Should fighters have their armor reduced?

[Corsair]

This is a genuine discussion thread so please leave your snarkiness and sarcasm at the door.

I've heard from several people that fighter battles are becoming unwieldy and tedious. With a combination of server lag, high armor and bot/bat values and other such factors, fighter battles can last a LONG time, even longer now that Mini Razors have been nerfed. Since my return, I've had a chance to be in one of these brawls and I must say, after an hour of jousting I was tired. It was fun and frantic at first, but that feeling quickly degrades to frustration as your opponent heals, or their shield comes up or you just have a pass where neither ship scores a hit. Watching a laggy opponent jitter back and forth isn't my idea of fun, either.

Now, that isn't to say that the entire experience was unpleasant; scoring kills is still satisfying, dodging enemies and hitting them is still great fun. But you can only hold on to that fun for a little while before it becomes tedious. Which is why I'm proposing a modification of fighter combat: Reduce their survival chance against fighters but boost it against capital ships. This can be accomplished in several ways:

• Boost fighter weapon damage so it takes fewer hits to score a kill
  
• Reduce armor but increase maneuverability slightly. Enough to make it hard for capital ships to land hits but have low enough armor for fighter battles to be over in a reasonable amount of time.
  
• Increase missile hull damage
  
• Increase mine damage
  
• Increase Mini Razor hull damage
  

Due to the nature of capital ships, these changes will affect them very little: Gunboats would be the most affected in the class, for better or worse. Lowering fighter armor might make their jobs easier but increasing fighter damage would make it harder for them to survive.

But no matter what option is taken, I think that it is important to change how long fighter battles take. I don't want to make PvP as much of a chore as trading.

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[Fletcher]

Yes, something needs to be done to decrease fighter combat time, when its snub-craft v snub-craft. The problem is making it so bombers don't become even more 'one-hit-wonders'.

Its a dreadfully hard thing to balance and there will forever be whining about it.

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"Oh chuffing blimey, another day, another person being whiney!"
Fletcher's Feedback and Stories Thread

[ryoken]

Well i think if fighters got a little less armoour/bots/bats, but bombers got a little less agile that would keep them equal. Yes bombers could 1 shot a fighter, but the fighter can handle alot better.
Plus if possible make armour upgrades nerf all snub agility. After all you add a ton of armour, and that ship should be harder to turn/dodge/accelerate and so on. So if you want fast/hard to hit no armour. If you want a tank? get armour, but lose agility some.
Snub fights are fun, but after a long snub fight i just need to log off for awhile to let my mouse hand rest. Yeah maybe i am getting to old, but i get stiff fingers after an hour long snub battle.


PS. Fix missiles. They are almost useless right now in a fight. You can fire 20 missiles, and if 1 hits your lucky.

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[kikatsu]

I guess with the way fighters are set up it is pretty much blamed on skill more than gear these days, since things are balanced so much to be....well the differences are subtle. Removing armor would do it, but then we have capital ship guns which can land an odd hit and nuke them....

Things are balanced for armor right now, not much can be said about it really...
Frankly I do not know how to decrease fighter combat time. They can already die fast if you stop paying attention. Maybe if a fight goes too long you can ask the guy if they think it is a draw, I have done that several times and they agreed after so much fighting.



Also why not remove the ability for bombers to strafe, will that do it?

[Not Espi]

Titan dies to 1 MR or nuke if not equipped with <strike>AU8</strike> an AU.


Think about it.


edit for nazis

[ryoken]

Also why not remove the ability for bombers to strafe, will that do it?

Yes that would work well, but all bomber pilots would yell bloody murder.

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[Fletcher]

Bombers with no strafe or less agility, would mean capitals would roam free much more easily. Still not a cakewalk but it would cull a lot of bombers.

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"Oh chuffing blimey, another day, another person being whiney!"
Fletcher's Feedback and Stories Thread

[ryoken]

Titan dies to 1 MR or nuke if not equipped with AU8.
Think about it.

A reason to use Bats. Most right now just run and recharge when shields drop.
That gives me an idea. Take away BOTS from snubs, but give them double shield bats. Makes sense you can dump power to recharge shields, but bots have always seamed OORP to me with instant armour fix.
Makes sense on cap ships that have repair crews, but a lets see something hanging onto a dodging fighter trying to repair it.

PS. Not that i pro cap over snubs. I have 2 caps only out of 35 ships.

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[Fletcher]

A reason to use Bats. Most right now just run and recharge when shields drop.
That gives me an idea. Take away BOTS from snubs, but give them double shield bats. Makes sense you can dump power to recharge shields, but bots have always seamed OORP to me with instant armour fix.
Makes sense on cap ships that have repair crews, but a lets see something hanging onto a dodging fighter trying to repair it.

AFAIK that isn't possible, I could be wrong though since I believe the bot/bat numbers are hardcoded in their balance. Meaning only equal numbers. Hope I'm wrong though since that is a good idea, although leave a few bots for the anti-radiation duties.

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"Oh chuffing blimey, another day, another person being whiney!"
Fletcher's Feedback and Stories Thread

[ryoken]

AFAIK that isn't possible, I could be wrong though since I believe the bot/bat numbers are hardcoded in their balance. Meaning only equal numbers. Hope I'm wrong though since that is a good idea, although leave a few bots for the anti-radiation duties.

I have seen it in another mod so it is possible. I am just like you and unsure how hard that is to fix. I have seen another mod where all ships had a 1:2 ratio bots to bats. So it may be a make all ships this way, or none thing to code. So would nail cpas,and transports to. Would be cool in snub fights though. Seeing a fighter fighting in flames with full shields because he cannot repair in space.

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