Strike Craft Need Some Love, Cherryh 2.0

[bbswfan]

Just throwing this against the wall, but might strike craft be better off flying and fighting as a wing? Basically have them set as a pseudo-ship that flies toward the opposing fleet and then paces its target vessel, while the "individual" craft change their visible formation to mimic the tight-turning swarm desired. Mechanically, it might work closer to a single ship with full-rotation turrets, with the "hit point losses reduce effectiveness" being closer to "% effectiveness = % hit points" - perhaps in more discrete blocks - to simulate the more 1:1 ratio of "craft" to firepower. Reinforcing the wing would differ significantly from current, as unless the entire wing is destroyed, the replacement craft would appear as part of the wing at its location and not necessarily visible travelling between the carrier and the wing (although maybe as basically a projectile). Changing to a single target for flak and PD would require some additional balancing.

Just a thought...

I like the idea. Solves two problems, one having to balance stike craft damage against L slots used on battleships, and two the problem of all fighters being erased from battle when their carrier dies. Might be easier for them to balance if they were their own ship class as well. And yeah, the reinforcement thing would be an issue, but perhaps they could make that the unique mechanic benefit of a strike craft wing over a corvette. You pay for the damaged strike craft wing like you would any new vessel, but perhaps they would instantly spawn into their wing instead of travelling across the map.

However, they would have to add a whole new ship class with it's own unique mechanics, and that is a bit a work, and considering what has been done with strike craft so far, they don't seem super high on their "total overhaul" list of things to do which is why many of the suggestions in this thread try to envision them within game systems that are already in place.

I rather like the idea though

Ooo, or these strike craft wings would spawn from cruisers/battleships. Few ways you could do this, for every cruiser or battleship sized vessel, you are also allowed to build "x" amount of fighters to accompany them, and this build option is available from the fleet overview when you click on that fleet. Another idea the "Hangar" slot becomes sort of a mobile shipyard that can only build fighters, and each Hangar slot increases the "command point limit" for fighters that the fleet can sustain. If the carrier dies, the remaining fighters stay with the fleet, but they can't reinforce until their "command point limit" is restored.

Again, love the idea, but as you can see, it just sent me down a rabbit hole that would probably work great, but also require quite a bit of dev time, time I think they'd rather spend elsewhere.

 

[GloatingSwine]

First off, why? Prove your argument is wearing clothes. Why would we have to change ALL of combat in Stellaris if fighters had the longest range? And yeah you could triple fighter range, it's no more arbitrary than any other combat balancing decision they've made. Hell, you could make it triple the range of Titans, ships would still start flying towards each other and executing their combat scripts.

Because to make their range matter, they have to have vast speed, and there's a limit to how fast things can turn in the game engine. (set the turn limit too high and things litearlly stop and turn on the spot, people tried this with missiles back in the day).

It's a mechanical limit of the engine.

You disprove your own point with the fact the two fleets are moving towards each other to begin with, they won't have to travel 230 if they launch from 250, especially if they target corvettes as their first target priority, not batteships. Also, no one said it was impossible to slow down battleship combat speed, and you are missing a pretty simple solution as well. Just decrease artillery range a bit. No one sat down and proclaimed all L and XL artillery weapons the only way to win in Stellaris just because. Make them more like artillery we see in other sci fi franchises. Make those big guns on the huge ships more like broadsides vaporizing vessels at closer to medium range than long range. XLs maybe about 100 Photon and Kinetic more like 70. This would make cruisers more valuable as well. Getting those powerful weapons in range quicker than their battleship counterparts or spec into missile platforms. Keep the Titan Ion Cannon range, it's a nice reward for investing in the tech and would make their range unique.

That returns us to the state of 1.0 where all combat was an indistinguishable blob with everything parked on top of each other. Weapons ranges were doubled so you could tell what was happening.

Also, again, you can't make the range different enough in the size of a Stellaris system.

Then missiles and fighters still get their moment in combat before the big battleships start exchanging their massive punches. You contend that the fighter role would be simply aesthetic because I don't suggest they effectively take out battleships the same way L and XL artillery weapons do, but you should think of fighters as the "skirmish" phase of combat instead. Where fighters meet enemy fighters, corvettes, and destroyers first before the cruisers and battleships have made it to the fight. They could still play a crucial role in deciding the battle, especially if an enemy's PD or missile strike capabilities are severely damaged. The core of my suggestion is that fighters should be made a more effective part of the missile portion of the weapon's triangle (or whatever shape Stellaris combat system actually is).

If they don't cause casualties in that phase, they have achieved nothing. A ship with 1HP can fire a giga cannon just as effectively in the first alpha strike as one with 3000, because the HP penalty is to rate of fire which only affects subsequent shots. It's cold maths, the casualties produced in a free fire engagement are proportional to the square of the difference between the forces. If one side's alpha strike causes massive casualties and the other side's does not the side that caused casualties wins by a huge margin.

All of my current suggestions have been made with the way space combat in Stellaris currently works. It is not my preferred use of fighters, but it is a way that they could be made relevant in Stellaris again considering the way systems currently exist. The systems are already in place, changing things like launch distance and target priority are things that just need numbers adjusted slightly and computer "if than" statements tweaked, but those are already there. No need to reinvent the wheel.

They're not though. Run the simulations for yourself. Mod strike craft range to something daft like 600 and fight them against artillery ships. The range will help far less than you think. Pay special attention to how long they spend in range before the artillery ships get their first shot and the casualties caused by it.

 

[bbswfan]

Because to make their range matter, they have to have vast speed, and there's a limit to how fast things can turn in the game engine. (set the turn limit too high and things litearlly stop and turn on the spot, people tried this with missiles back in the day).

It's a mechanical limit of the engine.

I never argued the turn radius point with you, and like Jin pointed out, all that would need to be done there is increase the range of their weapons so that their turn radius never takes them outside of their weapon's range, so once they are on a target, they stay on it until it's dead.

That returns us to the state of 1.0 where all combat was an indistinguishable blob with everything parked on top of each other. Weapons ranges were doubled so you could tell what was happening.

I have the biggest issue with this point. Is combat more or less fun to watch now? Because that's why they made that change. The answer is undeniably no. I get to late game, and the fleets never even meet in combat. Destroyers are insta ko'ed, cruisers slightly afterwards, and after the second volley, half the corvette fleet is vaporized. The point of increasing ranges wasn't to make artillery insanely powerful and invalidate the weapon's triangle, it was to make combat more interesting to look at, and it isn't. The increase in ranges works fine until artillery invalidates everything else late, pairing back the artillery would help combat, and don't pretend like it would be a return to the chaos of 1.0. If L artillery had a range of 70 and XL 100, that's still nothing like when mid range was 30, and I'm not suggesting shrinking the weapon's range of any other weapons, just the artillery, so their engagement distance is unchanged.

Fighters should be fast, and yeah they probably should be faster compared to larger ships, but we could just slow down the larger ships instead of making the fighters look silly fast. With the suggestion that battleship artillery range be cut back and them being slower, that would mean combat takes place in phases. One with the fast ships and fighters and two with the capital ships. It wouldn't be as much a mess because ships would enter combat at different times because of their speeds. If one side has a skirmish line and the other doesn't, of course there should be an advantage there.

Also, again, you can't make the range different enough in the size of a Stellaris system.

Well if that's the case, what's the harm of making it the max? 1/3 a system compared to a whole system, since they suck so bad, it shouldn't matter at all should it? It seems we can agree here. I'm not saying that would make them instantly good, just that they would be more useful, and the fighter respawn rate would actually come into play in some battles in this case.

If they don't cause casualties in that phase, they have achieved nothing. A ship with 1HP can fire a giga cannon just as effectively in the first alpha strike as one with 3000, because the HP penalty is to rate of fire which only affects subsequent shots. It's cold maths, the casualties produced in a free fire engagement are proportional to the square of the difference between the forces. If one side's alpha strike causes massive casualties and the other side's does not the side that caused casualties wins by a huge margin.

They would cause casualties. According to their stats, they have the damage, and the tracking to crush corvettes. As long as they have the weapon's range to stay on them so their turn radius doesn't take them out of range of the target, and the target priority to focus them first. That should be their role in combat. Hurting enemy covettes and destroyers before the big boys clash, and yeah, there should be an advantage to actually killing ships. Just like any fleet comp gets an advantage for actually killing ships in combat. What I am proposing is making changes so that fighters can kill ships too, not the nothing they currently do. Their target prioirty and lack of role cripples them.

They're not though. Run the simulations for yourself. Mod strike craft range to something daft like 600 and fight them against artillery ships. The range will help far less than you think. Pay special attention to how long they spend in range before the artillery ships get their first shot and the casualties caused by it.

Yeah, I know because of all the issues and bugs we've already pointed out. Target priority also has to be adjusted, and if the turn radius can't be fixed because of hard coding, their actual weapon's range needs to first be adjusted so that their turn radius doesn't take them out of range of their targets. Then we can run the numbers. We know the results with the current equations, we've run the numbers, that's why we are proposing changing the variables.

You keep bringing up arguments for making fighters as competetive as other top tier damage dealers in game. I'm not even suggesting that. I realize that a lot would have to be redone to retool fighters to that degree, although I'd like to get there someday. All I am suggesting is some semblance of a role again for fighters in combat, which currently, they do not have. If fighters were to act as a counter to PD for missile fleets, able to take out enemy corvettes and destroyers before they had a chance to take out your own corvettes, that would at least give them a purpose, freeing up the corvettes to take free runs at the enemy's battleships.[/QUOTE]

 

[Jin_Cardassian]

They would cause casualties. According to their stats, they have the damage, and the tracking to crush corvettes. As long as they have the weapon's range to stay on them so their turn radius doesn't take them out of range of the target, and the target priority to focus them first. That should be their role in combat. Hurting enemy covettes and destroyers before the big boys clash, and yeah, there should be an advantage to actually killing ships. Just like any fleet comp gets an advantage for actually killing ships in combat. What I am proposing is making changes so that fighters can kill ships too, not the nothing they currently do. Their target prioirty and lack of role cripples them.

Exactly.

Strike Craft won't be killing Battleships as well as XL/L builds and that is completely fine, because that is not what they are optimized to kill. They kill the smaller screening vessels, primarily the Corvettes and other Strike Craft. These are in any case far more likely to be rushing forward at the head of their respective fleets, so even if Strike Craft don't get close enough to the enemy Battleships to target and kill any before they get an alpha volley off, they will be close enough to target Corvettes and kill some of them before they get into into torpedo/small range.

Just consider the current meta that declares torpedo Corvettes are still too powerful. Here you have a suggested build for cutting them down; one that Battleships and Cruisers can also retrofit quickly in case an MP opponent tries to Corvette spam.

And christ the solution to speed/turn radius limitations in the engine is so blindingly obvious. Just increase their weapon range and/or kill the limited firing arc. @GloatingSwine, you assert an alleged requirement to completely overhaul the combat system to make this idea work. What is wrong with just changing those two parameters instead?

EDIT: Just thinking about this makes me want to see a hangar bow section for destroyers all the more. Imagine paring that with an interceptor stern for 2x S slots and a Strike Craft wing. That would be a fun Corvette shredder.

 

[SpectralShade]

it seems there are different opinions of what fighters should be.
It seems some just want to view them as a weapon like a beam attack, while others want them to be more flavourfull.

What I personally would love, is to see them more flavourfull.
This means that, no, they don't need to be able take down a capital ship before said capital ship gets to fire off an alpha-strike.
They DO need to stay in the fight until they individually are shot down, and not vanish like magic if the carrier is shot down.
In MOBA terms, I want that you could think of bombers as a "dot". They're launched, and they just keep doing "damage over time" (hence the term, dot) until dealt with. Ideally, a carrier battleship versus your stock alphastrike battleship would be a draw. Alphastrike ship blasts heavy into the carrier, and the carrier retreats or dies at some point. After this the bombers keep harrassing the alpha strike battleship while its 'large weapons alpha loadout' makes it unable to deal proper with the fighters and eventually suffer the same fate as the carrier it offed faster.

Why would anyone bother with carriers even at this kind of 'balance' I hear some say. Simple: scaling.
Take the above scenario and make it 5 carriers, 10 alphas. same result due to inability to deal with the dots: a draw where both fleets need to retreat/dies.

This would mean that you needed to consider the tactical aspect of defence against bombers, or your fleets would just die the death of a thousand cuts against any decent carrier fleet.
Then we could have fighters shooting at bombers again, point defence against fighters becomming important (make flak the "effective" anti-missile, point defence the "effective" anti fighter/bomber).

Add fighter/bomber tech to counter tracking of point defence/flaks (ECM technologies), and you start having an interesting development where you need to broaden up your fleet compositions rather than just use one ship type/design for all.

edit: maybe you would need to fiddle with the 'retreat numbers' for when hit by fighters too, but that would be something the balanceteam would fiddle with.