proposal:
an optional battle condition (deep space can’t be traversed by non-FTL fighters?) that limits the amount of fighters by carrier bays. 64-80 (4-5 squadrons) per bay sounds about right
pros:
balances carrier bays
brings out carrier class ships, more variety in cruiser design
provides realism without effecting gameplay for those who do not desire it (optional nature)
paves way for the campaign where fighters (non-FTL capable) cannot realistically travel as fast as cruisers
cons:
coding can be a bitch
side note:
suggesting frigate carrier bays (light, small bays for maybe 1 squadron on frigs)
Love it, especially for campaign-type game. Could even go along with tweaking fighters in some way–the better they get, the fewer squadrons per bay, and it wouldn’t be much tweaking, maybe something along the lines of improving the “bomber” role…
Side note: rather than basing this on squadrons directly, could be some way of measuring fighters–number of modules, size, even cost–that makes for factional variety. In other words, the same fighter design for faction X might take up more or less space than the exact same fighter design for faction Y. Also, fewer big, heavy fighters fit into the same bay that more, smaller, lighter fighters fit into.
In essence, this imposes a universal supply limit for fighters on all battles. . . .
[quote=“gunnyfreak”]
problem:
as is, fighter bays are quite useless
I disagree with this minor point when it comes to having many squadrons in a battle–dozens, even a hundred or more fighters can be returned to battle by a cruiser equipped with fighter bays. Other topics have addressed the problem with those “fixed” fighters being returned to battle willy-nilly, which often reduces their effectiveness, especially now that we have “stick together” orders.
One way of gauging this is to leave “cautious” orders on fighters in a battle where there is no carrier. Watch the left side of the battle screen. There can be a LOT of gimped fighters hanging out there after a short time… Fighters with damaged engines are lucky to get away; fighters with damaged weapons are decoys waiting to get shot…and neither are damaging the enemy.
I use fighter bays all the time guys, And I like making carrier cruisers. I tend to have a 4 to 1 ratio, 4 squads of fighters to one carrier bay. Sometimes more in the case of my eve-online mod as EVERY ship has a carrier bay. (new release to be released later today, Sunday the 24th.) Though I am going to pour over my data and remove the drone bays off the ships that do not have one in eve-online.
I have yet to see the fighters being hit in carier bay as put up here, but i have had fighters go up with the parent craft if they are docked and it blows space high. Anyways I gota run, I have a ferox to get outa of enemy held space in eve. Wish me luck.
Fighter bays are quite useful in the campaign. I can return hundreds of fighters to battle.
I wish fighters had to be carried into battle in fighter bays and launched from there. Only around your planets could you have “lose” fighters. When attacking you’d have to carry them in. Of course, that would not work with the current challenge system, and Cliff has done a great job merging the two systems together.
I also wish that if you have a fighter bay present in your fleet you did not need to do all the work to set cautious orders. Remember to set it at “1%”, so your fighters have a chance of getting away and getting fixed!
I don’t think fighter bays are useless, but I like this proposal – especially if fighters do not require pilots. The whole “limited pilots” thing is a little bit weird.
Instead, cruisers and frigate could have modules that grant “fighter support”. Perhaps you could even add fighter squadrons directly into the bays during Ship Design. Alternatively, if you like pilots, the number of pilots a ship requires could be based partially on how many fighter squadrons it is carrying. I think it should also be based on the size and class of the ship, rather than a flat “one per ship”.
In addition, I think the following changes would be cool:
Fighters burn fuel to fly around. Faster fighters burn fuel faster. A fighter that burns all of its fuel is “exhausted” (its engine goes out, but weapons may still be operational). Fighters can refuel by returning to a friendly fighter bay. Fighters can also be equipped with fuel tanks, but of course these add additional weight and cost, and take module space.
Tractor beams could be used to tow in damaged or exhausted fighters into a repair bay. Some fighters may even tow friendly fighters into a nearby bay.
Fighters with missiles, rockets, torpedoes, or bombs must periodically return to a friendly fighter bay to reload.
Refuel, repair, and reloading takes supplies, but supplies regenerate over time. This means that a fighter bay will last the whole battle (unless your opponent has something to say about it), but a single fighter bay could get overloaded if you have too many fighters on the field and not enough fighter bays left.
What if there are no fighter bays?
5) Fighters that are near an unavailable fighter bay and need to refuel will “power down” and act like exhausted fighters (speed 0, no fuel consumed) until an available fighter bay comes within engine range.
6) Fighters that need to reload will continue to fight normally as long as it has functioning weapons if there are no available fighter bays nearby.
I know that would require a lot of new work for “fighter jocky” AIs, but it would look really cool on the screen and make fighter/carrier deployment another tactical consideration.
By default, I imagine fighters should only go back to resupply when they are out of ammo in all limited-ammo weapons, barely have enough fuel to make it back to a friendly bay, or the Cautious order is triggered. They should be tracking a “target fighter bay” based on some calculation of distance and available supplies. (Fighters could have a resupply order that governs how likely they are to prioritize a fighter bay with a lot of supplies rather than one close by.) If another fighter docks into their “target bay”, then they may have to recalculate a new target or wait until the friendly fighter is done.
I like it, but again it would be a nightmear to code and work the bugs out of it.
HOWEVER before somenaysayer butts in. I Think the nightmare of coding will be worth it as something needs to be done with fighters to make them interact more with the game itself.
In Eve that have drone space, and what they call bandwidth, then they have light, mediue, heavy, fighter and bomber combat drones. Then they have armor, shield mantance bot , ecm bots, jamming, webbing and wrap scram bots, and mining bots. ALL of them are differant sizes and take up differant bandwidths. Light 5m3, and 5 bandwidth, mediums 10 and 10, heavys 25 and 25. the others i do not know as i rarly use them except mingin drones and starting to use armor and shield maintance bots. Nice things they are helped me save an armor tanked buddy in a wormhole sleeper site.
However i do have some issuse with what your saying, As for one A fighter should NEVER run out of fuel IF they have the cautions order in place and will return to a fighter bay at bingo fuel, However IF the ship that it is heading to or is trackign is blownup it may have to retrun right away for fuel or if there is none avaiable IE all ships with bays are blown up then It will fight untill it is out of fuel and use its Last bit to push it toward its edge of the screen, and drift the rest of the way.
The more your engine provides the faster you will burn fuel YES! ! ! Fuel tanks as an added module YES! ! Non-energy based weapons needing to rearm and reload YES! ! ! Tractor beams to tow in damaged fighters NO! ! !, they are for defence and though CAN be used in this fashion I feel that they would be used by stupid AI to move damaged fighters to a dead or used up fighter bay without proper coding. Fighter bay suppiles regenerate over time YES! YES! YES! PLEASE ! !
You have to add a “Cautious” order to the fighter squadron.
Click the fighter group.
Click the “Add Order…” title bar/button just above “Attack Fighters” (top left of screen).
Double click “Cautious” (the dialog goes away).
Click the new “Cautious” order, and slide the bar to 1%.
You are good to go. They will repair themselves and return to duty if you have a Fighter Bay present in your fleet.
