That's a logistics question!



Let me ask you this, where do the ships get all their extra ammo/fuel/food and PEOPLE! DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUUN!



(Lol I have always imagined the ships being fully self sufficient, especially with the crew.)

Araknae wrote:
This right here I would love to see. While it feels natural to protect borders with fleets I'd love to see more system improvement defenses. A few orbital defenses that could actually fight would be amazing, not to mention having a system be able to scramble a couple squadrons of fighters in an oh **** moment.

Defenses are a confirmed future addition!



As for a system improvement, yep why wouldn't it work!

sterrius wrote:
Here is my idea. The fighter would be a excellent weapon for the Long and Short phase of a fight. Not so much in the middle.



With their ability to close space and get right into the thick of it, i feel like strike-craft would make for some brilliant generalists.



You would have a "Hangar" module for fighters, each hangar would have X fighters ( think 5 to 10 fighters in the 3D map for each module is enough too give a good quantity and a "swarm" effect). A module can produce 5 fighters but they are still 1 unit with a single HP bar.



Yep i agree, but they might just work however missiles do with their stats.



Each fighter have 3 stats.



1-> HP (here is how much dmg a squadron can take. Maybe dmg from flak too).

2-> kinetic Dmg (To take out other fighters). The accuracy will be medium to give a window for heroes and improvements too work.

3-> Missile dmg (against ships)



I agree with 1 but from 2 and 3, wouldn't they all be effective due to the lack of durability on fighters and the possibility of being inside of larger ships defenses.



The difference from fighter missiles to capital ship missiles is....



1-> they attack each turn the capital ships or other fighters.

2-> Each squadron unit launch X missiles/turn. Each missile have very low dmg.

3-> They overwhelm flaks, too many missiles to destroy will make sure some missiles will hit.



This means while the capital ship missile work like a Hammer with a big hit and big dmg numbers. The fighter missile work like a mosquito bites. Working like long range kinetics that have great accuracy.



I feel like fighter missiles would be too small to shoot at with conventional flak.



The reason behind this is to give another option of attack to players. No point looking like a "missile weapon module" with a new animation.



Guns are fired like kinetic only against other fighters, too small to really dmg a capital ship. They have medium accuracy, This will make sure heroes and cards can have a effect on their battle.



As ships usually deflect kinetics using deflector shields, getting inside of them would probably mean they would have no effect, besides from that range it won't matter what your attacking with, blocking the strike-craft would be the enemy's best bet.



Heroes -> Offense and defense work on fighters giving +accuracy and defense to them. Pilot heroes would have one or two abilitys improving fighters.



Pilots are already very powerful (Acting more like a captains), but adventurers and corporate heroes could certainly use some more affinity's!







How would they work in battle.



Phase 1 -> they would leave hangar and start launching missiles as they close in. Flak is the defense like normal. The flak will focus the capital ship missiles first of course. But as capital ship missiles are only fired once each phase, the flaks will be busy fending off small missiles most of the phase.



Im guessing flak only fires at missiles once during a phase, but i feel like strike-craft should have to deal with the fire every round to compromise for their large numbers.



Phase 2 -> Fighters will fight each other. Here 2 things can happen.

1-> Side A wipes out Side B -> "A" will now resume missile strikes, side B don´t have fighters anymore so he can´t launch missiles.

2-> Both sides have too many to wipe each other out -> They dont attack, too busy fighting each other.



Phase 3-> Same as Phase 2



I am not sure about how you would deploy them, but wouldn't a card-counter card system be more thrilling for the player?



How the animations would look like.



Phase 1 -> They leave the ships, take formation and start closing in. They fire.



Phase 2-> The battles start. They would fight in the middle of all the shots/explosions like 2 swarms trying to kill each other. If they win they take formation again and shoot the ships.



Phase 3-> They retreat a little and make another run. Retreat at the end of the fight. Or just keep fighting.





How in the tech it would work.

1 -> You unlock fighters module researching destroyers.



Each time you research a new ship (Cruiser > battleship > dreadnought etc) you are going to unlock a new fighter with better HP. The reason behind this is that you improved the materials and got new ideas doing the big ships.



Maybe you should unlock better hangers here, like with more fighters and better tonnage-to-cost.



For kinetic and missile dmg you just need to research the same techs needed for capital ships, they will now also unlock a fighter version. This way you give another reason to research them.



and here you could improve the battle cards by a small %, leading a few wars to fully show the difference of 2% difference (It pans out, trust me.)



2 -> Some support techs can also improve one or more fighter stats.



B -> Create a "fighter tree" inside the battle tree that would improve all 3 stats at same time. But i dont like this because it adds too many techs, and the game already have enough to make sure you can´t research all in one game. Much better to make sure you will spend a great time thinking if you should go deep in the tree, right or left.



I have finally found a person who agrees! but more parallel techs could be fun!





With this idea you have



1- Another attack option that work like kinetic and lasers but can use missiles cards.

2- Another reason to use pilot heroes.

3- A attack that have 2 defenses. Flak can defend all attacks but fighters can fight each other too. Sure you will get some missiles hits but after you wipe them out unless they have other modules they can´t hit you anymore.



This can also make possible the funny outcome of both fleets wiping each other out

Well i don't feel like strike-craft would be the deciding factor for a battle, bu rather how you employ them, because someone with better tech shouldn't automatically win, that's just mean.

Astax wrote:
A module should suffice. And have additional Carrier type hulls that have -% to size of strikecraft modules...



Now as far as weapon type, we could have them equipped with whatever weapon type you choose. But the kicker would be that the weapon could be countered by it's appropriate counter, and there would also be a special anti strikecraft counter module, that would counter all strikecraft regardless of what weapon it was flying. This way if you outfitted your fleet with 50% deflectors and 50% AA guns, and the strikecraft coming at your fleet was armed with kinetic weapons, your defenses would be extremely effective. On the other hand if the strikecraft was using torpedoes, only the AA guns would roll for defense.

We could add it to the dreadnaught or battleship?



And as for counting strike-craft, the weapons they employ would always be effective due to the nature of the strike-craft themselves, but the idea should be to counter the craft, not the little gun they carry.



Instead of a new anti-fighter gun, why not just extend the use of the Flak guns and allow fighters to shoot each-other, giving people some room to immediately counter strike-craft when they enter the game, also allowing fighters and missiles to be more diverse.

my question about strikecraft would be this:

In games like Sins of a solar empire, the fact that you can control your fleet allows you to maneuver your carriers to keep them in the rear, while they launch the strikecraft. However, the enemy player is also able to flank and hit the carriers first (e.g. by warping in from the right direction).



However, Endless Space doesn't allow any tactical control of battles to take out carriers and such. So, how exactly would taking down the carrier ships work? You would have to strike through all their strikecraft, then their combat ships, before finally taking out the defenseless carriers?

There have been many suggestions regarding to formations and focusing fire on priority targets, but without them i guess it would be like attacking another ship, almost at random if i recall correctly, so i would imagine that you will have to have your carriers be weaponless in order to fit on enough defenses, which i suppose does encourage a more diverse fleet.

That's only one of the reasons why strikecraft/fighters shouldn't be implemented, in my opinion.

1) It ruins the ship of the line feel of the battles as they are now.

2) So, so many things to implement to make them worth it.

Armid wrote:
That's only one of the reasons why strikecraft/fighters shouldn't be implemented, in my opinion.

1) It ruins the ship of the line feel of the battles as they are now.

2) So, so many things to implement to make them worth it.

I understand your perspective, the main reason I am discussing is so we get it done right the first time, and try to not soil the fun idea.





But as your here, do you have any thoughts towards how we could include strike craft, but not have them overstep the ships of the line? Possibly by making them less effective in a straight up fight but more of a support role?

To be really honest, I've never really thought about it in details because every time I try to envision what it would be like, I don't like what I see.

But if they must really be in and the devs go for it, they must (I'm all into small lists today ):

1) Fit in with the current ship of the line feel.

2) Have their own card.

3) Be actually independently created, equipped and retrofitted.



Number 3 is a huge issue for me. If strikecrafts are in, then it has to be the real deal I believe. So the ship lists has to be divided in two, or a new panel needs to be added. On the standard ship list (the one we see currently), you can create your carrier. I can't imagine any of the current ships housing any kind of fighters, their design doesn't leave room for a dock or hangar... So you need a new type of hull, which means a new tech (ideally).

In the new ship list (or tab), you could design your fighters on a highly reduced hull.



In the Carrier ship creation screen, a new unique tab would need to be added to add in the fighters, each one taking more space obviously. Want to add in weapons? Alright, but that means less fighters (and why not a weapon module penalty for that particular hull?).



That way you have the fighters you want and the number of fighters you want of each design. Need to add in more fighters into a single carrier? That means new techs to research...



As for actual combat... Really, that's where I have to stop. My imagination doesn't go that way somehow. It just... doesn't fit it.



Edit: I feel the need to add: I didn't read through everything in this thread. Some of these ideas might have been debated already, sorry if that's the case!

Armid wrote:
To be really honest, I've never really thought about it in details because every time I try to envision what it would be like, I don't like what I see.

But if they must really be in and the devs go for it, they must (I'm all into small lists today ):

1) Fit in with the current ship of the line feel.

2) Have their own card.

3) Be actually independently created, equipped and retrofitted.



Number 3 is a huge issue for me. If strikecrafts are in, then it has to be the real deal I believe. So the ship lists has to be divided in two, or a new panel needs to be added. On the standard ship list (the one we see currently), you can create your carrier. I can't imagine any of the current ships housing any kind of fighters, their design doesn't leave room for a dock or hangar... So you need a new type of hull, which means a new tech (ideally).

In the new ship list (or tab), you could design your fighters on a highly reduced hull.



In the Carrier ship creation screen, a new unique tab would need to be added to add in the fighters, each one taking more space obviously. Want to add in weapons? Alright, but that means less fighters (and why not a weapon module penalty for that particular hull?).



That way you have the fighters you want and the number of fighters you want of each design. Need to add in more fighters into a single carrier? That means new techs to research...



As for actual combat... Really, that's where I have to stop. My imagination doesn't go that way somehow. It just... doesn't fit it.



Edit: I feel the need to add: I didn't read through everything in this thread. Some of these ideas might have been debated already, sorry if that's the case!

Point 3 is unnecessary; there is no real deal.



Your end result can already be done with modules and current hulls; the hulls in vanilla are size based more or less though with influence towards certain designs. For example, if you assigned the trait support to a strikecraft module it would fit better with Corvette classes etc. So in essence, you already have a carrier hull. I am also pretty sure a dreadnought can house fighters/bombers/assault shuttles/gun ships etc. It can house millions of people on its own as can a corvette.



Outfitting your strikecraft doesn't really serve any purpose either since you only have three weapon types. You might as well just cram in more lasers, more missiles, or more kinetics. In other words, it doesn't add anything new nor does it really repair any other problems, it instead adds problems logistical or otherwise.



And sure it fits because it's internally consistent with itself. Strikecraft launch like missiles, do their own thing at the center of the screen, then resolve at the end of the phase.



It currently isn't hard to implement them at least mechanically. Graphically it probably wouldn't take that much either. If you turn them into soft counters rather than sticking with adding more weapons or staying with only three weapon types you'll see a diversification of ship designs and possibly hulls.

Armid wrote:
To be really honest, I've never really thought about it in details because every time I try to envision what it would be like, I don't like what I see.

But if they must really be in and the devs go for it, they must (I'm all into small lists today ):

1) Fit in with the current ship of the line feel.

2) Have their own card.

3) Be actually independently created, equipped and retrofitted.



Number 3 is a huge issue for me. If strikecrafts are in, then it has to be the real deal I believe. So the ship lists has to be divided in two, or a new panel needs to be added. On the standard ship list (the one we see currently), you can create your carrier. I can't imagine any of the current ships housing any kind of fighters, their design doesn't leave room for a dock or hangar... So you need a new type of hull, which means a new tech (ideally).

In the new ship list (or tab), you could design your fighters on a highly reduced hull.



In the Carrier ship creation screen, a new unique tab would need to be added to add in the fighters, each one taking more space obviously. Want to add in weapons? Alright, but that means less fighters (and why not a weapon module penalty for that particular hull?).



That way you have the fighters you want and the number of fighters you want of each design. Need to add in more fighters into a single carrier? That means new techs to research...



As for actual combat... Really, that's where I have to stop. My imagination doesn't go that way somehow. It just... doesn't fit it.



Edit: I feel the need to add: I didn't read through everything in this thread. Some of these ideas might have been debated already, sorry if that's the case!

No worry's there buddy.



The idea of actually designing your fighters is an interesting one, and could create a very diverse game mechanic if implemented with how i thought out their in game use in the first 2 posts.



With the carrier ship screen, would you be designing the particular hanger set ups for use as modules on ships or did i misread. If i did not, then that is a quite mind blowing idea for customization, and would really appease people wanting more control in the game, but it might be confusing to newer players.

steinernein wrote:
Point 3 is unnecessary; there is no real deal.



Your end result can already be done with modules and current hulls; the hulls in vanilla are size based more or less though with influence towards certain designs. For example, if you assigned the trait support to a strikecraft module it would fit better with Corvette classes etc. So in essence, you already have a carrier hull. I am also pretty sure a dreadnought can house fighters/bombers/assault shuttles/gun ships etc. It can house millions of people on its own as can a corvette.



Outfitting your strikecraft doesn't really serve any purpose either since you only have three weapon types. You might as well just cram in more lasers, more missiles, or more kinetics. In other words, it doesn't add anything new nor does it really repair any other problems, it instead adds problems logistical or otherwise.



And sure it fits because it's internally consistent with itself. Strikecraft launch like missiles, do their own thing at the center of the screen, then resolve at the end of the phase.

Well, that's just me. As said, I don't like the idea of strikecrafts or fighters. And if they're added-in as cards or work-around to give the illusion of, then I'm out of it. If they're in, I need to feel like they're real crafts and ships that I can design and decide what they do and how many of each I'll put into my carriers.



As for a new type of hull, again that's me being against the idea to begin with and wanting an all-or-nothing solution.

Igncom1 wrote:
With the carrier ship screen, would you be designing the particular hanger set ups for use as modules on ships or did i misread.

Not sure I read you correctly either. What I mean is... let's say your Carrier can carry 10 fighters, to keep things simple. You could choose what type of fighters to load. So if you design 10 different fighters, it would be possible to have 1 of each on your carrier. Or 10 of the same type. Something like that!

Armid wrote:


Not sure I read you correctly either. What I mean is... let's say your Carrier can carry 10 fighters, to keep things simple. You could choose what type of fighters to load. So if you design 10 different fighters, it would be possible to have 1 of each on your carrier. Or 10 of the same type. Something like that!

While i am not sure about designing different fighters, designing the class might be cool (Like designing what your fighters are like and how they preform, instead of actually designing a number of different fighters to use.



The number of fighters you launch is something i feel should be determined by the type of module you use, possibly having your configured fighter affecting how it costs.

Igncom1 wrote:
While i am not sure about designing different fighters, designing the class might be cool (Like designing what your fighters are like and how they preform, instead of actually designing a number of different fighters to use.



The number of fighters you launch is something i feel should be determined by the type of module you use, possibly having your configured fighter affecting how it costs.

I don't know... I mean, having a module-based system raises the question of "where do they come from"?

With my system, a new Carrier would come fully-equipped and loaded when built. Some fighters are down? Come back into port and build new ones, just like you build a new ship. Possibly being able to build more than one a turn if you're up to the point building a corvette take only one turn, keeping some in reserve in system hangar.

But modules? Do they magically reappear? Will they take as long to repair/rebuild as it is long to repair a ship?

CmdrNoval wrote:
= Added as System Improvement (& added to defense points of System)



= Automatic usage of Strikecraft when System is being invaded. (Even if unable to destroy enemy fleet, they slow the invasion timer)



= Strikecraft gain bonuses of Hero assigned to System (If Hero is present & has Fleet or Pilot Bonuses)



= Introduction of Defense Satellites (??? - Instead of Strikecraft for System Defense, if this makes more sense)

This right here I would love to see. While it feels natural to protect borders with fleets I'd love to see more system improvement defenses. A few orbital defenses that could actually fight would be amazing, not to mention having a system be able to scramble a couple squadrons of fighters in an oh **** moment.

It doesn't really matter if you're against or for it because this thread doesn't cover that but, rather, it deals with the situation as if the developers have already agreed to implement it.



With that said, I am under the belief that all suggestions about strikecraft needs to solve a few fundamental problems ( 1. Mono-hull design 2. Stale combat ) without requiring overly complicated systems. The more simple and the more elegant the better and most that add often result in needless complexity and are clumsy.

steinernein wrote:
It doesn't really matter if you're against or for it because this thread doesn't cover that but, rather, it deals with the situation as if the developers have already agreed to implement it.



With that said, I am under the belief that all suggestions about strikecraft needs to solve a few fundamental problems ( 1. Mono-hull design 2. Stale combat ) without requiring overly complicated systems. The more simple and the more elegant the better and most that add often result in needless complexity and are clumsy.

I for one believe it is possible to solve the problems without having to add anything! but this shall not be discussed here

Sure Igncom1, but if we're adding new features anyways might as well use it to solve old ones and make it meaningful/interesting. Most suggestions about extra phases etc. kind of ignore aforementioned issues and aren't really economical.

steinernein wrote:
Sure Igncom1, but if we're adding new features anyways might as well use it to solve old ones and make it meaningful/interesting. Most suggestions about extra phases etc. kind of ignore aforementioned issues and aren't really economical.

True, and that's why im not suggesting them.

steinernein wrote:
It doesn't really matter if you're against or for it because this thread doesn't cover that but, rather, it deals with the situation as if the developers have already agreed to implement it.



With that said, I am under the belief that all suggestions about strikecraft needs to solve a few fundamental problems ( 1. Mono-hull design 2. Stale combat ) without requiring overly complicated systems. The more simple and the more elegant the better and most that add often result in needless complexity and are clumsy.

Re-reading your previous post, I have to agree with the "launch like missiles" bit. It does make sense.



But all that talk about strikecraft reminds me of the first thing I thought when I saw the threads popping left and right: mines?

It's a matter of perception. When I read this thread, I think about mines. Automated, disposable mines. Mines that can fire kinetics or beam weapons, or even carry small missiles, but still: mines. I think that comes from Crest of the Star, an anime some of you may know that I watched when I was younger.

To me, strikecraft should be valuable, even more if they carry pilots, but still valuable even if automated. Like our current fighters/drones: losing a drone isn't such a big deal, but you don't go sacrificing them left and right; losing a fighter is a tragedy; losing a naval ship is a catastrophe.