One staple ship type of space combat this game lacks is the "carrier" archetype, which has always sort of bummed me out simply because I love the thematic of a carrier ship launching a horde of weak but agile fighters that descend on the enemy like a swarm of space-piranhas.







In terms of their mechanical role- and how they fit into the current offense-defense system I could see them being implemented in a few ways:



1). Treat them as a subtype of missile. Make them work like missiles but harder to shoot down, but once a fighter has been shot down, the corresponding module is disabled for the remainder of the battle.



2). Since defense modules are already not a sufficiently desirable make fighters be a weapon type which deals more damage per tonnages then any other weapon type, but make them more susceptible to defenses. Perhaps have them interceptable by flak(they can be shot down), but also have them deal their damage per turn with kinetic weapons which are affected by deflectors- and while your at it make them easier to intercept and have their damage spread across fewer shots then comparable teched kinetics/missile modules. The result would be a weapon that is specifically designed to punish players that ignore defense on their ships, but is countered harder by defenses then any other weapon type(and countered by 2 of the 3 defenses)



3). The most complicated route would be to actually launch small ships with pre-assigned health & weapons modules.



Well I'm sure there are other ways they could be implemented(likely better options)- those were just the first 3 to pop into my head.





Realistically speaking I realize this probably isn't going to happen as it would requires new models and significant revisions to the military tech tree, but I felt compelled to at least bring the topic up for discussion. Food for thought and what-not.

I would definitely love to see this, however, it may be too late in the game for new ship designs. Something for the future perhaps.

TheFrozenOne wrote:
I would definitely love to see this, however, it may be too late in the game for new ship designs. Something for the future perhaps.

Aye I fully agree- I'd assumed as much. Mostly just felt the need to broach the topic due to my extreme love of all things carrier.

The devs have stated that they would love to implement a carrier/squadron system into the game's combat system, but they simply are too close to the deadline to make it happen satisfactorily. We'll likely see them added in with a DLC or expansion.

ya i loved fighters in pax imperia. frankly the game would have been nothin without them. well it had a decent espionage system to.

It's already been proposed. This thread has been moved to the archive and listed here: /#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/11783-strikecraft-fighters-bombers-and-corvettes-in-es

Also, this topic is already tracked and marked as a post-release-thing, if you have a look at the dev-tracking-sticky.