Humongous ships trading Humongous broadsides is fun.

But it can be made better with strike-crafts. The hard part is of course, doing this elegantly.

I gave this a pondering and realized it's doable. Squadrons can be implemented as hybrid offense/defense systems.



TLDL Version

squadrons of strike crafts basically function as modules on the strategic level and as additional ships in combat.

Because ships pick random targets in combat, squadrons are both offensive and defensive modules



Combat

There should be three type of strike crafts, fighters, bombers and gunships.

Squadrons behave like ships in combat and can be attacked like any other ships.

Squadrons will target enemy squadrons or ships at random by default, as any other ships.

Each type of strike craft have high resistance against 2 weapon types and low against the last.

Each type of strike craft have a single weapon type.

Fighters: Vulnerable to Beams, deal Kinetic Damage



Bombers: Vulnerable to Kinetics, deals Missile Damage



Gunships: Vulnerable to Missiles, deals Beam Damage



Squadrons lose firepower as they take damage.

Squadrons whose Mothership is destroyed continues to fight until end of battle.





Tech:

Fighters are upgraded via the Kinetics Tech Line

Bombers are upgraded via the Missile Tech Line

Gunships are upgraded via the Beam Tech Line

Carriers are unlocked by Advanced Warp Gravitics and has a bonus to reduce tonnage of squadrons.



Neural Robotics unlocks space superiority action, causing squadrons to ignore enemy ships.

Advanced Simulation unlocks focused strike action, causing squadrons to ignore enemy squadrons.

Persistent bodied unlocks Kamikaze action, causing squadrons to inflict damage equal to their remaining health. This attack cannot be mitigated by defense modules, but doing so will cause all squadrons to be damaged to 100%.



Strategic:

Squadron are repaired at the same speed as other ships if their mothership survives the battle.

Squardon that are damage to 100% can be repaired normally.

Squadrons that lost their mothership are destroyed at end of the battle, their remaining health are transfered to surviving squadron of the same type.

Squadrons don't do as much damage as equal tonnage in weapons

Squadrons do not provide as much protection as equal mass in defense modules

Squadrons provide a large amount of MP for the purpose of invasion

A single squadron will take up the entire capacity of an destroyer without upgrades



Graphics:

Strike Crafts move slightly faster than missiles, so it takes 3 combat turns for missiles to catch up to them.

Damaged Squadrons visually appear to have less crafts in them.

Squadron that receive repair in combat receive reinforcing craft from their mothership.

Each race have a single model for each type of strike craft. Some race use unmanned drones, of course.

Trail color and paint for the strike craft change as they are upgraded.

Squadron appear next to their mothership in a row on combat overview.

Each squadron appear as a circle, square or triangle on fleet overview below health bar of their mothership.

Health of squadrons are indicated by color of their icon on fleet overview, green for full strength, red for depleted.



That's about it. It's a feature that bring more excitement to battles and give players another way to round out their fleet.

/#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/11335-discussion-strikecraft-implementation.



Another discussion on the implementation of strikecraft, if your interested.

Yes!

Just as other posts toward this topic!

A real must have!