What are your ideas for "the ultimate fighter"

[Ultragamer2000]

I have a question. Do you know any fighter ships or ideas for fighter ships that would be classified as "the ultimate fighter"? Because I want to either have or create a fighter that can either alone or in a small squadron, take down heavy destroyers and reign spacial superiority against enemy fighters.

 

[jontyfreack]

for me, its this thing

its cheep, fast has decent firepower to quickly kill ships of similar sizes, is nearly missile proof, and in large numbers can take down much larger ships.

the main thing you want for a fighter is for it to have a cannot that has a decent rate of fire and some missiles. it also needs to be armoured enough to not be immediately destroyed by another fighter of the same size, but it cannot be too armoured as to be very slow. I typically aim for a 2.5 thrust to mass, however this is hard and a 1.5 thrust to mass is rather common as it allows for system space for better weapons/shields. Do not forget about power and how the fighter would dock to a carrier, and how you will enter the core.

and if you have the room add turrets, even if it is just AMS, the fighter needs to be able to defend itself if you intend for it to go 1v1 against other fighters. also when used in large numbers having a lot of AMS coverage is always a good thing.

 

[Panpiper]

I've already built it (pardon my lack of humility). The Marauder.

This is one of the standard pirates on my server (FreaksRUs). People regularly attempt to flee encounters even when they out mass this thing ten or twenty to one. In numbers, these can destroy anything. It is perhaps not the prettiest thing, but pretty is not what you want in a war fighter. This thing rips stuff to shreds. Seriously, test it yourself.

 

[Calhoun]

Can confirm, Panpiper has a nasty, nasty fighter.

 

[Jojomo]

What size/weight limits?

 

[kurosawa]

Panpiper's fighter looks to be at least 50 in height and width, length is a bit harder to determiner på properly also 50.

Mass ?

 

[Panpiper]

Panpiper's fighter looks to be at least 50 in height and width, length is a bit harder to determiner på properly also 50.

Mass ?

It has a mass of 537 with the PD turrets included. It is 54 meters long, 46 meters tall, and 48 meters wide.

 

[KiloZulu]

Yeah, the problem with this question is that first you have to define what counts as a fighter. That's always seemed to be a personal preference, or at least a server-specific one.

 

[Panpiper]

I this ship classification system.

My Marauder is smack in the middle of that fighter range. Smaller than that and it becomes very difficult to create a weapon system that can actually break through armor, resulting in a fighter that can't do enough damage to take out an opponent before it is taken out itself.

 

[AtraUnam]

Assuming I actually hit I have 750mass fighter-bomber that could vaporize that thing in a single shot. Though its in line for an update so that may change for better or worse.

 

[Panpiper]

Assuming I actually hit I have 750mass fighter-bomber that could vaporize that thing in a single shot. Though its in line for an update so that may change for better or worse.

Do a test. Have three marauders versus two of yours (equal weight) both controlled by the AI. See who comes out on top. It is certainly not impossible to make a heavier fighter that is every bit as good, pound for pound, but I think you will find if you run such a test that the best you would come out with would be for all intents a draw.

 

[AtraUnam]

Do a test. Have three marauders versus two of yours (equal weight) both controlled by the AI. See who comes out on top. It is certainly not impossible to make a heavier fighter that is every bit as good, pound for pound, but I think you will find if you run such a test that the best you would come out with would be for all intents a draw.

Its a player controlled only fighter sporting a pair of logic fired 680k missile/pulse/pierce so if it hit it would indeed instantly vaporize anything of lesser mass. However currently it is a very poor shot against anything other than large targets hence the 'if' it hit. The update will be giving it a new shell (currently bolted onto a regular fighter shell) and switching out the weapons to a single 680k missile/beam/pierce with lock capability and decoy missiles.

As is your fighters would win hands down in an actual fight not dictated by the bombers hence the update to make the design more useful against a wider variety of targets.

 

[Edymnion]

I'm currently (slowly) designing/building a carrier titan, so fighters for it was a big deal.

The thing I built my fighters around? A PDT.

All of my actual fighters have an anti-missile turret on their backs, which means the most effective way of dealing with a fighter swarm (missile/missile swarmers) are suddenly much less effective, as well as the fighters helping form an anti-missile shell around the carrier.



This is my fighter, the bump on the back there is my low profile PDT.

 

[Panpiper]

Its a player controlled only fighter sporting a pair of logic fired 680k missile/pulse/pierce so if it hit it would indeed instantly vaporize anything of lesser mass. However currently it is a very poor shot against anything other than large targets hence the 'if' it hit. The update will be giving it a new shell (currently bolted onto a regular fighter shell) and switching out the weapons to a single 680k missile/beam/pierce with lock capability and decoy missiles.

As is your fighters would win hands down in an actual fight not dictated by the bombers hence the update to make the design more useful against a wider variety of targets.

Missiles do 'very' poorly versus the Marauder, as it packs no less than eight anti-missile turrets. That is one of the things that makes it so scary as a pirate on the server. The standard tactic of using swarmers will not save players. You either need absolutely withering quantities of missiles, and not the slow speed, easy to target swarmer sorts, or the more direct approach of direct fire turrets.

The ship I fly on that server, I did not consider safe from pirates (including my Marauders) until it was around 25K mass and sporting eight highly lethal turrets. And none of the pirates are much over 1K mass!

 

[AtraUnam]

Missiles do 'very' poorly versus the Marauder, as it packs no less than eight anti-missile turrets. That is one of the things that makes it so scary as a pirate on the server. The standard tactic of using swarmers will not save players. You either need absolutely withering quantities of missiles, and not the slow speed, easy to target swarmer sorts, or the more direct approach of direct fire turrets.

The ship I fly on that server, I did not consider safe from pirates (including my Marauders) until it was around 25K mass and sporting eight highly lethal turrets. And none of the pirates are much over 1K mass!

Depending on server speeds lock ons are nigh impossible to shoot down at close range, It'd be an interesting matchup. The marauders would be far more capable in general but my bombers only need to get lucky once.

 

[KiloZulu]

I haven't seen the Marauder in person, but since missiles are largely ineffective in the face of PDT's, and the fact that AI likes to sit at max weapons range, it's unlikely that any missile-based fighter is going to have much success against it.

Since the advent of PDT's, I've moved away from a primarily missile-based ship design to one dependent on cannon turrets. I might incorporate some missiles for variety, but they are never the primary weapon system, and I don't expect them to be relevant in most fights.

 

[Panpiper]

Actually the pirate responsible for the most player kills on our server is the Outlaw (~800 mass). It is exclusively armed with missiles. It fires salvos of 56 missiles all at once, which utterly inundates virtually any point defense fire.

The trick to making missiles work is to swamp point defense with more targets than they can handle. That can be accomplished by mixing tiny decoy missiles in with your larger much more hurtful missiles. The point defense wastes a lot of fire on the little ones, allowing many of the big ones to slip through.

 

[-Moose-]

I have been experimenting with a fighter focused combat doctrine. My advice.

give your fighter a single weapon type. The AI will engage its target at maximum range. So if you have a cannon and long range missiles ol bobby will move out of cannon range and stay in long range missile range. Rendering half your weapons moot. I plan on leaving specialized weapons on the carriers.

Secondly big guns. As big as you can get them while still being able to move. Having one fighter with a 4500 (total size) block cannon is bad enough, having four fighters means 18000 blocks of weapons are shooting with sustained fire. That's bigger than a lot of frigates can put out.

 

[Jojomo]

I this ship classification system.

My Marauder is smack in the middle of that fighter range. Smaller than that and it becomes very difficult to create a weapon system that can actually break through armor, resulting in a fighter that can't do enough damage to take out an opponent before it is taken out itself.

Yes, but that range was defined by you! So it's still completely personal

I don't for one second claim that you're wrong, or that I'm right, but to me a fighter is smaller than that (just personal opinion).

I quite like Bench's classification system. Mass 537 in that would be a frigate:

 

[Panpiper]

I mean no disrespect to Bench, but I find those mass estimates ludicrously low. Perhaps those are the sizes of ships people were building back in 2013 when he made that, but that is not anywhere near close to what people are building nowadays.

My asteroid miner is 35K mass, a miner! And I haven't even finished adding to it. Our server reset a week ago. There are already people flying around 1 million mass ships! Virtually nobody builds ships at the smaller end of that scale. Virtually everybody flies around in ships that classification would call battleships and dreadnoughts, or bigger. You cannot use a classification system that puts virtually the whole of the ship classes 'below' the mass threshold that virtually everyone is actually flying, it makes no sense.