Whenever I see a mass of space fighters rushing at a space capital ship, defying all vacumm logic, and being shot at frantically by dedicated ship defenses, I cringe. The same laws of physics that determined how World War II torpedo bombers attacked capital ships, as being any sort of representation of how battle would take place in space is ridiculous and belongs squarely in the bloated fantasy world of George Lucas. I hate the addition of fighters and bombers. It kills the game for me.



In space all objects have equal weight (meaning none), the advantage that accrued for air vs naval units is non existent. In others words, a dreadnought would have all the speed and maneuverability of a fighter. Without that advantage, there would be no point in constructing mini craft, who could only be minimally armed, and whose space and development would take away from larger weapons.



Its doubtful a mini craft would ever be able to hurt a capital ship, as without the armor restrictions of mass and weight, capital ships would be armored and thus require weapons to take it down that only larger ships could carry.



Whatever I guess.

To be honest they already have Napoleonic ship type line ups before those were added.

autoresolve has always been better than their animated combat, or should I say clownbat

when you build up speed in space it is true that you can maintain that speed forever granted that you don't hit anything but for an object with such a large mass slowing down is going to be a pain. they can never be as maneuverable as fighters because their large mass effecting the ship's inertia. also the battles always occur around a planet and a tiny amount of gravity could be effecting the battle. as for weight restrictions maybe there wouldn't be one but the technologies in endless space have a point, it is just not practical building super massive space ships that neec to be crewed by hundreds of thousands of soldiers. electricity also needs to move throughout the ship and very long wires as would be required in a super massive ship would lose a ton of electricity and be incredibly inefficient. fighters are most obviously at advantage against capital ships because they are a much smaller target than the behemoth in front of it. as i said before, space allows big ships to go fast and maintain that speed but gives no advantage in maneuverability. as for how much damage a fighter can do it isn't much but in game fighters don't do much damage, they are designed as defense against bombers. bombers while most likely less maneuverable than fighters are still far more maneuverable than capital ships. a bomber could carry a number of different game style payloads (kinetic, beam, missile) from very close range. realistically, all that chaff you put on your ship is going to be very unhelpful in that close range. also for beams and kinetic, a bomber would be much more accurate from 10 meters away than those capital ships hundreds of meters away your ship's defenses were designed to fight. with precision a bomber could likely strike the weak points in your ship's armour and possibly important systems and high concentrations of your crew. my last point o the impracticality of super massive ships is that they still have to be built, which would take a huge amount of your resources even if you had millions of robots working on it.

Weight does not mean mass, mass always remains contant and in all formulas you use mass, also in weight formula. So, you have no weight, but you still have the same mass with the same inertia, so to move, or better say to change the direction or speed of small objects in space you'll need small force, and for large objects like ships you'll need tremendous amounts of force, and if you apply too much force, you can break the whole construction. Thus we can say that bigger ships cant be agile, concept is not broken, but one thing still makes no sense: wings that we see on evary fighter or bomber have no use in space. There is no gas in space, and you cant use that gas to rotate the fighter with wings, the only way of turning or decceleration is font and side thrusters, and we cant see them on the models, also if you dont turn thrusters off, you'll accelerate non-stop in space, but our fighters/bombers use them all the time.

Im not a fan of the strike-craft personally, and would prefer a more streamlined and realised use of the card mechanics to implement fleet strategy and doctrine.



But they aren't so bad really, could just use some adjustments to keep their complexity added to their depth added.

in endless space, bombers and fighters both participate in system invasions providing support for ground troops. the wings are likely to allow them to enter a planet's atmosphere and continue to have a combat capability.

Xenobyte wrote:
but one thing still makes no sense: wings that we see on evary fighter or bomber have no use in space. There is no gas in space, and you cant use that gas to rotate the fighter with wings, the only way of turning or decceleration is font and side thrusters, and we cant see them on the models, also if you dont turn thrusters off, you'll accelerate non-stop in space, but our fighters/bombers use them all the time.

"Adeventurer_Blitz" wrote:
in endless space, bombers and fighters both participate in system invasions providing support for ground troops. the wings are likely to allow them to enter a planet's atmosphere and continue to have a combat capability.

Shhhhhhhhhhhh you'll wake up dormant threads and/or the physicist! (not necessarily bad things... :P)



/#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/11436-wings-in-space



/#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/11486-craver-ships-look-rediculous





If you want my two cents about wings in space though, the principal of torque still applies in space and thus gives them some/limited use in space. As long as the thrusters are offset from the axis of symmetry, in theory they will be more effective at maneauvering the ship. In fact, as far away as possible would be best for max efficiency. So putting your thrusters on the wings and then utilizing the space for hard points is a logical recourse.



But as you guys point out the g forces could stress the hulls to the breaking point when taking a fast curve, so the wings would most like have to be shorter and stouter than their atmospheric counterparts, while still having enough area to create the requisite lift in an atmosphere.



As for the rest of it I may as well quote Nos because he summed it up nearly perfectly in this post of his:

"Nosferatial" wrote:
On the one hand, carrying fighters that are not capable of atmospheric flight becomes a serious issue for invading any planet.

Though I agree with The quasar that pure spaceborn fighters might look different, I'd like to make lists for the different requirements.



Atmospheric fighter:

- Unstable aerodynamics to provide maximum maneuverability and minimum air resistance

- Any mechanic generating an uplift

- engine outlet in the opposite direction of the main propagation direction

- either thrusters or rudders to modify the horizontal propagation, best at maximum distance to center of mass pivot point

- either thrusters or ailerons to modify the vertical propagation, best at maximum distance to center of mass pivot point

- aerodynamic weaponry that is effective in an atmosphere (nonrelativistic kinetics, rockets, overlapping laserfields without nonlinear optics behaviour at their wavelength and energy)

- Must be able to land/dock somewhere to refuel and replenish ammunition

- Should be light to minimize necessary uplift and maximize maneuverability



Spacefighter:

- shape constraints by requirements for radiation mitigation (you want your pilot to survive cosmic radiation levels) -> possibly bulky/heavily armored cockpit if not automated in the first place

- constrained by necessary overheat-countermeasures -> need radiators to get rid of excess heat

- engine outlet in the opposite direction of the main propagation direction

- thrusters to modify the horizontal propagation, best at maximum distance to center of mass pivot point

- thrusters to modify the vertical propagation, best at maximum distance to center of mass pivot point

- no constraints on weaponry (relativistic kinetics, rockets, high energy lasers)

- Must be able to land/dock somewhere to refuel and replenish ammunition (and possibly life support)

- Weight has to be balanced with thruster capabilities to ascertain maneuverability



If I look at the two lists, at least for bombers that do not use any radiation weapons, these two schemes might very well be combined.

For fighters I have to agree that it doesn't really make a lot of sense to have atmospheric and space capable crafts in one, since this would mean to cut down on the weaponry for space.

Stealth Hawk, this is the future, it is likely by this point they have been able to have adaptable wings for space and atmospheric battles. as for everything else, they have invasion focused fighters and battle focused fighters in game, so i imagine each fighter type is designed differently with different equipment to make it more useful in its specialty fields.

Igncom1 wrote:
Im not a fan of the strike-craft personally, and would prefer a more streamlined and realised use of the card mechanics to implement fleet strategy and doctrine.



But they aren't so bad really, could just use some adjustments to keep their complexity added to their depth added.

I like the battle card system. I realize that this isnt an RTS, so the battle mechanics cant be super intricate, and for the most part IMO it works fairly well.



Also after reading several of the points made so far, I am more open to the idea of space fighter/bombers. Definitely I think as long as it isnt an overt WWII carrier based/ torpedo attack/ dogfight/ ripoff, which I do not think it is too much. I guess we will be alright.

you can add up to four fighter squadrons on a dreadnaught but they don't really do enough damage by themselves to make a full carrier worth it.