Defense

Depends if your playing the AI or players

With the current state of the AI not often being in a superior position, even when given full advantages, generally things like starbases and satellites I find impractical to build, since they take a long time. Ditto weapon platforms. If the AI can manage to put up a good defence and constant counterattacks so you can't just roll over a system in a single turn or two and keep going, then they become much more practical to use, since you have to deal with their fleets running into your home system.

Against players.... well, all depends

i hate to agree, but i'm going to have to...

i would go as far to say that you need no defense but a semi-decent offense against the AI - at this point.
That's a whole 'nother conversation(s).

Anything that tuns warp points into barrel-shooting seiges of course is effective - since the defender gets to concentarte fire on single, sequential targets...

Stuka87 suggested a AI defense doctrine...
which i think was all valid, but the most "new" idea was that Fighters are probably the best system-garrison units.

In my games, i find I tend to rely an awful lot on satellites - even on advance.

My personal best defence would be to have Badger dig a trench in his back garden a proper WWI fighting trench 8 feet wide 10 feet deep with firing step and a small dug out all properly shored up with duckboards etc. I would have him do this with a butter knife and a tea spoon. Not sure it would work in SEV terms but there would be less badgering on this forum I think....

Many Weapon Platforms. Damage is spread across them roughly evenly so until every last one of them has no shields and no armour, their weapons can't be disabled. Furthermore, it deters people who just want to capture the planet, as then they'd have to blast the facilities and people into semi-ruin before they can safely get some transports through. Especially if there's a decent sized troop garrison such that 1 suicide frigate with 1 cargo bay can't hope to carry enough troops for a conquest.

Bases I'd imagine would be more useful for defending say... the inside of a storm cloud - somewhere you can assemble a fleet without the enemy knowing how strong it is. Heck, even build a fleet there. Also great as shields don't work in there so if you've gone heavy armour and they haven't, they're buggered. Get to early stellar manipulation and you can make your own storms of course.

Point is, bases shouldn't be defending planets (or warp points for that matter). Bases work best when they're at the centre of the map, not the all-important planet. So they're less for 'defence' and more for 'securing footholds in space'. As in, an otherwise 'empty' sector of space suddenly made important, e.g. because of a vast fleet being assembled there.

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

Just to weigh in on this - all you need are fighters to defend. Fighters are cheap and mobile. You can build them on any system. They can intercept enemy units in-system. They can be used to guard warp points. Later on, they can be carried off by ships to defend/attack other systems. All you need are fighters. Masses and masses of fighters.

I think SE-V has too many unit types as it is. All you basically need are two types of units - fighters and ships.

Drone - small ship with warhead and kamikaze pre-programmed.
Base - big ship with no engines.
Satelite - fighter with no engines launched into space.
Mine - fighter with no engines launched into space with kamikaze pre-programmed.
Weapon platform - fighter with no engines left on the ground.
Troop - fighter with only ground movement.

If you were to eliminate all of these redundant unit types, there would be far fewer techs to research and the game would go faster. Think about it, what do you enjoy more about the game? Watching masses of ships and fighters ripping into each other OR tweaking with tech bars to get the most out of your limited research points?

Let us enhance the game to make the best of what we enjoy the most in the game. That's my philosophy when it comes to modding a game. I've done it for Diablo and I'm doing it for SE-V.

"Do not be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed." - DVader

Ahahaha, I'd go insane if I only had fighters and ships to play with. Never mind the issue of never being able to have a Base Space Yard (BM allows this from turn 1), Weapon Platforms are what make planets hard to take down and Satellites are what make planets easy to take down.

Besides, I don't care if the enemy has 500 fighters, a 30-ship fleet in dense formation will chew through them all with minimal losses (in BM, especially if I have crystalline and/or organic tech coupled with Emissive Armour). But a 30-ship fleet can't handle a 100 drone assault AND 100 fighter assault if the former are extremely heavily armoured (with Emissive too). Let's not even think of what a 100 Weapon Platform defence would look like - factor in Mounts to extend range.

Fighters are versatile. There is no question of this. But they're not the best at everything.

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

Um . . . I don't think you quite get my point. I'm not saying eliminate the strategies employed by the various types - just eliminate the number of types to make things simpler.

For instance, if you want to build a mine, take a fighter hull with no life support, no cockpit, no engines, no defense, add an explosive warhead, add a mine CPU, launch it into space and set strategy to Kamikaze.

To build a weapons platform, take a fighter hull with no engines, no life support, no cockpit, add a weapons platform CPU, add some weapons, add some defense and leave it on the ground.

To make a troop unit, take a fighter hull, .... and so on.

It just seemed a little redundant to me that you have to research multiple chassis when you just reuse the same one over and over again. Maybe I'm just thinking too modular or object-oriented.

Oh, and as for fighters taking on masses of ships . . . it can be done quite successfully. Each of my fighters pack around 500-pt Shields. Yes, the ships will scorch a few on the way in but once they come within anti-proton range (60), it's over. Remember that fighters also have that nasty evasion percentage and I usually enhance that with ECM(+25%) and combat sensors (+25%) on top of their nasty attack percent bonus. The hardest part of operating fighters is keeping them fueled up when launched from ships and fixing them afterwards.

These are just my observations. I'm not out to prove anyone wrong or rile any feathers. Thanks for reading.

"Do not be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed." - DVader

To me the system moving fighter patrol is a cheese tactic. (Since the Ai doesn't ever use this tactic.)

Try using the same tactics as the AI for a more challenging game. Using Fighters is like the Modern yank's fighting the Jap's of WWII.

Again, "It's the variety, scope, and scale... And most of us love tweaking, that's why we're here" javaslinger.

Stated it best.

Its not that you can use a Ship as a drone, it’s that you "Have" drone's to begin with.

Its not that you can make a Fighter become a mine, it’s that you have "fighters".

If you want a multi-purpose fighter, make one. But don't deny others the chance to make mine's, WP's, drones, etc.

(As to the unstoppable Fighters. Yeah, it works against the brain dead "ai". But against a Human controlled Escort specialized with point defense weapons. Then it’s another story. Any mass produced Unit will overwhelm the Ai. Against a human, they can be easily countered. When and if, The Ai learns to Counter Design strategies. Then The AI will be like the old "modded" SEIV AI.)

Kato, which mod you talking of, or are you discussing Stock? If so, then there is indeed no discussion - fighters beat all. PD is uselessly underpowered and fighters are breakingly overpowered.

Either way, a single chassis trying to do everything wouldn't work. Never mind different mounts, it couldn't do different weapon sizes (normal vs miniature). If this is simply a matter of trying to cut down on the number of research bars you have to worry about, then why not change the tech tree such that some kind of "Unit Construction" tech upgrades all the unit chassis types at once?

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

To clarify, I meant to suggest that SE-V has IMO several redundant unit types and that removing them would lessen the number of techs to have to have to research. For instance, no Weapon Platforms, no need to research weapon Platform mounts. Same goes for Bases and satellites.

I did once write a game that only had Ships and Fighters as unit types. The chassis were flexible enough that you could put on it almost anything you wanted. I guess that is what has so attracted me to SE-V, its easy moddability and all.

As for the fighter thing, why not make the stock AI more efficient with fighters? That's one of my aims. If fighters are so overpowered when used by the player, why not give the AI more of a fighter bent and beef up PD usage and PD investment by the AI.

I appreciate your input. It helps me design a better mod.

"Do not be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed." - DVader

It actually makes it easier to write tactics for the AI by using seperate ship hulls, since you can then define tactics based on the seperate hulls. If you set them all up using a 'fighter hull' you then have to lookup what it's being used as.

...with all due respect, I thot that was the point of the "type" setting in design?

Very well, that's the flavour of SE V you envision and it's a perfectly viable one. Balancing it will be up to you so it'd be interesting how you'll mold it. IMO, a single fighter shouldn't be able to do as much damage as an entire ship, which is the situation in Stock to my understanding.

Hah... actually you know what this reminds me of? Mobile Suits (read: Gundams), where it was the units that had all the power and ships only served as artillery and carriers. If you somehow get someone to replace the fighter models with mech (read: single-person 16m tall power suits) models, your mod would be great~

Yes... I await to see what you do with your fighter mod, especially in the components.txt

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

Heh, a mod where fighters do all of the work. That would be interesting. Too bad they can't get experience (and I'm not sure if they benefit from fleet experience).