Intending to try a fighter Mod

And see if you can improve on what i already done to fighters (see Inter-Related Tactical Conversion). Of course i have done a lot more than just modding the fighters, and the weapons they use are quite different than stock...

What i ended up changing in my mod :

-Reduced the capacity of carrier. How many fighters they could have was insane! I also changed drone launchers, satellites launcher and mine layer for the same reasons.

-Reduced the damage of fighter weapons. Fighter weapons get too powerful.

-Improved the point defense. It's not the damage they lack, it's how many targets they can track and attack at once (useless to shoot all batteries on a single fighter). In my mod, i started to experiment with "multiplexing". Seem to work really well. Of course i have still to figure out if i need multiplexing on every weapons or if i can just add the ability to sensors/ bridge/ Master computer etc. Now i have a serious trouble making my missile waves reach the enemy, and my fighters get shredded if they are not heavily armored (wich reduce their payload).

-Improved ship's armor. In my mod, ship's armor don't work the same, there is penetration and absorbtion of damage. Since fighter weapons are so weak compared to mounted weapons, they have an harder time piercing through heavy armor. Of course, they also get anti-ship weapons, weapons that cannot be used against other fighters.

-Improved dogfight. Fighter battle looked lame in stock. In my mod, they circle each others, trading shot in a deadly dance of death. Real fun to watch.

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Inter-Related Tactical Conversion v 0.53

http://www.rogepost.com/n/3594323592

Some very nice ideas there, I persoanlly would reduce the hull size of fighters.

How about making it so that light fighters after engines and cockpit can have a max of 3 components, such as 1 gun, 1 combat sensors and 1 ecm or armour.

Medium fighters then allow 5 comps, allowing them to add an extra gun and either ecm or armour.

Heavy Fighters 7 comps.

You could make a missile rack equal to 3 or 4 comps. Also if you give the missile racks (of any type) 1 point of ord storage and require 1 point of ord to fire, then it would become a single shot item (as long as you didn't allow extra ord stroage on the craft). By playing around with the suggested numbers you could change how this balanced out.

By massively restricting the number of weapons a fighter can carry it makes use of the full tech tree, without turning a single fighter into an instant capital ship killer.

I would also suggest restricting the amount of shields and or armour that a fighter can carry, as these are supposed to be tiny little craft even in comparison to frigates, so shouldn't really be able to out sheild a frigate even at 50+ tech lvl difference.

On the missile side would it be possible to put a script in place that makes fighters come in in waves firing their missiles simultainiously in an effort to overwhelm the defending ships PD as this is the sensible way for them to work.

Missile fighters should also fire their range 16 missiles when they are at range 10-12 too make sure their missiles have the range to reach a retreating ship, rather than firing as soon as they have max range which will make them fail automatically against a ship running away from them. These fighters should also imho ignore other fighters unless there are no other valid targets in the combat zone.

Would it be possible to put various roles and target priorties in for fighters? This would probably be easiest done in the fighter design script. Such as having:

1. CAP (combat air patrol - defence fighters), these will stay and gaurd the carrier / fleet that it is part of, or planet that it is launched from. (planetry defence fighters might need a seperate catagory from cap fighters)

2. Missile fighters (MF) - Missile fighters that go out to destroy enemy capital ships.

3. Air Superiority (AS) - These are anti fighter fighters that go out and hunt missile fighters 1st and any other fighters 2nd.

4. Missile Fighter protection (MFP) - Just a variant on Air superiority, that fly defence for missile fighters.

If you could make each section into a seperate fleet or task force it would make them far easier to control on a macro level. i.e.

1. launch AS fighters. Target any enemy fighters.
2. launch 1st wing of MFs and MFPs, setting target for MF as enemy fleet, or enemy baseship.
3. launch CAP
4. launch 2nd wing MF and MFP, attacking target selected ator just after launch.

Some of this might be a bit above the capabilities of the modding system, but I think its good to aim high

Area effect weapons would add a whole new level of defense against fighters... at range, anyway. That, alone, would probably reduce losses to fighters significantly.

Tactical mines would be good, also. They could be used as a defensive screen against fighters or dropped by fleeing ships to keep fighters off their back. Such mines could be made to be relatively harmless to capital ships but lethal to the much smaller fighters and, perhaps, missiles.

Of course, the fighters need some nerfing, but many might prefer stronger defenses over much weaker fighters.

Just a thought...

I like the idea of anti fighter mines, of course fighters could probably shoot these down... make it a balancing act between the mines ecm / stealth vrs the fighters combat sensors / advanced scanners. Area effect would very anice feature to add into this mix, making it a domino effect as mines tripped other mines would make this a very sweet thing to watch. Same goes for missles.

You could also expand this to make Narn like engergy mines (from B5) which are active weapons shot by captial ships at either fighters or other ships. Give them a huge range 20+ and a really slow reload rate (say 20 seconds). With an area effect of 1-4 squares with decreasing damage.

As to making PD stronger vrs fighters, it won't help much when you can have a single fighter dealing out 10200 (more if you are willing to have fewer than max engines) points of damage every 2 seconds. When half a dozen fighters can take down a fully tricked out crusier (lvl 100), and a dozen can kill one without taking any significant looses, at a fraction of the construction cost.

One thing i noticed about PD weapons is they can destroy several seekers in a row if they have damage left to deal. If you reduce the number of seekers, you should consider reducing the damage PDs can do each shots. With multiplex, you don't need massive damage.

In my mod i restricted what each fighter weapons could engage (same with ship's weapons). This create a weakness for each designs. A fighter loaded with anti-ship weapons cannot defend itself against "superiority" fighters, and a mixed weapon fighter isn't great at either job.

You should check the order of targets for each weapons. The game seem to put priority in the order they are entered. Fighters should engage stuff their own size before going for the bigger targets, theis would increase their survival rate. The same can be said for point-defense. With multiplex, weapons are more likely to switch targets, it's better if they target stuff they can kill quickly then resume the more difficult ones (seekers are easier to kill than fighters or drones).

Inter-Related Tactical Conversion v 0.53

http://www.rogepost.com/n/3594323592