First of all who has really thought about the fighters that much? well for one i have since ive been making them and rendering them to size about 32x32 altho they may be a tad bit bigger later, like 45x45 yet i can tell you this much for total sure, how you going to hit them?
they are the size of 1.5 cannon shots, a torp hitting them ... well good luck... and unless you spray tons of rapids or railguns you may not even get close to hitting it, also if they are as fast as a corvette or faster good luck even trying to hit them.
Ive noticed also that the weapons seem to fire much slower in 2.0 than 1.4 anyone else noticed that, that will sure make it a problem hitting them good luck locking on to one at a time when theres 12 on you spitting torps.
Then your left with all kinds of problems later, like can they blockade a planet? will a planet be able to even hit one? how could you tractor a ship that small and look right? as well what about (i) will (i) exchange your battleship with a fighter? Then there is fighters using tractor? Then we can discuss how they will affect radar? Also how about shield? or Hull? if corvettes get a 1 or 2 what would a fighter get? .3?
What about hiding them? Some of the natural game ship colors clash with the planets at 32x32 and i can hide a fighter on a colored area of a planet and you will never see it unless you have radar?
Then there is the problem with crew. Normally crew was a fast look indicator of who can tractor who and who is near death ect without looking hard in combat, once targeted i could easy see someones crew in a fast battle and not really watch their shields or other stats cause if i was killing crew then i was at least hitting them and some times had time using T TTTTT to see their shields thru my own lag, but with fighters, what about crew, with one crew, hell they wont take even a single torp? or with 3 crew well maybee two torps and 0 crew. Then what? your sure not giving them much hull so crew will have to matter some kinna way?
How will names work? or fleets? for each fighter, say i have two players one with my fleet one on same race with another fleet? will the fighters have the ship name? captains name? unit 1 unit 2? when there are 200 fighters in the field how will lag work then since it will be udp> even udp has some lag and 200 extra tracks in one view all firing missiles (example) will add 200 x how many that shoot so how many tracks is that and all the carriers and other ships, i dont even think others ships will stand a chance with 5 members playing carriers? sit in f12 and wait for them to die or refuel get out of range? stay in cloak forever? and what about cloak? can fighters cloak? if so then talk about a sneak attack from hell...
Last what about swarm attacks? how will radar handle that full zoom? so my players have 9 carriers and say 10 (nice round number) fighters from each, whew, i hope radar gets a few more pixels?> lol
even as fast as laser pd fires it will have to fire twice as fast to keep up with even one attack let alone a group with 12 carriers and fighters and missiles. I can see it all now.. mayhem on a scale this game has never seen. You would have to arm half your fighters with only pd just to protect yourself from other fighters and even that would be a total criss cross of fire that would be wild for sure.
I can tell you this much as sad as missiles are now and how vets rarely use them unless spamming them from orbit, when the carrier gets here missiles will make a huge comeback. If the gui can handle it that is.
I know this much the bots will sure hate it. LOL.
Devils advocate, Marsie.
Fighters are ment to be small, hard to hit.. But low on HP, and lasers are highly effective on them becuase there sticky. Makes different weapons useful for different situations.
They need to be smaller then corvettes, simply put. Since there fighters. The size you had them at isn't 32x32 but it's probably what they are going to be size wise. Seems more like 20x20, which is good, since corvettes are 28x28.
Weapons are the same speed, nothing speed wise was changed, again its one of those things that it 'only' looks like it is but it's actually a bit faster, due to the increased FPS and your eye seeing more frames. They are really though supposed to be hit hard becuase only a small amount of shots are needed to make them go boom.
They can't blockade a planet no, there so small, there meant to defend or help attack, only the main carrier can attack them. Depending on the colony type, they will be able to use there laser on them when they decide to fire it. Fighters AREN'T like main ships, you can't tractor and capture them. They do not have tractor beams. You CANT BE a fighter. Radar is probably like small ships, more visible when near or keep the sensor:3 instead. Same difference. Again, they have low shields and hull. Very low. Nothing like regular ships. It would probably be determined by the type of fighter you want. But in the end there all going to be low.
Pretend there like homing missiles, but instead of exploding on the target, they fire on the enemy instead, like a ship would. Only certain ships would have these. So they don't have crew becuase there crew count is simply '1' or '2' anyways, plus since they can't be capped, orbit, etc, don't have to worry about all that. There repair system will be based on something different anyways. Maybe a value. They will probably have one or two really weak weapons, that's it. You won't see them equipped with a super strong gun, for example. They might be able to cloak but those fighters will be super weak on weapons. And once ships uncloak normally they should be easy pickings since they will have the lower shields/hp. Maybe even cloak type fighters will have no shields, who knows. (Could say that shielding gives off a sensor ping, so removing them since they don't have the same capabilities of a bigger ship)
There isn't going to be a spam of 200 fighters unless every ship is a carrier, even still, it would be fine, just kind of disgusting. Main game won't be like that. Carriers have X amount of fighters they can launch TOPS. Carriers aren't meant to be lone gunners, they need backup, there fighters are support ships, without them, there screwed. It's pretty much just a different way you can 'play SF'. They eventually run out of fuel and go back. You won't be able to command them from a far distance. (settable). If the carrier dies, the fighters will most likely explode after 5-10 seconds. Call them like 'robots' controllin
But I think you had the wrong idea for fighters. There like tiny missiles that don't explode on impact and can use weak guns. Players can't use them, and they aren't are scary as you think they will be. They WILL be a pain if you dont kill them yeah, but then if you had a laser weapon in PD mode, you are pretty much protected. Gives a good meaning to PD lasers and makes other weapons benifical. I was actually thinking of having something to a machine gun, super super fast, short range, but I'll figure that out in the future. But you don't have to worry about fighters being these crazy ships that can cap planets and destroy shit in two seconds.
Actually I have an idea for the orbit spam with missiles and other things, I'll work on that after. Trompete came up with the idea that if you fire while orbiting, it takes 1-3 seconds (dunno the exact time yet) that the reload/replenish of ammo works again. So if you are firing, ammo won't recharge, simply put.
