I am not going to comment on game mechanics, because In Amplitude I trust.



My only request is faction-specific models (or textures) for fighters/bombers.



No matter what, this should be awesome!

I'm Pretty sure there will be specific models for all the races. And if not, it will be the first time I have ever frowned at Amplitude.



Its at times like these I really wish that I worked for Amplitude.

Just to check, the rest of the design documents will be released for public viewing like this one, right?



And also, any thoughts about faction-specific turrets? I saw the fighters and bombers mentioned, but no word on any special turrets.

1Eevee1 wrote:
Just to check, the rest of the design documents will be released for public viewing like this one, right?



And also, any thoughts about faction-specific turrets? I saw the fighters and bombers mentioned, but no word on any special turrets.

I expect them to, once they become available and have passed a preliminary examination by the VIPs, as has happened here.



And no, I don't think anyone has thought of faction specific turrets.

Craver turret:



Hijackers: The cravers who float around their ships are equipped with very fast jet packs and powerful det-packs. The accuracy might be a little off but any hit from this tactic is a instant kill for any unfortunate craft caught.

Igncom1 wrote:
Craver turret:



Hijackers: The cravers who float around their ships are equipped with very fast jet packs and powerful det-packs. The accuracy might be a little off but any hit from this tactic is a instant kill for any unfortunate craft caught.

Sweet - would be bad-ass with animation

For the sake of tactical realism, when given the choice fighters should always go for the bombers first, if present, because of their ability to do the maximum damage to the defender...just saying...(sorry if this posted twice)

NightReaper wrote:
For the sake of tactical realism, when given the choice fighters should always go for the bombers first, if present, because of their ability to do the maximum damage to the defender...just saying...(sorry if this posted twice)

But as in any airwar, the fighter that breaks off and prioritizes a bomber will need a wingman to keep hostile fighters off its back or it will be destroyed while approaching the target bomber. We don't have targeting missiles as a fighter payload so far, so this problem exists.

Greetings, I like the idea of the Superiority Fighter, Interceptor and multi role fighters. A gunboat could be interesting as well with the option to have anti-fighter armament, missile interception, it's own jump drive or a landing squad for invasion or ship boarding. I think that planets should have hanger facilities that can house anti-invasion forces and other defences that need to be taken out for a successful invasion, these could give bonuses to production of fighters, defence or training. Strike craft who lose their carrier in a friendly system and survive the battle could be housed in system instead of being destroyed and deployed planet side, to a station or new carrier. If stations are not implemented there should be the option to house quick response space defence forces on moons or asteroids to participate in system battles. It would be good if the fighters could intercept missiles either inherently or as a battle action and be able give battle actions to strike craft and fleet separately or as combined arms. Battle actions that would be useful are:



Long Range Doctrine(Defence): Launch strike craft and missiles but no beams or kinetics, cut large ship engagement speed and no friendly fire casualties.

Short Range Doctrine(Offence): No missiles fired, ship engagement speed increased, increased kinetics fire rate and double friendly fire casualties.

Tokubetsu Kōgekitai(Engineering): Strike craft sacrifice themselves. Increased speed, critical chance and damage but lose strike craft.

Screened Retreat(Defence): Strike craft attack the enemy while the fleet escapes. Lose strike craft.

Start Landing The Troops: Strike craft attempt to bypass fleet and land on planet. Splits enemy attention, decreased enemy accuracy and enemy attempts to intercept landing.



The engineering card should repair the module on the ship, otherwise how are the strike craft to be recalled and housed? Would there be cards to target specific locations or ships? Attack engines, hangers, missiles, large ships, fighters or bombers ("Intensify the forward batteries. I don't want anything to get through")?

Some issue/Questions



1) During the ship design phase, they are both considered to be a stackable module. Each type requires a special slot.



Some they work like all modules but what does the special slot mean?



Meaning limited number of slots per ship/ can you have more than one type of fighter/bomber or are you locked out?



2) Repair options can be used to “Repair” all the damaged modules



Repair (HP) blows outside battles what are these options the repair modules need a buff (I know you said you don't repair in battle/ unless you add a card that does as such)



3) Bombers

Then, if they hit, the damage is directly applied to the target, ignoring any defences.



Really ignores defences wow bad if i'm thinking correctly especially if you add in this



3) Turrets

There is a new module type allowing the player to defend its fleets against Bombers and Fighters. Each turret can only have one target per round.



BAD idea room on ships is all ready limited we need laser/missile defences AND now bombers and fighters, MORE IMPORTANTLY turrets one target per round possible VERY BAD idea and a reason why missiles are powerful



the reason is clear we wont see missile boats we see fighter/bomber boats who load up with them and if your ships are balanced are going to die, unless killing the ship that launches fighters/bombers turns those fighters/bombers off or as you said it takes 6 rounds for a bomber to reach its target and if each round it taking fire from our fleet and turrets MIGHT work BUT STILL it promotes spam if their fleet can last 6 rounds.



3) Bombers / Fighters after they have killed everything

Once they reach the enemy’s fleet, they bombard them until the end of the battle.



Do they still take rounds of fire from turrets? doesn't this mean that you NEED turrets or fighters or are your ships are Fubar'ed



4) Pilgrim

Using their Resistance tactics, they developed a Bomber able to avoid the Melee phase, thus avoiding the enemy’s Fighters and capable of reaching the opponent’s fleet directly.



wait did you just break the game? i'm guessing that affinity related custom pilgrim here we go due to spam.



5) Invasion stuff is cool except the instant invasion (the 4 turn cap is good) must have serious issues for doing so



6) Mechanics

I would prefer if turrets were removed and made flak target missiles and fighters/bombers. Flak gets a new stat that works to shoot down planes and if it shoots a missile down it can still shoot down a plane its not locked into one or the other, so we don't see missile+fighter/bomber spam. We don't want more stuff that can turn OFF flak. This would be better because we are not adding more weight into are ships e.g. decreasing the overall defence of are ships.

@ThatMG:



Generally: As far as I understood, turrets keep shooting at bombers. So one target per round, not phase, while the bombers are flying around their targets, just means that they'll slowly be shot down, then the turret will switch targets.

If a turret would have a random target, the defense fire would be spread among all bombers, which will probably end in less destroyed bombers and more damage on your ships.

Otherwise formulated: You could theoretically interpret bombers as damage over time-effects with stacks and turrets as the same, that just removes the stacks and therefore the damage, at a given speed.



Regarding point 3-1, keep in mind the bombers/fighters do not die off, just because their carriers explode. They'll continue the fight til shot down or end of combat.



Regarding 3-2: Either they need turrets or fighters or enough HP to last til the end of combat.



Regarding 4: Should still be balanced, if the damage is reduced. This only means that you'd prefer turrets over fighters to destroy Pilgrim bombers.



Regarding 5: We should wait until they publish more on invasions, before we try to judge that. ^^



Regarding 6: As an alternative, we could reduce the weight requirement on all modules now or increase the total tonnage of all ships or just prioritize more what we actually build. What interests me more, is, if ships that are not directly attacked by bombers can they, unlike with flak, help other ships with their turrets to get rid of the bombers?

And what range do the turrets have? Do they fight during the whole approach or just when the bombers close in?

Nosferatiel wrote:
@ThatMG:

Regarding 6: As an alternative, we could reduce the weight requirement on all modules now or increase the total tonnage of all ships. Or just prioritize more, what we actually build. What interests me more is, if ships that are not directly attacked by bombers can, unlike with flak, help other ships with their turrets to get rid of the bombers.

And what range the turrets have? Do they fight during the whole approach or just when the bombers close in?

Well that should be (as the same for Traitpoints) a naturalness for the devs...just adding bombers,turrets,Fighters without changes to the non expansion ships would be to 99% a mess.



But good u pointet that with the tonnage out.

Nosferatiel wrote:
@ThatMG:



Generally: As far as I understood, turrets keep shooting at bombers. So one target per round, not phase, while the bombers are flying around their targets, just means that they'll slowly be shot down, then the turret will switch targets.

If a turret would have a random target, the defense fire would be spread among all bombers, which will probably end in less destroyed bombers and more damage on your ships.

Otherwise formulated: You could theoretically interpret bombers as damage over time-effects with stacks and turrets as the same, that just removes the stacks and therefore the damage, at a given speed.



Regarding point 3-1, keep in mind the bombers/fighters do not die off, just because their carriers explode. They'll continue the fight til shot down or end of combat.



Regarding 3-2: Either they need turrets or fighters or enough HP to last til the end of combat.



Regarding 4: Should still be balanced, if the damage is reduced. This only means that you'd prefer turrets over fighters to destroy Pilgrim bombers.



Regarding 5: We should wait until they publish more on invasions, before we try to judge that. ^^



Regarding 6: As an alternative, we could reduce the weight requirement on all modules now or increase the total tonnage of all ships or just prioritize more what we actually build. What interests me more, is, if ships that are not directly attacked by bombers can they, unlike with flak, help other ships with their turrets to get rid of the bombers?

And what range do the turrets have? Do they fight during the whole approach or just when the bombers close in?

3-1: isn't that a little OP and they will become the next spam, e.g. nothing but fighters / bombers on ships like the missile spam ships e.g. more is better due to defences turning OFF because of the "only shoots one ship/round"



3-2: really depends how good they are at killing ships



4: Yeah but you rarely vs only pilgrims



5: 1 turn invasions are bad unless there is a cost like increased time to not hate you etc/reduction in fids due to you bombing them etc



6: Its a fact the more defences we have the less weight is spent on a single defence type meaning our ships become weaker over all. This will be multiplied by the fact that anyone/thing who is smart makes ships not the same. This is why I'd prefer an addition to flak as the way to counter missiles and fighters/bombers (that's generally its function btw). Adding weight/decreasing weight costs is a slippery slope because it buffs other unrelated strats e.g. like pure missile/laser spam and doesn't really address the problem. That "More defence types = Less overall defences of a specific type" due to the weight resource.



E.G. destroyers with weapons and cruisers/battleships with fighters/bombers and dreads might through a spanner in the works with all that space available.



I also asked it says once per round turrets fire and also says it takes 6 rounds for them to get to you so does that mean that's 6 rounds of turrets they have to get through AND fighters. Depending on the values they may even be worse than kinetics lol or will be so powerful that they become the new spam, only time will tell.



I like your Dot analogy would like to see this as how they effectively work.

A lot of this can only really be tested, as differing opinions on the matter won't solve the problem.

Igncom1 wrote:
A lot of this can only really be tested, as differing opinions on the matter won't solve the problem.

I agree, this is more a balancing-problem than a design-problem, in my opinion.

*gasp* since fighters are their own modules, will dreadnoughts finally have a discount on something?



My idea(s):

Fighter & bombers are cool, but will they have any variants?



Elite fighters: These are specialized (ship here) built with superior technology (stats) and the most advanced of pilots. They are capable of "punching above their weight" in a battle and will be better in every way...except for in one area. Cost/tonnage. So they are much better, but due to cost, you can't have nearly as many. They are pretty ES's equivalent to red squadron or team starfox. (better vs other fighters/bombers?)



Drones: Mass produced fighters with programming that due to simpleness are cheaper/less tonnage to use. However even in times of interstellar travel they still cannot compare to a living being-True AI. (better vs ships?)



So basically quality over quantity, quantity over quality, and then normal fighters.

Since these are sidegrades they will not work in every situation, but they do what they do well. So normal fighters should still make up the brunt of your force.

Could make it a faction trait ^

I know they will have their own, but do fleet wide traits like strong alloys, fast travelers & deadly weapons affect them too?

NightReaper wrote:
For the sake of tactical realism, when given the choice fighters should always go for the bombers first, if present, because of their ability to do the maximum damage to the defender...just saying...(sorry if this posted twice)

Tactical realism goes out the window when you get into space baby, don't worry about it



Too lazy to grab the previous posts. OK MG, fighters and bombers are not all going to deal weapon level damage, they do not have the turret sizes on ships, so obviously weaker weapons. Fleet wide traits would have to affect them because... it would make sense? Why use weaker alloys on fighters and bombers :P you'd want them to survive hits as much as the other ships, but bigger ships just have thicker hulls. Drones could be a late game varient.

bomber feel more like torpedo boats.