Baron Vladimir Baron Vladimir

Fighters and carriers

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Fighters and carriers

from GalCiv2 Forums
Don't know how about you, guys, but while I was recently thinking about creating fleets and own ship designs it came to me, that I really miss the swarms of little fighters during combat. Coz' right now what we basically have, are situations where let's say 3 fighters defend a whole planet against an invasion... or worse, 1 fighter and 1 troop transport makes a whole invasion fleet!
To counter that a bit I set some rules on myself:
1. When building fighter, instead of naming it like: "Barracuda" I prefer to name it: "Red Devils Squadron" and pretend, that there are much more than only 1 fighter in it.
2. I never add life support to fighters and tend to station them on planets or starbases (so that longer journeys are only for the bigger ships)

But I still miss the ability to build carriers...
What do you think?
17,758 views 33 replies
Reply #26 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I dont see what is the problem with the concept of fighters in the game? It can just be used as another weapon and added into the teck tree (cant be that hard ... the teck tree is pretty streightforward ... though long, just the balencing and cost issues) and add in another defence to use against fighters

i see fighters as just another weapon system, not a radical depart from the game .... and would be a welcome addition to the game
Reply #27 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
So far from what I read I realy like the idea of a module (probably big) that would allow all tiny/small ships in the same fleet to share it's speed and range statistics.

On top of that that ship wouldn't need sensors since you could stick the sensors on a 'fighter' craft (like awacs not sure if I got that right).

Makes a bit more sense too than having a module that has a full load a fighters all the time as those fighters would have to be built somewhere and a carrier ship simply moves them to where they need to be.

Maybe after 1.2 comes out we (the community) can mod that in
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Reply #28 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Regardless of how it's doable, why do it at all? As I said, in many universes fighters simply can't lug effective weapons. In GC2, tiny and huge ships mount different numbers of the same guns. If you're going to make 'grain of sand' style fighters, what will they mount? A laser-1 0.001 beam? What's the bloody good of that?

Seriously. Fighters (and carriers) are useful on Earth because planes are faster than boats, and a plane can carry many missiles that can kill boats. This is *NOT TRUE* in space. People have already noted that huge ships are actually *FASTER* than tiny ones, since they can mount more engines. There is no way to mount regular GC1 weapons on 'one man fighters', so given the combat system, they'll be taking 0.001 beams against 23 shields and doing nothing. The only concievable use they would have is for scouting, but there's no reason the technology would scale down that far.

Basically, the only way this would work is with a fairly widespread rework of the tech tree. And for what? Stupid fighters that will die by the thousand? Unless they're treated as missiles, there are no weapons to kill fighters in the game, so they'll buzz around in their hundreds of thousands, doing nothing, until they're picked off by individual beam shots. Hooray.


Alright, if we're gonna nitpick, let's nitpick.
There ARE fighters already in the game. They're called Tiny and Small hulls. They have limited payloads. Thus, my suggestion of them having a base in the carrier, and share it's engine and support systems will make them more powerful and important. But they are still little fighters that can be easily shot down.
Speed!=Maneuverability. Inertia is not zero in space, and just because something is wickedly fast(a carrier) doesn't mean it can change it's course at a fast rate(like a fighter can).
With the 1.11 patch, when everyone shoots at the same time, small and tiny hulls lose ALL function.
Reply #29 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
But there already is a fighter type thing in the game. It is for Starbases but smart drones would be classified as similar to fighters on a carrier.

Via a mod you could apply the smart drones to a vessel then it could be classified as a carrier. Nothing says a fighter has to have sentient life in the cockpit...or to have a cockpit at all
Reply #30 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Well, I don't have that big of a problem with it. When I play, I just imagine that a single fighter unit actually represents a few hundred fighters, and that heavy fighter units represent half that, with frigates representing 20-30 frigates each, and battleship units as ten units each, and dreadnaught units as 3 dreadnaughts each. It's not that big of a problem as long as you let your imagination do some of the work. Also, this explains to me why dreadnaughts don't have that much higher firepower than fighters, because there are simply many more fighters per unit than there are dreadnaughts, but with much smaller scale weapons.
Reply #31 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Well, I don't have that big of a problem with it. When I play, I just imagine that a single fighter unit actually represents a few hundred fighters, and that heavy fighter units represent half that, with frigates representing 20-30 frigates each, and battleship units as ten units each, and dreadnaught units as 3 dreadnaughts each. It's not that big of a problem as long as you let your imagination do some of the work. Also, this explains to me why dreadnaughts don't have that much higher firepower than fighters, because there are simply many more fighters per unit than there are dreadnaughts, but with much smaller scale weapons.
Reply #32 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
How can you 'miss' something that was never there in the first place?


Maybe because we have played othr games where Fleets included Carriers and Fighters? Our world experience is not limited to Gal Civ 2. Some of us have hopes that it will become the best Space Combat/Empire Game.
Reply #33 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
You could do the carrier thing if you could change one thing.

Right now, the fleet only has the speed of the slowest ship. If that could be reversed to give the fleet the speed of the fastest ship, then you could build the fighters with no engines and they would follow along with the mothership.

But I think that is in the .exe file, and not moddable.