Ultimate Ship

There's been a fair bit of talk on the forums about fighters being very powerful. I don't like to use them myself, and I haven't had the misfortune of someone using them effectively against me.

Another point is that the AI can't seem to defend itself against much of the 'advanced' tactics that a human player can devise. This is also 'griped' about a bit on the forums, 'kicking puppies' has come up.

Ideally a human player 'should' be able to counter anything you can throw at them given some time. For example if another player spends the research you used on fighters on technology against fighters, point defence and emissive armour for example, they should be on even ground with you.

I've read that the most effective counter for fighters is other fighters, but I don't really want to see fighters as the be all and end all.

To leave this topic open for discussion I would like to add that I am definitely not an expert on fighters, or even the game in general to some extent. So everyone else feel free to tell me I'm wrong.

Aaron has fixed the stacking shield generators bug in next patch.
You'll probably find that ships arn't so fighter vunerable after this.
And when he fixes multiple targetting for multiple weapons then that will make PD even more effective.
Fighters in the current version are however very powerful, but there are ways of countering them. Advanced sensors/master computer coupled with dedicated PD ships with heavy shields/armor as a forward escort can rip apart fighters before they get close. Especially with the 3 range tactic (load three different range PD weapons on the ship)
1 such PD ship can take out a much greater cost in fighters. So you only need a couple.

Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc

Many modders have taken a whack at fixing the FSD (Fighter Swarm of Doom), in my personal game I have added five Capital Point Deafness Battery Components Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon respectively. Of corse the game Im playing has so many personal changes that stock game is very different.

Really there is no" One Ship to rule them all", like found in MOO2( Vs other human Players) ( Almost any ship will do Vs stock Ai). So for the ultimate ship would have to be the one that can do the current mission while suffering the lest amount of losses.

Give your Ultimate Ship a try in the Balance Mod.

10 of my fighters kill 10 cruisers of the ai..
normal??

Word.

In stock it's normal for fighters to beat the tar out of everything else.

Bebop did well to pay enough attention make this discovery, but it isn't earth-shattering news. The irony of the Ultimate Ship is that the ship itself is an optional component. The only thing fighters need a ship for is to cross warp points and resupply.

Yes Fighters are way over powered in stock, but its really hard to balance fighters, If you nerf them so that they don't own every thing in sight then they are considered useless due to the micro managing required to keep the carries full.

In my current test game I nerfed fighters so that it did take around 10x size to kill a well rounded general combat ship, this worked fine until a Specialized ship entered the fray. For my Escort Cruiser with 3 capital defense batteries was swatting down fighters, with no problem, it took 100+ Anti Ship fighters to kill the Escort Cruiser, I could not kill it with general fighters with mixed ordnance, they were being destroyed to fast. So fighters became an annoyance to me the player. Given that, my game is not even close to what any one else is playing.

But the fighters being over powered is a core problem with SEV. They are very hard to balance, with the number of components that are factored in to fighters, Keeping them from ruling all or not worth the hassle to build and ship to the fleet is a very very hard thing to do. . .

And using fighters to attack other fighters dose not work so well. Dose not matter the strategy used, when fighter is launched if there are no enemy fighters it locks on to enemy capital ship if it has weapons that can target ships, if it can not target ships it runs away, then when enemy fighter show up its to far from the fleet to intercept short of the fleet it self. So that makes the easiest solution not really workable.

If you do get your fighters to engage enemy fighters its like a jousting match, one quick shot in passing then a long loop to chase down the hostile fighter. So if the weapons can not kill the other fighter in one pass the enemy fighter still makes its attack run on its target. But upping the anti-fighter weapon so it can kill in one shot then creates a new imbalance that you have to fix, by ether making the weapon less likely to hit or giving more protection to fighters so that they can survive to reach there target, this cause players to become annoyed with fighters.

Add to that that a carrier launches fighters on a seemingly random bases ( at lest to me) As it will launch Space Superiority fighters when there are no hostile fighters, and launch Bombers at enemy fighters. If you could assign target based launch commands would make fighters more use full in the anti fighter roll.