Today, I’m going back to fighter design again for a bit. Back to basics.
The important factors in fighter design are:
Offensive Capability. This is a combination of raw firepower, the ability to deliver it, and effectiveness.
Defensive Capability. This is primarily based on speed, but could also potentially include armour.
Efficiency. This is based on the number of wasted resources – namely slots, power and hull bonuses – and the final cost.
These are basically the same for the other two hull sizes, with minor additions like shields and crew.
Currently, a fighter will have either one or two weapon hardpoints, which defines raw firepower. Based on this, the Federation is the most varied, and the Rebels are the most powerful. The Alliance and the Empire are both severely limited in this respect. I would suggest that at least one of each type of fighter should be available to each race, for better balance and variety of potential designs. The hulls-have-weight suggestion that has been mentioned would also help here – by making the two-hardpoint hull heavier, you help define and balance it. You would get either increased speed, or more hitting power, but not both.
The ability to deliver damage is based on the min and max range and on the speed of the platform. A high speed strafing fighter is much more able to deliver than a slow torpedo bomber that never reaches the target.
The effectiveness firepower is largely based – as with all weapons – on tracking speed and penetration. I feel that more options here would be handy. Have a cheap, rapid fire and fast tracking anti-fighter gun with no shield and very little armour penetration, a basic gun that won’t get through shields but will break fighter armour and weakly armoured frigates, and a heavier gun for anti-frigate work and chipping away at cruisers. In the same pattern, have fast tracking but slow anti-fighter missiles, anti-frigate rockets and anti-cruiser torpedoes. Three types of weapon, each designed for a specific enemy. To communicate this to the player, you could have a ship rating section with three bars, one for each type of target, that fill up when you add weapons. Factor in ship speed and maybe range, too.
For defensive stats, you can have two more bars and a blank space. The first is for speed – 1.0 would be weak, 2.0 decent, 3.0 good and 4.0 amazing. The second would be for armour, with the scale starting at zero and maxing out at the top penetration of anti-fighter weapons. The blank space would be for a shield bar on frigates and cruisers. Fighters don’t use shields, but leaving a space would make the interface more consistent.
I’m going to repeat my armour-on-the-outside-with-a-slider idea here, maybe in a diamond shaped slot below the ship. Pulling armour out of the general slots inside the hull would make for more balanced, and more varied designs – You can’t have too much armour, and you can always add a little without taking up a slot. Right now, it tends toward all or nothing designs, since one slot of armour may as well be ultra-heavy, rather than much weaker light armour in the same space. For fighters, this would also encourage a bit of armour on more designs, rather than the almost automatic “just add a second engine!” we have now.
I don’t think the current resource system is working with fighters. I’ve already mentioned the general problem of the two main types of fighters being backwards, plus the more specific but similar problem with pulse lasers versus standard lasers. I have thought about this a little more, and have come up with a drastic suggestion that I think could work: drop power use from fighters.
Fighters, in general terms, are not meant to be self sufficient. They carry limited fuel and limited ammunition. The reactor-and-some-stuff-running-off-it model they use now is the wrong model. They should not be like tiny little frigates.
Instead, make the key stats on each of the six weapons be weight and cost, with no power draw. Then, your little dogfighting fighters will be faster than your gunships, which will be faster than your rocket strike fighters, which will be faster than your torpedo bombers. Let the cost vary freely, and be the main means of balance.
So now you have one slot for armour, one or two for weapons, and no reactors or power. Now you have to add an engine…but how do you balance it without power? Maybe an engine-only slot…I think a triangle has a certain appropriateness. On fighters with one visible engine and one contrail, you get one slot. On fighters with two, either give them two slots (so that the fast-looking ships actually are faster) or give them one with the little hardpoint style set of lines to indicate doubling. Balance based on cost, with a range of engines that get sharply more expensive toward the top. Ship speed will naturally balance out based on the default weight of the hull and the number and type of weapons. Torpedo bombers will never be fast, even with a pair of engines…just a bit less sluggish and extremely expensive. On the other hand, an anti-fighter interceptor can be decently fast and quite cheap, or very fast and correspondingly more expensive.
At this point, you can either drop general slots from fighters entirely, or give them some actually interesting toys. Something like the target boosters on cruisers that makes them hit more accurately, or maneuvering thrusters that give them a bonus to their dodge without making them actually go faster on the map, or whatever. Something with more personality, that makes each design a bit more distinct.
For fighters, the only bar in the last section would be cost. By making it a bar instead of just a number at the top, it makes players a little more aware of the cost of their designs. (I personally don’t tend to notice the cost of my designs until some of them turn red on the deployment screen when I’m near the cost limit. In my defense, I’m so focused on the speed and power limitations that most of my designs either work or don’t work, and cost is not really a factor. The more forgiving and flexible design limits I describe above would steer players more toward effective designs at effective prices, rather than the system we have now.) Frigates and cruisers would add the bars for power and crew under this.
I think that racial bonuses on fighters are pretty pointless. The only one that’s any good now is speed (further benefiting the Rebels when it comes to fighters). Ten percent extra hull on a fighter is a rounding error, especially when a cruiser weapon gets a luck hit. Ten percent extra armour is a mean joke, especially on the Hornet – 2.3 default power and two general slots pretty much means reactor and an engine, and no armour at all. Extra power is rarely useful, because of the round numbers on almost all the modules and the small amount of power that fighters get. Plus I hate power and want it to go away.
I’d replace them weapon bonuses instead. Give a gun bonus or a missile bonus or a torpedo bonus. Make the different hulls more distinct and unique. Speed can stay, but only apply it to one hull per race – basically anything that looks fast should get it, but never overlap it with a bomber hull. Armour bonuses would also work on the stockier looking hulls if the armour-on-the-outside idea is adopted and fighters ended up actually using armour.
I realize that these are pretty significant changes, but as far as I can tell no one really enjoys designing fighters all that much currently, so it is a good place to start trying new design ideas. If they work on fighters, you can start rolling the appropriate ones on frigates and cruisers later on.
Thoughts? Feedback? TLDR?