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Re: New Tech Tue, 04 May 2004 12:58 Go to previous messageGo to previous message
Crusader is currently offline Crusader

 
Officer Cadet 2nd Year

Messages: 233
Registered: January 2003
Location: Dixie Land
 OK, I give up. I'll put in my 2 cents worth here also. Rolling Eyes

If you are going to go the fighter/carrier route, you really need to put these items in the tech tree, and quite a ways up there in my opinion (for whatever that's worth). Trying to stay in the scale of the game would be the main consideration here, I think, which means that fighters are built/represented as squadrons or wings with the carrier being another hull, possibly multiple to represent different classes of carriers with increasing capabilities of carrying more squadrons. Slots on the carrier hull are for carrying fighters, and all the other stuff as well, but mainly fighters. Fighters are a component that have intrinsic values like beam weapons or missiles/torpedos. Range would be the entire battle board. Very Happy Cool Difference is, fighter components are used up. You have to replace them due to losses, both combat and maintenance. Either that, or you just assume that supply always makes up your losses and so you have an unrealistic representation of the fighter as a component that never dies. Crying or Very Sad

And if space fighters are as big a impact on space battle as they have been in terrestial battles here on Earth, you will see Battleships quickly become obsolete as a main ship-of-the-line due to their cost vs. their vulnerability to fighter hits, so carriers are more along the cost of a cruiser hull (in minerals) rather than the BB, due to the lower armor, etc., although resource costs would be higher than the BB. Carrier hull would probably require construction and electronics tech both to build also.

Individual fighters might be cheap, but you don't fight with fighters as individual ships. You throw them at your targets as squadrons or wings, swarming them en masse. A squadron might be the equivalent of a destroyer or some such. Higher tech levels could possibly give upgrades to fighters, if you want to get that complicated about it.

Assuming that you are going to allow fighters to have the same impact in battle that they do here on Earth, you are going to have a squadron of fighters with the ability to take out a fully decked out BB, which makes the BB a less attractive ship. Another down side is that you can't even use your old, obsolete BBs for ground bombardment like you can in real life, unless FreeStars is going to give BB hulls some intrinsic bombardment value, or bomb slots.

Again, assuming that your FreeStars is attempting to stay true to Stars! while incorporating this new feature modeled after terrestial experiences. Ain't no law that says you got to.

So, go back to individual fighters (yuck). How many fighters can you load on a carrier (or hanger slot)? How many fighters does it reasonably take to kill a BB? One lucky shot could do it in WWII. Probably couldn't be done in WWI. One fighter can quite possibly take out a fleet today.

Then, someone will want to be able to do kamikaze attacks, so better change the battle orders too. How come your battle orders don't apply to fighters anyway? How do you represent fighters without taking up a ship slot, but still get them transported into battle, much less build them.

I'm just saying... Sherlock

I know. I'm being the spoilsport here, and I'm not even a part of the coding team. I do understand the challenges here, however, or at least my ego tells me I do. Smirk The game of Stars!, as it currently is, represents a grand strategic scale that is too large to easily represent fighters. This is only true in the reality where I live. Your reality my differ signicantly. To my mind, a scout hull represents a ship consisting of a working crew of between 10 to 50 "beings". This is why I believe a squadron of fighters would be represented as a token, rather than have individual fighters zipping around the battle board. You couldn't even design fighters like you would ships. You could probably fly three or more fighters into the Fuel Mizer engine with room to spare. The short-range, super-fast (on the battle board at least) engines on the fighters are teeny-tiny and not in the tech tree at all.

Well, I'm starting to ramble. But I just really think that the difficulties in trying to represent fighters in the current Stars! game would actually detract from the game, either in making it an unrealistic representation of battle (again, in MY opinion) or complicating the game to the point of frustration. (same disclaimer)

But if you guys can work it out so that fighters can be represented without overcomplicating the game, knock yourselves out! Wall Bash I'll be the first to congratulate you if you can get it to work.Yey

The Crusader Angel

Nothing for now.

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