe add a speed penalty to the destroyer if it uses a hanger? Players could still counter this with afterburners, of course.

Probably unnecessary to exactly parallel reality here - the escort carriers were slow because they were cheap. The Stellaris equivalent would be having access to Tier 2 or 3 thrusters and deciding to only install a Tier or two lower to save on Minerals.