fighters vs cap ships

[Psyco Diver 69]

I know this issue has been raised before and is probably being worked on as a post but I can't help but notice a good fighter can stand toe to toe against a cap ship, heck get 4 or 5 fighters together and you can take out a cap ship. To me this isn't right. A fighters guns shouldn't even make a scratch in a cap ships armor, matter in fact a caps armor should make a fighters armor look like paper. Cap ships should have super thick armor and super strong shields. The only thing that should be able to hurt a cap ships is another capship, or a heavy fighter carrying 1 or 2 torpedos. They should have super powerful, slow firing big guns along with a bunch of turrets for fending off fighters.

A fighters roll should be support in taking out other fighters and torpedo fighters. When it comes to cap ships they would be use to take out turrets, the "big guns", shield emmiters, and even engines.

It could open up a big portion of the game where people could get together to attack a cap ship for a mission, or in a pre set big battle as a suggested in another thread. People who could afford cap ships would have to focus on hiring fighters to protect them, buying better turrets, ect

Just another one of those late night thoughts I get

[jackS]

Which capital ships are you finding particularly vulnerable to non-missile weapons? There are a number of vessels that, while much larger than a fighter, are not capital in nature. Some, such as the Ox, Gleaner, and Yeoman are freighters, and others, such as the Thales, Hidalgo, and Mule are sub-capital in nature (not to mention that the Hidalgos are converted yachts, and the Mules, even in military configuration, are supply chain, not front-line combat vessels). If you're finding Tesla, Kahan, Agasicles, and even larger vessels keeling over from strafing runs, something is indeed very worrisome, and we'd like to know about it.

That said, there are certainly a number of capital vessels whose turret emplacements are in need of some overhauling, especially with respect to anti-small-craft turrets (as the AI doesn't currently do much in the way of escorting its capital vessels, making "combined arms" approaches even more difficult to balance ).

[ollobrains]

A note on how fighters escorting capital ships should work.

The capital ship moves slowly, fighters should split into patrol vectors ( think 3d above below either side of ship behind and in front)

fighters in nearby patrol sectors in a 3d sense should assist each other in terms of responding to incoming threats. While the others should migrate to the border of their patrol areas to defend against rear guard incoming bogeys that might be using the distraction from one angle to attack from the other.

On the assualt front fighters in packs of 3-10 should attempt either full force front on attacks or attempt to divert the fighter guards with decoys and so forth using the 6 sector approach in a 3d sense i mentioned above.

The sphere defense - full on or split offense system seems to be a common thread in most sim games along a simliar appraoch.

Could be tweaked according to class, firepower and so forth