Pathetic begging for more fighter weapons and modules

Gratuitous Forum Gratuitous Space Battles
1

Yes, I know that fighters aren’t quite perfectly balanced. I hear that, but I also know that Cliff is on it and I expect it to be solved soon.

That said, I am looking ahead. One of my favorite parts of this game is that we have fighters and they can be deadly if used well. I feel like we need more fighter modules and some faction specific modules to give fighters more flavor.

What we have now:

Two types of laser weapons, one of which works well, the other is prohibitively heavy (should be same weight IMO). Rockets and Torpedoes that do work pretty well against incoming frigates and capital ships but primarily do their damage against the shields.

Some holes that I see:

  1. We don’t have a dedicated anti fighter weapon with low power use for teams with lower power.
  2. We don’t have any kind of bomb. Think short range, high armor penetration, good damage, but no shield penetration. Even better if they can only carry one or two.
  3. We don’t have a fighter shield generator. This would be fun, especially if some fighter weapons couldn’t pierce it (but most or all frigate anti fighter weapons could)
  4. We don’t have a fighter mounted anti fighter missile. This is a no brainer, should have a minimum range.
  5. Fighter cloak module, should be relatively heavy but this would be fun!
  6. Most importantly, some special weapons for the races would give them some extra flavor.

Here are the proposed stats of these proposed modules

Weapons:
Name Cost Damage Fire Interval Max Range Opt Range Min Range Armor Pen Shield Pen Power Tr Spd Weight
Gatling Cannon 10 2 100 200 150 10 5 1 1.75 3.2 2.7 (maybe fed special weapon?)
Fusion HEAP bomb 45 14 3000 50 30 15 66 4 1.00 .6 10
anti ftr missile 10 5 700 400 325 250 3 4 1.50 3.4 4
Alliance dischgegun 15 9 1000 100 75 25 2 15 3.00 2.4 2
Imp ftr laser 20 5 400 350 260 40 8 6 4.50 2.7 2.7

EDIT to note that I think the ftr shield generator would be good for Alliance… it should have just enough shield resistance to block the lightest shield penetrating weapons such as gatling cannon. Giving it a resistance of 7 would make it invulnerable to the cruiser defense laser, which would be a great element. (cruiser pulse laser could still get it tho)

EDIT 2 to add: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE CLIFF, Please! =)

2

I’ve also been giving some thought to fighters and the modules that can be given to them. I may try turning my ideas into a mod, if that doesn’t turn out to be too difficult.

Several of the ideas you’ve proposed are already in my design (like bombs and fighter-to-fighter missiles). I’ve been looking at ways to greatly differentiate the range of designs, mostly by using a wide range of power requirements on different modules. Some cheap fighters will not need a separate power supply, while others will have some very high powered modules.

I may be able to post my design spreadsheet later today, as I’d love to hear your input on it.

3

If you’ve read anything I’ve posted you know I love to provide input =):

Also, another idea for a fighter module: Engine booster, a relatively light module that provides a boost to fighter speed (i.e. hopefully long enough to take out enemy light fighters, or make a bombing run) for the (relatively short) duration of the booster’s fuel.

4

OK, I’ve put my designs up on Google docs: spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key= … pT0E&hl=en

I think you may need to make a copy of it into your own Google account (or probably you can export it to Excel or Open Office) before you can play with the “Ship Builder” worksheet. Let me know if any of the ships you can build seem broken (speeds higher than 4, for example) or if there are more things that can be improved. It may take me until next weekend to find time to try and turn these into actual modules for the game (and then I’ll need to figure out how a gameplay mod will actually work).

5

I agree, Serpent, fighters need more variety. Only half of what’s there is useful and so much more could be done.

I hope Cliff isn’t just planning on fixing defects at this point. I think parts of the game could still do with much more material.

6

Is there any way now or in the future to allow ships to use weapons appropriately? There isn’t really a reason to (ie, if only fighters are in range, you don’t lose any ‘ammo’ or ‘power’ or anything by firing torpedoes uselessly at them) but if fighters were made more interesting it’d be nice to prevent them foolishly using their weapons on useless targets.

7

Liking these ideas.

IMO, fighters could do with an extra slot or two, to encourage greater variety. Dont really see why they should get so few slots just because theyre small - cos the modules are small too. Should probably reduce the stats of the armour/power generators etc across the board to compensate too.

8

That’s a good point with regard to the different item lists; indeed if the restrictions were relaxed you could make overpowered weapons frigate weapons that barely fit, or the fighter can load up half a dozen smaller weapons which limit them to anti-fighter or missile work. It’d be nice to see fighters with a bit of dakka that weren’t so good at slaughtering everything. :slight_smile:

9

I would be interested in seeing more fighter variety, but I would phrase it more as a request than a petition :stuck_out_tongue:

When I look at the Star Wars universe, there are a whole slew of different mainstream fighters that give some clue as to the possibilites. Here are a bunch from the Tie Fighter/X Wing games.

Rebel Alliance -
A-Wing: Super fast and agile interceptor. Fragile, lightly shielded, little to no armor.
X-Wing: Armored and shielded fighter. Could carry a good complement of warheads to make it viable against fighters and capital ships.
Y-Wing: A cheap, slow, heavily armored and shielded bomber. Carried a large amount of warheads and laser types to allow it to tackle all kinds of things (just not interceptors).
B-Wing: An expensive, slow, heavily armored and shielded assault destroyer. Could take on everything the Y-Wing could but was more expensive and took specialists to fly.

Empire -
TIE Fighter: The common or garden variety TIE Fighter had no shields or armor and rarely mounted warheads, and the bare minimum of anti-fighter capabilities.
TIE Interceptor: A TIE Fighter with a souped up engine and marginally increased firepower (warheads were still a luxury).
TIE Bomber: A TIE Fighter with a double hull, some armor, the same anti-fighter capability of the TIE Fighter, but also carried a plethora of warheads.
Assault Gunboat: An expensive, slow, heavily armored and shielded assault destroyer. Could take on anything. So delicious. So expensive.
TIE Advanced: A TIE Interceptor with more powerful engines and shields that matched the rebels main fighter, the X-Wing.
TIE Defender: A ridiculously overpowered thing with a a metric ton of shields, a souped up engine, great missile payload, and two different laser types.
Missile Boat: A gunboat that traded all of it’s different laser capabilities for better shields and an insane missile payload.

I would like to see the options available to Fighters increased, period - I would also like to see some greater variety in the hulls. You should be able to look at a hull and go “okay, this guy is going to be slow no matter what, so I should choose between making it a bomber or a brawler” or specifically go hunting for the hull that will meet the holes in your strategy.

In my opinion, the minimum number of Module spaces on a Fighter should be 3. That’s an engine, a power plant, and (either) shields or armor. However, by increasing the number of Modules to 4, you now have the option of switching out the armor/shield for another enginer for super fast fighters, or another power plant to upgrade the weapons…and more.

More options = greater variety.

I would FURTHER like to see the squadron size as an option to modify in the fighter categories OR be allowed to customise the individual payloads in the squadron. I don’t want the whole squad kitted out with laser painters, but I would like SOME laser painters. It would be good if I could say that this one ship would be the squad leader, with the best shields and weapons as a reward for their experience, and give them some rookies to lead…or make 5 fighter kill teams, whose job is to seek out and hunt down enemy bombers only, and so on.

It’s annoying to have to blow a huge amount of crew on fighters when only half a dozen will provide the role you need, and being able to customise exactly how many they are would be helpful in tidily using up that last bit of your budget before hitting Battle.

10

How’s that? More apt IMO.

11

LOL

That’s a little TOO humble :smiley:

12

Changing what fighter modules are available is scary because the huge effect it can have on game balance, but it is certainly something I’d like to get done. I am also attracted to the idea of there being variable sized fighter squads, but that involve a bit of digging to ensure nothing gets broken (plus lots of fiddly AI for selecting the size of the squad).

13

Awesome.