Greetings,
What do you think about putting fighters on capital ships? Here are some points that I would like to share:
- AI usually flies in groups (fighters sticking to leading ship)
- There is no real common sense that a capital ship would fly alone. Its also not likely that a big expensive ship would not have any hangers for supporting vessels.
- Bombers are ridiculously overpowered in this game. Cap ships are impotent and dont have any effective tools to handle this situation (no logic in that). I guess flak guns will be settled in next version but still there is no logic in having no hangers.
- We have carriers in this game (carrier of what?)
- Its very difficult to find a human pilot that will fly a fighter and stick with your ship when in RP.
- Is this even possible to do?
a) We could put hanger pods on cap ships (similar to missile or torpedo pods)
b) Ammunition would be fighters (very expensive)
c) After firing that gun a fighter will spawn to protect the owner (similar as AI does)
d) Different pods for different ships, fractions and pockets
...
Your opinions, thoughts?
I have no idea if that could work, and if it could, I think it could be too easily abused. Up the price too much to combat that, and then it becomes unrealistic to use much, if at all.
NPCs suck anyways... I don't know...
About abuse, sure, good point. The mod should limit that.
I've been modding X3 Reunion game while ago with scripts and I must say it's a joy doing that there. The huge drawback is that there is no multiplayer. What I want to point out here are 2 facts:
- There is no realistic logic that cap ship should not have it's own wing for protection (Let's look back to our world - cruisers before the WWII had it's own seaplanes)
- Current defences are; hmmm how shall I put this? There are no defences. That contradicts with the first military rule: STAY ALIVE.
And yes AI is crap, but annoying enough to tangle with fighters and bombers (this is more like a pocket question - How much do you have? What can you buy?) If you launch a fighter (as torpedo or a missile), it will be lost after certain amount of time. And ships cost money (A lot of money!!!)
I wouldn't give capital ships right to have npc's support. I don't see why would some trader-vendetta have right to call for support just because he -can- buy big ship. It should be by rank, not by ship. And for non-defense problem, we call it tactic. You need to use debris fields and strategy in some fights.
EDIT: I think we had this discussion before, right?
make Friends, they will help instead of NPC units. its a bit hard to do that, what you are asking anyway.
i do believe that if you hang around in one area for awhile. and you're hostile to the faction near you and you have ally npc bases in system. they'll soon show up. Many times on Gneisenau when i would be at a trade lane for a long time wasting npc freighters and transports I'd soon get like 2-3 fighter wings of rogues and outcasts fighters. Though, having them be like level 19 when this happens would be a lot better when you try to solo pirate things in a fighter.
Greetings everibody!
I am back from lunch. My belly full and I have a concrete proposal that could work.
Before going into this a quick comment about friendship. It not a problem in having friends, its a question of are they available? You may ask for help only those that are online with you.
Here is a proposal that might be done in a relative quick way:
1. We introduce hangers that might be bought and installed in your ships cargo hold similar to armor. They cost money and take space. You pay for it with money and space.
2. We dont need to put any fighters (ammo) on our ships. We could work this through our servers database by using a string link to characters ID.
For example we could introduce the following chat commands:
/buy wing (different parameters)
/launch wing (different parameters)
/retrieve wing (different parameters)
So with the link to your char ID; our server knows all essential parameters about you and may:
- Give you the right to buy your defense wing at different conditions (when at bay or at certain installation, limited types of ships linked to your fraction ID,)
- Spawn a limited amount of ships that you have previously purchased through communication bar (for example destroyer 2, cruiser 4, battleship 12, carrier 24,)
- Give certain commands to spawned ships (formation, protect,)
- retrieve your ships on command (here we may also play with different parameters like ships will be unspawned after 1 minute the command has been given,)
That shouldnt be too difficult shouldnt it? If we work through our server, we could easily work later on, on parameters and this doesnt need any special mood for everybody to install.
Actually I dont know how this game works but generally (I assume) we need a mod that puts fighter bays in the game and everything else could be done through chat bar window commands to our server at any time.
*puts in two bobs worth from Australia* Well I would have to say that I love the idea of having fighter/bomber wings with with capital ships. Especially carriers it would add so much more realism to the game in that area an actually allow the carrier vessels to be exactly that.
Well, if this ever were implemented, it could always be abused. But probably no more then any conventonal weapon or ship could.
If this could be done. It could be done easily enough for us to do so without overstressing the dev team, then I would say do it. I'd suggest only mounting it on dedicated carrier class ships, and maybe having it replace the Capital armor slot. Thus meaning that Carrier vessel will have to stay back and support it's fighter screen.
The NPCs however would still probably be no match for actual players. So having your friend in a VHF protecting you would be worth a bit more then the NPC squadron, but the potential RP value is still worthwhile.
Hmm you would need to find a way to give the fighters and bombers orders. Par say attack alll enemy fighters, designate specific target, patrol specific area, escort me etc etc
Bit rough if you have a battleship or a dessie bearing down on your carrier and your bombers run off an attack fighters leaving you out in the cold.