I do believe that space strike craft are so much a part of science fiction today that no game should and could avoid them in the long run. (I remember the fights it took to convince some other developer, they fought like three headed hell hounds and finally gave in).



I also believe that they would "fit in" to this game the best way the OP described; to have a "sortie" mission on the strategic map to project power without actually having a fleet engagement. Just having another phase at "even longer range" is boring and defeats the purpose of a carrier that stays safe because it stays out of combat (or at least out of range).



I have only one problem with it: What is a reasonable range for the strike craft?



If fleets meet in a system, they engage. So since we do not want a fleet engagement, the carrier can not be in the target system.

But star lanes are of different length. You also cannot "brake" shortly before the system to unload fighters (at least not in the current version).



Would it (gameplay wise) feel good to launch strike craft at a range that normal ships need several turns to travel? I think not. Strike craft should not be able to teleport to their target. I also don't like the option to launch and have the carrier sitting there for several turns until the strike craft come back, since this would paint a picture of strike craft capable of enduring years of travel, which is the complete opposite of how we picture strike craft in science fiction.





So, to come to my conclusion, as much as I also would like to have strike craft, and as much as I believe that they belong into any space game, I cannot find the right place for them in this game yet. Maybe one day when we have fleet formations, or if fleets in the same system first have to find each other and not just engage, or if the carrier can stop just in front of the target system and launch them, this will change.

If you wanted to simulate strikecraft being used like ww2 carriers you could always add a very long range phase to the beginning of combat where they are most effective.

What if instead of caries for small fighters, we go with something more along the line of LAC's? (Light Attack Craft) Spacecraft that aren't a fighter but actually only a very small space ship without any proper interstellar drives. Then at first you build them purely as as a system defence ship until you can research dreadnoughts and that then gives you the ability to build a carrier variant that can carry several of these ships into an engagement without affecting the fleet cap costs. These "carriers" would of course have little space for any other combat or defensive mods so will be relatively fragile compared to ships of the line, but will be offset by the extra fire power they bring. Also the lacs themselves aren't all that large but they can still pack in a bit of fire power due to the lack of any faster than light engines [Warpenginesforthetrekkieppl.] Should you consider this idea, I'd advise you to go look at the novels written by David Weber. He has worked on this idea quite heavily and should quite readily be able to help you come up with your own take on this.

xilacnog wrote:
You could do it like in Freespace, after having Free Travel, the fleet jumps in with the Carrier either in the middle or on the far side of the fleet, since carriers rely on fighters and bombers (let's call them, strike craft) to do the damage for them, and launch all strike craft at a closer range. In space, however, a strike craft has to be much bigger than an atmospheric version dude to life support systems so they could be remotely controlled or drones and they would "behave" differently for each race; for example a Sowers version would be slower but more durable and "smarter" while a Cravers version would have a kamikaze like behavior.

If strike craft are counted as support and not weapons Ameoba carriers would be gods among men.

You could do it like in Freespace, after having Free Travel, the fleet jumps in with the Carrier either in the middle or on the far side of the fleet, since carriers rely on fighters and bombers (let's call them, strike craft) to do the damage for them, and launch all strike craft at a closer range. In space, however, a strike craft has to be much bigger than an atmospheric version dude to life support systems so they could be remotely controlled or drones and they would "behave" differently for each race; for example a Sowers version would be slower but more durable and "smarter" while a Cravers version would have a kamikaze like behavior.

Again, i am not personally here to discuss the logical problems of fighters, but the game play implications.



Seeing as we already hand-wave so much in science fiction, how exactly would adding space fighters push this over the line.

There's still a fundamental issue, though, that most of these threads aren't touching. Another member on the forums put it in near perfect terms:

Kenuzara wrote:
I was going to point this series out as well until I saw you had done so. I also think that the methods of combat portrayed in this series are far more accurate than anything else I've seen. Most space-born novels and games seem to forget that space is absolutely vast. Even traveling across a solar system at near light-speed takes hours or days. And when you're going that fast (think 10s of thousands of kilometers per second), there's no way any human could manually control maneuvering or weapons.

The series he mentioned was one I brought up, The Lost Fleet by Jack Campbell. If you think of the distances involved in space combat, a "very long range" attack like this proposes would be...impossible. The fleet you are attacking would see the attack coming hours, maybe a day in advance. How easy will it be for them to avoid you? Very. In space, a bigger ship can fly faster than a smaller ship, the reasons for how suddenly escape me. If you don't want to deal with the small fry, fly away from them. They'll be expending their very limited supply of fuel trying to catch you, that you will avoiding them.



Or, better yet, go after them. At the relativistic speeds you'll both meet, the reaction time needed to stay alive would be downright inhuman. Drones might be able to handle it, but then you just have a number of drones going up against much bigger and better armed warships.

I would treat them as a weapon system as opposed to a ship or separate entity. Fighter bays and bomber bays could be equiped to a ship just like missiles, each bay housing several fighters that would launch and deal damage in battle. Point defenses would try to shoot them down and act as defense, all without burdening the player with having to design a multitude of additional ship types.

I still don't see this making sense.



You'd be launching fighters/drones at the enemy fleet. Realistically, they should be able to detect these coming, and have defenses ready and waiting. And a prepared fleet, ready and waiting, would (or should) be able to decimate the numbers of the smaller craft.



This works in the real world because fighters and ships are in two different mediums of transportation (air vs water), giving the jets a huge advantage. Anti-air defenses make the field a bit more even, but current situations still favor jets. In space, though, all the ships are on equal footing in terms of their medium (vacuum). The only difference is now the size of each ship, the thickness of it's armor, and the size of the guns it carries.

as much as i love the idea of carriers and fighters and all that and would love to see them in game, they would need to be implemented very carefully so as not to get a simuler situation that happend with there implementation into space empires where it would pretty much be the only thing used as the combined amount of fighters and bombers would be more damage output than a singel battleship, and then again you also dont want them to weak so as to make them compleatly useless.



all in all i belive its a very fine line and something that would be needed to be implemented with extrordinary care.

As it seems appropriate to discuss the legitimacy of fighters Carriers and what not (In both a logical sense and in the way of game-play) Here is the place to do it.



Now as many people have brought up valid points regarding hoe logically fighter don't really make much sense, i am personally not going to bother.



But if we consider the game-play ramifications it leads onto several questions, What will they actually do?



SO here is how i can see the fitting in:



Fighters, drones and robot missiles would not take place in a actual combat of fleets but would instead act like a type of bombardment system of an opposing fleet, displayed in the same way that normal combat would occur, but instead your fleet won't get hurt, only the ordinance you dispatched to attack the enemy (As a sort of mimic of WW2 carrier warfare where ships rarely got into each others firing range...i think, don't quote me as fact on this).



This addition to the combat system could mix up how we design our fleets, possibly leading onto situations where neither player wants to directly engage an opponent. Amd so a possible a unique dynamic for the game.



But i would love to hear your thoughts on the matter.

@ Nosferatiel: Inertia. Yes. Anyone saying that fighters' only advantage is air/water doesn't know jack about physics. Thank you. I also like many of your posts for reasons involving logic and my 2 cents being mostly stated by you already. Good Job.





Simply put... Fighters and Carriers would be really cool to me. Reguardless of their efficacy, I would still use them. Just because they are cool.



As for how... turning a game of 3 into a game of 4 weapon types I just see as leading to more likely issues of you don't have defences against WEAPON X ? ok, cool. Let me just blast you with those then.



If perhaps they were a weapon module, but all defences worked at half efficacy...

fluff wise:

flack: shoots fighters just like missiles/torpedoes, since it is a form of AA already.

shields and deflectors: do the same thing to their weapons, but they can direct their shots at weak points from up close/behind, etc.

I've said it before and will say it again: Carriers for me are the single coolest thing in space combat. I was very dissapointed to not see them (yet) and sincerely hope they will be introduced at some point. It will make the ship battles visually extremely pleasing and add more depth to the game at multiple levels.

Some more reasons for fighters:



1. Harder to target: When huge ships fight each other, there will be a lot of debris - distinguishing debris (some of it glowing red hot due to weapon-fire) from fighters can become nigh impossible.

2. Easy to replace: Fighters are disposable, can be mass-produced and disassembled easily for transportation.

3. Less collateral damage (follow-up to Nosferatiels surface-argument): Bombers can perform surgical strikes at critical installations on planets, while the huge weapons of space-ships cause enormous collateral damage to surrounding cities (not to mention the atmosphere).



And I agree with Hugin & Evil Tactician: Space-fighters are a big part of Sci-Fi, so adding them as a fourth-type of weapon would be more than appropriate. I would suggest that all fighters are armed with one of the three standard-weapon-types, but ships get another form of defense (i.e. point-defense) against the fighters themselves. Larger ships can then either rely on their normal deflection, shield, chaff to defend against the fighter-weapons or try to destroy the fighters themselves.



Also fighters are only the first step towards boarding-modules ;-)



Best regards, Buecherwyrm

well i believe fighters/bombers/strikecraft need to be implemented at some point and to the OP on what there roles would be fighters would be capital ship escorts and protection protecting them from bombers and act almost as a sponge protecting medium ships from fire,



bombers well would bomb, they could be used for planetary bombardment to help speed up invasion rates and in space battles they would be target bigger ships, big ships have problems with really small ships cause there fast and darty its hard to hit something when its fast, this would also give more reason to have medium and small missle and flak ships in your fleets as they would be anti fighter/bomber escort protection.



and well strike craft would be anti fighter/frigate support, carriers would only be allowed a set number of ships so it would give micromanagement to the carriers

TangJET wrote:
@ Nosferatiel: Inertia. Yes. Anyone saying that fighters' only advantage is air/water doesn't know jack about physics. Thank you. I also like many of your posts for reasons involving logic and my 2 cents being mostly stated by you already. Good Job.



Simply put... Fighters and Carriers would be really cool to me. Reguardless of their efficacy, I would still use them. Just because they are cool.



As for how... turning a game of 3 into a game of 4 weapon types I just see as leading to more likely issues of you don't have defences against WEAPON X ? ok, cool. Let me just blast you with those then.



If perhaps they were a weapon module, but all defences worked at half efficacy...

fluff wise:

flack: shoots fighters just like missiles/torpedoes, since it is a form of AA already.

shields and deflectors: do the same thing to their weapons, but they can direct their shots at weak points from up close/behind, etc.

If they were in, I like this idea. It's better than adding another specific weapon mod, like I suggested, with it's own defense.

Buecherwyrm wrote:
Some more reasons for fighters:



1. Harder to target: When huge ships fight each other, there will be a lot of debris - distinguishing debris (some of it glowing red hot due to weapon-fire) from fighters can become nigh impossible.

2. Easy to replace: Fighters are disposable, can be mass-produced and disassembled easily for transportation.

3. Less collateral damage (follow-up to Nosferatiels surface-argument): Bombers can perform surgical strikes at critical installations on planets, while the huge weapons of space-ships cause enormous collateral damage to surrounding cities (not to mention the atmosphere).



And I agree with Hugin & Evil Tactician: Space-fighters are a big part of Sci-Fi, so adding them as a fourth-type of weapon would be more than appropriate. I would suggest that all fighters are armed with one of the three standard-weapon-types, but ships get another form of defense (i.e. point-defense) against the fighters themselves. Larger ships can then either rely on their normal deflection, shield, chaff to defend against the fighter-weapons or try to destroy the fighters themselves.



Also fighters are only the first step towards boarding-modules ;-)



Best regards, Buecherwyrm

1.) Yep, a lot of debris...Flying at who knows how fast in the vaccum of space. I'd imagine still fast enough where any pilot would need to be superhuman to avoid crashing into anything.

2.) Fighters are not disposable...Every fighter you lose, you lose the fighter, the tech in it, and the pilot you spent money on to train. And jets tend to be more expensive than missiles. So, I still say we would be better off just making more missiles than adding space fighters.

3.) Yeah, the only purpose I would see for fighters/bombers would be for ground warfare, not space warfare.



As for them being a big part of sci-fi...They're a big part of Hollywoodized sci-fi. You know, with explosions you can hear in space, fighters that are flying around and maneuvering as if they were in air and not a vaccuum, and so on and so forth...

FinalStrigon wrote:
1.) Yep, a lot of debris...Flying at who knows how fast in the vaccum of space. I'd imagine still fast enough where any pilot would need to be superhuman to avoid crashing into anything.

2.) Fighters are not disposable...Every fighter you lose, you lose the fighter, the tech in it, and the pilot you spent money on to train. And jets tend to be more expensive than missiles. So, I still say we would be better off just making more missiles than adding space fighters.

3.) Yeah, the only purpose I would see for fighters/bombers would be for ground warfare, not space warfare.

1) Definitely valid.

2) Unless fighters had a medium range drive that missiles lack and could perform patrol and medium range attack duties, missiles can only make up for at short range fights.

Also the missiles we now see and use are more like torpedoes, large, heavy and not very fast. Fighters could be able to shoot those down.

3) You mean because the fighters could decelerate while entering the atmosphere, unlike rockets or just big slabs of material?

On the other hand they'd still have to reach escape velocity to get to orbit, after the fight. That's a huge energy loss.

Nosferatiel wrote:
2) Unless fighters had a medium range drive that missiles lack and could perform patrol and medium range attack duties, missiles can only make up for at short range fights.

Also the missiles we now see and use are more like torpedoes, large, heavy and not very fast. Fighters could be able to shoot those down.

3) You mean because the fighters could decelerate while entering the atmosphere, unlike rockets or just big slabs of material?

On the other hand they'd still have to reach escape velocity to get to orbit, after the fight. That's a huge energy loss.

Heh, not sure what my odds will be exhanging points with a scientist, but here we go:



2.) I see your point, but I'm hesitant to comment still until we know exactly at what speeds the ships are traveling in these battles. I, personally, buy into the system of The Lost Fleet. All these big ships are traveling at relativistic speeds, simply because space is huge and you need those speed to get anywhere in any reasonable amount of time. At those speeds, fighters would be useless. No human would have the reaction time to do anything. All they could do was they make it through the split second where ships are in firing range, because at that speed hitting any kind of enemy projectile will probably disintegrate the fighter. Also, due to the fact that targeting systems would be handling the firing in these kinds of engagement, any very long range attacks at speeds pilots could handle would be pointless, as they would be easy pickings for the computer.



However, if the devs do decide to drastically slow things down (to, say, the Star Wars-like battles), that does make sense. They could probably shoot down the missiles, but I still question their use at long or medium range. If they're too far away to be supported by bigger ships, the enemy fleet will decimate them. If their friendly fleet is close enough to help...Well, then I guess we have the Star Wars battles.



3.) That, as well as they would be able to provide precision ground support to troops on the ground, much as jets provide air support to soldiers on the ground today. One could probably argue that the big ships still in space could also provide this support, and they very well probably could (Again, The Lost Fleet is influencing me). But this is the role I would see fighters best in, if they were in the game, some kind of bonus to an invasion or ground battle.



And you have a point there. But if there are also troop transports for land invasions, as people have suggested, they would need to reach those speeds as well. I assume both kinds of ships would have big enough engines to handle it. Although, now I think it may just be better to send a smaller ship (Corvette-class, maybe Destroyer) down into the atmosphere to handle these battles as well. I've seen them planet-side in some of the concept art, so it is possible.

Quantum_Anomaly wrote:
I would treat them as a weapon system as opposed to a ship or separate entity. Fighter bays and bomber bays could be equiped to a ship just like missiles, each bay housing several fighters that would launch and deal damage in battle. Point defenses would try to shoot them down and act as defense, all without burdening the player with having to design a multitude of additional ship types.

Exactly what I was thinking. Here are my ideas for implementing carriers and fighters/bombers... Handle them like a weapon system similar to missiles but with more power. One way could simply be a battle card such as airstrike or cap that you will get if your fleet has carriers. Now here is another thing that could be added... at the start of combat the first thing that happens before anything else is the carriers have the option of launching fighters or not. This would have to be a new phase maybe called 'standoff'. Even taking it further, there could be several different 'carrier' types of cards, some could be 'fighter cap' where they will defend your carrier, 'bomber strike' where they go straight after the enemy capital ships without escort, 'escorted bomber strike' weaker strike but escorted. So this still keeps the rock, paper, scissors approach the game is designed by, example is I may play 'fighter cap' and the enemy may play 'bomber strike' and they will get tore up. After the 'standoff' phase there could resume with the normal 'long range' phase. Well just a few things off the top of my head.

FinalStrigon wrote:
All these big ships are traveling at relativistic speeds, simply because space is huge and you need those speed to get anywhere in any reasonable amount of time. At those speeds, fighters would be useless. No human would have the reaction time to do anything.

If the target traveled at a relativistic speed and you did the same, both ships alongside at exactly the same speeds, you wouldn't be able not to hit it. As long as you obey lightspeed as the absolute limit and provided you'd actually manage to fire anything.

First for the "cannot not hit"-argument: If both ships travel in the same direction at the same speed, everything in the ships, including projectiles, moves in the same direction with the same speed. Seen from any of the ships, the other ship would not move. Everything else moves, but in the coordinate system of either ship, the other wouldn't move. Imagine driving on a highway with two lanes. If someone drives at exactly the same speed as you, they don't seem to move from your perspective. Only the background moves.

In our world with an atmosphere, if you throw a bomb at your fellow driver, it wouldn't hit. Why? Because of air friction. Both cars have a motor that accelerates them and that overcompensates air friction, if you want to move. Your bomb hasn't. Make it a little flyer and let it exactly compensate the air friction at that speed, then set it out of the car. It will not move, seen from your perspective. Give it a shove and it will hit the other car.

Same happens in space. You just have to match speeds, go alongside and throw whatever you want at them.



The problem lies in the case when both ships are flying at relativistic speeds and don't fly in the same direction. Most extreme case: Both ships light speed, heading in opposite direction. If c is the limit, any sensor information telling you "Oh my god, a ship is coming!" would travel at the same speed as the ship, so you get a characteristic relativistic light cone trailing the ship like a supersonic boom in air, in which you'd actually be able to see the ship. You wouldn't fire at it, because you wouldn't even know it is there.



Any "in between"-case is a matter of lots of calculations and would actually be difficult. You'd need to compute the position and velocity of the ship at time t. For that you'd need to find it's position x(t) at two points in time and for each position measurement, you'd need to triangulate the position, which is not exact in three dimensions. And you'd have to do it relativistically, so with a time-dependent measurement. In the end, it'd need a lot of computing power, produce interesting error bars and you'd hope you fire at something that's where you guess your weaponry should shoot.

Even today in fighters, computers are doing more of the work to actually fly them than humans do, anymore (most crash, if all computers crash). If you fight at subrelativistic speeds, the situation simply wouldn't change. If you fought at relativistic speeds, you'd have a whole lot of other stuff to worry about.

FinalStrigon wrote:
However, if the devs do decide to drastically slow things down (to, say, the Star Wars-like battles), that does make sense. They could probably shoot down the missiles, but I still question their use at long or medium range. If they're too far away to be supported by bigger ships, the enemy fleet will decimate them. If their friendly fleet is close enough to help...Well, then I guess we have the Star Wars battles.

I personally like the Starlancer battles. Old PC-game. Anyways, the idea was to have large hullbreaking torpedos that either the huge battleships could field (which were too bulky to move a lot) or specialized bombers could bring to bear. The torpedoes and the bombers were easy to shoot down, though. So fighters to intercept torpedoes and bombers made a lot of sense.

The engine technology was actually a jumpdrive, so ships simply couldn't flee. The drive had to recharge. Nice excuse for interesting battles, in my opinion.

FinalStrigon wrote:
That, as well as they would be able to provide precision ground support to troops on the ground, much as jets provide air support to soldiers on the ground today. One could probably argue that the big ships still in space could also provide this support, and they very well probably could (Again, The Lost Fleet is influencing me). But this is the role I would see fighters best in, if they were in the game, some kind of bonus to an invasion or ground battle.

I think the best bet for ground invasions is to simply have one-way-dropships, roll out air-fighters on the ground and quick-construct a few airfields, hijack a few as first priority or rework a few highways to that effect. Bringing anything in and out of the atmosphere simply isn't worth it, due to heat-shielding and energy requirements severely reducing the effective weapon payload, possible.