A discussion on the usefulness of fighters

[Star Commander Shepard]

DISCLAIMER: I have never experienced starmade on another server or with many other players, so what I'm saying could be wrong.

In the past few updates, it has gotten much harder to build ships, especially with viable weapon systems and advanced hulls. In singleplayer, I often have to take my salvage cruiser to four different systems to actually get all of the minerals I require for basic shipbuilding. Don't get me wrong, this is great, I love the new balances and such. However, now that it is considerably more difficult to acquire the necessary minerals for ship creation, a wise individual would rather spend his materials wisely than haphazardly.

Which brings us to our discussion, are interceptor- and bomber-class ships useful?

Yes, they are. In my own experience, they are an integral part in base defense. They serve as distractions for enemy fighters and corvettes as my heavy missile and punch-through turrets wipe up the already softened invaders. However, are they useful in a proper battle, say, in a pirate base attack?

I, personally, had very little success in using fighters in a base attack, unless I used about 3 wings (fifteen fighters) to finally overpower the base, and after 22 grueling minutes, I suffered terrible losses: I had only two ships left, and only mine was properly flyable.

Looking for a way to aide my fighters in anti-station warfare, I turned to the archives of YouTube. This video ==>
finally sealed the deal for me.

Fighters aren't good at assaulting stations. Even bombers, with their anti-structure missiles, couldn't properly succeed at destroying a base, because the base has unlimited fighters at its disposal, and, as we see in the video, and as is true in real air combat, a single fighter is most likely not going to win against a fleet of them, no matter the skill of the pilot.

On the assault of another base, instead of investing my resources into creating fighters, I made a frigate, with required less blocks than the previous raiding party I had built, geared with anti-structure weapons and anti-fighter turrets. In a matter of 3 minutes, I had neutralized the station. It could be that I make better large ships than I do fighters, or that I was constrained by making the fighters look like the Raven Interceptor, (From XCOM: Enemy Unknown.) but I believe that investing in frigates is a much more rational choice than investing in fighters. I'm still somewhat testing this claim, and I'll keep you updated, if this thread gets popular.

 

[Runeseer]

DISCLAIMER: I have never experienced starmade on another server or with many other players, so what I'm saying could be wrong.

In the past few updates, it has gotten much harder to build ships, especially with viable weapon systems and advanced hulls. In singleplayer, I often have to take my salvage cruiser to four different systems to actually get all of the minerals I require for basic shipbuilding. Don't get me wrong, this is great, I love the new balances and such. However, now that it is considerably more difficult to acquire the necessary minerals for ship creation, a wise individual would rather spend his materials wisely than haphazardly.

Which brings us to our discussion, are interceptor- and bomber-class ships useful?

Yes, they are. In my own experience, they are an integral part in base defense. They serve as distractions for enemy fighters and corvettes as my heavy missile and punch-through turrets wipe up the already softened invaders. However, are they useful in a proper battle, say, in a pirate base attack?

I, personally, had very little success in using fighters in a base attack, unless I used about 3 wings (fifteen fighters) to finally overpower the base, and after 22 grueling minutes, I suffered terrible losses: I had only two ships left, and only mine was properly flyable.

Looking for a way to aide my fighters in anti-station warfare, I turned to the archives of YouTube. This video ==>
finally sealed the deal for me.

Fighters aren't good at assaulting stations. Even bombers, with their anti-structure missiles, couldn't properly succeed at destroying a base, because the base has unlimited fighters at its disposal, and, as we see in the video, and as is true in real air combat, a single fighter is most likely not going to win against a fleet of them, no matter the skill of the pilot.

On the assault of another base, instead of investing my resources into creating fighters, I made a frigate, with required less blocks than the previous raiding party I had built, geared with anti-structure weapons and anti-fighter turrets. In a matter of 3 minutes, I had neutralized the station. It could be that I make better large ships than I do fighters, or that I was constrained by making the fighters look like the Raven Interceptor, (From XCOM: Enemy Unknown.) but I believe that investing in frigates is a much more rational choice than investing in fighters. I'm still somewhat testing this claim, and I'll keep you updated, if this thread gets popular.

I am just going to address “Acquiring Ship building Materials.” Pirate station siege is another topic all together.

There are generally four ways to acquire materials to build ships.
1. Manufacturing with mined resources
2. Player driven economy (cheep thrusters for sale!)
3. Pirate loot farming (direct)
4. Shop farming (indirect)

You seem to have a grasp on manufacturing. Yes, you have to roam systems to find the needed resources.

I assume you are playing alone so number 2 is out of the question.

Pirate farming!
If you are using fighters to take out pirates for loot, you are doing it wrong. Yes fighters will kill pirates, but AI fighters will not collect the loot they drop. And you will most likely not find the “loot piñata” before it goes poof.

Methodical single target accusation and destruction is required. Pick a target, get in visual range (important to see the “loot piñata”), blow up said target, profit. This will provide a massive influx of building material.

Shop farming…
What the heck do I do with the 3,000 Faction Blocks that last pirate dropped?

Sell off that extra loot to shops and use the millions in earned credits to buy the blocks you need.

As a side note…
Inventory management will be a issue. Check out my Sort-O-Matic inventory sorting array.
http://starmadedock.net/content/sort-o-matic.2218/

 

[Lidren]

Ai fighters are pretty useless currently compared to what they should be. There's no command and control (coordination is a fighter wings best strength irl) so they lose their main advantage. Some people overcome this with swarming disposable ones, but I find the tactic distasteful. Player piloted fighters are worth their mass three tines or more in gold, but nearly impossible to manage without ship based spawning among other things.

 

[Star Commander Shepard]

I am just going to address “Acquiring Ship building Materials.” Pirate station siege is another topic all together.

There are generally four ways to acquire materials to build ships.
1. Manufacturing with mined resources
2. Player driven economy (cheep thrusters for sale!)
3. Pirate loot farming (direct)
4. Shop farming (indirect)

You seem to have a grasp on manufacturing. Yes, you have to roam systems to find the needed resources.

I assume you are playing alone so number 2 is out of the question.

Pirate farming!
If you are using fighters to take out pirates for loot, you are doing it wrong. Yes fighters will kill pirates, but AI fighters will not collect the loot they drop. And you will most likely not find the “loot piñata” before it goes poof.

Methodical single target accusation and destruction is required. Pick a target, get in visual range (important to see the “loot piñata”), blow up said target, profit. This will provide a massive influx of building material.

Shop farming…
What the heck do I do with the 3,000 Faction Blocks that last pirate dropped?

Sell off that extra loot to shops and use the millions in earned credits to buy the blocks you need.

As a side note…
Inventory management will be a issue. Check out my Sort-O-Matic inventory sorting array.
http://starmadedock.net/content/sort-o-matic.2218/

In singleplayer, I don't do it for the loot, I do it for fun, mostly. I know and have utilized nearly every one, except I'm limiting myself to manufacturing for my own sake. I have an extremely vivid imagination, and I'm really just doing this to excel the "story" in my head. I discovered this inefficiency while deep in my world and thought I'd share it with the Starmade Community.

Ai fighters are pretty useless currently compared to what they should be. There's no command and control (coordination is a fighter wings best strength irl) so they lose their main advantage. Some people overcome this with swarming disposable ones, but I find the tactic distasteful. Player piloted fighters are worth their mass three tines or more in gold, but nearly impossible to manage without ship based spawning among other things.

You are right, Lidren, AI controlled ships are the worst air strategists I've seen, they seem to be best geared towards distracting other ships rather than actually destroying them. Swarming is a useful tactic, but since I'm manufacturing, I don't have the time to diminish three different asteroid fields to build a fighter swarm to destroy one station. Then I have to dock all of the remaining ships to a docking lattice or make another swarm and thats just too much work for a simple pirate raid.

 

[Monchoman45]

I do want to point out that the video you linked is probably not a good example.

For one thing, this guy can't manage his power. For another, he's using dumb fire missiles against moving targets. Isanths have no shields; you should be able to one shot them with a lock on missile.

On top of that, he complains that his jammer is eating all his power when he doesn't even need one. At the point where you're getting shot at, a jammer only protects you from lock on missiles. Isanths don't have lock ons, and since he said he knew that particular station, he should know whether or not the turrets have lock ons too.

If you build yourself a massive titan, and your tactical plan is to use your cloaker to get close to pirate stations and then destroy them with a checkerboard of damage pulses, you're gonna have a bad time. No quantity of ship can save you from bad design, but a well designed ship - of any size - is a formidable force.

 

[CyberTao]

Isanths don't have lock ons

They do actually, Isanth have All Weapon variants, Mb is just a rarer spawn that only appears at higher wave strengths (More difficult pirate spawns). I'm not sure if they can fire their missiles though, due to them have being made before weapons were finalized, they may not have enough power to fire. I recommend Sven's updated pirate pack, fixes all them pirates so that they actually work.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

I do want to point out that the video you linked is probably not a good example.

For one thing, this guy can't manage his power. For another, he's using dumb fire missiles against moving targets. Isanths have no shields; you should be able to one shot them with a lock on missile.

On top of that, he complains that his jammer is eating all his power when he doesn't even need one. At the point where you're getting shot at, a jammer only protects you from lock on missiles. Isanths don't have lock ons, and since he said he knew that particular station, he should know whether or not the turrets have lock ons too.

If you build yourself a massive titan, and your tactical plan is to use your cloaker to get close to pirate stations and then destroy them with a checkerboard of damage pulses, you're gonna have a bad time. No quantity of ship can save you from bad design, but a well designed ship - of any size - is a formidable force.

Jammers do nothing against lock on missiles but they will save you from cannon and beams because AI can still lock on you when you are jammed but they take a huge accuracy penalty, which doesn't effect tracking missiles.

 

[Winterhome]

We need mass-based Shipside respawn tickets and a secondary Undeathinator type thing for fighter combat to be a thing.

Right now, the only way to use fighters is either solo or as emergency base defense, because of the "short" distance from a spawn room to a ship dock. Need a way to respawn and grab another fighter for it to be a viable option in any other scenario.

 

[BDLS]

Jammers do nothing against lock on missiles but they will save you from cannon and beams because AI can still lock on you when you are jammed but they take a huge accuracy penalty, which doesn't effect tracking missiles.

Besides DPS, this is the main cause of fighters being useless. Reduce lock-on turning radius & response, give some kind of warning that a missile is locked onto your ship....then fighters won't be (as) crappy anymore. Missile mobility penalty or no-lock for AI trying to use lock-ons vs. a jammed craft.

 

[TheFloorMatt]

One thought I have in terms of how a fighter could POSSIBLY be useful in any sort of combat in their current state, is through teamwork.

Here's a possible scenario, keeping in mind this is mostly thoughts regarding PvP. And also that things obviously wouldn't play out exactly as I may write. And that while possible, this exact scenario isn't likely.

Let's say there's a big bad 10k mass frigate that you want dead. We'll call this frigate ship A.

Now, how do you want to go about killing this thing? Well you aren't going to kill it with a 1k mass fighter. But... it can certainly help kill it.

So you go to take 3 ships against this frigate. An 8k mass ship, and two 1k mass ships. These will be ships B, C, and D respectively.

Ship B can't take on Ship A alone, it's only 80% of the mass and at a disadvantage. Ships C and D can't hope to take on Ship A, given Ship A is constructed and piloted intelligently. But if Ships B, C, and D work together, I think they have the advantage. "But Matt, ships C and D can hardly even hurt Ship A?". I bet they can kill all or most of their turrets, before the turrets can take out either of the fighters. And once they do so, it's 3v1 and Ship A is likely outgunned. Without turrets, it should be mostly unable to even harm ships C and D. Even if ship B dies before ship A does, it should have been able to do enough damage with ships C and D to make it simply a cleanup job for the two remaining fighters. If ships C or D die before ship B does, you can think of however long it took for them to die to be that much extra time ship B was allowed to do damage to ship A.

tl;dr In their current state, I think fighters are bad solo. But they can be made to have a use when flown with other ships, and constructed with specific roles in mind.

 

[Drumboy168]

One thought I have in terms of how a fighter could POSSIBLY be useful in any sort of combat in their current state, is through teamwork.

Here's a possible scenario, keeping in mind this is mostly thoughts regarding PvP. And also that things obviously wouldn't play out exactly as I may write. And that while possible, this exact scenario isn't likely.

Let's say there's a big bad 10k mass frigate that you want dead. We'll call this frigate ship A.

Now, how do you want to go about killing this thing? Well you aren't going to kill it with a 1k mass fighter. But... it can certainly help kill it.

So you go to take 3 ships against this frigate. An 8k mass ship, and two 1k mass ships. These will be ships B, C, and D respectively.

Ship B can't take on Ship A alone, it's only 80% of the mass and at a disadvantage. Ships C and D can't hope to take on Ship A, given Ship A is constructed and piloted intelligently. But if Ships B, C, and D work together, I think they have the advantage. "But Matt, ships C and D can hardly even hurt Ship A?". I bet they can kill all or most of their turrets, before the turrets can take out either of the fighters. And once they do so, it's 3v1 and Ship A is likely outgunned. Without turrets, it should be mostly unable to even harm ships C and D. Even if ship B dies before ship A does, it should have been able to do enough damage with ships C and D to make it simply a cleanup job for the two remaining fighters. If ships C or D die before ship B does, you can think of however long it took for them to die to be that much extra time ship B was allowed to do damage to ship A.

tl;dr In their current state, I think fighters are bad solo. But they can be made to have a use when flown with other ships, and constructed with specific roles in mind.

There's an issue with that argument, unfortunately. 1000 mass ships can hardly be considered fighters, and while the point you made itself is valid, there's an inverse relationship to the number of fighters you use and the manageability of sending out/recalling them. For example, your ship A of 10000 mass is attacked by carrier B of 5000 mass, which also carries and deploys 50 100 mass fighters, as well as its own weapon systems. It's a forgone conclusion that ship A is toast, but the issue lies in the fact that there's no conceivable way to recall said fighters, making their use outside of admin tests at best extremely unpractical. Of course, with the promised AI updates, this will likely change, and wings of fighters and bombers will likely become crucial components of a well balanced fleet.

 

[jorgekorke]

Wait, wait.... 1000 mass, 100 mass...... This is getting confusing. What do you consider a fighter ?

A fighter for me is a small ship that possess a variety of systems (passive effect modules ; small scanners ; small built-in or ring-external jump drive) and have enough firepower to annoy turrets and reasonable survivability due to high speed, and shield enough to hold out at least 1 shot from a major weapon without getting turned into dust.

For me, the range of a fighter/bomber is 300~700 mass.
Smaller then this, I'd call it a Interceptor , ships that are usually not driven by man, but by AIs. Used as Drones by most people.
Above 700, it's almost an corvette.

 

[Winterhome]

Wait, wait.... 1000 mass, 100 mass...... This is getting confusing. What do you consider a fighter ?

A fighter for me is a small ship that possess a variety of systems (passive effect modules ; small scanners ; small built-in or ring-external jump drive) and have enough firepower to annoy turrets and reasonable survivability due to high speed, and shield enough to hold out at least 1 shot from a major weapon without getting turned into dust.

For me, the range of a fighter/bomber is 300~700 mass.
Smaller then this, I'd call it a Interceptor , ships that are usually not driven by man, but by AIs. Used as Drones by most people.
Above 700, it's almost an corvette.

A Fighter to me generally focuses on speed and guns with just barely enough shielding to survive.
Not much room for varied systems, sadly.

A Bomber, I feel, is between a Fighter and a Corvette, somewhere in the 300-1000 mass range. :I

 

[Ithirahad]

A Fighter to me generally focuses on speed and guns with just barely enough shielding to survive.
Not much room for varied systems, sadly.

A Bomber, I feel, is between a Fighter and a Corvette, somewhere in the 300-1000 mass range. :I

A bomber isn't really a ship class, it's just a job/role. You can have a ship that's around 100-300 mass, designed to drop bombs on ground target, or, theoretically, you might even have a 100,000-mass ship dedicated to dropping the largest possible nukes on stations and other large targets. Both of these could be called a bomber. A fighter is more of a class, though - just a small ship with high maneuverability that's designed for combat.

 

[BDLS]

stuff

Thing is though, resources are less in demand than pilots once you get going on your server for a couple days. Meaning realistically, those 3 pilots should be flying their own frigates. Why should they go smaller? Fighter wings are fun and neat, but currently should only be used if you cannot fly bigger stuff. Pilots in the same faction should be using teamwork no matter what they are in.

 

[TheFloorMatt]

I feel like I made this discussion go from "Are fighters useful ever?" to "What is a fighter?". My example was only example, using example masses. Apologies for that.

Thing is though, resources are less in demand than pilots once you get going on your server for a couple days. Meaning realistically, those 3 pilots should be flying their own frigates. Why should they go smaller? Fighter wings are fun and neat, but currently should only be used if you cannot fly bigger stuff. Pilots in the same faction should be using teamwork no matter what they are in.

One reason to not fly only larger stuff is mass limits in set up fights such as the Blood and Steel tournament that happened recently. Otherwise, I completely agree with everything you said. No real reason to use fighters, but they CAN have a use. Possibly.

 

[Keptick]

If we had basic "follow, attack, defend, dock" remote commands fighters would actually be really useful. Drone swarms have an insanely high destructive potential to total swarm mass ratio. However, the reason they are rarely used is their one time us nature and somewhat expensive usage cost.

A proper AI system with carrier based and/or master slave control over other ships should solve the issues. There's actually a stickied thread on the subject.

Defeating bigger ships with a solo fighter is an unrealistic dream btw. Even luke skywalker had a full squadron of fighters to aid him in the destruction of the death star. A solo fighter does not and should never have the weapons to kill a much bigger ship. A swarm, however, does. As proof I killed thefloormatt's 30some million shield ship with 250 drones (27k mass of drones VS a > 100k mass ship). His turrets were shot to shit and he just gave up on shooting the tiny targets with his main guns.

 

[Winterhome]

If we had basic "follow, attack, defend, dock" remote commands fighters would actually be really useful. Drone swarms have an insanely high destructive potential to total swarm mass ratio. However, the reason they are rarely used is their one time us nature and somewhat expensive usage cost.

A proper AI system with carrier based and/or master slave control over other ships should solve the issues. There's actually a stickied thread on the subject.

Defeating bigger ships with a solo fighter is an unrealistic dream btw. Even luke skywalker had a full squadron of fighters to aid him in the destruction of the death star. A solo fighter does not and should never have the weapons to kill a much bigger ship. A swarm, however, does. As proof I killed thefloormatt's 30some million shield ship with 250 drones (27k mass of drones VS a > 100k mass ship). His turrets were shot to shit and he just gave up on shooting the tiny targets with his main guns.

The entire reason he managed to take out the Death Star is due to the other fighters tying up the turbolasers and TIE fighters, not so much due to them individually shredding its hull and shields.

They definitely have the firepower to cause serious problems (decompression in whichever area gets hit by a missile, for instance), and it only took two torpedoes to take it down, but they hit in a very specific spot.

 

[Keptick]

The entire reason he managed to take out the Death Star is due to the other fighters tying up the turbolasers and TIE fighters, not so much due to them individually shredding its hull and shields.

They definitely have the firepower to cause serious problems (decompression in whichever area gets hit by a missile, for instance), and it only took two torpedoes to take it down, but they hit in a very specific spot.

Yea, I know. I was just saying that cause people usually use that example for something being able to solo a huge ship, which wasn't actually the case ^_^.

The X-wings flying with luke in that trench run were basically additional shields.

 

[Winterhome]

Yea, I know. I was just saying that cause people usually use that example for something being able to solo a huge ship, which wasn't actually the case ^_^.

The X-wings flying with luke in that trench run were basically additional shields.

Well, I do think that we should make it theoretically possible for a single small ship to annihilate a massive one, on three conditions.

1: The skill gap needs to be enormous - IE, the fighter pilot is a fucking ace, and the capship pilot is halfway to potato.
2: The fighter is extremely well made
3: The capship either has no turret coverage or very poor turret coverage.

This way, amazing pilots can punish people for not learning how to play or build before they move up to flying massive battleships.