Since the talk about fighters and flack cannons began, I've been thinking about the way weapons work in FO.
As far as fighters go, as ROF weapons are supposed to be anti-fighter, the minimum capacity for the lowest capacity fighter bay should always be more than the ROF of the anti-fighter weapon. Otherwise with deterministic combat flack ships will always shoot down all your fighters. IE: if the ROF of the flack cannon is 3, then carriers need to be able to launch
at least 4 fighters/flack cannon/round of combat to get past the flack ships. Also presumably they should be able to inflict at least enough damage to take out the flack ship itself. Likewise because they are supposed to be balanced against each other, the ceiling for carrier capacity should be less than the capacity of two flack ships. his way one carrier will always get past one flack ship, but two flack ships will always stop one carrier. I don't know what numbers will need to look like for other hulls because I've only barely played around with carrier designs, so I don't know for sure how to suggest balancing the parts, but this kind of relationship should make them balanced.
I do think that a target priority system would be a good idea. One problem I've run into trying to use basic carriers is that they tend to get shot down before they really do much. I don't know how cumbersome having multiple target priority systems operating would be. Also I don't know how easy it would be for humans or more importantly AI to learn to keep track of all of them and use them properly. However I do think a universal targeting priority system should be workable.
- Unarmed Fighters
- Missiles/Torpedoes (if we get them)
- Armed Fighters
- Flack Ships/Distortion Ships
- Direct Weapon Ships
- Carriers/Troop Ships/Bombardment Ships (IE: Special Weapon Ships)
- Unarmed Ships
- Stealth Ships (according to stealth value)
- Planets/Buildings/Population ect...
Part of the function of fighters is to soak-up damage from the other ships, so they should be at the front. There is script and resources for unarmed "fighters" so they should take hits first. If we do get missile-type weapons (basically self-destructing fighters) they should have priority over armed fighters for targeting. Flack ships take out fighters, so they should be targeted by fighters and any support ships. Carriers should be protected by the other ships in the fleet, so they can continue to launch fighters if they still have them. The same goes for bombardment and invasion ships, but I don't know what kind of priority we should set those in-between each other. Any unarmed ships that are in your fleet (for whatever reason) should be protected by the other ships, cementing fighters role as damage sinks, and in case these are things like colony ships you would naturally want protected. Lastly, with combat being deterministic, stealth ships should be targeted last. Their stealth value should determine how "far back" they are. So distortion ships should have a high target priority to keep any of your stealth ships stealth. Planets (and anything on/around them) should take damage last if there are friendly ships in the system, under the assumption that the fleet will protect the planets.
On a bit of a digression:
I do think a major re-thinking of weapons would be a good idea as right now they all just seem to be the same aside from damage amount. The solar concentrator gives lasers some uniqueness, and I like it. I'd suggest that if there is a second high rate-of-fire weapon that it be a Pulsed Laser, namely because resources for it already exist and it would be distinguishable form the flack cannons by being able to take advantage of the solar concentrator (presumably giving it even higher ROF around brighter stars). Perhaps giving plasma cannons and/or death rays some ROF or ROF increasing techs would make them more interesting. I do think that if Death-Rays are going to stay a sort of "ultimate weapon" that they should have some ROF value above 1 for sure, to make them at least useful against fighters.
With consideration to the idea of perpetually researchable improvement technologies
here, if something like that is ever implemented, we should think of ways to make different weapons more qualitatively different in the game as there would be almost no reason to ever research plasma cannons or death rays if you could just research "improved rail guns" an unlimited number of times, even if it only ever gave you a small bonus. Especially with the research numbers of the later game.
On a bit further of a digression:
Right now we just have a single trait that makes
all of a species attack attributes (aside from invasion) better. There has been talk about "good pilots" having a bit of a balance issue, and I think this is correct. I would suggest decoupling a species effectiveness with fighters from its effectiveness from guns. This may in fact be useful to making the Mu Ursh a bit more balanced, as lore talks about them being good fighter pilots, but doesn't really mention their weapons. It would probably also make the Misiorla's weapons bonuses a bit more balanced in context if someone else had really good fighters (that could presumably contend with them). So you could have a species that had really good carriers, but bad battleships (say nerf Mu Ursh's guns), and another species with good battleships but bad carriers (say nerf Misiorla's fighters), or even no fighters (I'm thinking of the blind shipbuilders here like Exaw and Abbadonians).
To go a bit further to balance these traits against each other, I would suggest giving the "good weapons" species a bonus to rate-of-fire for all weapons (right now this only applies to flack cannons), somewhat nerfing the bonus overall
but ensuring they'll always be somewhat effective when put up against fighters. Likewise giving "good fighters" a bonus to fighter capacity, means that the ROF bonus is more relevant to the "good weapons" species. Also with tech primarily increasing the damage of weapons this keeps the traits distinctive throughout game progression. This would also put weapon damage squarely in the realm of technology, which I think would be a better approximation of realistic situations where better technology is what gets better weapons. There's no reason that an alien species should have inherently more destructive weapons with access to the same technology, but they could have better reflexes or just move faster.