StarMade doesn't seem to favor fighters very well at all. They have some advantages (i.e. cheap cloaking, maneuverability, better use of heat-seeking missiles, better shield regen), but almost all of these advantages help out Frigate-size ships considerably more. In fact, fighters I have seen are pretty useless, other than to use as distractions for turrets via the AI module, but you can probably better waste those distraction resources on more turrets, which have more DPS/block than a Fighter can manage.
I propose making a few changes that actually makes fighters worthwhile to have in a fleet, other than fodder.
1. Greatly nerf turn acceleration on all ships, and much more harshly penalize acceleration as mass increases. In should take literal minutes for a Titan to reach top speed. Right now, any mobility advantage a fighter is gone because a capship can just accelerate to max speed in 2 seconds, and the fighter can no longer do anything but trail behind (at the same speed) and eat turret fire.
2. Nerf turn speed, based on the longest axis from the core. Ships that are 300 meters long DON'T have the capabilities to just spin around like they do. If they did, the world would never have invented tug boats.
3. Nerf turret tracking speed, based on mass of the turret. There is no reason a 5,000-block AMC array should track just as fast as your 3 barreled, 5-AMC anti-fighter turrets.
4. Inverse AMC fire rate from adding more blocks. Fighters have 0 survivability when the biggest cannons are also the ones that fire the fastest. That's silly. Players should have to actually think about fighter defense when designing a ship, not rest secure in the knowledge more DPS = more death to anything, regardless of how it's built.
5. Add a new radar block that, when activated, highlights all blocks that you can see of a certian type (based on settings). While this is a benefit to all ships, this will have the biggest help given to fighters, as they are maneuverable enough to highlight all of opponent's Power Blocks, then target the center of them to disrupt the opponent's charging.
6. Require power-using systems to be linked to a power source via Power Tanks or Power Blocks. This way, players will actually build separate power systems to power various different equipment, and can't just shove shield blocks in every crevice. This will make easier for fighters to work as tactical surgeons, destroying critical systems while supporting fire keeps the enemy's shields down.
7. Add missile penetration for Heat Seeking missiles, so they pierce x hull blocks before exploding, As they target your own and allies’ ships, this will make them a deadly, fighter-exclusive weapon. To further help prevent abuse, add the ability for turrets to target missiles, increase base missile speed significantly, then have it so larger damaging missiles are larger, move slower, and have more health/armor. I suggest having missile size+speed based on the number of missile blocks lined up on the output. (Side effect, you can finally build awesome, slow-firing Torpedoes from Frigates that'll do gnar damage against un-shielded capships!)
8. Add more Fighter-exclusive weapons, or at least weapons that work better with fighters. On idea is a "painted missile," a missile that has huge power requirements, requires huge missile arrays to be effective, and needs a ship (not a turret) to mark the target and fire the missiles. Of course, you can use same ship as the missiles are on, but with hugely nerfed bigship turn rate+acceleration, you won't be marking any Frigates or critical systems. Fighters could then be devastating forces when backed up by large missile boats. Of course, the range of the missiles would be limited (lock-on wouldn't be possible outside range), the missiles would be slow, and wouldn't have armor or shield piercing. This will prevent them from being OP, as the missile boats could be destroyed before the enemy shields are down, as you will have much less defense+DPS/block. (Also, disallow it from being used by any AI modules)
9. Have any Hardened Hull that receives damage to share 90% of the received damage to all connected Hardened Hulls and 1 layer of regular Hull, as long as the hull being damaged has > 15% HP. This, combined with a reversed AMC fire-rate, will create a requirement for missiles to be effective against big ships. Armor would all of a sudden actually become useful, as it would take a fair amount of damage do destroy large bulkheads (of course, once the bulkhead does start falling, it'd be destroyed fairly fast). Fighters would also no longer die to the random pot-shot, as their framework will provide a HP sink before losing hull pieces (and give the player some hint to his/her life, if the HUD shows HP only from the Bulkhead directly connected to the core). This in turn will make attractive options for anti-fighter duty, assuming there is enough flak-cannons to keep their shields down, as an interior explosion will likely ruin internal systems, if not outright destroy the core.
10. Remove friction and add a slider-type throttle. So instead of tapping W a bunch to try and remain at 50% speed, you hold W until the throttle is at 50%, then let go. If you are bumped and go 75% speed, brakes will apply until you are 50% speed. This will allow much more realistic space combat, and will decrease strain on players in dogfights (observe: BattleStar Galactica). Also have it so the throttle resets to 0 upon the ship being exited, so ships will stop drifting FASTER than they do now (as the slider will be 0%, so the brakes will be applied until the ship is 0% speed).
11. Rework the ship blueprint. Instead of paying credits based on ship materials, you literally buy a ship blueprint, just like a recipe blueprints. Credits you pay are decided by ship creator, and credits go to ship creator/uploader. In order to get blueprinted ship, you put the blueprint in a Shipwright block, and add required parts. Have the Shipwright have considerable power requirements. You can then build small Shipwrights on your carriers to replace fighter losses during battle, so you don’t have to worry about losing all your fighters all the time. Of course, the build rate would be fairly slow, fast Shipwrights would have enormous power requirements (fast being replacing more than 1 fighter every 30-45secs, and even that would have a pretty massive power draw). This will also have players want to protect their capships more and not just throw them into every battle, as it would take a considerable amount to replace one (instead of “lolz I just bought 9 Titans and the server broke ha ha ha!!1! XD”). I suggest with this that shops have medium to large Shipwrights, so players can get their ships there.
12. Vastly increase distances between planets and shops, then vastly increase the size of planets and make them oreo shaped. Make planet numerous km in length, maybe more than 1 km thick as well. This will give fighters all the advantages in planet-side combat, as larger ships will have to stand off and inaccurately pepper the planet’s surface, hoping to expose the enemy bunker (unless they bring siege ships and know where your factory is, of course!)
13. Add a warp drive that has a size requirement based on ship dimensions, a power requirement based on distance+mass (favoring larger ships), and a cooldown based on mass. Have the warp system set up so you input a sector, or a beacon, or gate, or whathaveyou, then you need to face the proper direction and reach 75% speed (upon exiting jumpspace, speed will be set to 0 again to prevent an nasty problems with capships that take 10 minutes to stop). Capships will then make excellent carriers, as they will be able to jump much further than fighters, but fighters can jump more often and can reach jump-speed far faster.
All of these things added together should make fighters far more fun, and far more useful as well. Then being the captian of capship won't be as "fun" (but much more immersive, which is better than "fun" in any game, so long as it doesn't hurt gameplay), meaning players will be more likely to want to bring their own Frigate, or man turrets, instead of everyone just showing up a capship. (Or, if everyone does a capship, players will be more likely to get into their fighters and head into battle, assuming PlexUndethinators can be placed on ships properly at some point, and let the turrets do the fighting while players decide the match with real skills.) It’ll also make it worth-while do send out other AI fighters, to distract turrets and increase your own survivability.
I propose making a few changes that actually makes fighters worthwhile to have in a fleet, other than fodder.
1. Greatly nerf turn acceleration on all ships, and much more harshly penalize acceleration as mass increases. In should take literal minutes for a Titan to reach top speed. Right now, any mobility advantage a fighter is gone because a capship can just accelerate to max speed in 2 seconds, and the fighter can no longer do anything but trail behind (at the same speed) and eat turret fire.
2. Nerf turn speed, based on the longest axis from the core. Ships that are 300 meters long DON'T have the capabilities to just spin around like they do. If they did, the world would never have invented tug boats.
3. Nerf turret tracking speed, based on mass of the turret. There is no reason a 5,000-block AMC array should track just as fast as your 3 barreled, 5-AMC anti-fighter turrets.
4. Inverse AMC fire rate from adding more blocks. Fighters have 0 survivability when the biggest cannons are also the ones that fire the fastest. That's silly. Players should have to actually think about fighter defense when designing a ship, not rest secure in the knowledge more DPS = more death to anything, regardless of how it's built.
5. Add a new radar block that, when activated, highlights all blocks that you can see of a certian type (based on settings). While this is a benefit to all ships, this will have the biggest help given to fighters, as they are maneuverable enough to highlight all of opponent's Power Blocks, then target the center of them to disrupt the opponent's charging.
6. Require power-using systems to be linked to a power source via Power Tanks or Power Blocks. This way, players will actually build separate power systems to power various different equipment, and can't just shove shield blocks in every crevice. This will make easier for fighters to work as tactical surgeons, destroying critical systems while supporting fire keeps the enemy's shields down.
7. Add missile penetration for Heat Seeking missiles, so they pierce x hull blocks before exploding, As they target your own and allies’ ships, this will make them a deadly, fighter-exclusive weapon. To further help prevent abuse, add the ability for turrets to target missiles, increase base missile speed significantly, then have it so larger damaging missiles are larger, move slower, and have more health/armor. I suggest having missile size+speed based on the number of missile blocks lined up on the output. (Side effect, you can finally build awesome, slow-firing Torpedoes from Frigates that'll do gnar damage against un-shielded capships!)
8. Add more Fighter-exclusive weapons, or at least weapons that work better with fighters. On idea is a "painted missile," a missile that has huge power requirements, requires huge missile arrays to be effective, and needs a ship (not a turret) to mark the target and fire the missiles. Of course, you can use same ship as the missiles are on, but with hugely nerfed bigship turn rate+acceleration, you won't be marking any Frigates or critical systems. Fighters could then be devastating forces when backed up by large missile boats. Of course, the range of the missiles would be limited (lock-on wouldn't be possible outside range), the missiles would be slow, and wouldn't have armor or shield piercing. This will prevent them from being OP, as the missile boats could be destroyed before the enemy shields are down, as you will have much less defense+DPS/block. (Also, disallow it from being used by any AI modules)
9. Have any Hardened Hull that receives damage to share 90% of the received damage to all connected Hardened Hulls and 1 layer of regular Hull, as long as the hull being damaged has > 15% HP. This, combined with a reversed AMC fire-rate, will create a requirement for missiles to be effective against big ships. Armor would all of a sudden actually become useful, as it would take a fair amount of damage do destroy large bulkheads (of course, once the bulkhead does start falling, it'd be destroyed fairly fast). Fighters would also no longer die to the random pot-shot, as their framework will provide a HP sink before losing hull pieces (and give the player some hint to his/her life, if the HUD shows HP only from the Bulkhead directly connected to the core). This in turn will make attractive options for anti-fighter duty, assuming there is enough flak-cannons to keep their shields down, as an interior explosion will likely ruin internal systems, if not outright destroy the core.
10. Remove friction and add a slider-type throttle. So instead of tapping W a bunch to try and remain at 50% speed, you hold W until the throttle is at 50%, then let go. If you are bumped and go 75% speed, brakes will apply until you are 50% speed. This will allow much more realistic space combat, and will decrease strain on players in dogfights (observe: BattleStar Galactica). Also have it so the throttle resets to 0 upon the ship being exited, so ships will stop drifting FASTER than they do now (as the slider will be 0%, so the brakes will be applied until the ship is 0% speed).
11. Rework the ship blueprint. Instead of paying credits based on ship materials, you literally buy a ship blueprint, just like a recipe blueprints. Credits you pay are decided by ship creator, and credits go to ship creator/uploader. In order to get blueprinted ship, you put the blueprint in a Shipwright block, and add required parts. Have the Shipwright have considerable power requirements. You can then build small Shipwrights on your carriers to replace fighter losses during battle, so you don’t have to worry about losing all your fighters all the time. Of course, the build rate would be fairly slow, fast Shipwrights would have enormous power requirements (fast being replacing more than 1 fighter every 30-45secs, and even that would have a pretty massive power draw). This will also have players want to protect their capships more and not just throw them into every battle, as it would take a considerable amount to replace one (instead of “lolz I just bought 9 Titans and the server broke ha ha ha!!1! XD”). I suggest with this that shops have medium to large Shipwrights, so players can get their ships there.
12. Vastly increase distances between planets and shops, then vastly increase the size of planets and make them oreo shaped. Make planet numerous km in length, maybe more than 1 km thick as well. This will give fighters all the advantages in planet-side combat, as larger ships will have to stand off and inaccurately pepper the planet’s surface, hoping to expose the enemy bunker (unless they bring siege ships and know where your factory is, of course!)
13. Add a warp drive that has a size requirement based on ship dimensions, a power requirement based on distance+mass (favoring larger ships), and a cooldown based on mass. Have the warp system set up so you input a sector, or a beacon, or gate, or whathaveyou, then you need to face the proper direction and reach 75% speed (upon exiting jumpspace, speed will be set to 0 again to prevent an nasty problems with capships that take 10 minutes to stop). Capships will then make excellent carriers, as they will be able to jump much further than fighters, but fighters can jump more often and can reach jump-speed far faster.
All of these things added together should make fighters far more fun, and far more useful as well. Then being the captian of capship won't be as "fun" (but much more immersive, which is better than "fun" in any game, so long as it doesn't hurt gameplay), meaning players will be more likely to want to bring their own Frigate, or man turrets, instead of everyone just showing up a capship. (Or, if everyone does a capship, players will be more likely to get into their fighters and head into battle, assuming PlexUndethinators can be placed on ships properly at some point, and let the turrets do the fighting while players decide the match with real skills.) It’ll also make it worth-while do send out other AI fighters, to distract turrets and increase your own survivability.
