The idea of adding a giant fuck-off carrier to a fleet, have it escorted by escort vessels, etc. etc. is plain awesome and would add immensely to the game as a whole. It's the main thing missing from ship combat right now.

As is their right lol

AngleWyrm wrote:
The devs have said they definitely plan on adding fighter/carrier to the game, but it is a feature that they want to do right, not just rush out for the release. So it will be done post-release, so they can give it their attention.

What I read this as: The devs will put it in an expansion pack so they can sell it to us.

Well missiles only need to be small and fast so they can't be shot, so why not just make it down the centre?



Link in the weapon to overload when firing and make that the warhead!

Igncom1 wrote:
Well future fighers wont have a pilot in the craft anyway. But why no gun? you could shoot a hole for the missile?

True, true. But, the gun issue comes back up. Will you be able to put on a big enough gun to be useful, while retaining the maneuvering needed to be effective?

Well future fighers wont have a pilot in the craft anyway. But why no gun? you could shoot a hole for the missile?

Igncom1 wrote:
Real life spaceships? no i don't think they will be any good, and i am more of a beliver of some kind of wormhole thingie.



But yeah, fighers are just missiles with......guns? you know what? thats the only differance, they have guns.



Missiles with PD, and such.....why not let them just ram the F***** and eat lunch on the enemys homeworld.

Heh, exactly. Why not just cut out the gun, cut out the pilot, put some extra explosives in there, and problem solved. All that would be left would be to bombard the planet, and send in the Marines to smash whatever is still standing.

Real life spaceships? no i don't think they will be any good, and i am more of a beliver of some kind of wormhole thingie.



But yeah, fighers are just missiles with......guns? you know what? thats the only differance, they have guns.



Missiles with PD, and such.....why not let them just ram the F***** and eat lunch on the enemys homeworld.

Igncom1 wrote:
Of course they make no real sence, but the idea is that 'fighters' would carry ordinance too their target, ordinace that can't be put in a missile.



Besides, drones will eventually replace the in flight pilots for remote control, giving better pilots then ever as its harder to kill them. In the end, the ablity to ferry weapons to a target multiple time in combat, to provide a constant problem and so end up being worth more then a single remote missile.



But do note that planes and carrier warfair came in long before proper missile technology, so it still has to be proven that missiles can fully replace any sort of carrying craft for effectiveness and cost.

True, but what ordinance are they carrying that can't be put into a missile? If they are carrying lasers, they can't be carrying one of any real size/weight, or else they lose their maneuvering power. The laser would be significantly weaker than any a bigger ship would be carrying, so you would need many of them to do any real damage. Not to mention the energy source to power the laser. But these bigger ships would be able to target these ships with those bigger laser to zap them out of the sky. Lasers are light, they travel at the speed of light. They would be impossible to dodge at the "close" range space battle take place in.



Kinetic weapons are an option, but again, the fighter would be limited to the size of the gun it can carry, as well as the size of the ammunition. Would they be able to even get a kinetic round flying fast enough, for the size they would be, to do damage against bigger ships designed to withstand even bigger rounds?



And I do know that carriers and aircraft came before proper missiles. But at the same time, it has yet to be proven that space ships such as these are even possible. What's to say there isn't some VI or AI that has been developed that can allow the missile to fly and maneuver itself, to make sure it gets to the target? And because it wouldn't be restrained by the limitations of a human body, it would be able to pull off maneuvers that would cause Gs high enough to kill a human, making them harder to hit and eliminate.

Of course they make no real sence, but the idea is that 'fighters' would carry ordinance too their target, ordinace that can't be put in a missile.



Besides, drones will eventually replace the in flight pilots for remote control, giving better pilots then ever as its harder to kill them. In the end, the ablity to ferry weapons to a target multiple time in combat, to provide a constant problem and so end up being worth more then a single remote missile.



But do note that planes and carrier warfair came in long before proper missile technology, so it still has to be proven that missiles can fully replace any sort of carrying craft for effectiveness and cost.

I don't like the idea of carriers and fighters. They just don't make any sense to me. A fighter in space won't have the advantages over bigger ships the way that jets have over naval vessels. To quote The Tough Guide to the Known Galaxy:

Their tactical value is unclear, since the are really just small spacecraft themselves. Since they don't operate in an essentially different medium, the way aircraft operate in a different medium from surface ships, there is no fundamental reason why they should be all that much faster. In naval terms they are more analogous to motor gunboats than to airplanes.



Mostly Space Fighters fight each other, which is logical enough in itself but doesn't explain why they are used in the first place. Only two other missions can be identified for them:



1) To destroy gargantuan BATTLE STATIONS, which are vulnerable only to attack by Space Fighters.*



2) To give prominent roles to young males in their early twenties, so they can display their swagger, coolness, and fast moves on any attractive female of an Interbreedable species.

*In my mind, because apparently a race advanced enough to build super space stations forgot how to make close range defenses, like turrets and what-not.



This, sadly, also killed my hopes for space fighters: Click, not to mention various series that I read such as The Lost Fleet. The simply make no sense to me anymore. You need a significant amount of them to do any damage, and at the cost it would take to A) make the ship, B) train pilots and C) expend the resources to make the carrier, train carrier staff, engineers to keep the fighters and the carriers working...Why not just turn the "fighter" into an unmanned, giant missile?

Alright then.



Don't know about you guys, but to me the only thing more impressive than a huge Battleship brimming with lasers is an even bigger Carrier-Class ship filling the sky with fighters.

Apart from the obvious "oh ****" feeling that such a situation would eclit in every unlucky observer, adding Carriers (and consequently fighters) would do lots to make fleet battles worthy of their name - A full blown space battle rather than the brief battleship 3v3s that tend to dominate endgame at the moment.



So what would be ways to implement it?



At the moment, combat is pretty straightforward; there are hulls with a certain amount of tonnage + weapons and corresponding armor of 3 types to squeeze in there.

Hit's and damage are calculated on a comparatively small number of targets, seldom more than 15 at a time. So adding (dozens of) fightercraft as an actual ship class, with own tonnage and hitbox might not work in the current system, it would probably just take a huge toll on the hardware for little gain.

Plus, if they were actual ships, they would have to be launched, an action clogging up space in the 3-actions-based-combat that we have.



So my suggestion would be, to make fighters a weapon type. (Alternatively, a module) And make it huge, or otherwise restricted, so it can only be fitted on certain ship types (Carriers)

Once installed, it would launch the fighters not unlike missiles are launched currently and send them towards the enemy (again, like missiles, with a certain delay till they arrive)



Now here things get interesting. What would the fighters do, once they reach the enemy? From the top of my head, there are several possibilities:



- launch torpedoes (heavy hitters, hard to destroy with conventional antimissiles)

- attack subsystems (for example, destroy the enemies anti-missile turrets just before your missiles hit home?)

- hinder the enemies movement. (As in once they are swarmed by fighters, their weapon accuracy takes a huge hit)

- kill other fighters (see Interceptors below)



So this would make fighters a "debuff" weapon, destroying either defense or hindering offense, adding some tactical depth.

As for torpedoes (they could come in a different "Bomber"-Module?), they would add the obvious need for Interceptors. Bombers might be too maneuerable or too heavily armored to be scared off by mere antimissiles, so the apropriate counter module (staying within the offense/defense setting we currently have) would be Interceptors.

Ships would have to balance their payload between the two, just like they have to with current weaponry.



So fighters (and thereby carriers) seem feasible within the current combat system. The one spot where it might become tricky, is to design their actual combat behaviour. They won't just bounce off shields - they need proper combat animations, but I'm confident that's manageable.



Ultimately, there could be more varied types of fighters, with different weapon types etc - but for now I think two types, with a strict offense/defense role fit the current combat system best.



So, what do you guys think? Carriers Yay or Nay?



More suggestions to flesh this out would be greatly appreciated

If there's no bombers to fight maybe there could be a Kamikaze card to play if you are attacking the carrier. Like if you had a swarm of drones you could crash into the well defended carrier. Make the carrier hull have a defense gun feature automatically added, like a phalanx or something. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS

Igncom1 wrote:
Sure, lets do this thang!

So while there are many cases of Carrier warfair that we can use baised on the WW2 model, why not the moden era with faster and more effective varients that can fight without having to close on the enemy (Not that the WW2 ones had to, but yeah), the eara of supersonic flight brought with it a new way of air-to-air combat, with tracking (Or Laser and fast kinetic gun) type weapons that can one hit kill other fighters and bombers without being able to see them.



The unique use of 'Cold war' tpyes of Navl warfair compaired to the WW2 method that alot of 4x games use could give this game alot of spice! and Top Gun coolness.

Not sure if I'd necessarely compare it to any real world carrier warfare. This is space after all I was thinking about some nice dogfights between - or surrounding the larger ships. Think of the stereotypical Star Wars space battle and you get an idea;



I think this would add lots of dynamic to the fights. Maybe this is more in line with your Top Gun Dogfight idea, too?

Thumpen wrote:
For simple flavor, it seems the most basic version of this would be to simply add a bomber/strike fighter line of weapons, with a corresponding interceptor/CAP fighter line of defences. But if you want it to be different from other weapons it gets trickier. Bombers would have a slower travel time than missiles, I assume, so what would set them apart? Status effects and system damage have been suggested. My preference would be simpler: say that every bomber/strike fighter carries enough munitions to be effective throughout an engagement, and so they can do constant damage once they arrive at the target. As for defence, the simplest way of balancing the whole thing would be to add interceptors as a defence like any other; interceptors, and only interceptors, defend against strike craft.

Yup, that's what I was thinking. It would be an alternative to missiles, as in another heavy damage type with initial delay. The constant damage, as opposed to the torpedoes is an interesting idea. It could come with some battle animations of the fighters swarming the hull of the bigger ship (If they haven't been shot down on the way there) I wonder what Interceptors would do if there are no bombers to fight. Theoretically, they would have (low damage) weapons of their own to attack enemy bigships with, but it's more feasible in the current system if they would simply fly around their carrier in a defensive formation, doing nothing. (Same as any other defense in absence of its counterpart)

Do we need dedicated carrier hulls? A lot of people seem to want them, and I personally like carriers, so if there is time and will at Amplitude, why not? Giving carrier hulls a role would be as simple as making bomber/interceptor hangars very large and giving carriers a -x% bonus for them, or alternatively by limiting hangars to one per ship with carriers having no such limit. If the hangar module is very large it would probably be neccessary to make interceptors defend all the ships in a fleet, allowing you to bring a dedicated interceptor-carrier. Alteratively you could add a second line of anti-bomber defences, point-defence cannon, which any ship could carry to fend of strike craft.

I'm totally in favor of dedicated carrier hulls. Another opportunity to add something big and intimidating to your garage is always a plus

And yes, Interceptors would reasonably have to defend the whole fleet. This might be tricky in the current system, although there are already some modules in place that increase fleet efficiency...

Maybe those could be adapted to add a +x% strikecraft defense to all ships.

Of course, the problem remains that we would need a corresponding combat animation. Interceptors would have to attack ALL strikecraft, even if it were aimed at different ships

For simple flavor, it seems the most basic version of this would be to simply add a bomber/strike fighter line of weapons, with a corresponding interceptor/CAP fighter line of defences. But if you want it to be different from other weapons it gets trickier. Bombers would have a slower travel time than missiles, I assume, so what would set them apart? Status effects and system damage have been suggested. My preference would be simpler: say that every bomber/strike fighter carries enough munitions to be effective throughout an engagement, and so they can do constant damage once they arrive at the target. As for defence, the simplest way of balancing the whole thing would be to add interceptors as a defence like any other; interceptors, and only interceptors, defend against strike craft.



Do we need dedicated carrier hulls? A lot of people seem to want them, and I personally like carriers, so if there is time and will at Amplitude, why not? Giving carrier hulls a role would be as simple as making bomber/interceptor hangars very large and giving carriers a -x% bonus for them, or alternatively by limiting hangars to one per ship with carriers having no such limit. If the hangar module is very large it would probably be neccessary to make interceptors defend all the ships in a fleet, allowing you to bring a dedicated interceptor-carrier. Alteratively you could add a second line of anti-bomber defences, point-defence cannon, which any ship could carry to fend of strike craft.

yay, now instead of training for years in eve online to fly carriers ill be able to do it in endless space! hurray!

AngleWyrm wrote:
The devs have said they definitely plan on adding fighter/carrier to the game, but it is a feature that they want to do right, not just rush out for the release. So it will be done post-release, so they can give it their attention.

good stuff, can't wait to see carriers in action! although considering carrier sizes and weaknesses (hence the need for support ships) they'll have to increase CP then I presume...?

The devs have said they definitely plan on adding fighter/carrier to the game, but it is a feature that they want to do right, not just rush out for the release. So it will be done post-release, so they can give it their attention.

Skurkanas wrote:
Meh, used the search function but somehow forgot to look up that link



Still, it's just a rather vague "will there be strikecraft?" question. Maybe we could use this thread as an opportunity to discuss actual ways of implementing it

Sure, lets do this thang!



So what era of carrier baised warfair are you basing this suggestion off? With the whole Fighter-Bomber-Intersepter deal it looks like WW2? So lets build off of that!



So here we have three groups or catigorys of Figher/drone warfair: Anti-Shipping, Anti-Bomber and Anti/Counter/Escort-Fighters. This combo looks good but limiting, so how about more of a list like this: Anti-System, Anti-Defences, Anti-Small Shipping, Anti-Heavy Shipping, Anti-Module, Anti-Fighter/Drone/Missile, Anti-Bomber and Harrasment/Raiding Fighters.



This list of roles can be utlised in a number of ways, but first lets decuss what we are actually using. Well fighters right? But there are amny unique choices throughout science fiction that could be used, for incedence in star trek they have no real one man/computer fighter craft but they still use fighter type squadrens, how? well their "fighter" craft are just smaller corvette type ships that can accelerate much faster then nomal ships of the line, which are also much larger then their smaller counterparts and so are less manuverable.



So while there are many cases of Carrier warfair that we can use baised on the WW2 model, why not the moden era with faster and more effective varients that can fight without having to close on the enemy (Not that the WW2 ones had to, but yeah), the eara of supersonic flight brought with it a new way of air-to-air combat, with tracking (Or Laser and fast kinetic gun) type weapons that can one hit kill other fighters and bombers without being able to see them.



The unique use of 'Cold war' tpyes of Navl warfair compaired to the WW2 method that alot of 4x games use could give this game alot of spice! and Top Gun coolness.

Igncom1 wrote:
We have got you coverd on that frount good buddy!



/#/endless-space/forum/29-archives/thread/14002-suggestions-and-wishes-that-we-are-tracking

Here shows that the devs are tracking theses types of suggestions.

Meh, used the search function but somehow forgot to look up that link



Still, it's just a rather vague "will there be strikecraft?" question. Maybe we could use this thread as an opportunity to discuss actual ways of implementing it

We have got you coverd on that frount good buddy!



/#/endless-space/forum/29-archives/thread/14002-suggestions-and-wishes-that-we-are-tracking

Here shows that the devs are tracking theses types of suggestions.