Stellaris Devs, can You Please Take a Look at Strike-Craft Balance?

[Mímisbrunnr]

Stellaris Devs, can You Please Take a Look at Strike-Craft Balance?

In the existing 2.x versions as they currently stand [prior to 2.2, which may or may not change things], strike-craft are horribly underpowered.

Some of these reasons include, but are not necessarily limited to:

1.) They move too slowly and take too long to reach the enemy fleet to engage in a fight, in contrast to the long-range guns that can also occupy the L-slot like Kinetic Artillery or Neutron Launchers. This has a significant negative impact on their damage-dealing potential.

2.). They have too large of a turning radius between attack runs and are not attacking all that effectively in the meantime. This means that much of their theoretical damage output is wasted even when they do get in range, as they are often spending more time turning around than actually shooting at their targets, wasting the time in which they would otherwise be able to get in more shots. This also vastly lowers their effective damage output.


If not in 2.2's release itself [although of course it would be strongly preferable], can you at least strongly consider taking a look at it and fixing some of strike craft's issues in a hypothetical 2.2.1 or 2.3?

Because at the moment in 2.1, strike craft are largely a waste of a weapon slot and not worth using. Which really is a pity, as I love the idea of them. I want to be able to use carriers in my fleets and have star fighters battling without the feeling that I'm purposefully sabotaging myself to a significant degree.

 

[Lumion32]

I agree, I would suggest giving them 360 firing arcs and just let them circle the enemy. The travel time could be balanced by giving ships with fighters huge, possibly syste, wide engagement ranges, that would specialise them and give them time to close the distance

 

[Mímisbrunnr]

Those would be cool ideas.

Some fighters in Star Wars like the Y-wing have a rotating turret on top of them, so that could work [360 firing arc].

Even without that, scrambling the fighters as son as reaching a system with enemies in it could also be a major help. You could send out the fighters that way even before engagement with the big guns, potentially, and that way by the time the big guns enter range, the fighters might have had a chance to close in to the target, giving them less of a lag in damage output.

 

[CuddlyTurtle]

Honestly at this point I'm surprised they haven't just removed them entirely, they've been hot trash since the game came out and barely anything has changed about that.

 

[Mímisbrunnr]

I'd rather they not remove them though - I want to be able to use them. Having grown up with Star Wars, the idea of them is just so cool - I WANT to be able to use them without intentionally using something that is almost useless in their current state.

 

[KingAlamar]

I kinda wish that Strike Craft were scrambled the second you jumped into the system. Of course I also wish they were their own 'ghost fleet' so you could position them how you'd like. If you're expecting that you're going to get jumped AND you know where the enemy is coming from why not give them a nasty surprise when they finally do jump in.

I also agree with 360 degree firing arcs, better targeting choices, better turning radius, etc.

While it would take another patch to do this I'd like ships to have variable speeds in game. Think "normal" sub-space speed and "turbo" speed. This might help the Strike Craft in various different ways that would be useful.

 

[Mímisbrunnr]

There was Combat Speed vs. Sublight speed as separate stats earlier in the game.

But yeah, Scrambling fighters immediately would be a good idea. It would make sense as precaution/escort.

 

[KingAlamar]

There was Combat Speed vs. Sublight speed as separate stats earlier in the game.

But yeah, Scrambling fighters immediately would be a good idea. It would make sense as precaution/escort.

I forgot about combat vs sublight speeds earlier but you're right. As for the pre-scramble if you have a chance of deploying your fighters pre-battle it may help with reducing travel time to the target among other things.

 

[Mímisbrunnr]

Heck, depending on the engagement distance and strike craft speed, you could have it so that either Strike craft tend to be arriving at the time other guns are in range, or even allow them the first strikes [extending your effective range beyond that of the big guns because they can fly out ahead of the fleet].

 

[Foefaller]

I seem to remember someone saying that strike craft don't suffer from the damage debuff after a jump drive use, since they are a ship that spawns after the fact, making them suprising good for ambushing in that matter.

Give them a wider engagement range, better damage, and survival/replenish mid battle, and they could become pretty awesome.

 

[Zeelilus]

Honestly at this point I'm surprised they haven't just removed them entirely, they've been hot trash since the game came out and barely anything has changed about that.

Not entirely true, they've never been the single most powerful weapon for their slot size, but there *have* been patches in the past where they were as usable as any other weapon that isn't flavor of the month broken. Their current pathetic state however makes them not worth the energy they take to power, let alone compared to every other weapon in the game.

 

[Mímisbrunnr]

And yeah, there is something truly flawed with their current implementation when " not worth the energy they take to power" has been shown in "fleet-collider" vs. tests that other people [not me personally] have done to be LITERALLY true.

Wasn't it like 1.8 or 1.9 where we really had a good strike-craft implementation?

Devs, we would like to see a return to a time like that insofar as strike-craft performance goes.

 

[Baron Jukaga]

They also need a dedicated carrier hull to go along with a general strike craft rework.

 

[Greenslade]

Can we maybe merge all the "please rework strike craft" threads because there are a lot of them.

 

[MarkAngelo]

There have been so many of these threads, it’d be nice to see some sort of response on the matter...even if it is merging all these threads. I think a post just saying “you’ve been heard and we aren’t going to get to it till next year” would be nice...otherwise it would be cool if they just did some sort of hot fix for these. They’ve been useless since forever and they are the coolest thing to put in a weapons lot for me. I wish they worked.

 

[KingAlamar]

And yeah, there is something truly flawed with their current implementation when " not worth the energy they take to power" has been shown in "fleet-collider" vs. tests that other people [not me personally] have done to be LITERALLY true.

Wasn't it like 1.8 or 1.9 where we really had a good strike-craft implementation?

Devs, we would like to see a return to a time like that insofar as strike-craft performance goes.

Around 1.8 or 1.9 I did some testing that showed that Strike Craft actually were better than even the good old 422 Battleships in certain circumstances. Certain FEs were esp. vulnerable to Strike Craft and against other FEs they were still a viable choice.

 

[Mímisbrunnr]

Beyond that, the poor Strike Craft in this version seems to really hurt the Fallen Empires, since they deploy a bunch of strike craft themselves. Augmenting their strike craft would make them pose a better challenge.

 

[Fogmind]

Here's a random thought: How about letting strike craft shoot down incoming missiles?

(And if that makes missiles under powered, just buff them.)

 

[Ariphaos]

Here's a random thought: How about letting strike craft shoot down incoming missiles?

(And if that makes missiles under powered, just buff them.)

Interceptors do. Fighters used to, but they got removed and now it's just 'bombers === strike craft'.