QUOTE (darthkev @ Jan 17 2010, 01:38 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

What if it's a lone fighter squadron acting without a carrier or some other support vessel?

"What's he doing all the way out here?"
"Look, he's headed toward that small moon!"
"That's no moon..."

This made me laugh so loud my upstairs neighbors started banging on their floor! Oops.

As for thinking of fighters as smart missiles, I actually considered making a weapon like that once called a 'Smart Missile'. It would essentially be a fighter bay with fighters, except the fighters look like missiles, move like missiles (inertialess), and have a weapon with a large blast radius and short range that destroys the parent ship upon firing. Also, the missiles could have light weapons. This could also work for kamikaze fighters.

Thinking of them as smart missiles also cements my decision to not use fighters in any TC or even stock EVN. Too costly for what you get in return. The only exceptions are Mantas when fighting other fighters.

This post has been edited by darthkev : 17 January 2010 - 06:35 AM

Now, when I said they're sort of like smart missiles, I didn't mean that they're entirely fire-and-forget in nature. The fighters will still be a very valuable asset, but it's better to think of them as a specialized weapon more than an individual ship; like a weapons platform that you can deploy and send out ahead of your ship. For instance, if a gigantic heavy cruiser like the Harbinger is being pursued by a vicious hunter-killer and cannot turn on its axis fast enough to deliver a few fatal blows from the main guns, two or three strategically-deployed fighter squadrons can zoom behind the craft and give it limited fire support in its blind spot for a brief period of time, or at least harass the attacker until the flagship can turn and fire. Though they are inexpensive and fast, they are better used as a strategic defense weapon than as an actual spacecraft. Most of the larger ships in Delphi will have at least some form of limited fighter support, as the truly gigantic ones turn at an abysmal rate, and turrets alone are not always enough to fend off an adversary.

maybe you could have some fighters be AI controlled, so you don't feel like such a horrible person.

Delphi, I didn't mean they were fire-and-forget. I was referring to fighters in general, regardless of universe, TC, what have you. I've never used fighters as my personal ship nor as weapons (except for Colosseum, but there's not a lot of choice there) and I don't think I'll start soon. They just seem to take up more space and cost more money than they're worth. Plus, because fighters are ships and not ordnance, it's harder to find them in outfitters so I can restock.

Now, if you were to make fighters/fighter squadrons cheaper and more common in outfitters, then I might try them in your TC. From the sound of it, I'll have a hard time anyway if I don't use fighters.

As for what yamfries said, that's been done, sort of. Has anyone here watched Stargate SG-1? Or perhaps heard of the Predator Drone used by the U.S. Air Force? The Predator is remotely controlled by pilots from an airbase. In an episode of Stargate SG-1, there was a race of people who used craft controlled in a similar way to fight an oppressive regime. Because AI controlled fighters tend to lead to a Terminator-esque doomsday situation, remote controlled fighters would be better in my opinion.

This post has been edited by darthkev : 17 January 2010 - 10:52 AM

Ah. Sorry I misinterpreted your post. I thought you were saying that I spoiled your opinion of fighters so badly that not even my TC could save it. Either way, I agree wholeheartedly that fighters as player ships are almost completely pointless. Very small room for customization, almost negligible cargo space, and a nearly unusable FTL drive. Even against other fighters, they're fairly useless, because let's be honest: the EV Nova AI handles high-turn-rate ships better than a human using arrow keys.

Also don't worry, you won't have to scourge the entire galaxy looking for just the right fighter. Although Delphi is a gigantic universe, there are quite a number of locations where prefab fighters are available. Even in the depths of the almost completely unexplored Crux arm (late game story), the NDC has stations set up with fabrication and assembly lines. The supposed idea behind the faster-than-light tech in Delphi is that assuming you have an "anchor" at both your starting point and your destination, you can move anything around in almost no time at all. It's only when a ship has to plot a FTL drop-out point light years away that it makes the drive do real work. Also, primary system space-lanes are generally crowded, and therefore ships are required to do their own spatial calculations instead of just using the instantaneous "riptide" system to jump everywhere, lest immense queues should form in front of every gate out of a system. There are riptide anchors scattered throughout civilized space, though, so you can certainly get around in a hurry if it comes down to it. Obviously, this is the same game mechanic as the hypergates in classic Nova.

Either way yeah, it seems like a miserable thing to do, sending so many hundreds of pilots to certain doom, but a truly clever commander can use them as screening craft and pull them back in time to prevent overt casualties, using them to soften up a target's shields so the nichron cannons can let fly bolts of Zeus' own lightning and wreak havoc. The only real battles of attrition happen when they go head-to-head with another squad of fighters, which can truly become a last-man-standing ordeal. Against capital ships, they dodge turret fire with lighting speed and harass general ship operations with ease, making them a very useful tool for projection of power. If you're following lore, they are also used to ferry troops to and from the planet in the event that dropships are not available.

Speaking of dropships, I'm thinking of making the TT-14 dropship a useable carried vessel. Since it's usually fitted to vehicles not equipped with fighters, I figure an "it's-better-than-nothing" approach is deserved. I just figured that if you came under seriously crippling fire and had a perfectly good pair of light-grade pulse turrets hiding unused in your launch bay, you'd have to be pretty stupid not to use them.

Oh, and though I'm using small representative markers for fighters instead of 3D renderings, don't go thinking that means I'm going to cheap out on the artwork and just call one red dot X and the next red dot Y. They'll still be unique, and detailed, and have at least some sort of pretty artwork, either in the target window or the outfitter, and specialized icons in the main viewer to determine fighter type and strength.

QUOTE (Delphi @ Jan 17 2010, 10:38 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Oh, and though I'm using small representative markers for fighters instead of 3D renderings, don't go thinking that means I'm going to cheap out on the artwork and just call one red dot X and the next red dot Y. They'll still be unique, and detailed, and have at least some sort of pretty artwork, either in the target window or the outfitter, and specialized icons in the main viewer to determine fighter type and strength.

I was thinking of a similar approach for Sins of the Brothers, having squadrons represented by a scattering of dots to represent physical location, with a blown-up image similar to Nova's target image to give an idea of what type of fighter it is. I mean, it's space, so you're never going to be seeing what's on the screen other than what your computers bring up for you.

A 2-minute sketch of what I mean: Fighters.jpg (41.61K)
Number of downloads: 36

I have no idea how I'd render the spin on that, if the dots would animate and kind of swirl around one another or what, but that's something we can think about later. (Edit: actually, I'll probably just spin the wireframe part of the image; easy to do, easy to understand.)

Resource-permitting, I'd like to make several versions of the fighters and their motherships: one for when they're carried by mission-related escorts, one when they're carried by mission-related enemies, and one for everything else. Each would have a different color on the rendering and perhaps the points, so things wouldn't get too hectic in large engagements.

This post has been edited by Archon : 17 January 2010 - 04:27 PM

So, Archon, you're considering having a target image floating around with the RLE sprite or just having unique target images for each fighter type? If it's the latter, that's kind of to be expected. If it's the former, wouldn't that get in the way when fighting?

And perhaps more annoyingly, wouldn't it have weapon collision?

Not as such, because the idea is that the image is superimposed over the squadron (and would probably be much smaller than in the image I posted), so there would be fighters behind the image as well. If it ends up not working out that well, it's certainly not set in stone.

Actually, do ships lights count as targets that can be hit? I know engine glows don't, but what about weapons glows and lights? If lights can't be hit, only the ship itself can, then perhaps make the target image the ship's light so you have this holographic image that can't be hit over/around the ships itself, which can be hit.

Oh really? I had thought that any part of any sprite was fair game. If engines don't count though, I bet other glow/light effects don't. To make it work well on the side, Nova would need to use only the base sprite (not the lights) in calculating the center point though, since that's what the AI and turrets aim for. If that works too, though, it would make for some interesting possibilities.

Anyways, we should probably let Delphi have his thread back, unless he cares to speculate on this for the plug along with us.

How about it, Delphi? Back to your TC only, or discuss this idea as well as your TC?

** Edit:** Ooh, ominous, this is my 666th post.

This post has been edited by darthkev : 18 January 2010 - 12:24 AM

Meh, you're free to talk about whatever you want. It keeps interest in the thread and shows me what people expect from a TC, so I can either exceed expectations or revolutionize the status quo.

Alright, then. Archon, from your example picture I've thought up a design for your idea. Basically looks the same as yours, but green. I just think green would stand out more against the usual black of space. The target image would be normal size (128x64 pixels) with a green box around it and a green line shooting off from 7:30 (that's south west) to the center of the fighter sprite. You could even incorporate the ring into the light image forcing the player to have to actually hit the fighters and not just the area around them.

I like the running lights idea quite a bit, especially because the tag can be set to disable running lights when disabled. Therefore, with the player's targeting reticle around the target ship as well as the ship's indicator beacon (the ring, or light, or whatever is used to mark it), it'll truly attain a HUD effect, but it also means I don't have to show the ship's icon over top; I can represent them with several to-scale microscopic models, and the "running light" indicator denotes their status (alive/disabled) and heading.

It would make sense that a ship would loose sensor readouts on a craft as small as a fighter when the fighter is disabled since the disabled fighter won't be sending out signals to any friendlies. Because of this, sensor systems would have a hard time targeting the teeny tiny fighter.

It's likely that the easiest way to lock on to any ship would be tracking its heat, which would probably dissipate slowly from a fighter as they can't carry much in the way of heat sinks. Still, it would make sense for your targeting comp to simply drop the image to reduce clutter once the target is no longer a threat.

My thoughts exactly, Archon. Also, it'd work better for destruction purposes, the same way that your reticle releases from a ship that's been destroyed and is beginning its death animation. The indicator would disappear at the same time, truly making it seem more like an extension of your regular HUD.

Good point, Archon. I forgot that space doesn't really allow for rapid heat dissipation due to there being nothing around the craft to dissipate heat with. But still, it does make sense to reduce clutter.

Perhaps we could enhance this further. The engine glow for fighters could be an arrow showing the fighter's heading, as I think Delphi was hinting at. The weapon glow can be special markers around the ring indicating the fighter's weapon systems have powered up.