[Error] Fighters can't dogfight anymore

After 5 minutes, 12 seconds and 6/10ths of a second three squadrons of fighter, each armed with a fighter laser produced not a single solitary casualty on any side. One fighter had a speed of 2.42, the other had a speed of 3.28. Switching the faster fighter to pulse lasers had no effect other then slowing it to 2.98, neither side was able to hurt the other. Using a fighter with a rocket launcher and a speed of 4.29 leads to the same result. Putting a torpedo launcher on a fighter lets it get killed, but if you have a fighter over a certain speed they’re uninterceptable by other fighters. I don’t know for certain but I think this has to do with their new turn radius, I also suspect it wasn’t your intention to remove dogfighting from the game. I also don’t know what the change did to the ability of other ships to effectively intercept fighters but I suspect that there’s a massive loss of anti-fighter ability across the board.

EDIT: I just watched 3 squadrons of fighters kill 29 frigates and 1 cruiser, and each frigate had at least 1 tractor beam and a small fast firing weapon, an ion cannon I believe, and 3 fighter squadrons won with 27% left. Before the update that setup just ate fighters and spit them out. It doesn’t confirm it but it does reinforce my opinion that there has been a massive degradation of anti-fighter ability.

Yeah-- I noticed this yesterday too. I’ve used a ultra fast laser fighter (3 squadrons) to pretty much wipe out normal/hard/insane modes of the first 4 scenarios with the current imbalance. That and the problem you describe of fighters not being able to attack other fighters… I’m sure this will be addressed but currently it is a pretty big game fun destroyer / imbalancer… :slight_smile:

Interesting. The turn speed change shouldn’t have made that big a difference. I am currently balancing, and will be increasing the ability of fighters to kill each other. I will also look into the likelihood of anti-fighter weaponry working.

the number of times fighters get caught by tractor beams and then escape without ever coming under fire is rediculous. Perhaps there should be an override where any fast-tracking or otherwise anti-fighter weapon will prioritise something tractor’d by its own ship primarily, and also anything tractor’d by another ship otherwise?

I agree that a ship should target something it’s caught in a tractor beam

I had the problem that my fighters simply passed attacking fighters and attacked the fighters that protected the enemy´s cruisers, frigates etc.
You should add an order that enables the fighters to attack incoming enemy fighters instead of getting shot down by the fighters protecting the enemy capital ships.

THIS!