Fighters -- the ultimate SE5 weapon in Stock or BM =(

the anti-fighter-only weapon I think would be a good counter to fighter. Also I like the way IRM mod had a small Emissive value on all standard armor to help counter the fighter swamp be reducing the amount of damage done.

He ponders the dangers inherent in the advantages, and advantages inherent in the dangers. - Ts'ao Ts'ao

Crimson

The biggest problem, as far as I'm aware is how PD weapons work at present (still) however for an anti fighter weapon in BM the APB is useful so you could have some APB fighters backed up by larger ships firepower, or just a large number of small (frigate or destroyer) ships with layered pd. and have them stay close (don't break formation) to a large ship, i find small dedicated pd ships in BM can hold their own quite well.

I'd have to play a max tech game in the sim some more to see properly myself I guess.

I can understand how frustrating it can be to deal with fighters in this game,in my current campaign i'm at war with a race who rely's on fighters, and the only ships i've seen from them are colony ships so far , and i'm on turn 183.

Unfortunately,since their existance, fighters have always been a powerful weapon of war, all aircraft in general. Which is why all the U.S. Military Services use them, and most, if not all, Armies around the world rely on them to this very day. Why? Becuase they are an awesome weapon of war, they are effective, and very hard to stop. Its been proven since their existance, historically, that they can change the outcome of war, and even cuase an end to war when used effectively, as well as a deterent to war. They ended the war against Japan, brought Germany to thier knees, forced North Korea to stay grounded and unprotected, Caused North Vietnam to negotiate, put the Taliban in hiding, and utterly Destroyed Iraq.

More balanced? Rediculous. There is balance, u need to fight fire with fire, build fighters and carriers w/PD support ships. No ship, base, tank, troop, or anything else to this day can say they can kill every fighter that ever attacked them, at anytime they attack, is 100% effective. If there was or could be, fighters would not exist at all (all aircraft in general), becuase they would be useless and a waste of money to build. I personally don't believe a game should be changed to make it more fair, especially when u can do the same thing, the enemy can do. Lets get rid of the queen in chess becuase my opponent uses it better than i do. No, i say learn to use your queen better, even if it means losing the next 100 matches to do so.

Take the great advice offered from these posts, try them , use them, and grow in knowledge from them, til the day comes when the next time you face an enemy who relys on them comes along, you can laugh and say fools, and destroy them utterly, with out much effort at all. I've learned more from these posts, trial and error, and experimentation, then anything else.

So, i built a fleet of 28+ ships, 2 heavy carriers, 4 cargo ships (full of fighters), 2 construction ships ( to build replacement fighters), 4 supply ships (for ordance and supply replenishment). 70% of the ships in my fleet are Escort ships (equiped with Point Defense systems, with 6-12 PD components each), and those PD components are all atleast lvl 20 on the research scale. The enemy fleet at the Warp Point i plan to enter is all fighters, 200+ atleast, so this should be interesting to say the least.Will i win?, i think so, but if not, then i try again something new. So stick to your guns, be stubborn, and kick a$$.

Good hunting and good luck, but never give up the battle, unless its your wife, who can make you live on the couch for a week or more. 8D

Not enough information.

1) AI or human opponents?
2) Assume Strategic Combat?
3) Simultaneous or Sequential Turns?
4) (most importantly) Has Formations_TaskForce.txt been tightened to 'fix' the problem with formations that nearly nobody worries about?

You say fighters get to swarm one ship at a time no matter how many ships there are in the fleet. That itself must not be allowed to happen. The default formations place ships ridiculously far apart - my ships virtually touch each other hull to hull. Fighters don't all come at once - they come in a horde meaning if you kill them almost as fast as they arrive then you're practically fighting a tiny fraction of that horde for an extended period of time.

Standard PD advice of mixing multiple PD tech to have adjustable range of course - with note on having Bomblet Missiles for the sheer range.

Still... we are touching a certain issue with the game engine: there is no tactical-scale AoE in SE V (well, except Mines but they don't count as we're already in combat). There is no reason not to tight-pack lots of weak ships/fighters.

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go to this Wiki if interested. No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE

Psieye's right. His #4 is critical.

I was a bit surprised. BM used to have all ships break formation as default. I've been away a while so maybe that's changed. But you can change it back and have your ships all mob together in one ugly mass, or tighten up your formations by reducing the "square size" number.

I've never used I-Beams on fighters, so I can't say if they're all that ueber; but I'll sure keep it in mind.

[Rantstart]
Fighters shouldn't be the ultimate doom weapon. Every time this issue comes up, we get at least one post about the glorious history of fighter aircraft and I'm going to respond this time.

First of all, some realism can be sacrificed on occasion to make a game fun and playable.

Second, we don't need to sacrifice realism. Why? Because space-based fighters are not analogous to the historical fighters, and even then fighters are highly overrated by some historians and aircraft fanboys.

Fighters in space would be exposed. They'd be just as easy to spot as any other object, except for their small size. The advantage of zooming in from over the horizon against an enemy who can't see you coming or doesn't have weapons capable of hitting you doesn't apply as it did in most of the situations mentioned. Neither can you fly up in the stratosphere and drop bombs on targets that can't shoot back. The big advantage fighters have historically enjoyed is that most of their targets couldn't return fire effectively for one reason or another.

There has been one noteworthy exception: naval battles. Aircraft did well in the Pacific battles of WW II. But in most cases they had to have large numbers to be effective.

Stock SEV fighters can beat FF's & DD's one-on-one, unless you're talking an all PD flakboat. You can't defend that from history books, even those written by the most biased authors.

WW II antiaircraft was somewhat primitive, and the gunners weren't always well-trained. When the Iowa class BB's were put back into service in the 80's, the were equipped with serious point defense weaponry. These PD's could reliably shoot down incoming missiles, and fighters are slower targets than missiles.

So realism shmealism I say to ueber fighters. They're not realistic at all. A fighter's just another small spacecraft, and truly realistic fighters would make for a balanced, enjoyable game. Either that, or they'd make for some quick target practice...

My point was, everyone has the oppertunity to use fighters, with the same basic results. Just becuase one person use's them more then another, or better does not mean its un balanced. You can use them too. My PD ships literally destroyed the 200+ fighters i faced, to the point i never needed more than 50+ fighters for support. Like the game of chess, everyone gets the same basic game pieces, so saying one is better than the other or unbalanced, to me is rediculous, and plain silly. The Queen in chess is the most powerful piece in the game (in my opinion) and its more powerful then all the other pieces, but the black queen is not better than the white queen and both players get a queen....that is balance.And just becuase its better than the pawn, bishop, or knight, does not make the queen unbalanced. how you use it and what you do with it , is the true unbalance, not the piece. How you choose to fight against fighters is the problem and the answer. I think and believe that balance is having the same oppertunity's as your oppenent, and weither you choose to use this oppertunity is personal choice, not a game error. Just becuase 1 fighter can destroy 1, 2 or 3 ships does not make it unbalance, you can do the same thing too with your fighters. Make better ships, different ships, or what ever you need to win. being able to change strategy and tactics to fit the need of the battle is what combat is about to achieve victory, and the best generals, admirals and leaders can do just that. There are many posts by good players in this site on how to deal with fighters, thats how i learned, and trial and error on the battle field. I no longer fear enemy fighters and if i played multi player, i feel competent enough to deal with them effectively, and i dont need them to re balance the fighter to do it. If you build nothin but ships, and no fighter defense, then expect to get your rear handed to you on a silver platter, its that simple. So, in the end , everyone can use fighters and gain the benefits as well, and fighters are not invincable and are defeatable, even by the hundreds. you just got to know what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. Not remake the piece becuase you get frustrated due to lack of knowledge or expiernce, or you just want to make ships.

Well, this is my opinion, and i can beat fighters, so i dont see the imbalance, just lack of knowledge, practice and maybe skill. Yes i suppose changing the challenge everytime we face one to fit our needs would be nice...but its not realistic, and we might as well get rid of organics and crystal tech, base ships, etc., for those who dont have the patience to learn to fight agaist them or use them. But for the sake of argument, i will not make anymore posts on the subject, i dont want anyone to take it personal LOL, and to me we all get the same pieces, and oppertunities, and lack of common sense, tactics, and choices, does not make an unbalanced playing piece, just the player does.

Fleets are still set to break formation in the BM.

With respect to the mod, I think this issue falls under more of the strategy category. If you're opponent is using large numbers of fighters, you have several counters available such as improving you're overall point defense concentration, ship and fleet training, targeting carriers, your own fighters, and so on.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Isdahl, your definition of balanced doesn't quite match with others here. Yes, everyone can use fighters. You say even if fighters were ultra overpowered, they're balanced because everyone can use them. We say, forcing players to have to use fighters because nothing else works is by itself imbalanced.

Basically, we're putting different areas of the tech tree on the scales of balance. It should be (and actually is) viable to not use fighters at all and still effectively deal with enemy fighters. That is, it should be viable to have some freedom of choice in playing/research style/tastes.

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Playing Touhou games (Go to this Wiki if interested. No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE

BTW apparently combat sensors stack with the religious tech that does the same thing. Thus giving you a large enough accuracy boost to hit them reliably with normal beam weapons. Just felt like I should mention that.

But yeah, I agree with Psi-Eye. The game isn't fun if it's a race to see who can make the best and most fighters. Sure, there are some options(like using drones to destroy the carrier), but those are more easily countered in stock than the fighters themselves. One option would be to reduce the idiotic speed of fighters(and drones for that matter). But that'd make them far less playable.

Ok, i know i said i was not going to go any further on this, and this is my last post this time,lol {knocks on wood,lol), on the subject. I agree 100% with what capt.kwok said its more of a strategy issue. I do understand how many players may feel that they are forced to advance tech to deal with fighters, but you have to advance tech with everything in the game to deal with all the different styles of play. I play the unnamed mod 1.08b, and fighter tech doesn't go past lvl 9 i believe. My fighter tech is at lvl 7 in my current game, but the weapons i use on them are much higher, becuase i'm honestly not a big fan of the use of fighters, so i try to make them powerful so i dont have to build hundreds of them. I only build them when the need arises. I see fighters as a weaker force then most people do in this game. Why? Becuase i can defeat them with other techs. I can see how they can be effective, but i honestly dont have much problems with them, at all.

In my current campaign, i brushed the 200+ fighters aside with no loss
of my own except for maybe 3-4 fighters. As i moved thru the system my fighters were used up and i had nothing close by to replenish them, (i left my cargoships and build ships behind for fear of losing them in combat, before i could use them). I entered another hex in the system with a planet, that had 178 fighters in orbit around the planet as defense, my fleet consists of..1CV (carrier), 1 FFE (PD ship), 1DDE (PD ship), 3xCLE (pd), 4xCAE (pd) 1xCLMS (minesweeper), 2xCAB (bombardment ships) 3xCL (for ship to ship combat) 5xCA (ship to ship). My CAE's carry 12 point defense components of diferent types, and ranges, and rates of fire, and 1 or 2 ship to ship weapons just in case, lol. All my PD ships carry pretty much the same stuff, only lesser of it due to hull limitations. As soon as tactical battle begins, i break my fleet formation, manually move my ships into a tight, circular defenseive ring, with the PD ships in the outer ring, capital ships in the 2nd ring and minesweeper + carrier in the center. I set my move speed to 1/2, run the game for a few seconds to see where the fighters are concentrating, pause the battle, manually move the furthest PD ships to the most likly spot the fighters will hit first, now i have a forward line instead of a ring with vulneralbe ships to the rear, then unpause the battle and let the enemy fighters come. Keep in mind my PD tech is around 23-26. And guess what happened? Yep it was a slaughter, not me but them, it was so bad that i felt dissappointed they didn't even get to the carrier, and for that matter not one of my ships was destroyed, not one. the worst that happened we lost alot of shields and took aome major armor damage, but not 1 internal hit to any of the ships. Well the rest of the fight was just a mop up operation , and the system belongs to me now. But this is the only fleet i have that is set to defend against fighters, my 5 other fleets in the campiagn, are not facing fighters on thier fronts, so my ships carry minimal PD defenses in those other fleets.I just dont need them there. Thats a strategic and tactical choice, not and imbalance. If anything someone could say that fighters are too weak, and i would agree in some case's.

You see, i didn't need to research fighter tech to beat them, but i did reasearch them for another type of weapon at my disposal, if needed. I could have chosen Drone tech to hunt them with, or put all my resources into Intelligence and just depleted the enemy of supplies and resources. 1000 fighters with no fuel or ammo are pretty useless, and the enemy would lose them due to lack of support for them. I took PD tech as my choice to fight them, with a variety of ship types to reinforce my anti fighter theory. I only applied 10% research to the tech, i just left it on for some 50+ turns,lol. You need PD tech to help against a Drone race as well and against cap ship missiles, torps, etc. So it was the wise choice.But it was my choice in strategy and tactics that made the diference, the way i orginaized my fleets and built my ships, and where i put them, and how i used them, was there an unbalance? sure it wasn't fair, i slaughterd them, poor fighters.

So yes i understand about the tech tree, and being forced to research against dif types of opponents, but it was still all my choice, and obviously the right one for the situation, i mean isn't that the point after all? Facing the challenge and winning? Again i say, its not the piece, its the player and the choices you make, and how you use them. Thats why i agree with Capt.Kwok, and i'll bet alot of the old timers who play this game would agree with this assumption as well, its not the piece, its the player. And that is why i dont fear fighters, and dont see an unbalance, or a lack of tech tree choices. No offense meant to anyone , this is just my opinion, thru trial and error. Ok now i'm done on the subject, lol. Good hunting all and kill well.

Oh who would take offense~ We were discussing a hypothetical situation of "if fighters were the only way to deal with fighters" and your definition of 'balance'. We both know how to deal with fighters in other ways. Personally I don't use any carriers or fighters in my fleets no matter what the enemy are using, but that's my style (note: that's not the same as 'never use fighters' - they're good for quick defence and hunting down non-combatant ships).

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go to this Wiki if interested. No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE

Destroying fighters in tactical battle, where you can change formations is not this much of a problem. The problem is a PBW battle, where you have no control of the situation. Furthermore, lowering the combat speed increases weapon accuracy, but PBW combats seem to be run at the highest speed...

I dont really think fighters are over powered, in RL naval combat, tactical fighters dominate, why not just make picket capital ships with alot of PD weapons and combat sensors ? And of course, interceptors of your own.

I was a tad unclear earlier, it seems.

Isdahl, my rant was not against you, but the ideas you appeared to be advancing. Ironically, you seem to think fighters should not be the only way to even have a chance in the game, unlike the typical fighter fanboy whose posts resemble what you wrote in the earliest parts of this thread.

I have little patience with the "Fighters should be über because that's realistic" premise, and I probably always will.

I think we all want fighters to be strong enough that one way or another everyone must be concerned with them. But I don't think anyone who's posted so far wants the game to force all players to use a predominantly fighter force. That would be imbalanced. Not in the sense that anyone would be at a disadvantage, but in the sense that there's only one boring strategy that everyone's got to use.

The sad thing is: the handful of players who think they want such a game wouldn't even keep playing if the opposition came against them with the same set-up.

I've been away for months, so I can't offer an opinion on the present state of the fighter. From what I'm reading, they can be countered effectively, although may take some extra effort and/or experience.

Fighters are the predominant way for a fleet to strike at another, i dont see why people would even think that a fleet should be able to put up a fight without them :|

I STRONGLY disagree with the basic premise being pushed here. For reference, I play multiplayer games, BM, simultaneous turns.

Fighters can be beaten. They have weaknesses that can be exploited. They have to get to close range to shoot, and they can't easily mount effective weapons AND decent armor AND afterburners at low tech levels. So, make them chase your ships down (using retreat settings) so that they have to plod across the ships' weapons range to get close enough to fire. Use a combat strategy that keeps ships in formation (and choose a decent TF formation and # of ships to use) so that their weapons arcs support one another. Research a few levels of combat sensors to overcome the fighters' natural combat defense bonus. Etc.

Personally, I believe that if my opponent focuses on fighters as their main space combat weapon, they just might be at a disadvantage. Could they win? Of course they could, but not because of any combat imbalance skewed toward fighters.

Just to clarify, I have only ever played PBW games, using BM. I've never really played against the AI, and I've never played stock. Please don't take my post as claiming any great skill; I am only saying that in the ~10 PBW games I've played, fighters have been in the mix, but never as a majorly successful tool. Do they destroy my ships? Yes, they can and do, but I've always been able to find ways to blunt them.

I guess I need to play a PBW game against you. Maybe *I* have something to learn about fighters. Perhaps if my opponent actively specialized in their use I would change my tune.

I wish to add my 5 cents to this discussion.

1) Make missles about 4 times faster than fighters, also have no disadvantage for long distances
2) massively increase the range of beam weapons as well as point defense weapons.
3) and allow the ships to fire there defense weapons way before the fighters come into fireing range
and another idea even if the above is not acceptable try drones filled with point defense and allow them to be reusable as well

hopefully this helps with this problems

Yours sincerely

Despair

One of the problems with fighters is that emissive armor isn't balanced well. The specific purpose of emissive armor is to be more effective against smaller weapons, such as fighters. But it doesn't do its job properly.

In the Stock game, emissive armor is woefully late in the tech tree, and extremely underpowered once you finally get your hands on it. You need level 20(!) in armor before you can even use it, and it starts out at a measely 1 point of damage reduction. It also weighs four times as much as standard armor, costs 8 times as much, and provides only a third of the structure points. All for a measely 1 point of damage reduction. Granted, the armor does improve somewhat as you continue to research, but it takes a LONG time for it to become useful. By the time you get emissive armor, you'll be lucky if the damage reduction can just catch up to the enemy's weapon tech improvements.

In the Balance Mod, emissive armor is quite a bit nicer. It's ALWAYS more efficient than standard armor, pound-for-pound, but at a significantly higher price. The only reason that it's not an excellent counter to fighters... is the small incinerator beam. That weapon hits too hard in my opinion. I would lower the damage (and the weight) by 20%.

If you are lowering damage AND weight, you will not do anything good, because there will be more place on the fighter left...
I think the main problem is, that the standard formations are sucking and that you have no possibility to change this in PBW games.

That's not quite correct. If you lower damage and weight then the weapon becomes less effective vs. emissive armor.

For example, assume that emissive armor absorbs 5 damage per hit. If a weapon does 20 damage per second and weighs 20 kt, then its effectiveness is only 75% against emissive armor. But if you reduce the weapon to 10 damage and 10 kt then its effectiveness against emissive armor drops to 50%, even though the weapon has the same damage output per kiloton.

Essentially, the weapon keeps the same efficiency vs. normal armor but loses efficiency vs. emissive armor.

"Setting a fleet of PD ships to retreat and attack at max range will break up their formation in such a sparse manner that a well-chosen fighter strategy will pac-man each ship alive. They *are* faster than your ships (often significantly so), in every case, and they are extremely hard to hit a long ranges, where their defense bonus is even rougher on your PD guns."

Of course a large cloud of fighters will get to you before you can kill them all, and then the fleeing ship will likely be done. But before that happens, forcing them to cross a kill zone (regular longish-ranged weapons...APB, DUC, etc.) before they reach weapons range will give the fleeing ship the opportunity to take down many of them. Given equal tech, it can be more $$$ worth than the ship.

"If you keep your ships in formation, and the enemy fighters are set to attack the nearest ship, they'll eat your formation for breakfast, although at least you'll get to shoot at them before breakfast is over. Any research you get to make is countered by... enemy research, of course. Any fighter-using opponent is going to be making his fighters both tougher and giving him more ECM, etc. in the same time you are researching sensors."

Of course they'll get their breakfast. However it will cost, and it will very possibly cost enough that it would be a net loss to the fighter cloud. I don't mean to suggest that it's free or easy, and I did not intend to suggest that a player using fighters will sit still in the tech area. However, it is worth noting that PD weapon ranges seem to increase faster than fighter weapons do as they are researched. This can make it easier to set up a good kill zone that fighters must cross before they can shoot back.

"On top of that, the PD AI is pretty foolish about "overkilling" fighters -- this is especially true with the longer ranged PD. You can pack a fleet full of PD and still only knock down a few fighters, because you overkilled each one and wasted your overall PD firepower to an extreme. Layered PD works better because it tends to overkill less, but the layering only works at long ranges."

I won't argue against using layered PD. However the overkill you mention is actually avoidable via the "targetted damage less than xx percent of structure" strategy setting. This gives the player decent control over the amount of overkill, and you can sometimes even go with less than 100% if you know you're up against fighters, because if a hit does partial damage to the fighter and either destroys its weapon or does engine damage, it can be just as effective as destroying the whole fighter if you're using a retreat strategy.

I'm not saying that fighters are weak. They aren't. My contention is merely that unless you're totally out-teched, it is possible to counter fighters with reasonable confidence.

"My argument is not that fighters are merely the best element in space combat (you could argue that they are on par with other techniques... but certainly not lesser), but rather that they are, strategically, the best option -- i.e. you can build them anywhere, they can move on their own (even efficiently from system to system with well done carrier transportation), and they are cheap to build AND maintain."

I agree with you. The biggest thing fighters bring to the table are the strategic angles you mention. The thing I appreciate most is that they let you put an effective force into space without needing a spaceyard.

I'd have to agree on the strategic part of fighters. They may be reasonable to deal with on the battlefield itself, but nothing can quite beat the 'build on any colony' and 'fast map movement' traits. Hypothetically, once you have enough ships in the fleet then fighters can reasonably be dealt with but in real PvP I doubt such a fleet can successfully be assembled safely.

Also, regarding Emissive Armour it seems every major patch has re-written how they work. During IRM's time, the Emissive property was somehow stacked to make it do what it should do: protect a ship from tiny weapons. Crystalline Armour can still do this job but... we have front-loaded DPS like the Fighters' Rocket Pods or the Small Incinerator Beam.

If I was to mod a solution, it'd be to cut down fighter map movement and make afterburners give most of the combat speed that a fighter enjoys. That or drastically cut down the supply storage of fighter engines. Having said that, if I was ever to make my own mod, it wouldn't have "fighters" or any other unit in them as we know them right now.

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go to this Wiki if interested. No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE

Fighters in the Balance Mod are already slower than most small ships and use proportionately more supplies for movement and sometimes combat. I think the emissive values also work well in the mod.

I'd chalk up the original posters success to good empire management/strategy and a better economic situation than his enemies.

The only thing I would change, which is really needed to cut down units in general, is to bump up their maintenance to 10% from the current 5%.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Yes but fighters are still exceedingly fast. They're the only unit which can travel around in space without the aid of any ships (except to cross warp-points). Any colony can build them near-indefinitely as once storage space gets low, they just take off and ship themselves to wherever they're being amassed. In short, they don't need to travel so far to get to the frontline to be useful.

Hmm... perhaps the simple change of increasing maintenance for units might be enough. Personally I feel slightly increasing the cost of each fighter chassis might help. That or increase supply usage further - I've never felt I'm 'running out' of supplies in BM so far (especially with the "build a supply ship and scrap it immediately" method).

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go to this Wiki if interested. No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE

It's a bit late, but I'll mention one more counter: throw subtlety out the window, break formation, and splatter them on your windshield like the bugs they are!

Actually, ships are slow to reacquire ramming targets so there's a delay after the first impact; but it generally doubles my kill rate. I play 1p hands-off in combat, so this should work fine for everyone.

Doesn't help the economic issues...

Actually There are quite a few ways to beat fighters cheaply and effectively. if you are playing stock my favorite way is to go religous and organic. The key to defeating fighters is to be able to hit them at long range. so the religous talisman is king! stack this attack bonus with combat sensors and master computer as these are the only ways to get attack bonuses in stock game. This will allow you to hit comparable tech fighters at extreme range with ease. set your ship strategy to Max range and build a cruiser. this is where organic comes in handy, it will allow you to use the Lightning ray the single most powerful weapon in the game you can now hit and kill enemy fighters at extreme range without effort. add some organic armor so that you can repair damage and basic shields and you are set. the big problem with this is that it requires a moderate level of technology to be succesfull.
the biggest problem i have with fighters is that they slow down the game when the AI's put 400-800 fighters on a warp point turn processing speed goes to hell.
fighters are cheap and available everywhere which is a great advantage. in the early game fighters are great and so cheap! but I hate keeping up with them so I use them as little as possible.

When playing Balance mod my strategy is completly different. I did make one small change. I changed drones to be recoverable in the vehicletypes.txt file. now my big beam ships carry one drone launcher and ZERO PD weapons. instaed I use PD drones to ward off hordes of fighters. this works pretty well especially if i match my drones speed to be the same of the launching ship, and keep their orders the same as well. I can still be over whelmed if there are enough enemy fighters but the cost/benefit ratio is in my favor by at least a 2:1 ratio. balance mod takes the lightning ray and makes it completely useless, which sucks but it was a game changing weapon so i can understand it. meson blasters are great antifighter weapons on drones just avoid using anything that requires ordinance. I have at least one beam weapon on your drone so it will act like a ship instead of running away. in balance mod i never build fighters.

I did some testing and made a few notes.

1: fighters have more durability than the ship that launched them.

2: how the heck does a fighter weapon do 800 damage?

3: the durability of a fighter is determined by the tech levels of it's components, shield/armor is nearly useless.

4: PD weapons are a joke when trying to destroy fighters with high-tech components.

In my testing I did simulations in a max-tech stock game. the fighters (an ai design) had a little over 2400 total toughness. This means that 60 of them had the same toughness as a BASESHIP. And the baseshhip design I used was heavily shielded and armored.

My conclusion? why the heck are fighters so durable? Also, why did one of the weapons have a damage of 800? That doesn't make sense. At least not on something you can use at a reasonable speed.

next test: mod the game to reduce durability/damage of fighter weapons. (yeah, that's where most of the durability of the fighter was, it's weapons)

1. As a collective, yes.

2. As a collective, yes. As individuals? I don't get that either.

3. I usually have enough on them to allow them to approach or make a second volley under fire. After that, a fighter under fire is lost anyway.

4. I wholeheartedly agree about PD. I make sure at least some of my shipboard weapons can also target fighters.

Prime reason why I don't play Stock ever - fighters truly are messed up imba in there.

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go to this Wiki if interested. No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE

I'd be interested in your results of a similar test performed using the Balance Mod.

Also, if you are using the combat simulator in your testing (I couldn't tell), it may be worth supplying the strategy definitions that were used, both by the fighters and by the opposition. Engagement range and retreat settings could come into play.

I've had ideas of toying around with fighters myself, the ones in stock, and of stuff relating to fighters.

1: Tone down their armor a little bit. Fighters are going to have 'thin skins' compared to a big ship. A very heavily armored fighter is going to be torn in half if it gets smacked by any 'real' weapon.

2: Tweak fighter size and how movement is handled (a large fighter needs more engines to move than a small fighter, so it only has a little more space for weapons compared to a small fighter of equal speed, rather than being able to pack in mountain loads more weapons).

3: scale down the weapons, so a Fighter weapon that is 1/10th of the size of a Ship weapon gets *shock* only 1/10th the firepower!
(Seriously, a 3kt gun that can, with a few tech levels, equal the firepower of a much larger 30kt weapon of the same level? Nonsense!)

4: Make it so only a few weapons (such as small torpedoes) are of any real use against ships (due to 3, regular weapons will be useless against a big ship unless used in large numbers)

5: Emissive armor tweaked, fighter based is 1 damage reduction per 2 levels, ship/base version gets 2 per level. Since everyone and their cousin uses the biggest weapon mounts possible, it probably won't have a major effect on ship to ship combat between big ships.

6: Cluster Bombs be usable against bases and satellites (seriously, to a fighter, they are big, immobile targets)

7: Most fighter weapons can shoot other fighters (makes sense for dog fighting, line up the enemy target and let rip). This includes small torpedoes, which double as effective multi-purpose missiles.

8: Tweak three PD weapons, bombleet Missiles travel faster/more maneuverable (speed 0.10, turn of 0.02), Flak Cannon to fire once per second with only a 40% bonus, PD MB does less damage (6 + ((lvl -1) *2)), reduced 30% bonus and fires twice per second (0.500), the last two to be the equivilent of old WWII gun batteries that took out fighters mainly by tossing a lot of shots at them.

9: Afterburners applying a small defense bonus (better speed/acceleration), if possible, also a small penalty to attack (greater speed difference between targets, less time to aim properly, etc)

I just left the orders at defaults. Telling the ship to run wouldn't have done much since baseships are slow as frozen mollasses.

Also:
I like ditto's ideas.

In my testing I found that (max tech level in stock) small emmisive armor has 150 durability(size 1), and small anti-proton beam has a little over 200(size 2). Makes armor seem like an utter waste doesn't it?

I'm thinking about modding the durability growth of small weapons to see what the total effect is. My test craft with 2400 durability had 1975(ish) in structural integrity of internal components. changing the durability growth would probably knock off aroun 800-900. tghus severely reducing the survivability.

I forgot two other ideas I had (buried in my notes)

10: Tweaking Fighter Engine costs. Minerals costs now fixed at 20/25/30/35 per engine, Radioactives cost now 2/3/4/5 for the engines.
Reasoning is because regular engines have no 'per level' increase in Minerals cost, and they also have a Radioactives cost.
An alternate idea, since small engines are only '1/10th' the size of regular engines, make them '1/10th' the cost (20/30/40/50 minerals and 4/6/7/10 radioactives). Unfortunately, that second one makes prices a little more lopsided and perhaps slightly imbalanced since fighter can carry more engines than ships do, but on the other end of things, makes some sense since small engines are simply smaller scale versions of the bigger ones.
Either way, with all small engines now having a radioactives cost, and more advanced small engines now having a higher base metal cost, it means they are going to be a little more expensive to build in some ways.
I had similar ideas for troop engines, but a bit more expensive (fewer engines, having to deal with gravity)

11: Add "# + ([%Level%] - 1)" to the defense bonus of regular fighters, since they did not have them, yet organic/crystalline fighters did.
Also knock the base defense bonus down by 10 (from 80/70/60 to 70/60/50) for all small/medium/large fighters
Side note, I did similar with drones, knocked their defense bonus down to 45/40/35 for small/medium/large drones, so their defense is still 'lower' than that of fighters.

1: Extra info
For armor, was working on the idea of knocking down Small Armor and Small Emissive Armor to 5 + (([%Level%] - 1) * 1). This lessons the effectiveness of fighter armor vs. big weapons.
So, at lvl 50, Small Armor Small Emissive armor will have 54 tonnage structure, yet Small Emissive Armor will have a damage reduction of roughly 25.
Add radioactives cost of 2 to Emissive armor.
Remove the 'per level' mineral cost increase.
Toying with idea of Small armor tonnage structure being 2 + (([%Level - 1) * 2), so small armor is more durable, and small emissive armor has to rely more on its damage reduction for protection due to being 'more fragile' vs. heavy damage. No more 'best of both worlds'.

Like in other sci-fi settings, the shields are going to play just an important role in protection as armor does, if not a more important role than armor will.
Seriously, standard SEV fighters remind me of another game (an old RPG) where 'game balance' means 'soldier on foot can tick off a tank and survive the first shot from its main gun'... yeah, right, I don't think so...
If WWII Fighter + 5in cannon shell impact = scratched paint then Formula + Recycle Bin + reduced 'hit point' formula = darn good idea.

7: Extra info
Supposed to be to have most fighter weapons be able to target fighters and satellites, not just other fighters. (I'm a person who plays Freelancer and has succesfully shot down enemy fighters with torpedoes before... also played a lot of Wing Commander and Privateer in the past, not to hard to shoot a small object if it's not going anywhere, and even 'big guns' are useful on fighters if you aim the right)
All is fair and love and war, and ignore the little book that says 'you're not supposed to do it, it makes sense and is effecitve, but military and intelligence are mutually exclusive' stuff....

The changes don't really effect troops to much, except for the armor, so not sure how they will effec troops (I rarely have had troop battles...)

As for tweaking small weapons, been there, done that. Been distracted with other games, so I haven't had a chance to really try it out yet.

Small Depleted Uranium Cannon
====
Weapon Space Min Damage Modifier Formula := (2 + (([%Level%] - 1) * 0.6)) - iif([%Range%] > Min(30, (([%Level%] - 1) * 5) + 10), 10000, 0)
Weapon Space Max Damage Modifier Formula := (2 + (([%Level%] - 1) * 0.6)) - iif([%Range%] > Min(30, (([%Level%] - 1) * 5) + 10), 10000, 0)

Small Rockets Pods damage reduced, but still useful, also doubled ordnance storage (10), and doubled supply/ordnance used per shot (2/2), can now target Satellites (not like they can dodge anything in the first place), increased shot speed (0.08) to represent being made to sacrifice range for speed and hitting power.
====
Weapon Space Min Damage Modifier Formula := (60 + (([%Level%] - 1) * 2)) - iif([%Range%] > Min(60, (([%Level%] - 1) * 10) + 20), 10000, 0)
Weapon Space Max Damage Modifier Formula := (60 + (([%Level%] - 1) * 2)) - iif([%Range%] > Min(60, (([%Level%] - 1) * 10) + 20), 10000, 0)

Small Anti - Proton Beam
====
Weapon Space Min Damage Modifier Formula := (3 + (([%Level%] - 1) * 0.7)) - (([%Range%] / 10) * 2.00) - iif([%Range%] > Min(60, (([%Level%] - 1) * 10) + 20), 10000, 0)
Weapon Space Max Damage Modifier Formula := (4 + (([%Level%] - 1) * 0.9)) - (([%Range%] / 10) * 2.00) - iif([%Range%] > Min(60, (([%Level%] - 1) * 10) + 20), 10000, 0)

Small Meson Blaster has faster rate of fire (1000) and faster shot speed (0.10).
====
Weapon Space Min Damage Modifier Formula := (3 + (([%Level%] - 1) * 0.5)) - iif([%Range%] > Min(30, (([%Level%] - 1) * 10) + 10), 10000, 0)
Weapon Space Max Damage Modifier Formula := (3 + (([%Level%] - 1) * 0.5)) - iif([%Range%] > Min(30, (([%Level%] - 1) * 10) + 10), 10000, 0)

Small Phased Polaron Beam has good hitting power to match its size.
====
Weapon Space Min Damage Modifier Formula := (6 + (([%Level%] - 1) * 1)) - iif([%Range%] > Min(60, (([%Level%] - 1) * 5) + 20), 10000, 0)
Weapon Space Max Damage Modifier Formula := (8 + (([%Level%] - 1) * 1.2)) - iif([%Range%] > Min(60, (([%Level%] - 1) * 5) + 20), 10000, 0)

Small Incinerator Beam now hurts a lot, acting as a 1/3 scale Ripper Beam, also added Radioactives cost(15 + (([%Level%] - 1) * 1)), tripled supply use (3). Makes a good (if not pricy) anti-ship capable beam weapon now.
====
Weapon Space Min Damage Modifier Formula := (30 + (([%Level%] - 1) * 1.7)) - iif([%Range%] > Min(50, (([%Level%] - 1) * 5) + 10), 10000, 0)
Weapon Space Max Damage Modifier Formula := (30 + (([%Level%] - 1) * 1.7)) - iif([%Range%] > Min(50, (([%Level%] - 1) * 5) + 10), 10000, 0)

Small Anti-Matter Torpedo damage reduced, doubled radioactives cost (10), doubled supply/ordnance use (2/2), doubled ordnance capacity (10), travel speed increased (0.06), Also can target more things now, considering it's a 'small' torpedo.
====
Weapon Space Min Damage Modifier Formula := (40 + (([%Level%] - 1) * 2)) - iif([%Range%] > Min(60, (([%Level%] - 1) * 5) + 20), 10000, 0)
Weapon Space Max Damage Modifier Formula := (40 + (([%Level%] - 1) * 2)) - iif([%Range%] > Min(60, (([%Level%] - 1) * 5) + 20), 10000, 0)

Small Cluster Bomb can now target Base, Satellites (again, not like those things could dodge anything)
====
Weapon Space Min Damage Modifier Formula := (30 + (([%Level%] - 1) * 2)) - iif([%Range%] > Min(30, (([%Level%] - 1) * 5) + 20), 10000, 0)
Weapon Space Max Damage Modifier Formula := (30 + (([%Level%] - 1) * 2)) - iif([%Range%] > Min(30, (([%Level%] - 1) * 5) + 20), 10000, 0)

Small Graviton Beam
====
Weapon Space Min Damage Modifier Formula := (20 + (([%Level%] - 1) * 1)) - (([%Range%] / 10) * 2.50) - iif([%Range%] > Min(60, (([%Level%] - 1) * 5) + 20), 10000, 0)
Weapon Space Max Damage Modifier Formula := (23 + (([%Level%] - 1) * 1)) - (([%Range%] / 10) * 2.50) - iif([%Range%] > Min(60, (([%Level%] - 1) * 5) + 20), 10000, 0)

Small Shield Depleter, not so useless now, doubled it's base damage, but reduced damage increase per level.
====
Weapon Space Min Damage Modifier Formula := (6 + (([%Level%] - 1) * 1)) - iif([%Range%] > Min(60, (([%Level%] - 1) * 0) + 20), 10000, 0)
Weapon Space Max Damage Modifier Formula := (6 + (([%Level%] - 1) * 1)) - iif([%Range%] > Min(60, (([%Level%] - 1) * 0) + 20), 10000, 0)

Ground Cannon... okay, it is a small weapon, but it can't be mounted on fighters and has no 'space' damage, so no point in tweaking it...

Small Electric Discharge
====
Weapon Space Min Damage Modifier Formula := (2 + (([%Level%] - 1) * 0.9)) - iif([%Range%] > Min(90, (([%Level%] - 1) * 5) + 30), 10000, 0)
Weapon Space Max Damage Modifier Formula := (3 + (([%Level%] - 1) * 1.1)) - iif([%Range%] > Min(90, (([%Level%] - 1) * 5) + 30), 10000, 0)

Small Acid Globule
====
Weapon Space Min Damage Modifier Formula := (5 + (([%Level%] - 1) * 0.6)) - iif([%Range%] > Min(60, (([%Level%] - 1) * 5) + 20), 10000, 0)
Weapon Space Max Damage Modifier Formula := (5 + (([%Level%] - 1) * 0.6)) - iif([%Range%] > Min(60, (([%Level%] - 1) * 5) + 20), 10000, 0)

Small Shard Cannon
====
Weapon Space Min Damage Modifier Formula := (2 + (([%Level%] - 1) * 0.5)) - iif([%Range%] > Min(60, (([%Level%] - 1) * 5) + 20), 10000, 0)
Weapon Space Max Damage Modifier Formula := (2 + (([%Level%] - 1) * 0.5)) - iif([%Range%] > Min(60, (([%Level%] - 1) * 5) + 20), 10000, 0)

Small Time Distortion Burst
====
Weapon Space Min Damage Modifier Formula := (1 + (([%Level%] - 1) * 0.4)) - iif([%Range%] > Min(60, (([%Level%] - 1) * 5) + 20), 10000, 0)
Weapon Space Max Damage Modifier Formula := (1 + (([%Level%] - 1) * 0.4)) - iif([%Range%] > Min(60, (([%Level%] - 1) * 5) + 20), 10000, 0)

Small Telekinetic Projector
====
Weapon Space Min Damage Modifier Formula := (3 + (([%Level%] - 1) * 0.6)) - iif([%Range%] > Min(90, (([%Level%] - 1) * 5) + 30), 10000, 0)
Weapon Space Max Damage Modifier Formula := (3 + (([%Level%] - 1) * 0.6)) - iif([%Range%] > Min(90, (([%Level%] - 1) * 5) + 30), 10000, 0)

Then what about running your tests with frigates or destroyers? They have no problems at all turning and running, making the fighters have to catch them. The fighters need to cross a kill zone where they can be shot at before they can bring it within range.

I'm still not convinced that fighters need to be made weaker. Making them weaker could take them out of the game as an effective weapon.

Increasing cost and maintenance cost I can see as a possible change, though.

You wouldn't need to make them pitifully weak. making them somewhat weaker would prevent them from being so horribly imbalanced, you don't need to halve their abilities to weaken them. Even if you did run, fighters are so fast that even at max speed your ship would get 2 shots instead of one before the first wave closes to firing range. then you run out of room to run.

Reducing damage and durability values would make them what they're supposed to be, effective in masses, but something you'll need to replace regularly.

I wonder if someone could send me an SEV savegame file (Balance Mod) with a tech level/fighter design that is unbalanced which demonstrates the dire need to change things up, along with a combat strategy that is assigned to them. Then I can play with it a bit in the simulator, and put it up against ships from the same empire (ie roughly equal techs, though not guaranteed) at roughly equal production costs for each.

Perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps fighters are imbalanced, and I just don't know how to use them effectively. I'd like to learn something, here.

I think there's a slight imbalance that exists in the Balance Mod when you consider the amount of fighters you can support versus ships with the same amount of resources. Generally speaking, ships have a small edge if we're comparing strength on a per kT basis versus fighters, so there should be a slight numerical advantage (in terms of total kT) for fighters - but I think it might be skewed a bit too far in favour of fighters, which is why I bumped up the maintenance rates on units for v1.13.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

i think that another aspect of the fighter imbalance is that they have such a extremly low research cost
once again albeit in a different field the fighter wins at equal cost spent.
typicaly in pvp battles if one player begins using fighters the other one has to as well, i never really found any other counter, high level ecms and scattering armor make standard direct fire wepons useless and the bomblet missile has to make serveral hits at max levlel to kill a single late game fighter
i suppose that large area damaging wepons would be a possible cure for this

acctually lare area damage would be interesting in many ways including giving a reason for the wide spaced fleet formations

another idea would be to change the maximum supply and ordinace storage
fighters in almost every sci fi series ive ever watched, should be most of them by now, do not have many anti capital ship missiles/wepons on them

typicaly this is true of modern fighters aswell, very very few fighters in series or reality has more than 20 cap ship missiles most have only a few

the damage of the small nuclear missile is locical if you consider the size of a nuclear missile
allowing perhaps one anticapship shot or at most 4-6 per fighter will make sure that that fighters are mostly used as anti fighter wepons and or against a single ship per fleet
all other capship wepons would be anti fighter only or at least with a damage improvment table that isnt even close to 1/10 th of the original wepons ...

in a big battle using many many fighters vs plenty of big ships the fighters would run out of ammo quickly this way instead of a typical every day small personal fighter having hundereds of large and cumbersome missiles or perhaps large battery-kapacitors to power a incinerator or sumtin...
not to difficult to implement either

I think what this game needs is a sort of mini-missile that hits units, thus giving it an autohit. Flavorwise it'd be similar to modern surface to air technology.

I've been thinking about the fighter problem and I've come up with these solutions:
(if anybody has raised these points them I'm sorry)

1 fighters have limited fuel.It stand to reason that small ships have smaller fuel tanks, this means that one should not treat it like a normal airborne fighter, because unlike atmospheric fighters, space fighters cannot waste fuel angling, dodging and dog fighting. thus you should decrease their def. bonus

2 fighter bays are smaller than cap missile launchers!?!?! why increase the size now the bay must be large enough too: accommodate a fighter allow it to be turned around in combat, let it be reloaded and launched that takes up a lot of space. I doubled the size of the fighter bay component

3 I decreased the effectiveness of fighter weapons a little bit

after those changes, I found that while fighters were strong it would take about 10 if them to take out 5 frigates armed only with DUC's so while the fighter is still important in the my game by using logic, fighters become an option not an ultimate weapon

I like the idea of the bigger launch bayes .. but you should make them in 3 tiers ( small, medium, large ) and the should be at least the double size of the according fighter size.
( and needed to launch them .. )

The fuel idea is not true in my oppinion .. to reason trucks have bigger fuel capacity than a car, bigger car more fuel .. the range of a truck is bigger but a car is still faster, more agile and can outrun a truck any day with time to refuel .. also thrust in space is needed per Mass so even a frigate needs alot more fuel to accelerate to the same speeds or do the same turns than a fighter can ( i think there is a sqare in the according formula ) and atmosphere fighters need their fuel to stay at speed to stay up in the air, dodging is optional and they carry extra fuel tanks most of the time.
I think the best and most realistic example for space fighters are those cross-formed cockits with guns from babylon5 ..

Remember : Pillage! then burn.
- Cpt. Kaff Tagon

Have people considered ramming ships/drones against fighters? Not exactly an early-game solution (then again, fighters can't go through warp-points so you can camp in early game) but you have your "never misses" attack and a well built ramming ship/drone should be able to take down several fighters. Of course, you wouldn't use these alone - put them in a fleet so if the fighters switch their strat to keeping away from your ships, you have all the more killing distance with regular PD weapons (or bomblet missiles if you really are desperate for Accuracy).

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go to this Wiki if interested. No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE

We need to have fighters have very limited ammunition supplies, however until carriers can recall and reload a fighter in mid battle this would underpower them. This would give carriers a use after they entered the battle then. Maybe have them carry one or two big heavy weapons and probably a small amount of anti-fighter ammunition as well.
That way lone fighter squadrons could take out the occasional stray ship in their system, or fight effectively from a staging point but would be far less useful if they went off to fight a fleet unsupported.

Please help me understand your example. Was this stock or BM? What weapons and how many did the fighters and frigates have, and what armor on each? What level of combat sensors were on the frigates?

I play BM only, which may be the difference, but this sounds nothing like what I've experienced. Against more than one frigate, 10 fighters would generally be dog meat in situations I've found myself playing in, unless the opposing ships had nothing to shoot back with, or they blindly charged into the teeth of the fighters, or unless a tech difference hugely favored the fighters. I sometimes wonder if folks perhaps are not taking full advantage of the design and combat strategy tools that are available.

I still think that fighters' combat effectiveness is right about where it needs to be, at least in the BM environment. Weakening them significantly will eliminate them as a useful tool.

Generally in the Balance Mod, fighters are equivalent to ships per kT. For example 300kT of fighters should be a match for a 300kT typical frigate etc.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

gusset I hope this answers your question. It was in stock with level 1 everything. the frigates had 2 or three ducs with a lv1 bat sensor (with about 150 armour) and the fighters had 2(?) missile launchers with 2 lv1 small armour components. Both sides were computer controlled and rushed each other.

Juju I think you aren't taking the point on fuel usage serious enough a ship moving in space on a vector is easy to track and therefore target. to combat this a fighter must burn A LOT of fuel to change its vectors fast enough. if it doesn't change its vectors fast enough it dies. so while I concede the point about total fuel loaded on to a fighter the rate that it is used up is more important. the only thing a bigger fuel tank dose is increase the amount it can manoeuvre on a single tank of gas. star fighters cannot afford to burn fuel dog fighting and manoeuvring so in my opinion reducing the def. bonus make perfect sense

'cept that, in my experience, a carrier can haul around 4 times it's weight in fighters.....

Would there be anyway to have a shield component have an added effect of reduces small weapons fire damage by ___%

You would only have this on the regular shield component, not on the small shield component...I know the game has an energy refractor that reduces beam weapon damage, but could you make it so it reduces damage dealt by small weapons?

and I dont know about this next idea, but the flack cannon, does it hit multiple targets? cause it throws out a wide area of flack right...so if there are a lot of ships in a small area, it should hit more then one ship

I was just scanning through and I just had a thought...I think the bigger picture is really how many units you can support is the problem...Think about an air craft carrier for a moment...its a floating city, ship is huge, it has all the support personnel and abalatis to fix things and they dont have 100's of fighters, its a lot less, I think its more like 20, and thats a high end estimate...Also the game doesnt take into account of maintaining the fighters...a helicopter has I think roughly a 2-1 ratio. Thats for every 2 hours of flight time, it needs 1 hour of maintanence. Also modern air craft have a flight time of at most 8 hours...Now yes this is a space game and all this goes right out the window BUT if you think about it...yeah being able to send out your fighters with out any down time at all seems a little un reasonable to me...and you can argue the same for larger ships, but on the flip side of that its a larger ship and you can work on it while and keep up your mantanince so it doesnt fall apart around you

One of the things that surprised me about SE5, is that armor does not have any sort of natural "hardening" effect: some sort of damage reduction or the ability to ignore damage below certain threshold.

The reason they invented bigger warmachines in the real world is so they can increase the thickness of the armor, that they can ignore smaller caliber fire altogether, as well as the ability to compartmentalize damage. Any weapon that hopes to penetrate the armor should specifically develop weapons that can penetrate those armor. Notice I said penetrate, not *ignore*.

A weapon that focuses on piercing armor should deal less damage once the armor has been pierced. Conversely, a weapon that are made for maximum area damage should deal more damage against targets with little or no armor. I believe most real life weapons work this way.

They way armor is set up now, fighters will always be king of damage. However, lowering their DPS output per ton will just make them nothing but crappy cannon fodders.

Should shields get the ability that any armor should already have? I'm all for it if it makes the game more interesting. It just seem to me a "field" or "shield" would take incremental damage regardless how small, unless its a refracting effect for rays.

Emissive Armor can completely negate smaller damage amounts. But should all armor in stock have some negation effect? It wouldn't be a bad idea for protection against units with light weapons, but I wouldn't go as far as to make small ships unable to damage larger ships.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

I wouldn't say "unable" to damage big ships, but they should be armed with big ship specific weapons like rockets or armor piecing DF weapons that are not as efficient at taking out other fighters with - ie a large ship hunter role.

Yeah, sounds good to me.

The first true idea in this thread that doesn't say "nerf this .. nerf that".
( and i am ashamed, i haven't thought of that )

Its the first true answer as seen in every Space-Flight Simulation or Sci-Fi Movies that count.

Fighters shoot Fighters. Fighters don't shoot capital Ships.

Thats what Bombers do.

Fighter weapons do not have enough power to hurt a real Ship.

No X-Wing would shoot an Star Destroyer with Lasers, thats what Proton Torpedoes are for.

No Viper .. not hundred would go for an Cylon Baseship .. the missile volleys fired in Galactica are exhausting.

Tie-Bombers, Broadswoards, Raptors .. the go for the Big Ones .. the have big Torpedos ..
a Interceptor will shred them, but Capitals are in for a world of pain.

So yes .. I like this armor proposal.

Give every Armor and every Shield a abilitie that negates damage.
Let it grow with different armor levels and types
Let it specialize in certain damage types( leaky or different absortion )
Make it basicly small but let it stack.
The more armor the more possible absorption.

That sounds like a good way to me

Remember : Pillage! then burn.
- Cpt. Kaff Tagon