I always thought it would be neat to design a scenario where not every ship represents a single ship. Fighters for instance could be assumed to be flying in formations, so one fighter on screen could be an indicator for a formation of several fighters.

For A Small Fighter to be able to defeat a large capital ship you need three things.
1. Skill
2. The right weapons
3. Money To buy those weapons

With these three things you can take out anything, unless the thing you are trying to take out is designed to take out you.
For example a fighter in the real world could be properly designed to blow the living %^&%^%*'s out of a aircraft carrior with a nuclear missile. Granted a fighter in any reality woulden't be able to take out capital ships head to head but from a distanse it is alltogether possible that a small fighter can take out ships that are many times bigger than itself.

This post has been edited by newbie 101 : 13 February 2007 - 11:16 AM

The question that needs to be addressed to answer the original question is: what are fighters for? There's several use cases I've seen expounded on here, with my commentary attached:

• To engage other fighters
  ** Not much point to them then, unless those other fighters pose a threat to the capital ships.
• To destroy capital ships
  ** What makes them better than actual capital ships in doing this? In other words, why would you use a bunch of weak ships if one strong one could do the job?
• To distract/harry/damage capital ships
  ** Interesting, but this implicitly assumes that ships can take partial damage, which they can't in EV (with the exception of ionization). The AI can be distracted, though.

Now here's some other thoughts:

• To act as point-defense
  ** Fighters make ideal long-range missile interceptors, assuming they have weaponry that can be brought to bear. Using this in EV would be tricky, though, because of how PDS works.
• To make first-strikes
  ** Capital ships take a long time to get into range of each other; may as well do something during that period. Fighters for this use would have a few heavy-hitting shots that they'd need to make count.

In general, I think what's needed for fighters and capital ships to make sense and still be fun is a lot of asymmetry. In other words, fighters and capital ships should have access to entirely different outfits, along the lines of what Pac was suggesting. A capital-ship battery could fire massive, incredibly damaging shots that also move slowly; these would be easy for fighters to dodge but less so for other capital ships. In turn, fighters would have a lot of short-ranged, fast-firing weapons that don't do much damage; ideal for fighting other fighters, but if they want to use them against capital ships, they'll have to get dangerously close to those big guns, reducing their reaction time. They'll also have to spend a long time in that range to get anything accomplished. In EVN terms, fighters would have light blasters, while capital ships would have heavy blasters that move at about half-speed. If a fighter does carry effective anti-ship weaponry, it'll have to have severely limited ammunition and range compared to what capital ships carry.

Also, remember capital ship PDS. EVN doesn't use this much at all (and I don't know if the AI will use PDS if it has access), but an effective point-defense makes short-range fighter runs much more dangerous.

@derakon, on Feb 13 2007, 05:14 PM, said in Should Fighters Be Able to Kill Capitol Ships?:

The question that needs to be addressed to answer the original question is: what are fighters for?

Don't forget the parallel question: what are capital ships for?

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In other words, fighters and capital ships should have access to entirely different outfits, along the lines of what Pac was suggesting.

Not me! I don't think they should.

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Also, remember capital ship PDS. EVN doesn't use this much at all (and I don't know if the AI will use PDS if it has access)

The AI will use point defence weapons should it have them.

An aside from the theory here. In practice, fighters in the Nova engine are devastating, if the enemy doesn't have fighters itself. Why? It's all to do with retargeting. (Note that this doesn't come up much in the Nova scenario, because of the disparity in power levels between the forces that usually fight each other.)

Let's say we have two capital ships fighting each other, about equally strong, but one carries a couple of fighters and the other doesn't. AI vs AI, the one with fighters will generally win. This is because when the fighters attack the fighterless ship, it basically ignores them. If it retargeted, it could destroy them quite quickly, but it doesn't. (I'm not certain about the exact reason for this. I think it may be to do with relative Ship Strength, but I haven't tested to make certain.) So the fighters do quite a bit of damage without reply (unless the ship has point defence, which will fire at anything suitable without needing to retarget).

(This is an issue I've come across with, amongst other ships, the Igazra in AotC. With its EVO armament, against a vessel (even a weaker one) carrying fighters, it's in real trouble. Sometimes, it's simply powerful to take out the capital ship, and then deal with the fighters, but only because it's an exceptionally strong ship.)

Now, we could call this a bug, but in practice it works out quite well, because if both ships have fighters, then while the ships themselves don't react to being attacked by fighters, their own fighters do, and will come and defend them. The fighters will dogfight with each other, while the capital ships slug it out.

So, as it stands, things can already quite easily be made to work out quite nicely. If you lack fighters, capital ships get swarmed and overwhelmed. If you lack capital ships, fighters can't stand up to heavy firepower.

Anyway, the general point is that it's fine to theorise about how things should work, but before you start planning too much you need to check out how they actually do work.

Heh, okay, so capital ships should be able to arm fighter-class weaponry. The question there is, why would they want to?

Capital ships serve several uses, as I see it:

• Versatile combatants. They can prepare for multiple situations, whereas a fighter is single-purpose.
• Durable combatants. A capship, if necessary, can weather heavy fire without dying. Thus, it makes a better blockade-runner and is better-suited to taking out defended targets.
• Conversely, capships also make superior defensive combatants. They can absorb fire to protect other ships, and their weight of fire can repel ships that get too close to their escortees.
• Missile platforms. Pretty self-explanatory.
• Fighter platforms. Being able to repair and rearm fighters can be very significant, but simply being able to add them to the fight is frequently the most important thing.

Frankly, in my opinion, fighters shouldn't be able to mount remotely close to the same armament levels as capships can. We can stretch things a bit for the player's ship because otherwise it's no fun, but honestly the player should still have trouble taking down a capship on their own. It doesn't really matter so much if the ships share outfits, though I think it adds flavor if they aren't, but a fighter's capacity for capship-killer weapons should be limited.

Incidentally, I think the reason why EVN capships don't target fighters is because otherwise, every time they get shot by a fighter, they'd switch focus. I seem to recall this being a problem in EVC and EVO - if you had enough fighters, then their target would basically never focus on any one ship for more than a half-second or so. They basically became paralyzed by the wealth of targets, and thus were easy meat. Now, ideally EVN would have some rules about targetting turreted fire and what to do with your primary target is out of range (plus some prioritization based on the offensive and defensive capabilities of available targets), but it's still basically using the same combat rules that EVC did, at the core.

This post has been edited by Derakon : 13 February 2007 - 04:30 PM

@derakon, on Feb 13 2007, 09:28 PM, said in Should Fighters Be Able to Kill Capitol Ships?:

Frankly, in my opinion, fighters shouldn't be able to mount remotely close to the same armament levels as capships can.

This is the same point we had above. This is a nice idea, which initially seems attractive, but in practice the max ships in system limit means that fighters have to have firepower not so far short of that of capital ships - otherwise they become pointless unless you have about 20 of them, and if you have carriers with 20 fighters you can say goodbye to fleet battles.

@derakon, on Feb 13 2007, 09:28 PM, said in Should Fighters Be Able to Kill Capitol Ships?:

Capital ships serve several uses, as I see it:

• Versatile combatants. They can prepare for multiple situations, whereas a fighter is single-purpose.

Surely any ship can be refitted? You can have a space superiority variant of a fighter, a 'bomber' variant, a system patrol variant, an extended range variant …

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• Durable combatants. A capship, if necessary, can weather heavy fire without dying. Thus, it makes a better blockade-runner and is better-suited to taking out defended targets.

Blockade-runner? We're talking warships not tough traders. As for taking out defended targets, to invert your earlier question: why use one big expensive ship when lots of small cheap ones will do the job?

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• Conversely, capships also make superior defensive combatants. They can absorb fire to protect other ships, and their weight of fire can repel ships that get too close to their escortees.

I don't know what behaviour you're describing here. Anyway, the job of a capital ship is not to escort things - that's a whole different specialist class of ship.

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• Missile platforms. Pretty self-explanatory.

Not really. If I just want a ship full of missiles, it doesn't need to be the size and cost of a capital ship. Why not lots of smaller, cheaper ships full of missiles?

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• Fighter platforms. Being able to repair and rearm fighters can be very significant, but simply being able to add them to the fight is frequently the most important thing.

Hang on, we haven't established that fighters are important, but you're using them as a reason why capital ships are important?

But your answers are actually a step on from the answer I was looking for. What are capital ships for? In realistic terms? Fighting other capital ships. Yes, they can destroy other things too, but they're overspecced for the task - you can do the job much more cheaply and effectively.

Fighters - being cheap and fast - are good interceptors (in the EV terminology sense of 'buzzing' ships in-system). Fighters are good anti-piracy vessels (while capital ships are overspecced for the task). Fighters can be good escorts for traders (while capital ships are …).

So, the only reason we have capital ships is because large-scale interstellar warfare exists, and there are other capital ships for them to fight in the effort to achieve naval superiority. (Once you've achieved it, you don't need capital ships anymore, since smaller vessels will do the remaining jobs more efficiently.) If you have a scenario where conflict on that kind of scale is unthinkable, you wouldn't have capital ships (Elite had no capital ships), but you would still have fighters.

Now, the follow-up question is: why should fighters be significant in major naval battles? And this time, the answers have nothing to do with realism. We want fighters because:

• Battles involving them are more aesthetically attractive. (The Enterprise and another big ship shooting at each other in Star Trek is not in itself interesting - very few memorable Star Trek moments are directly related to space battles. Conversely, even in the worst Star Wars films, the battles remain visually arresting, chiefly thanks to the contrast of tiny ships zipping around vast ones.)
• Battles involving them are a greater challenge for the player. Dealing with small fast ships requires (or should require) completely different tactics from large ones. A big battle with a mixed range of ships and armaments should be another test again.
• The availability (and playability ) of fighters gives more options to the player. If the game were made restrictively 'realistic', so that even the best player couldn't take out a capital ship in a fighter (never mind a stock shuttle), then there would be less variation of play. Winning the big battles would require everyone to adopt the same tactics and the same type of big ship.

Incidentally, the reasons to have great hulking capital ships (which might make equally little sense in economic and tactical terms) are essentially the same: they are also a part of the visual attraction, and part of the challenge, and they also offer the player a great big thing with a huge price tag to aspire to owning.

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Incidentally, I think the reason why EVN capships don't target fighters is because otherwise, every time they get shot by a fighter, they'd switch focus. I seem to recall this being a problem in EVC and EVO - if you had enough fighters, then their target would basically never focus on any one ship for more than a half-second or so. They basically became paralyzed by the wealth of targets, and thus were easy meat.

I'm not quite sure what your argument is here. I've explained that the way things work at the moment makes ships without fighter cover 'easy meat' for enemy fighters. Now you say that they used to be easy meat in Override as well. So, what was the reason for the change again …?

Now, the situation you describe from Classic/Override did happen, but it was not so debilitating as the present one (trust me, I've invested the time to know ;)). The swarmed ship would at least be firing, and if it had more powerful weapons than turrets it would take fighters out with them. Also, as a rule fighters do/did not regenerate so fast that those occasional turret shots were completely ineffective. Fighters would be taken out by them too (and once the first goes, the remaining fighters each get targeted that much more often, accelerating the process). The only situation where a ship could be completely 'flooded' in the way you describe would be by a flock of Azdaras (thanks to their shield regen), or if the numbers were completely disproportionate.

A test case with Override ships: Igazra vs Azdgari Warship (with its 6 Azdaras). Under the EVO engine, you should find the Igazra wins with about 30-40% shields remaining. Under the EVN engine, it should destroy the Warship, but the Azdaras will probably finish it off too. It might win, but will be down to its armour.

(Edit: Tested the above and this is about right. The key factor is how close together the ships start. In EVO, being far away is to the Igazra's advantage, as it gets some SAE volleys off, and can deal with the Azdaras separately from the Warship. In EVN, being far away is to the Igazra's dis advantage, as the Azdaras will strafe it (to no reply) for a longer cruise before it gets into range to finish off the Warship. But regardless of distance, the Igazra almost invariably wins this match-up with the EVO engine and loses it with the EVN one (on the version of data for Nova I'm using, at least). Distance just determines how many shields it has left if it wins.)

This post has been edited by pac : 13 February 2007 - 07:33 PM

@pac, on Feb 14 2007, 12:10 AM, said in Should Fighters Be Able to Kill Capitol Ships?:

• Battles involving them are more aesthetically attractive. (The Enterprise and another big ship shooting at each other in Star Trek is not in itself interesting - very few memorable Star Trek moments are directly related to space battles. Conversely, even in the worst Star Wars films, the battles remain visually arresting, chiefly thanks to the contrast of tiny ships zipping around vast ones.)

There was the time that Jem'Hadar fighter destroyed the USS Odyssey with a kamikaze run. I believe that was only the second time we saw a Galaxy-class go down in flames.

In fact, a lot of the Dominion War battles were pretty memorable. That may be related to the fact that some fighter-like craft were involved on both sides, however. Not one-man, but small attack ships.

Then, of course, there's always the Sulu-to-the-rescue scene in The Undiscovered Country.....

This post has been edited by Lindley : 14 February 2007 - 11:02 AM

I think Animorphs actually had fighter-to-cap-ship combat down pretty well. Halo aswell.

Basically I think that in general, fighters should not be able to destroy capital ships, but if they have special attack strategies, bombs, things like that, that it should be possible. I think that medium ships should be able to destroy capital ships if very well piloted, but in most combat cap-ships should dominate. However, I do think that the most dominating cap-ships should generally be battleships, not carriers, as they have great amounts of firepower aswell as reasonable speed and maneuverability. This doesn't count if we're talking super-ships, like the mothership in Independence day; those should be very much God-like vessels, although they should have weakness (which is inevitable realistically as well), but weakness that is extremely difficult to exploit. That's my general idea on it. Capital ships should definitely be able to bring great amounts more firepower to bear than individual fighters, but given enough time and enough dodging fighters should be dangerous, but only if it is difficult. Definitely no "Last Starfighter" type stuff.

When I think about fighters, I think of two science fiction universes. Andromeda, and Battlestar Galactica (the new version). Many other universes simply do away with fighters, and stick with capital ships. Incidentally, both of these universes do not use shields, just armor and point-defense. They also both use missiles, something you don't see too often when there are shields.

In Andromeda, fighters were essentially the main military power of the Andromeda. She launched small drones, and it seemed that these small fighter drones could take out capital ships with ease. At the same time, there seemed to be the threat that the enemy could destroy the Andromeda with fighters and missiles just as easily, so heavy use of AI-controlled PD was employed. Ultimately the Andromeda launched missiles while this was all going on, and stayed at a distance away from the enemy. There did not seem to be much in terms of dogfighting. People left their PD systems to deal with fighters and missiles.

In Battlestar Galactica, Vipers are always going head to head with Cylon Raiders, while the Battlestars and Base Stars shoot at each other with missiles and heavy canon at range. Fighters shoot down incoming missiles and other fighters. Fighters also destroy non-capital ships like civilian transports, scouts, or landing craft. In other words, in Battlestar Galactica capital ships shoot at each other and fighters worry about the little things. In some cases fighters may be equipped with much heavier weapons to take out specific targets. Some cylon raiders carry nukes to attack capital ships directly or destroy groups of civilian ships. Raptors are also used as missile platforms in the more recent episodes.

So, the general consensus in my mind is that if you don't have shields, fighters are very powerful and you depend on armor and PD a lot to survive the incoming bogies. If you do have shields, fighters just don't seem very useful (even in Star Wars where fighters seemed rather important, they were useless as long as the new Death Star was shielded). To destroy capital ships in a universe of shields, you need weapons and power plants a lot bigger than a fighter can carry.

I love to bring Schlock Mercenary in whenever we talk about space combat too. In that universe, ships destroy each other by having a larger power plant than the other guy, and by overwhelming the enemy with many more drones than they can effectively destroy. To a certain extent AI strength is a factor, but basically the bigger your "annie plant", the more "gravitics" you can bring to bear and rip the enemy apart.

So the question has been asked, why do you want capital ships? Well in a shielded universe, the answer is simple, bigger the ship, better the shields and bigger the weapons you can use to take out the shields the other guy has. In a universe without shields, I think it's basically a matter of space. The more surface area you have, the more guns you can shoot at the enemy to take out his armor before he takes out yours. The more internal volume you have, the more fighters you can launch, which also means more guns and more things the enemy has to worry about. But something we're overlooking here, is that you can bring more marines with you the bigger your ship. Fighters can bring a lot of firepower to a fight, but only a capital ship can actually control space. Besides being able to land a legion of troops on a planet you want to conquer, or board the enemy with enough troops to take over their capital ships, there's also the intimidation factor. Would you be more scared of 100 fighters or a couple of really big ships? 100 fighters might be beaten by inferior forces by using superior tactics and hit-and-run attacks. A capital ship won't be leaving your skies without bringing some very heavy weapons of your own, or a very large number of smaller weapons. Ultimately, a capital ship is a platform and a symbol. In modern times, when an aircraft carrier or battleship comes into your sea and starts hanging out a few miles off your coast, that's an important message. The symbol of military power is obvious, the message is that the area around that capital ship is now under the control of that ship. The people who sent that capital ship have an interest in the goings on around there. Sending a destroyer group to somebody's backyard sends a different message than a carrier group. I've heard something along the lines of: a modern US aircraft carrier can unleash more firepower than all of the munitions in World War II. And of course there are certain kinds of weapons that will only fit on a ship of a certain size. The Death Star was basically a ship built around its weapon. With the exception of Andromeda (nova bombs) you don't really see fighters carrying around weapons capable of destroying whole worlds.

Why do you want fighters? Well, fighters are numerous in theory, and thus somewhat expendable. They are also fast, and can respond to threats quickly. But really, when the two big capital ships duke it out, the fighters are not going to be a huge part of it. They might be able to hit certain targets, attack the enemy from multiple angles, but two massive warships pounding each other with shells, missiles, or lasers... you wouldn't want to put your fighters in between.

So I know that the original question for this topic was "should fighters be able to kill capital ships?", and I haven't really answered that. But I think ultimately it comes down to shielding. Are shields strong enough that fighters can do anything to them? Sort of turns the question back around without answering it, but for this question I just don't think there's enough real data to say. A modern fighter could carry ordinance to sink a carrier or battleship. But those ships are being equipped with some really crazy auto-tracking PD systems now. Basically incoming missiles are shot down in a hail of very large bullets. So perhaps if you're going to sink a modern capital ship you'd really need to send a large number of fighters at it. Yes you could use a nuke, but in space with no air pressure nukes are pretty worthless except at very very close range, and so much of the energy is lost in directions not towards the enemy.

@mrxak, on Feb 15 2007, 09:40 AM, said in Should Fighters Be Able to Kill Capitol Ships?:

When I think about fighters, I think of two science fiction universes. Andromeda, and Battlestar Galactica (the new version). Many other universes simply do away with fighters, and stick with capital ships. Incidentally, both of these universes do not use shields, just armor and point-defense. They also both use missiles, something you don't see too often when there are shields.

Likewise Babylon 5. Except for the missiles part----it's all pulse-blasts and lasers there.

You obviously missed "Severed Dreams" where two Thunderbolt class starfuries launch missiles at Martian pressure domes when Clarke orders the bombing of Mars.

Ah, there was that.

I suppose B5 may use missiles for air-to-ground strikes, then. We didn't really see many of those.

Now that I think about it, Earth's defense grid had lots of missile batteries.

Yes. The GOD satellites. I think GOD in this case may stand for geosynchronous orbital defense or something along those lines.

This post has been edited by CaptJosh : 17 February 2007 - 10:04 AM

Realism may not be the best word, and modern naval analogies are not necessarily accurate. I personally have always felt that the capital ships need to be stronger. EV was slightly more balanced than Nova, but Nova is too focused on a close gap. In EV, it was possible to take out a a Confed Cruiser with the most powerful fighter, the Rapier, but it took a lot of skill and a lot of time. The thing about Nova is that there are so many powerful medium ships. I have problems with the idea of a Mod Starbridge being able to take down a Pirate Carrier or Fed Carrier, or even Destroyer. I think there are a few things that need to be done when developing.

1. Define what fighters, medium ships, heavy ships, and capital ships are. There should be a bit of a noticeable difference, in my opinion, between the role and armament of a fighter and, say, a medium ship and the relative strength. Fighters should truly only be effective in swarms and group attacks and quick strikes. That is their role. I hate the idea of Thunderheads being labelled "Light Destroyer Class" or the fact that two or three Pirate Thunderheads can fairly easily take down a Carrier. An AI medium ship (Valkyrie or Starbridge) should have no problem taking out an AI fighter (Thunderhead). An AI Heavy ship (destroyer) should have no problem taking out an AI Medium ship. An AI capital ship (Carrier) should have no problem taking out a heavy ship. There are a few ways to correct that.

2. Make the defensive differences in overall classes greater. If a normal fighter has, say, 150 shields, then a normal capital ship should have well over 3000. A medium ship might have something like 600, and a heavy ship should have 1500.

3. Make the space on larger classes of ships bigger, and make weapons heavier. If possible in the game, limit access to heavy weapons by smaller ships. Just like there is no way to put 16 inch guns on a PT boat or even a destroyer, you should never be able to fit heavy blaster turrets or 200mm railguns on a fighter or medium ship. It may be necessary to reduce the empty space on some fighters as well. Also, anyone want to tell me why the Pirate Thunderhead can carry only 1 less gun than a Fed Carrier? Sure, it can't use turrets, but my point is that the capital and heavy ships need to be able to actually carry more weapons than smaller ships.

4. Scale back the power of some weapons. The thunderhead cannon is rather overpowered.

This is making me want to do a modified version of the ship data.

In my opinion, the point of fighters is to attack smaller ships and fight larger ships in groups with the aid of a larger ship. A single fighter really shouldn't be that effective in the big picture.

This probably isn't helpful for EV, but I'm going to say it anyways, its an interesting view point.

I suppose in the shield argument, it depends on how shields work. Theres what I'm going to call the 'EV style', where you have to take down the enemy's shields all together, regardless of where you're shooting. Theres also the idea where instead of one single barrier, theres multiple generators responsible for various sections. For example, in Master of Orion 2, all ships had four shields: front, left, right, and rear. If you shot the front of the ship enough, the front shields would fall and the armor would be vulnerable, but hitting it from any other direction would still strike shields.

In the latter style, this also give the possibility if the shiel isn't simply a "skin tight" layer around the ship, but rather a bubble or other shape that gives enough space between it and the hull, a hole could be made in the shields and fighters could slip through and be free to attack the surface of the ship.

But basically, I see capital ships as mobile command bases. They probably generally carry an army around with them to deploy for surface invasions, since you're not going to want to blow up every single world you attack, some may have valuable resources. They are also slower and more ponderous, which in open space isn't too big of a deal, but its not always a big expanse. Should a fight occur in a dense asteroid field, capital ships, should it even be safe for them there, would have highly restricted mobility whereas fighters and smaller craft could dart between rocks rather easily. Fighters could also slip through minefields much easier.

Then theres atmospheric combat, which introduces a planet's gravity to the capital ship. Unlike space, it would take a great deal more energy to keep it flying, since it is no doubt very large and very heavy. A fighter, on the other hand, would hardly notice the difference much unless the gravity is unusually strong. They'd also have a far easier time navigating the terrain and would be able to slip into canyons and such to attack specific targets. Plus, since in my example capital ships carry an army, they'd need to be deploying it for an invasion, making them vulnerable. Fighters could attack/defend vulnerable capital ships in the process of deploying their army.

Also to note is any planetary defense systems, which can be even bigger than what a capital ship can mount. And ships that big aren't known for their agility (at least as far as I know) and would have a great deal of trouble avoiding planetary based weapons designed to blast cap ships, whereas fighters wouldn't have the same trouble. Another possible use would be for bombing surface installations, assuming orbital bombardment isn't very accurate, if even possible.

Fighters might also be ideal for stealth operations. They're smaller and probably harder to detect due to that. It'd be much easier for a fighter to slip in somewhere than a huge vessel.

The problem with EV is that it is really only concerned with open space slug matches. The player is the only one who would consider taking cover behind asteroids, actively evading shots, etc.

One interesting thing in Star Wars (or at least, the space fighting games) is that fighters carry firepower strong enough to destroy them many times (i.e. X-Wing carrying 6 proton torpedoes, one of which is enough to blow up another X-Wing, should it happen to hit of course), which isn't unrealistic if you consider that missile technology is more advanced than shielding technology, and in fact I think it's the case too with today's fighter planes (which can be outfitted with efficient anti-fighter missiles for which the only protection is countermeasures such as flares or ECM, and/or somewhat efficient anti-ground/anti-ship weaponry, and/or of course of goold old friend the nuke; thanks go to Buck Danny for such current fighters knowledge). The EVC Lightning and Manta, the EVO Voinian Heaver Fighter and UE Fighter, and EVN Phoenix and Anaconda can destroy themselves but do not come really close to the extent it is in the SW games (i.e. the "how many time you can destroy yourself constant is much lower). This means that in these games, fighters can take out ships bigger than them provided this guided weaponry can hit (we assume that lasers become less useful against bigger ships, which can be equipped with turrets, which are quite a pain for fighters when the fighters are inertialess as is the case in SW and real life airborne fighters, EVs are quite unique in that inertia fighter behavior). As for capital ships, their power comes from many turrets which can be avoided only if you're small and nimble (which is easier in 3D that in 2D, given the extra dimension possible for avoiding stuff). The end result is that medium ships are nearly useless for combat, since they are not powerful enough to resist being killed by a single fighter's torpedo run, and they are too big to avoid actual capital ships turret shots (think Leia's Tantive IV at the beginning of Episode 4), so the only medium ships are transport stuff (more comfortable than a fighter...) and cargo ships. This also means that capital ships (which have to exist if only to tranport troops and logistics and everything to ensure a spöb invasion, space is not everything people, or in fact various stuff such as planetary bombing or blockading/guarding when there's no station present yet, this can't be done by a bunch of fighters as I'm sure you would all love being stuck on duty in your cramped fighter for days...) have to be quite big (by comparison, much larger than EVs capital ships) so that they cannot be destroyed by a few fighters, only being sensitive to actual runs from many bomber-type ships (TIE Bomber or B-Wing); they end up being so big that they are really slow and can not come in range when they are both in the same zone for some time, thus the need for fighters. Unfortunately, this isn't really suited for Nova, both for ship limitation reasons and because it's wouldn't be fair for the player to have to go through the medium ship stage very vulnerable to all combat ships out there. So I think we can somewhat get inspired from SW but not really completely.

Somewhat recently in the universe of Vendetta Online (the MMO, EV-ish space combat and trading game), capitol ships were given shields, which were basically barriers that only became visible when hit, and needed to be hit with a lot of fire to go down. Only when they went down could a player begin dealing real hull damage, and after 15 minutes, the shields would regenerate again.

This has drastically changed combat styles against these ships, since all of the pilotable ships in VO are basically fighters, light and heavy. More reliance has been placed on the bomber-fighter alliance in taking down a large ship. Here's a movie clip of a group of us taking down a very large capitol ship's shields using multiple bomber craft, and striking all at the same time to break through the shields. In Vendetta, most capitol ships have devastatingly powerfull turreted weaponry they can fire if any ships come within range. Most ships can be destroyed in 3-4 of these shots, so strikes have to be tactical and organized.

Achieving balance like this in Nova could be acquired to some extent by having large ships carry very massive turrets with high tracking, rate of fire, and damage. Giving fighters less weapons space, and creating accordingly small weapons designed for them would force the balance.

This post has been edited by Hamster : 18 February 2007 - 12:40 PM

@zacha-pedro, on Feb 18 2007, 07:17 AM, said in Should Fighters Be Able to Kill Capitol Ships?:

One interesting thing in Star Wars (or at least, the space fighting games) is that fighters carry firepower strong enough to destroy them many times (i.e. X-Wing carrying 6 proton torpedoes, one of which is enough to blow up another X-Wing, should it happen to hit of course), which isn't unrealistic if you consider that missile technology is more advanced than shielding technology, and in fact I think it's the case too with today's fighter planes (which can be outfitted with efficient anti-fighter missiles for which the only protection is countermeasures such as flares or ECM, and/or somewhat efficient anti-ground/anti-ship weaponry, and/or of course of goold old friend the nuke; thanks go to Buck Danny for such current fighters knowledge). The EVC Lightning and Manta, the EVO Voinian Heaver Fighter and UE Fighter, and EVN Phoenix and Anaconda can destroy themselves but do not come really close to the extent it is in the SW games (i.e. the "how many time you can destroy yourself constant is much lower). This means that in these games, fighters can take out ships bigger than them provided this guided weaponry can hit (we assume that lasers become less useful against bigger ships, which can be equipped with turrets, which are quite a pain for fighters when the fighters are inertialess as is the case in SW and real life airborne fighters, EVs are quite unique in that inertia fighter behavior). As for capital ships, their power comes from many turrets which can be avoided only if you're small and nimble (which is easier in 3D that in 2D, given the extra dimension possible for avoiding stuff). The end result is that medium ships are nearly useless for combat, since they are not powerful enough to resist being killed by a single fighter's torpedo run, and they are too big to avoid actual capital ships turret shots (think Leia's Tantive IV at the beginning of Episode 4), so the only medium ships are transport stuff (more comfortable than a fighter...) and cargo ships. This also means that capital ships (which have to exist if only to tranport troops and logistics and everything to ensure a spöb invasion, space is not everything people, or in fact various stuff such as planetary bombing or blockading/guarding when there's no station present yet, this can't be done by a bunch of fighters as I'm sure you would all love being stuck on duty in your cramped fighter for days...) have to be quite big (by comparison, much larger than EVs capital ships) so that they cannot be destroyed by a few fighters, only being sensitive to actual runs from many bomber-type ships (TIE Bomber or B-Wing); they end up being so big that they are really slow and can not come in range when they are both in the same zone for some time, thus the need for fighters. Unfortunately, this isn't really suited for Nova, both for ship limitation reasons and because it's wouldn't be fair for the player to have to go through the medium ship stage very vulnerable to all combat ships out there. So I think we can somewhat get inspired from SW but not really completely.

The purpose of a medium ships is to be able to take out several fighters. Yes, a fighter can take out a few others, but that's only if it can survive the attack from said fighters, whereas the purpose of a medium ship is to be able to survive the attack from a few fighters, and so on up the scale (heavy ship should be able to survive a few medium ships, capital ships should be able to take out at least 2 heavy ships).

@erikthered, on Feb 18 2007, 05:46 PM, said in Should Fighters Be Able to Kill Capitol Ships?:

The purpose of a medium ships is to be able to take out several fighters. Yes, a fighter can take out a few others, but that's only if it can survive the attack from said fighters, whereas the purpose of a medium ship is to be able to survive the attack from a few fighters, and so on up the scale (heavy ship should be able to survive a few medium ships, capital ships should be able to take out at least 2 heavy ships).

What Zacha's saying, though, is that a Medium Ship would not be able to survive against fighters. He's examining sources where offensive power easily outweighs defensive power.

(One X-Wing can potentially take out six other X-Wings in one shot each.)

Under such a system, Medium ships would suffer high attrition rates against fighters (The opposite of the bold statement above).

Let me put it this way:
Lets say I have an enemy who I know is going to be sending a lot of fighter-bombers at me.
Lets also say I have reason to believe that the missiles my enemy's fighters are armed with can kill a fighter or a Medium Ship in a single hit.
Each of his fighters have several of these missiles, so the cost of (or the loss of) each fighter is heavily outweighed by the damage it could potentially do.

I can respond either by investing in my own horde of fighters, or I can invest those same resources in Medium Ships.

Each Medium Ship would require more resources, money and crew than each fighter.
They would be larger, and therefore slower and less able to avoid my enemy's missiles.
I would also have fewer Medium Ships than I would fighters.

In a situation where offensive power outweighs defensive power, such as the ones Zacha Pedro was examining, and the one I described here, Medium Ships would not be a good investment.

This post has been edited by Eugene Chin : 18 February 2007 - 02:02 PM