Fighter Based Empire

Fighters are still kinda broken. (CV) ships - that is dedicated carriers are still way too powerful because PD weapons are only shot (all weapons) at the same target.

###### I havent tested this in the latest patch.######

As for scouting a system with fighters, I don't think it can be done. I would suggest a drone or 2 for that. Balance mod lets you add supply components to them so .... viola! they'll last longer that fighters will to (you may even want to leave out the warhead(s) all together).

On the idea of having your entire emipre based around fighters, it does work. Preliminary tests of mine show (repeatedly) that a squadron of beam weapon ships, all with a few fighter bays each wiped the cosmos with a more traditional fleet based around missile boats (supported by PD's, and beam ships).

I find that beam satellites on your close-range ships, and missile sats on your mid-range ships is a cooler mix. They add more (and more powerful shots) than fighters, and to destroy them (with the targeting bug) your victims must direct anti-ship weapons to kill them.

Lol ... and your fabulous idea gets crushed. In short, mix it up a bit dude. hope this helps.
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What is the most humane way to kill a crab? In the fridge or with Michael Bolton music?

I use fighters heavily.
PDC's can't compete with heavy bombers.
the only thing i've found effective against fighters is other fighters.
I use my cap. ships to glass planets and take warp points.

I noticed that in BM, armor with damage reduction works great aginst fighters (at least at low tech). Fighters with small DU/MB/APB ... does not have chance, only slow firing big damage weapons (small missiles) works.

btw. is there real "shipkiller" weapon for fighters? (Something like torpedo in RL: not targeting fighters, REALY dangerous aginsst ships)

lol yep .... no weapons in favour of 3 kamikaze warheads. The pilot though won't be round to tell any more war stories.

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What is the most humane way to kill a crab? In the fridge or with Michael Bolton music?

[SEV 1.58, BM 1.10] I think the main problem with an largely fighter based empire are the slow combats... When I have a medium carrier launching all his fighters gameplay really slows down (also in strategic combat). So what will it be like with a fleet of large carriers?
Did you try to launch large fighter groups manually? (Turn "launch all units" off in the strategy of the carrier. Then, in combat, launch all fighters (of a carrier) at once manually.) ->Game hangs for about 10-20 seconds...
(CPU: Athlon64 3500+)

Has turning down settings like Graphic Quality and Background made a difference?

When I was playing 1.09 my system grinded to a halt for 60+ ships, and my system is pretty high end (currently) I also had slowdown (5-15 FPS) in the odd system when my 50+ fleet was moving about. Found it slightly better with Graphic Settings and Background down to Medium.

Seems daft doesnt it. I can play Medieval Total War 2 at full settings, and get slight slow down only on the very large battles, yet on this it chuggs at moderate ship levels. (Reminds me of Birth of the Federation, a 6 year old game that still runs slowly for big battles, even on the latest PC's).

Think your right though, I noticed more slowdowns when fighters were involved in my fleet. I'd love to play a Fighter based empire, but don't think my patience could hold out with the slowdowns.

During test runs I did during 1.44, it appeared ships with many PD weapons did in fact engage multiple targets at once.

Retested with 1.58 using a pure PD cruiser with the PDs spread out around oute hull.
I used the same basic stuff as before when I last testd this, mainly against an 'inferior' fighter design a neutral race has (they focused mainly on other stuff, like APBs and Rippers, and only have 3 planets, I got like a half dozen systems...)
My PD weapon tech is around lvl 33, the fighters I had tested it against were only tech lvl 5 average.

So, testing with a Cruiser with max tech combat sensors, and nothing but a single type of PD weapon had the following results
PD Beam (x16): 5 targets
PD Blaster (x16): 3-5 targets
PD Cannon (x16): 5-7 targets
Flak Cannon (x16): 5-7 targets
Bomblet Missile (x12): 3 targets
With PD Blaster/Cannon and Flak Cannon, it seems to vary as to how many it will shoot at once, as it will fire a few guns at one or two targets and very quickly fire the rest of the guns at other targets, but it seems each 'volley' will engage up to 5 (possibly 6) targets at once. resulting in 2 volleys 'in the air' at once, or at least the second firing as the first is hiting.
I had similar results with a Cruiser packing x19 Meson Blasters.

Based on secondary testing with a Dreanought with Wave Motion guns against assorted ship types of lesser (frigates to light cruisers), it seems to boil down to a little thing of how much firepower a ship will direct against a single target.
That if you got enough guns to 'overkill' a target, it will direct fire against a second target, and if it has enough firepower to overkill the second target, it will direct remaining guns to a third target, etc.

So the main thing that would possibly help is to make fighters less resistant to damage (fighter armor rated in inches, warship armor likely rated in feet), have it so PD weapons do extra damage to fighters (similar angle as the first) or make PD weapons hit harder overall (maybe not so good idea), or simply cram a ship full of PD guns, and the game will simply cause the PD weapons to spread fire over multiple fighters.

I when I went to see what happens with a Dreanought crammed full of PD weapons... up to 10 targets at once, or a hectic mess of firepower with one variant with x6 ea Flak/Bomblet/PD Beam/PD Blaster/PD Cannon plus 2 Meson Blasters and a Quantum torpedo so it doesn't try to 'run away' from the carriers before the fighters launch.

Although it is a moot point against my own 'lesser' fighters (small fighters built as 'militia' fighters to provide cheap fighters for my planets, guns only, not rockets/torpedoes)... PD heavy Dreadnoght gets raped hard... as in group of 40 fighters takes it out after loosing only 10 fighters.

On a side note, I have also run into the problem with the game 'freezing' for up to a minute when launching lots of fighters. It seems that the more fighters there are in the group (even if the group hasn't actually 'launched' yet), the slower the game goes. with lots of carriers and hundreds of fighters is when the game really gags, even the music seems to 'skip' at times.
What's up with that? Each fighter doesn't have much info related to it, it seems like the game should be a lot faster when it comes to the window where you launch them.
For carriers that auto launch, I don't think I have seen any such delay.

If you try a primarily fighter based strategy in BM, any oppenent that can adapt to your tactics will kill you quickly, at least at higher tech levels. Emmisive Armor makes ships literally untouchable by the lighter fighter based weapons (small anti-proton beams, small meson blasters, ect), and is still a significant defense against anything else they can carry short of rocket pods or small anti-matter torpedos.

Point defense weapons actually do not all fire at once -- though this isn't always helpful. I haven't figured out the exact way they work -- either two fire at once, or the number that fires is determined by how many are needed to destroy the target. The weapons (PD or otherwise) at the top of the targeting list (those you placed on the ship first) will always fire before the ones below them, if they have a target they can fire at. Once they've fired, the next weapons can fire (but it won't happen at the same time, it happens several milliseconds later).

HOWEVER. As I said, the topmost weapons fire first, before the weapons below them are considered. So if the topmost weapon reloads and is able to fire before the bottommost weapon has a chance to fire, the bottommost weapon will never fire. At normal speed, this is really only an issue if you have more than . . . I think it was between 20-40 weapons that have a 1 second reload rate. Running the battle at a higher speed might make the problem worse (in fact, I'm sure it would). On most ships this probably won't be a big problem if you stick to normal speed battles, but it could hurt bases, and is a huge killer for planets -- all the weapons from all weapon platforms on a planet are polled into on list, so you can easily have over a hundred weapons on a planet, especially if you have any sort of PD weapon platforms (and if you don't, fighters will kill you with great ease). Unless you plan very carefully, most of those weapons will end up completely useless.

I love Fighters myself and tested them much.

Try this: Med Fighter with 1 X Rocketpods, Cockpit, Life Sup, Shields, Engines, Supply storage, Ord storage and MOST importantly set them to 'Max' weapons range. Not sure on weight (at work).....you may be able to squeeze some more in. If you can then add 1 X Armor and more Supply/Ord storage.

See how that design works for you.

You can do that with a Small Fighter as well, but no storage (I think).

The Keys is the Shields with MAX weapons range with Rocket pods. You can out distance many of the PD weapons at Max range, but you BURN up your sup/ord!!

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An excellent summary of the way things have been in SEV for quite some time, perhaps always. This can be harnessed by using the combat strategy setting that bases targetting on % of targetted structural points, which basically will move on to the next available target once a certain amount of weaponry has been dedicated to an individual target. For defense against fighters, I usually use the setting of 100%. Using a higher setting, or none at all, increases the odds of wasting shots.

Personally, I don't think fighters are terribly broken in SEV, and if they are, it certainly is not because of PD fire not being distributed. What good would it do for every PD weapon on a ship to fire at a different target if none of those shots by themselves can destroy, or at lease significantly damage, what they hit? If it takes 3 hits to kill a fighter, then wouldn't you want at least 3 shots to be taken at any fighter that you're shooting at?

An "all fighter" strategy sounds interesting. It might be worth investigating what would happen if an empire added a focus on fighters and small weapons...how much potential would small rocket pods, or perhaps small antimatter torps, have if they could reach high enough levels? Could be interesting to try out.

Fighters were the ultimate weapon in SE4 as well as SE5 (some will dispute this, regarding SE4, but I would claim that the free maintenance on fighters in SE4 made it so), especially with crystal tech (in either, including the BM), or in SE5 organic or psychic tech.

With the armor penetration and shield boosting abilities of crystal tech, fighters were fearsome in SE4 -- crystal tech fighters were unstoppable when defending their own turf (and having 3x as strong shields as usual via the crystal facility that enhanced shielding). Even regular fighter craft were tough, primarily due to their complete lack of maintenance, and the ability to construct them anywhere.

In SE5, the crystal-tech fighter is still very formidable, but the organic fighter weapons have the edge, giving organic fighters both a production advantage (the resources get balanced out over crystal/organic, and the fighters are faster to build overall) and a range/damage advantage over everyone else. Psychic fighters are the new contenders for "ultimate weapon" in Stock SE5, due to their ridiculously long ranged fighter weapon -- they are near unhittable at the range they can fire from, while being able to easily hit a large target via combat sensors and the fighter's own innate combat bonus. Psychic weapon armed small fighters are unmatched in cost efficiency against any other fighter size, armed with any other fighter weapon, and that same speed/defense/range advantage makes them unmatched in vs-ship combat as well.

In BM, the crystal and organic tech fighters still seem pretty decent -- I have never tried psychic fighters in BM, and don't know if their deadly long ranged weapon is similar in BM or not. I would wager that only the shard-cannon armed fighters are truly effective across the board, however, due to emissive armor. Thus I would think that only a crystal-tech empire could really accomplish the all-fighters gimmick in SE5 with the BM.

I build fast cheap fighters. and lots of them
Small hull (40kt), 1 rocket pod, 2 SDUC, no armour, ecm, combat sensor, ordanance storage and the rest engines.
Short range (better chance to hit?)
The only effective weapon i've seen work on them is the seeking pdc (bomblet?)
and of course other fighters.
Unfortunately the game wasn't built to support the number of fighters i release upon my enemies(hundreds!) and battles are pretty damn slow. but i love seeing them swarm over an enemy fleet and wipe it out.
to support this many fighters my carriers are basically supply and ordinance. no weapons or armour, sensors for seek and destroy and that's it.
losses are usually high but they're so cheap to build i can build more than i lose each turn. mwa ha ha ha ha ha ha

Cerberus wrote:

I build fast cheap fighters. and lots of them Small hull (40kt), 1 rocket pod, 2 SDUC, no armour, ecm, combat sensor, ordanance storage and the rest engines. Short range (better chance to hit?) The only effective weapon i've seen work on them is the seeking pdc (bomblet?) and of course other fighters. Unfortunately the game wasn't built to support the number of fighters i release upon my enemies(hundreds!) and battles are pretty damn slow. but i love seeing them swarm over an enemy fleet and wipe it out. to support this many fighters my carriers are basically supply and ordinance. no weapons or armour, sensors for seek and destroy and that's it. losses are usually high but they're so cheap to build i can build more than i lose each turn. mwa ha ha ha ha ha ha

After heavy losses it slows down my offensive as I try to get my carriers refilled with fighters. I even use Freighter/carriers to shuffle the fighters to the combat zones. That is why i try to make mine more resilent, so its more of a supply issue versus replacing lost fighters. I carry Supply and Ord pods along with a fleet repair ship.

SE5 Files hosted on Filefront (Patches, Mods, Races, etc)

II've toyed around with ideas of combat ships that loose a few weapons/armor to mount a few fighter bays.
Enemies can stay out of range and even 'outrun' CSMs until they run out of fuel, but the same can't be said if a Cruiser happens to start launching a handful of large fighters packing torpedoes, ecm, and a fair amount of shields and armor, for some Wing Commander style "Torpedo Bombers" that are slower than normal fighters, but pack a nasty punch and able to take a good deal of punishment.

I even have a few non-carrier ships setup as 'carriers', carrying fewer fighters than a full carrier (say only 20-40% of total weight in fighter bays), but packing better weapons/armor than a carrier can have, sort of like a battle/attack/assault carrier that is built as much for direct combat as it is it is built for being a mobile fighter base.

Fun ensues with a big ship packing a space yard so it can park and rebuild fighters in the field, or even a few of such ships, so they can not only support each other but repair each other.

All I need to do now is actually test such designs in something other than the simulator, to see how they work in 'real life', as it were.

OH ya. construction yard ships are always with my fleets. They sit on the warp point i'm invading from and just build fighters.
12+ CYS's can pump out alot of fighters.
But they would be the weak point to an invasion. since i'm based on fighters if they take out my production of fighters i'd be forced to retreat. well. maybe not. bring in the frigates!!

i've played around with all my ships having at least 1 fighter bay. it works pretty good. nothing like some good ol fighter support to soften things up. but i generally use them for different things and don't want fighters mucking things up with the missions i send my cap ships on.

i use fighters for guardian and for seek and destroy missions. Planetary assaults are all done by cap ships since they can outrange most planet defenses. plus damage is significantly higher

Add satelites for protection of your CY ships and bombarment. Using them is closer to fighter style than using cap. ships.

I tend to distance myself from ordinance weapons entirely ... (I don't like organictech for some reason and supply ships are too vunerable). Try this on for size: take a con-ship and instead of taking missile boats, equip them with carrier bays filled with kamikaze fighters. They take more punnishment than missiles, move faster (in most cases) than missiles, and you can rebuild them.

For the fighters use cockpit, LS, max engines + AB, 1 shield, no sensors, and kamikaze warheads to fill the rest. For a really nasty surprise if you like temporal techs, put 1 small temporal cannon. Each fighter shoots 1 shot that does X4 damage to shields right before impact.

Mmmmmmmmmm carnage

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What is the most humane way to kill a crab? In the fridge or with Michael Bolton music?

Sounds like a lot of people are still complaining about fighters being too strong.. OK, I'll make their weapons a little bit weaker.. I also added launchable corvettes (65kt)

"Genius is Simplicity" chris connors
"To win without fighting is best" sun tsu
those who think they know everything are annoying to those of us who do

They're not too strong, they just require specialized counter strategies and designs in order to stand against, which is as it should be. At least as far as the Balance Mod goes, I think they're just about where they need to be. A fighter based empire, as suggested in this thread, would be quite fun to play, and I am seriously thinking about giving it a try. However, IMHO it would be difficult to win with against a human opponent.

If you weaken them in your mod, you may just reduce them to the point of uselessness.

I've been working on ideas to more or less butcher small weapon damage.

Thanks to one RPG system I know of, I get annoyed at the thought of small stuff being able to be as powerful as big stuff.
My main ideas is to make small weapons roughly as powerful as their size should allow.

If a small weapon is 1/10th the size of the full size version, it should do 1/10th the damage also.
If a small weapon is 1/5th the size of the full size version, it should do 1/5th the damage also.
And so on.
Exceptions are for Small Rocket Pods and Small Anti-Matter Torpedoes, which have had damage reduced a little bit, but still do hefty damage.
Assorted weapons like bombs can now hit bases and satellites (simply because neither can 'evade' incoming attacks), other small weapons can also hit other fighters, because it makes sense for the way fighters attack.
Also doubled the damage resistance of regular Emissive Armor, tweaked the PDs, etc.
All I have to do is actually get around to finishing it up, copying the modded stuff into the components file, and testing it out in game to see if fighters can be made to be effective, but also be made to be not so freaking powerful.

Just like WWII, a fighter did its damage to big ships with bombs or torpedoes, their regular guns were almost useless against the big ships... (unless you're an A-10 Thunderbolt II with a 7 barrel 30mm GUA-8 Avenger gatling gun, that thing can shred armored targets and could possibly pack enough punch to give big ships a problem...)

Fighter strength is fine in my opinion. I think point defense needs to be beefed up though. in my game i modded all the point defense guns to fire twice as fast as normal and it seems to counter fighters pretty good. a squad of fighers (i use 12) should be able to take down a lone cap ship no problem. but against a fleet(6+) they should get ripped to shreds and they do. not without doing significant damage though. and i'm fine with that.

I do think smaller weapons should be toned down, a bit, so they don't do quite so much damage to cap. ships. But they still need to do significant damage to fighters and other Units.
Could you put damage resistance, to 'small' weapons, on cap. ships?

Already in the game, in the form of Emissive Armor. Emissive armor is an effective counter to regular small weapons. Small rocket pods or torpedos then become the only real weapon a fighter has against normal ships.

Between that and the use of decent combat strategy definitions, at least as far as the Balance Mod goes, fighters are well balanced. Useful weapon to have, but not the game breaker that it might seem.

Small weapons are definately imbalanced in stock.
A good example is the meson blaster.
normal, 20kt, 15 damage + 5 per level.
small, 3 kt, 5 damage + 4.4 per level.
At max level, you get 510 vs. 440 damage, meaning the small one is, kt per kt, packing 5.75 times more punch than the regular ship version.

At some point small rocket pods become worthless, specially since the small meson blaster can fire 5 times more often.

Then compare a ship with 3 meson blasters to one with 2 fighter bays with fighters.
At some point, a frigate with a few fighter bays can field large fighters and pack more effective firepower than a dreadnought with massive mount wave motion guns...

Against AI, the surefire weapon will always be fighters no matter how outgunned you might be. A well-supplied Carrier force can keep a fleet of dreadnoughts occupied for dozens of turns without much trouble.

Against human players and especially with better point defense, things do start to change although they still do great as anti-planetary raiders or a way to pick off lone dreadnoughts. What would be interesting is if drone versus fighter warfare was emphasized as it might give the fighters a nemesis to face rather than the usual task of taking on large targets.

Well... the most effective counter to fighters... is fighters.
i set the fighter strats to target Smallest and fastest at the top of the list. so they will go and take down enemy fighters first. it works VERY well.

and i realize emissive armour is good against fighers. but you can't get it till way late in the research tree. and once you research enough in small weapons emissive armour becomes useless as even a small meson blaster does more damage than the armour can absorb.
Damage resistence against SMALL weapons on Cap. Ships should be hard coded in, not a component or something added. OR! The damage to KT ratio (as RDITTO describes) should be tweaked. its pretty lame to have a fighter packing around a cap.ship gun

I feel that fighers overall are pretty balanced. there is defenses against them. I just think the weapons need to be tweaked.

What are we talking about here? The original post specified Balance Mod, which is, well, more balanced.

Rditto specified numbers from stock SEV, as far as I can tell. In the BM, there are only 11 levels of Meson Blaster, and 6 levels of Small Meson Blaster. There are other differences between stock and BM that come into play, as well, such as PD specs, emissive armor's location and cost in the tech tree, etc.

Perhaps this discussion should be better defined; it's possible that my confidence and experience in dealing with massed fighter strategies would change if I played stock. What I do know is that after a number of BM games against human opponents, I have found that fighters can both be used effectively and successfully countered. What it usually comes down to is research priorities and ship design...if you leave a gap that can be exploited by your opponent, chances are that it will be, whether that weakness can be capitalized on with fighters, missiles, direct fire, shield piercing, whatever.

ya i guess it originally started with respect to BM
but i don't play BM. and i wanted to add my 2 cents on just how much i love fighters

Meh. I played 1.10 balance mod, and got my buttocks handed to me by the Norak, when my fighter-carrying destroyer was wasted by their puny frigate.

Part of the problem was that it was early on in the game, on a low starting tech-level, back when the fighters were only 12KT each and the armor was crap.

So the destroyer launches a fighter, and before it can launch the second fighter, the first is dead.

Then the stupid frigate hit's my destroyer with missiles, and the PD guns the destroyer has wouldn't target the missiles.

And they were set to target at maximum range.

That said, fighters can be evil, but they need to be launched in at least groups of three.
Afterall, I did eventually wipe a system clean of the Norak with a single Light Carrier.

I suppose Tech levels are the best indicators for when to use fighters.
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I'll make one later.

Carriers should have more than one Fighter Bay... 1 fighter launches per bay.