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Fighters and such

Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2017 5:34 pm
by defaultuser
I have been playing some with an older version (5/20 test) and doing a bit haphazardly with fighters. Now that the latest test seems to have mysteriously fixed the display problems, I want to keep testing it. Is there a good guide on the fighters/flak cannons/etc.? I tried searching the forum but got so many hits that I didn't feel trying to wade through them.

Re: Fighters and such

Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2017 11:26 pm
by Oberlus
defaultuser wrote:doing a bit haphazardly with fighters
:lol: That's the way I do it.
defaultuser wrote:Is there a good guide on the fighters/flak cannons/etc.?
I'm not aware of anyone. If there is not, we could try to make it in this thread, with our experiences.

IMO, the main strengths of figthers are two:
- Very cheap cannon fodder (it replenishes after combat, if carriers weren't destroyed).
- Ignores shields.

Both combined make a swarm of figthers a real pain in the ass for fleets of late game capital ships. And they are not bad against fleets of many smaller ships, neither.

Several times, my rampage of conquering planets has begun after a relatively modest fleet of self-grav. carriers with plasma figthers have obliterated a bigger fleet of self-grav. + titanic battleships. After erasing the big doomstack that kept me tied to my own space I could begin conquering planets with little resistace. But that does not happen anymore since AI got aware of figthers and uses them from early game.

For Self-Grav, I use one engine in core slot, one shield and one figther bays. In extern slots, one launch bay, 3 weapons and 2 armours. I call them Battlecarriers. Later I get Titanic Battlecarriers, with 2 figther bays and 3 launchers (all 6 fithers out on first round). And finally I get solar hull with 3 fighter bays and 4 launchers. I never built non-carrier ships, it would be counterproductive unless you're already winning the game.

Because of my early turtling/expansive style of gaming (I focus on colonisation and defense rather than conquering), I've never built a carrier smaller than Self-grav., except when going stealth with organic hulls (that usually go full carrier, no weapons). But I guess robos with 1 fighter bay and 1 launcher would be also a great asset for your fleet early and mid game.

Re: Fighters and such

Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2017 1:26 am
by defaultuser
I had noticed that some encounters didn't go the way I predicted, as purely on weapons/structure fleets that would be expected to dominate didn't. I assumed that was due to fighters in the enemy fleets. I started adding some flak cannons to large ships. I have also looked at carriers with self-grav and titanic hulls. I don't have a good feel for:

1. How many flak cannons make a difference.

2. The best way to construct large carriers. How does it play out with the balance of hangars and launch bays? Does more than one hangar do anything?

I have to review my construction anyway, as none of the carriers or flak cannon ships in my saved designs loaded with this latest version.

Re: Fighters and such

Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2017 3:02 am
by MatGB
Documentation for Fighters lags as it's still a realtively new thing and while it's meant to be game changing to an extent we're aware it's going to take time to balance it and similar.

Basically, we need feedback threads (like this one) and then come up with some stuff to add to documentation as/when we finalise actual stats, currently what's implemented works, the AI can use it and the rules for it are clear.

But I have zero clue what's a good/bad design currently, nor really do others, the multiplayer group have been helpful with this because they're competing with each other rather than against the AI so get a better idea of what is/isnot powerful.

Personally in a standard three rounds of combat game I want all my fighters launched on round one as anything after that only gets one shot. So my designs have launch bays to match the fighter/bomber complement. Which in the early game means only bombers as internal slots are rare, in the later game I have some designs that use fighters but this is unusual.

One of my big changes to make is almost certainly to make launch bays match with the number in a fighter hanger not a bomber hanger, fighters should be the standard. I also thing Flak Cannons are overcosted but need some tech developement, I'll probablt try reducing their base shots to 2, half the cost but have techs that increase the ROF at some point.

Stealth carriers are overpowered against the AI because getting ahead in stealth is basically a guaranteed win against the AI regardless, but a single carrier can really mess up an AI making conquest almost too easy: work needs to be done there but I genuinely don't think it's the stealth carrier concept that's the realy problem. Geoff has done a barebones mock up implementation of a battle scanner system but I haven't had time to even try it myself yet, the idea looks good.

Most of my end game designs if I go down the standard robotic/constructed line tech is for a 'battlestar'/'star destroyer' ship that has some fighters and some flak and mostly guns, asteroids get more fighters because more internal slots, organic ships get weird mixes and rely on stealth more, energy can be very messed up.

Frankly, some good feedback on what does/doesn't work and what is/isn't explained would be very helpful, it'll need a balance pass before 0.5.0, whenever that ends up being.

Re: Fighters and such

Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2017 3:17 am
by defaultuser
See if I can follow. For example, a self-grav hull has two internals. If you keep one for shields, and use the other for a fighter hangar, then use three launch bays in the external slots? Dedicate the others to armor/weapons? Is the only difference between the hangar type the number of ships?

Re: Fighters and such

Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2017 3:30 am
by MatGB
No and no.

Launch bays have a capacity, currently the only one in the game has capaciy 2, so each lauch bay can launch two fighters per turn. So my core slot has an engine (recent change, all engines are one per design, the 2nd is now core/internal so you can use it in either), then there's a shield and a bomber hanger (capacity 2), and a single external launch bay.

Hangers currently are bomber, fighter and interceptor, with descending damage per shot and increased capacity, interceptor hangers have 4 fighters but they only do 1 damage at basic tech level, IIRC fighters are 3 damage/3 capacity and bombers are 5 damage/2 capacity. The techs increase these, not sure I got the balance right on them though.

Re: Fighters and such

Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2017 5:28 am
by defaultuser
Sorry, still a bit uncertain about the relationship between hangars and bays.

Re: Fighters and such

Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2017 12:16 pm
by EricF
I haven't used fighters yet, but I have found that putting just
one Flak cannon on my ships when I notice the AI is starting
to use them is sufficient enough for me to ignore them.
Now I may put two Flak cannons on my Titanic hulls as the
fleets of Titanic hull ships tends to be smaller than my earlier
fleets. More ships=More Flak cannons.

Re: Fighters and such

Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2017 12:33 pm
by EricF
defaultuser wrote:Sorry, still a bit uncertain about the relationship between hangars and bays.
Maybe I can answer this to see if I have it right as well. Correct me if I am wrong.

One launch bay can launch two 'Fighters'.
Fighter in this context is referring to all 'Fighters'. As in Bomber, Fighter or Interceptor.
So a launch bay can launch two Bombers or two Fighters or two Interceptors.
Hangers have a capacity in 'Fighters'.
A Bomber hanger holds two Bombers.
A Fighter hanger holds 3 Fighters.
An Interceptor hanger holds 4 Interceptors.

So for example a ship with one launch bay and one Interceptor hanger will launch
two Interceptors at the end of round 1 and two more at the end of round two.
If you had two launch bays you could have launched all four of them after round one.

Re: Fighters and such

Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2017 12:34 pm
by Oberlus
defaultuser wrote:Sorry, still a bit uncertain about the relationship between hangars and bays.
Inner slots:
- Interceptor hangar bay: 4 tiny "planes".
- Fighters hangar bay: 3 medium "planes".
- Bombers hangar bay: 2 large "planes".

Externs slots:
- Launch bays: can launch 2 "planes" per turn.

Interceptors are IMO just cannon fodder, because they do little damage (specially late game).
Early game, bombers hit stronger than fighters, but late game fighters seem better (at least until next balance cycle).

So I only use fighters.

Regarding hangar/launch bays balance for any hull, I use as many fighter hangars as I can (after I got 1 engine and 1 shield), say N hangars, and then I put round.down(N*3/2) launch bays.
That is:
- for 1 hangar (3 fighters), 1 launcher (1 fighter is launched in second combat turn);
- for 2 hangars (6 figthers), 3 launchers (all fighters out in first round, best scenario);
- for 3 hangars (9 fighters), 4 launchers (8 fighters out in first round, 1 remaining fighter out in second round).

Re: Fighters and such

Posted: Sun May 13, 2018 1:39 pm
by phocas
about design i've tried a duel carrier approach, 1 with bomber design and 1 with interceptor design
1 launch bay for each hangar
(i was thinking that the fighter were off at the battle start and thought it was better to have some reinforcement in the second battle turn)
less launch bay means more weapon or armor on the sihp

around midway in the pacific the interceptor should provide the CAP when the bomber are going against the ennemy fleet


there is a lack of battle report to understand effectively whats going on during the battle
we can see that ships are missing but we never know from what

one missing point is that we don't know if the "fighter-planes" fight again themselves
so the wick interceptor could be better at killing ennemy bomber than ennoying ennemy batlleship
NB: a "battleship" i everything bigger than a fighter with a specifc design


we don"t know either if the flak gun are aimed primarely against fighter or randomly between fighter ans battleships
if it's random as the other gun they can be rather ineffective if there are numbers of battleships making no damage against shields

?? is there any way to have a rough report (txt or other) stating wich ship design fire against what with brut damage and shield effectieveness
i know it could be rather long and should be optional if in the gui player interface
but it could be of gui in some battle log that you could exam "by hand"

Re: Fighters and such

Posted: Sun May 13, 2018 6:08 pm
by Gault.Drakkor
phocas wrote: ?? is there any way to have a rough report (txt or other) stating wich ship design fire against what with brut damage and shield effectieveness
i know it could be rather long and should be optional if in the gui player interface
but it could be of gui in some battle log that you could exam "by hand"
The combat report already exists in game. (Not obvious that it exists, nothing is mentioned in the pedia, can only view via SitRep entry)

In the SitRep (english):
At Asterope: there was Combat with League.
At <link to star system>: there was <link to combat report> with <link to empire>

Click on Combat to bring up the "Combat Report"
There are two tabs: a graphical "Summary" (with some display options), and a hit by hit "Log" of what ship damaged what.

Note: If you are doing moderator+ AI the report is very lacking, only surviving ships are described.

Re: Fighters and such

Posted: Sun May 13, 2018 10:14 pm
by phocas
whaou
i never saw that the report colored words were clicable links

YES this combat report is a good base
having the design name with the ship name in the log could be fine

i'm playing a fresh build from the new PPA
i saw that in the year battle report the ship design has be added to the ship name

i will see whats going on in the next turns when i have more ships and research tech

Re: Fighters and such

Posted: Mon May 21, 2018 2:26 pm
by phocas
important precision about weapon and fighter targetting,
all on the same random selection with no specific target mode
http://www.freeorion.org/forum/viewtopi ... 391#p92523