[Answered] Aerospace Craft (Fighters, bombers etc)

[Me2005]

We don't want fighters engaging capital ships, it's a waste of resources and completely futile. Giving them armaments to do so diverts them from their only useful role, shooting down enemy fighters so your capital ships can hit harder and shooting down incoming ordnance.

You and I don't, but it sounds like other people do. Setting it up so fighters can frequently survive an engagement against a cap isn't impossible, and then it'd serve to teach everyone to use fighters for their proper role re: shooting down other fighters/bombers, and acting as a screen against or destroying ordinance; without outright annihilating them and leading them to complain "Cap's are OP, nerf them so I can attack with my fighters!"

[Holy Thunder]

Actually, with the time that it takes to reach the target, dumb fire projectiles would not be accurate. It is easy to calculate the velocity of the target and shoot where he will be, but then the projectile requires several seconds to reach it's target. This gives plenty of time for the target to change his course.

Missiles can be shot down by point defense systems just as they close in near the target. And because the target in this hypothesis is a small craft it does not need a very large PDS.

And as a last resort Armor and Shielding can defend against any hit that manages to get through.

We are strongly against one hit kills, so you should expect that we will make sure we provide small craft with enough protection to help it survive most anything but direct hits from capital ship guns.

The Devs seem to want to make small craft at least somewhat viable, and so they will be. IRL larger ships don't always have an insurmountable advantage, i.e. torpedoes, hypersonic missiles, nukes. When giant capital ships are truly unstoppable, it's just not fun for other players. The more plausible approaches to combat, the better.

[Niwantaw]

eh. I see no reason as to why a torpedo with a good damage to power usage ratio coupled with a large size that promotes mounting on a hardpoint like modern fighters carry that is slow but packs enough of a punch to disable systems with a well aimed shot.

AKA that's a nice turret you have there. It'd be a shame if anything happened to one of your primary turrets.

also I hope that there are both bubble and form hugging shields. With the former being much more efficient while the latter is not vulnerable to fighters getting under the shield and delivering their ordinance with the shields operational.

Or that's a nice exposed engine you have there. Ditto.

Just make them relatively difficult to reload via a magazine and slow moving. Meaning they are impractical to use on a cap ship (and the primary benefit of a neglable power draw is also not as important)

Fighters don't kill caps. I don't think anyone has ever said fighters should be able to kill capital ships unaided. But fighters can cripple some of a capital's systems and make them more vulnerable to the main fleet.

[Holy Thunder]

eh. I see no reason as to why a torpedo with a good damage to power usage ratio coupled with a large size that promotes mounting on a hardpoint like modern fighters carry that is slow but packs enough of a punch to disable systems with a well aimed shot.

AKA that's a nice turret you have there. It'd be a shame if anything happened to one of your primary turrets.

also I hope that there are both bubble and form hugging shields. With the former being much more efficient while the latter is not vulnerable to fighters getting under the shield and delivering their ordinance with the shields operational.

Or that's a nice exposed engine you have there. Ditto.

Just make them relatively difficult to reload via a magazine and slow moving. Meaning they are impractical to use on a cap ship (and the primary benefit of a neglable power draw is also not as important)

Fighters don't kill caps. I don't think anyone has ever said fighters should be able to kill capital ships unaided. But fighters can cripple some of a capital's systems and make them more vulnerable to the main fleet.

Clearly there is a market for Auto-Grammarfy.    But otherwise I can agree with that.

[Me2005]

eh. I see no reason as to why a torpedo with a good damage to power usage ratio coupled with a large size that promotes mounting on a hardpoint like modern fighters carry that is slow but packs enough of a punch to disable systems with a well aimed shot.

A large, hardpoint-mounted, high-damage torpedo could just as easily be mounted on a larger ship as on a fighter; the large ship just builds a bay/battery/giant wing and however long it takes to reload it takes to reload. If they're actually useful against other caps, someone will figure out a way to use them on board a cap. If it's basically dumb-fire, then it might be pointless to do so obviously; and if it's too inaccurate it might make it so it's just a difficult/useless weapon for anybody (fighter or cap).

However, that weapon existing doesn't do much for survivability of fighters, they'd still need to get close enough to fire. If you plan to mount the torpedo-equipped fighters in a cap and launch them when the caps are close together, that's a different strategy than the wolf-pack we've mostly been talking about (then it makes more sense to just include dumb-fire missiles and drop fighters again). From this quote:

I'd consider fighters more as a sort of 'smart missile' being deployed by another capital ship rather than being considered direct equals that could take on a defended cruiser one-on-one.

It sounds like that's kind of the direction the devs are planning for (carrier/battlestar-type combat).

I like the double-shield idea; if you make bubbles much more powerful/efficient than hull-huggers, it could help make fighters viable in direct combat. Fighters/smaller craft wouldn't need the power-hungry hull hugger to survive, anything that got that close would crash anyway. Large ships would have neigh-penetrable bubbles, but fighters could penetrate those and go to work on the inner stuff. Might even make sense to have bubbles be aggregate shields while the hulled-version are something else; again assuming fighters can get close somehow in the first place.

The Devs seem to want to make small craft at least somewhat viable, and so they will be. IRL larger ships don't always have an insurmountable advantage, i.e. torpedoes, hypersonic missiles, nukes. When giant capital ships are truly unstoppable, it's just not fun for other players. The more plausible approaches to combat, the better.

I'd argue it's a case of field conditions. Larger ships IRL may not have insurmountable advantage, but it's because you can field non-ship weapons against them (subs, aircraft, orbital strikes, etc.). Larger ships do have a neigh-insurmountable advantage against surface combatants; Battleships typically win against smaller surface vessels when in the open ocean, and the situation we've got in space is most similar to that of an open ocean with only surface vessels available. If all ships are equipped with nukes, it wouldn't make sense to field battleships, so everyone would ride around in PT boats. Even if torpedoes exist, no PT boat is getting close enough to my battleship to use them, since I can see it first (my large size allows better optics) and when I can see it it's in my range.

I agree with the premise, smaller ships should be viable in game: I do not agree that they automagically will be without some grand design on how combat should work. This isn't the kind of think you can come in and slap on later, it has to be inherent to the game. Last I checked in on Starmade, they were facing basically this problem: Large ships own small ships, every time; and any attempt to adjust that made it so large ships were pointless. It doesn't work to just adjust the values of damage done for X blocks, or to taper shield-power off, because then balance sways one way or the other. It needs to be a combination of many factors working just so to allow multiple classes to have a real, fun, place in combat.

My best suggestion to that end thus far is the one using multiple "spaces," which basically seeks to emulate seagoing combat. Snowdragon's one about interceptable cap-fire is good, but it places fighters into a secondary role (which isn't what I'm reading many of you as wanting). Launching fighters from a bay as missile-carriers also seems against the spirit of the fighter-desire as that places them aboard capital vessels meaning that, as a player, you'd still need a cap to fight a cap.

[Kane Loki]

eh. I see no reason as to why a torpedo with a good damage to power usage ratio coupled with a large size that promotes mounting on a hardpoint like modern fighters carry that is slow but packs enough of a punch to disable systems with a well aimed shot.

A large, hardpoint-mounted, high-damage torpedo could just as easily be mounted on a larger ship as on a fighter; the large ship just builds a bay/battery/giant wing and however long it takes to reload it takes to reload. If they're actually useful against other caps, someone will figure out a way to use them on board a cap. If it's basically dumb-fire, then it might be pointless to do so obviously; and if it's too inaccurate it might make it so it's just a difficult/useless weapon for anybody (fighter or cap).

Dumbfire torpedoes with little or no acceleration coupled with fighter-permeable bubble shields.  Anti-capital fighters would be dive bombers relying on their own inertia and proximity to deliver payloads on target.  Pilots might need a little skill to do this reliably, but I don't see an issue with that.

To clarify:  The primary purpose of bombers would be shield penetration, followed by taking out a capital's surface mounts.  NOT "sinking" the capital.  Mission-killing it by removing its ability to fight or flee, sure.  But not outright destroying it.

As for survivability - I don't like the idea of flat out gimping small turrets, so something on the fighter's end of things.  A stealth system, maybe - think Babylon 5 Earthforce vs Minbari.  Or active ECM on the part of the fighter's base, or a Battlestar Galactica Raptor-equivalent.

And fighters need a base, unless you want them to be useless after launching their limited ammunition.  A station, a carrier, or something along the lines of Homeworld's Support Frigate - somewhere to resupply.  It doesn't have to be involved in combat, either.  Leave it a short jump away with some active stealth to keep the enemy from finding it.

I don't like the idea of jump-capable fighters, but it's probably necessary to make them at least quasi-autonomous.

I suppose I should say that I'm in favor of capital-centric combat, but variety is never a bad thing.

[Niwantaw]

eh. I see no reason as to why a torpedo with a good damage to power usage ratio coupled with a large size that promotes mounting on a hardpoint like modern fighters carry that is slow but packs enough of a punch to disable systems with a well aimed shot.

A large, hardpoint-mounted, high-damage torpedo could just as easily be mounted on a larger ship as on a fighter; the large ship just builds a bay/battery/giant wing and however long it takes to reload it takes to reload. If they're actually useful against other caps, someone will figure out a way to use them on board a cap. If it's basically dumb-fire, then it might be pointless to do so obviously; and if it's too inaccurate it might make it so it's just a difficult/useless weapon for anybody (fighter or cap).

Yes. Wonderful. you have wasted a /large/ amount of space making a large bay to fire large, slow dumbfire warheads that while powerful... a conventional gun of the same size (inc. the support it'd need) would have comparable damage output and be a damn site more effective at the standard combat ranges a cap ship would expect to engage at.


(Not saying it's entirely pointless. I imagine a big ass rack of these would be great as a massive burst of doom weapon that if it hits is fantastic. Just not as a main weapon.)

[Cy83r]

Actually, now that I recall, there was a thread on /tg/ last week or so about naval/space combat, the Anons got to discussing IIRC a team of Italians running PT boats that effectively sunk many times their number in large vessels.  However, this is also noting that torpedoes are effective in naval concerns only because watercraft sink when large flaming holes are punched in their hulls just below the waterline.

If you had some weapon that caused a ship to leak hyperspace stuff into its interior and that like... eroded everything?  Maybe then?

[Czorio]

I think the main advantage of bomberbased weaponry is the fact that any potential for it to be shot down by PDS is minimal. If I fired 10 torps from my BC at your BC from 3km away, you'd have about 5-15 seconds (Depending on projectile velocity) to have your PDS shoot it down, rendering it useless. If I can get a fighter/bomber within 250m from your hull, it'd take maybe .5-1.5 seconds to have it reach your hull. That is an advantage enough imo.

[Me2005]

Dumbfire torpedoes with little or no acceleration coupled with fighter-permeable bubble shields.  Anti-capital fighters would be dive bombers relying on their own inertia and proximity to deliver payloads on target.  Pilots might need a little skill to do this reliably, but I don't see an issue with that.

To clarify:  The primary purpose of bombers would be shield penetration, followed by taking out a capital's surface mounts.  NOT "sinking" the capital.  Mission-killing it by removing its ability to fight or flee, sure.  But not outright destroying it.

As for survivability - I don't like the idea of flat out gimping small turrets, so something on the fighter's end of things.  A stealth system, maybe - think Babylon 5 Earthforce vs Minbari.  Or active ECM on the part of the fighter's base, or a Battlestar Galactica Raptor-equivalent.

Probably the best setup yet. Might need to be dumbfire rockets, but I'd take that. One risk though; Starmade does stealth this way and it still gets complaints (It doesn't do 'fighters armed with torpedoes penetrate shields' though, so maybe it'd work). The stealth might need to slowly fade in and out so that shots are harder to take, but it doesn't make the ship so equipped immune to fire or impossible to target.

(Not saying it's entirely pointless. I imagine a big ass rack of these would be great as a massive burst of doom weapon that if it hits is fantastic. Just not as a main weapon.)

It might be a glass cannon or support thing, but it could be possible. Fighters mounting such a weapon would need to be more effective at delivering it than a cap ship is mostly the point, otherwise a giant rack is going to be the favored use.

Actually, now that I recall, there was a thread on /tg/ last week or so about naval/space combat, the Anons got to discussing IIRC a team of Italians running PT boats that effectively sunk many times their number in large vessels.  However, this is also noting that torpedoes are effective in naval concerns only because watercraft sink when large flaming holes are punched in their hulls just below the waterline.

If you had some weapon that caused a ship to leak hyperspace stuff into its interior and that like... eroded everything?  Maybe then?

My issue with this isn't just that ships can sink (which could be replicated by having reactor/fuel/FTL/weapons explode spectacularly), but that you need to get those little ships close to the big ones to do damage, and that's easier to do in the cover of coastlines and islands than in the open ocean of space.

I think the main advantage of bomberbased weaponry is the fact that any potential for it to be shot down by PDS is minimal. If I fired 10 torps from my BC at your BC from 3km away, you'd have about 5-15 seconds (Depending on projectile velocity) to have your PDS shoot it down, rendering it useless. If I can get a fighter/bomber within 250m from your hull, it'd take maybe .5-1.5 seconds to have it reach your hull. That is an advantage enough imo.

But you need to get your fighter/bomber within 250m, so I've still got the 15+ seconds to fire on it. Small ships using stealth would be one way to deal with the issue.

[RLS0812]

  As of right now, folks have been having space "fights" in another simulator, and have found that small space ships can easily wreck havoc with slower moving large ships, even when the larger ship has a good sized crew.

 I predict in the future that large ships will mostly be support ships, while small ships do all the fighting and raiding missions.

[SnowDragon]

I think you'll find we're not concerned with other space games in this discussion. Basically, this is your problem.

Capital ships carry five times the armament of the fighter/bomber in their CIWS/Secondary arrays. (If not more)
They also carry five times the armour. (If not more)
They are also large, which increases their effective health (Health in this case being how many holes I have to punch in you before I hit something important, like the main reactor)

Small craft (Bombers, fighters, etc) Carry a small load of armaments, mainly PD.
They don't have a lot of armour and primary speed over defences on the alignment graph(effectively, thanks to the requirement of speed/agility)
They're also small, which decreases their effective health.

A frigate (Such as the Arachnid shown before in the picture) in any one angle of attack, carries at least five times the armament, (more if the the fighter approaches from the exact lines of axis (Top, bottom, left right)) of the fighter, using the fighter's own primary armament. For the fighter to engage the frigate, it has to get into the frigate's CIWS range, at which point the massive difference in firepower becomes clear. Numbers used for effect. Fighter gets into range, does two damage using two guns. Frigate is in range, does ten damage with ten guns. Frigate is using capital scale armour, and as such, is barely scratched. Fighter has taken the equilent hits from five craft of it's own size, and is likely destroyed, if not completely crippled.

Now, yes, you could use fifty fighters to make the damage to craft ratio even in the fighter's favour but it doesn't fix the main problem, Capitals are too large, and too heavily armoured to give a damn. And at the point of buying fifty fighters, you would be better off just buying a goddamn frigate and saving yourself the trouble. A fighter's role, without any other interfering factors (Game mechanics to increase their effectiveness) will be limited to intercepting ordnance and destroying enemy fighters so the capital firepower doesn't get intercepted. Mine's a mechanics issue, because a larger ship will always win a certain engagement.

[Hyperion]

What about using fighters to deliver bomb squads to diffuse invisible space minefields that are targeted to explode when a ship of sufficient gravitational presence is detected?

[Kane Loki]

If you had some weapon that caused a ship to leak hyperspace stuff into its interior and that like... eroded everything?  Maybe then?

Sounds like a reactor or warp core leak.  I have trouble imagining fighter-scale weaponry that could do that.  Unless we're lobbing unstable warp cores at each other?

Or maybe torpedoes would carry nanites/a weaponized alien virus that feeds on metal.  Untreated hits slowly become huge, gaping holes.

I think you'll find we're not concerned with other space games in this discussion. Basically, this is your problem.

Whoa, dude.  Watch the teeth.
I, for one, find the way other games do things to be quite relevant.

Fighter gets into range, does two damage using two guns. Frigate is in range, does ten damage with ten guns. Frigate is using capital scale armour, and as such, is barely scratched. Fighter has taken the equilent hits from five craft of it's own size, and is likely destroyed, if not completely crippled.

Are you expecting a 100% hit rate versus the lone, suicidal fighter?

A small group of fighters would have a much easier time of hitting you than you would them.  And if they had any brains at all, they wouldn't be trying to burrow through your armor.  They'd take out your weapons.

And at the point of buying fifty fighters, you would be better off just buying a goddamn frigate and saving yourself the trouble.

Fighters would be much faster to build, though.  That, coupled with the necessary size of their construction facilities, makes them easier to replace.

...without any other interfering factors (Game mechanics to increase their effectiveness)...

Funny, I thought game mechanics were defining factors.  As in, we will design our ships to work with the mechanics.  Not the other way around.

Granted, I hope the devs don't do something silly like making weapons do less damage to small ships.

What about using fighters to deliver bomb squads to diffuse invisible space minefields that are targeted to explode when a ship of sufficient gravitational presence is detected?

Those wouldn't be fighters, though.  They'd be minelayers.  Or utility craft.  Also probably pretty boring to fly.

[Me2005]

  As of right now, folks have been having space "fights" in another simulator, and have found that small space ships can easily wreck havoc with slower moving large ships, even when the larger ship has a good sized crew.

 I predict in the future that large ships will mostly be support ships, while small ships do all the fighting and raiding missions.

Interested to know which other sim. In a block-based world, unless there are inverse-scales applied, bigger ships = more power. At the very least, the big ship should be able to launch fighters at the incoming fighters to fend them off.

If you had some weapon that caused a ship to leak hyperspace stuff into its interior and that like... eroded everything?  Maybe then?

Sounds like a reactor or warp core leak.  I have trouble imagining fighter-scale weaponry that could do that.  Unless we're lobbing unstable warp cores at each other?

Or maybe torpedoes would carry nanites/a weaponized alien virus that feeds on metal.  Untreated hits slowly become huge, gaping holes.

I'd think it'd be possible. Make reactor blocks have low health and explode on death, require them to be exposed to vacuum in one way or another. Might be cool to require exposure to vacuum, but you could bury that exposure; ala the Death Star or the capitol ships in Firefox - that way fighters can try to fly down the ventilation shaft and blow the cap up. Of course, that might make them OP; it'd depend on how easy it is to KO them before they got to doing that.

...without any other interfering factors (Game mechanics to increase their effectiveness)...

Funny, I thought game mechanics were defining factors.  As in, we will design our ships to work with the mechanics.  Not the other way around.

Granted, I hope the devs don't do something silly like making weapons do less damage to small ships.

Game mechanics will define what types of ships are viable for sure. A limit to the number of blocks you could use could stop super-caps; a minimum number of blocks required for a ship to function (engine, reactor, cabin, weapon and you've got 4 blocks min.) could stomp out drones/tiny fighters. Weapons having different levels of accuracy; ammunition being a thing or not, heat dissipation, engagement ranges, block behavior when destroyed, terrain, physics setup; even preformance capabilities would all define what is useful or not. I'd like to see a setup where diverse strategies are possible, but that might require some wonky mechanics and good planning to make happen.