FIghter missile pods, too powerful?

[JDL]

at highest they have 100 damage. they never miss and with heavy fighters w/ 2 shield 3's each you can make a mess. To say nothing of the early on swarms of the small fighters you can field. you can overwhelm all but the most dedicated aegis pdc ships and kill his fleet and still have some left over.

THoughts?

[Arralen]

Weapons are still a mess as far as play-balance is concerned.
But MM is working on this (and new weapons, maybe), so doing a "general" mod to fix this will only be good 'til the next patch ...

A.

[Q]

I do not think they are to powerful. First the range is short, so the attacking fighters will be exposed to the point defense weapons before the can use their missile pods. Second if the enemy is not killed by the first attack amd there are no other weapons besides the missile pods, the fighters will be slaughtered in the remaining combat turn. That's what I observed quite frequentely. Third they can only target ships and planets. Against other fighters or satellites this could mean obliteration. My personal preference for fighter weapons is therefore either incinerator beam or meson bLaster.

[Alpha Kodiak]

I think of fighters with missile pods as strike aircraft that need escorts. I usually build two fighter types, one with missile pods and one with some sort of guns. The missile launchers can get a big punch in against ships, while those with guns can engage other fighters as well as finish off surviving ships.

I don't think that they are unbalanced. Remember what one fighter with an Excocet missile did in the Faulklands war?

[Triumvir Emphy]

I think the fact that the british used aluminium for their super structure caused the problem, not the exocet, it just started the fire. (aluminium is hard to put out once it starts burning). A similar strike on current ships wouldn't nearly cause that much damage.

[Alpha Kodiak]

quote:

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Originally posted by Triumvir Emphy:
I think the fact that the british used aluminium for their super structure caused the problem, not the exocet, it just started the fire. (aluminium is hard to put out once it starts burning). A similar strike on current ships wouldn't nearly cause that much damage.

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Good point, but it was still one missile from one fighter. If it wasn't intercepted it would do significant damage to any ship, even if it didn't sink it. A squadron of attack planes, if not destroyed by defensive fire first, would wreck havoc on any fleet. My point was merely that the fact that fighters using missiles can do substantial damage to ships in SEIV is not out of line.

As far as balance is concerned, think about how much research it takes to get even small fighters carrying missile pod IIIs.

Construction 1: 50000
Fighters 1: 100000
Small weapons 3: can't remember, but significant
Missiles 3: again, can't remember (at work) but quite significant

To get heavy fighters costs a LOT more in research.

For all that research, it is not out of line to get a one shot per combat value that is quite large.

[Triumvir Emphy]

this brings us to the wave motion gun vs DUC debate again, the rocket pod works on the principle that you need to be able to kill ALL your opponents in the first wave, else you loose all.

For the price of a rocket pod you could put 3 ducIII's on the fighter and get the same damage in 2 and a half turns.

I suggest people use a combination of both, have the rocket pod fighters just a little slower than the duc fighters, this seems to work well in simulations (strategic)

[Aussie Gamer]

If you look at the amount of damage over the 30 turns, taking into account that you are most likely only fighting for 20 turns, then all the weapons are reasonable equal for size to cost to damage ratio.

I will match your missile fighters against my organic lightening ray fighters any time, even if they could fire at each other.

All weapons of a fighter group are used on one target per turn, so you would kill a group off but the rest would surive, shooting at you for the next 19 turns.

[Will]

Just some corrections/comments here, to show that Rocket Pods are not that powerful...

Rocket Pods are direct-fire weapons, and they CAN miss.

Rocket Pods can fire ONCE in combat. Easy to get around with Tactical, just have your carrier pick them up and relaunch, but then you have to worry about the carrier getting shot up. With Strategic combat, this isn't an option, so you better have overwhelming power.

As stated before, it takes a long time to research up to the level to get a truely useful fighter using Rocket Pods. Small and Medium would be too easy to kill, and/or be too slow to do much good.

Rocket Pods are only really useful when they have lots of backup. It's one of the most inflexible designs you can make.

[mac5732]

In my opinion, leave the rocket pods as they are. In WWII SPD's and TP's always went in with ftr escort or they became dog meat, alla
battle of Midway. However, if they did get thru the ftrs and PD and hit, they did extensive damage. The same with SEIV, by using ftrs, it causes your opponent to use them as well. Otherwise it makes the ftrs useless and not worthwhile to build or use. I think it adds to the game, you have to defend against them or suffer decent damage, it also causes you to build ftrs to help protect your ships, planets and bases. Take the damage they are capable of doing out of the game and you eliminate their use. Why would you want to build ftrs or carriers to carry them if they only caused minute damage or less.. Just an opinion Mac