Read by Council how to fix fighters vs big ships

[jorn818]

No matter how many fighters you got you just cant penetrate the shield of a capital ship
so here is an idea:

what if we do something similar to how (spoiler alert) starkiller base got destroyed
pretty much firing at the same spot, or around the same spot would weaken the shield at that spot
a laser should have impact of around 10 blocks from where its hit, in other words if all fighters fire at the same spot for a few minutes (bomb runs) the shield would eventually collapse at that spot (when not fired at it will slowly regenerate (after 60 seconds of not being fired at) so I imagine 10-12 fighters dropping missiles there so they can eventually blast through the hull.


Also some alarm sounds when shields are down would be cool

 

[Pacific_Jim]

Another idea: Don't.

At least, not to a massive extent. Provide better options for coordinating groups of smaller ships for sure, so intelligently designed groups of smaller ships can use well thought out tactics to take down larger targets. We don't need arbitrary weak points etc though.

 

[jorn818]

Another idea: Don't.

At least, not to a massive extent. Provide better options for coordinating groups of smaller ships for sure, so intelligently designed groups of smaller ships can use well thought out tactics to take down larger targets. We don't need arbitrary weak points etc though.

Well thanks for the well statement with some good arguments, I mean some people just comment things without explaining you know /s

 

[Edymnion]

Well, the prevailing attitude seems to be that the game should be nothing but two titans parked next to each other until everybody gets 2 fps as the turrets trade shots automatically because the ships are too big to turn. And anything else is morally wrong.

 

[MrFURB]

There have been a few folks running some combat tests about this issue as of late. The results of the big vs. small tests leaned towards multiple smaller ships having an advantage so long as their combined mass is at least 1/3 (number is variable depending on ship design and AI competency) that of the larger vessel.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying 'smaller ships are better than larger ships' as much as 'more ships are better than fewer ships'. I also believe that this advantage will be compounded in the future fleet/AI updates, as one of the weaknesses of using multiple ships is a lack of manpower and of BOBBY AI's refusal to stay out of enemy fire arcs. With a wing leader of fleet leader able to herd other ships along with them, you could guide AI ships into blindspots or flanks where turret coverage is weakest.

 

[Lecic]

No matter how many fighters you got you just cant penetrate the shield of a capital ship

False.

/thread

 

[Pacific_Jim]

Well, the prevailing attitude seems to be that the game should be nothing but two titans parked next to each other until everybody gets 2 fps as the turrets trade shots automatically because the ships are too big to turn. And anything else is morally wrong.

I mean, that's entirely wrong? But sure. It's been shown a few times, in PVP especially, groups of smaller ships overcome giant ships. Within reason, obviously. You tend to need about 5 or 6 ships equally about a third or so of the mass of the bigger vessel. Or, you can go overboard and let out 100's of smaller ships in drone swarms if you want to be excessive.

The only real problem at the moment is outside of drone swarms it's hard to field those kinds of numbers (and to field drones you tend to need a fairly large ship). You really need to have every ship piloted by a player at the moment, both due to getting the ships there in the first place and the AI's tendency to kinda, wander off. Decent fleet controls should solve this though, though we'll have to wait until that update hits to see how that works.

 

[Heillos]

No matter how many fighters you got you just cant penetrate the shield of a capital ship

Yeah, other people have already pointed out the error of this statement.

Well, the prevailing attitude seems to be that the game should be nothing but two titans parked next to each other until everybody gets 2 fps as the turrets trade shots automatically because the ships are too big to turn. And anything else is morally wrong.

Good strawman, friend. For the sake of avoiding redundancy, I'll just direct you to any reasonable post in this thread.

 

[Edymnion]

Decent fleet controls should solve this though, though we'll have to wait until that update hits to see how that works.

Fleet controls alone won't really solve the problem, I'm afraid.

Because it just means one person driving a titan can now drive a titan and a fleet of smaller ships as well, and it will still boil down to who has the biggest ships.

As long as economy of scale says a single big ship beats a single small ship every single time, we will never get away from giganticism until the titans start coming with actual weaknesses.

 

[MrFURB]

My own opinion is that a small ship shouldn't be able to defeat a large ship due to lack of firepower and that a large ship trying to shoot down a small ship with anti-capital weapons will be wasting time with missed attacks and slow turret traverse (which should be a thing). Neither side would be able to achieve a quick victory.
Of course, there could always be specialized anti-capital bombers using warhead torpedoes or anti-drone gunships with smaller and faster turrets, but both of those draw resources away from the default roles of ships of that size.

 

[SkylordLuke]

oh look,another make mouse beat elephant thread :P

 

[Zyrr]

Because it just means one person driving a titan can now drive a titan and a fleet of smaller ships as well, and it will still boil down to who has the biggest ships.

As long as economy of scale says a single big ship beats a single small ship every single time

Well, the prevailing attitude seems to be that the game should be nothing but two titans parked next to each other until everybody gets 2 fps as the turrets trade shots automatically because the ships are too big to turn. And anything else is morally wrong.

i haven't seen anyone on starmadedock strawman this hard in a long damn time

 

[Edymnion]

i haven't seen anyone on starmadedock strawman this hard in a long damn time

Its called an exaggeration for comedic effect.

If anything you do in a video game about making imaginary space ships out of virtual blocks can be considered morally wrong, then damn, I wanna know what you were doing because I've been playing it wrong!

 

[Zyrr]

No, it's actually called a strawman. Here's an informative page about it, read up.

 

[Pacific_Jim]

They already have weaknesses. Namely:

-Cost effectiveness. As stated, for about a third of the block count you can make a group of ships that would be more effective in combat. This might be minor by itself, but as territory and holding ground becomes more important this will become a bigger deal. This also depends on fleet sizes as well, as we don't know whether there's a planned maximum for fleet sizes. We also don't know whether or not entirely controlled AI fleets will be an option (my guess would be yes), so if you hit a fleet maximum, just send in 6.

-Agility. This is one of the big reasons why groups have the advantage at the moment. Turrets are too easily killed to keep up with smaller ships staying in giant ships blind spot. This is especially true with the thruster update, since while bigger ships can turn a little better now their speed has suffered heavily. This is made even worse by...

-Diminishing returns. You need more and more thrusters as your ship size increases. Weapons have a hard limit for how much block damage can be done with one output. Multiple outputs cost more and more power the more you have. After you hit 2 million power produced per second you hit a very, very steep drop off (which makes powering those multiple outputs even harder). You can mitigate this to an extent with docked reactors, but it's still less efficient than just making two ships.

Bigger ships are likely never going away completely. One on one they're obviously going to win. As the game expands though groups of smaller ships are going to become more and more viable.

 

[SkylordLuke]

This is not Ster Wers,Death star was an inside job

 

[FlyingDebris]

I'm just going to casually mention that the X-wings didn't do jack, as stated in the movie. It was someone setting off a hugeass bomb inside the thing.

Name one time a single, lone fighter (Just one, no escort whatsoever.) killed a large ship anywhere in any decent sci-fi movie.

 

[Edymnion]

No, it's actually called a strawman. Here's an informative page about it, read up.

No, its called satire.

 

[Pacific_Jim]

I'm just going to casually mention that the X-wings didn't do jack, as stated in the movie. It was someone setting off a hugeass bomb inside the thing.

Name one time a single, lone fighter (Just one, no escort whatsoever.) killed a large ship anywhere in any decent sci-fi movie.

There's a pretty good DS9 episode dealing with the subject, where a ship in the Defiant class controlled by a group of plucky underdogs tries to take on a huge ship by itself.

 

[SkylordLuke]

bigger ≠ better
hell,my ships that I recently made that are only 150m long,can beat my old ships that are 1000m long.
and THEN there are lot of ships and builders that can make a ship that is EVEN smaller and can beat THAT 150m ship xD hahahaah

..It comes down who can build a better ship,who will use the support tools the best (with future heavy Buffs to each one)
and what fleet configuration are you gonna use (knowing what your enemy fleet is made of,and then bringing fleet that can counter enemy fleet configuration),etc.