Well, what I did with the modified Version of Proportions that I'm using, was to give the fighters' engines a combat movement of 6, separated from their strategy movement, so if they would move 10 strategy, which would be 5 tactical, they would get 6 more movement points in combat for a total of 11.
It looks awesome in combat, with the defending fighters launching out of a planet to intercept an incoming fleet, but it have a little side effect: since the fighters only fire before movement or after movement, when the target is halfway their total movement points, the fighters tend to move back and forth between two combat squares until they use up all the movement points, and only then fire their weapons.
It's kind of annoying, but you can think of it as dogfighting.
I liked the idea of adding to their hull defense bonus, so I will add some more of it, so the regular ships' guns can't hit them at all, while adding to the fighters weapons hit bonus, so they can still be effective against other fighters.
I also twiked the Fighter Attack strategy, so that fighters would engage other fighters first, achieving air superiority, and only then attacking the enemy capital ships, and leaving planets for Last.
-I reduced the small rockets and small torpedo components to 3 kt, so that every fighter can carry 2 guns (damage between 2 and 4) and 1 missile/torpedo component (damage between 30 and 60).
- The life support component got eliminated, since I thought it was irrevelant for a short range fighter (I don't use fighters strategically because the AI doesn't) To make it sound better, I added to the description of the Fighter cockpit that it "contains advanced targetting systems and limited life support equipment".
- Addittional hit and defense bonus to the afterburners, since their combat movements doesn't add up to the engines combat movement.
- Fighter hull price lowered to 1 mineral per kt to allow for mass production.
I also twiked the carriers a bit:
- The fighter bay component to 20 kt, so you can carry 100 fighters in the Light Carrier, and still have room for 3 shield generators and 3 PDCs.
- Fighter bays can now carry the 4 fighters it can launch, without need for cargo components.
- The Light Carrier to 820 kts, to add 1 more crew and one more life support components, since I thought a wing of 100 fighters should use quite a number of tech and maintenance personal.
And that's about it.
I liked several of the ideas in this thread, so I will probably add some of them.
One problem I have though, its that I haven't quite managed to make the AI to mass-produce the fighters.
Last weeek I put in the build file to "build at least 100", but I don't know yet if it's working. The other entries says "Build per planet", I think, but I don't know how that works exactly (20 means 2 per planet?)
Help here please.
Re: Making Carriers and Fighters more usefull.
Linear Mode
