Purpose Interceptor

Battlescape
1

Right now I feel like the interceptor is the unwanted child in the family…

I mean all it can do is hunt other interceptors and bombers and sometimes the odd corvette but their role is not vital.

Destroyers and capital ships can deal with interceptors en bombers on their own thanks to the missles spam therefore nullifying the role of the interceptor.

Maybe the future modules and subsystem targeting update will change it up a bit but right it doesn’t feel like it is in a right spot on the battlefield.

Maybe nerf the capital ships vs bombers ?

2

TBH I would remove missiles and torps on the cruiser. The destroyer is also supposed to be anti-bomber so its ok if it keeps them.

A change in the economy would also be a great help to the interceptor, a change that included a flat reward for kills in addition to a reduction to the current ship price based reward. One of the interceptor’s biggest weaknesses is that it can’t earn credits like the other ships can. Sure you might get 2-3x the number of kills as a bomber, but 1 kill in a bomber is worth 300 or so credits while one kill in an interceptor is worth 20-80 credits.

While we are on the topic of interceptors, one thing that the interceptor lacks is any ability to stop hit and run attacks, ie warping in and torping a station turret and then warping out. By the time the interceptor has gotten to the bomber the bomber is already gone.

If the bomber builds up speed, it is basically guaranteed an escape from any interceptor as by the time the interceptor builds up the same speed, the bomber is well out of missile and gun range and able to warp. If the interceptor tries to catch up to a speeding bomber via warp, it can but will immediately fall behind the bomber when dropping on it.

All in all, a smart bomber can get in, drop its payload, and get out before even several interceptors can do anything about it. Only time an interceptor has a use against a bomber is when the bomber is using his shotguns, but at those ranges PD will a single bomber before it can do anything.

If you really want to make the interceptor strong against bombers (leaving the destroyer to be a general purpose anti-strike craft (vette, bomber and interceptor) with some anti-cap ability), you need to give it some long range “interception” abilities, so it can take out bombers before or after they start their bombing runs. Something like missiles that can travel really fast, deal no damage, and knock players out of warp before they are within 60 km (optimal LR bombing range) of their target, an ability to drop on a target and match its velocity from warp (thus defeating the use of high speed to escape) and maybe even a flak cannon to shoot down torps and mines with as well.

Perhaps I am going too far with the long range interception ideas, and the issues I am seeing are more a lack of fleet composition than interceptors lacking ability, but as I see it unless you have a fleet to support you (ie multiple vettes/destroyers for warp jam scattered about) a single interceptor struggles to shut down a single bomber if the bomber is content with hit and run as opposed to close in fighting.

1 Like
3

(First post:)

Interesting ideas Dartly.

One thing I’ve realized is that interceptors are balanced when looking at them from a “cost effectiveness” perspective, and I literally mean “cost”, as in 20 currency units. However, interceptors are far from being balanced from a player effectiveness perspective. The opportunity cost is too high. A player might be enjoying themselves in the interceptor, but they are not helping their team win if they are not in a cruiser or bomber.

I was and still am intrigued by the idea of large player counts. With the potential for so many human players, I think there’s a tendency to devalue the opportunity cost of each individual player. It’s easy to think “there’s an endless mob of human players to fill dozens of interceptors”, but that is not proving to be the case.

Players will be the most precious resource in this game, not the in-game currency. There is currently no reason a player playing to win would be in an interceptor.

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4

I agree here. Currently we have 6 ships to choose from, but if you’re playing to win, you’d better be in a cruiser as soon as you can afford it, and a bomber otherwise. In addition to that, once I get into a cruiser, I can quickly accumulate so many credits just by beating up on the AI cruisers that I’ll never have to fly another ship again.

Hopefully there will be some reasons for a player fleet to mix up their fleet composition as the game develops further.

5

I find ints to be a bigger pain when in a corvette than bombers or anything else is.

remove missiles from Cruisers

You really shouldn’t have trouble dodging the missiles in a Int… you can even make the cruiser hit itself with its own missiles. :expressionless:

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@Darty I agree, remove the missles from cruisers, they should only rely on their point defense that get to close.

Bomber with Torps should be the bane of cruisers. And cruisers therefore would need support form fighters or a destroyer and not be 1 man army’s that can do everything like they currently are.

Alternative would be to give cruisers larger slower missles that can only lock on to corvettes and larger ships.

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Point defense shouldn’t be so strong that it completely takes over targeting torps and shooting them with missiles. That’d just make things worse.

You should still need to micromanage missiles to defend against a good deal of threats, and mines for that matter.

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Pont defense shouldn’t target torps and mines

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You’re focused on your own “life”, rather than contributing to the fight. Especially in an interceptor it doesn’t matter if you live or die. The time you spend dodging missiles in an interceptor is time you could have spent clicking in a cruiser. As a cruiser, I don’t really care if I kill an interceptor, they can’t meaningfully hurt me during the time frame over which the fight will take place. If I do want to shoo away an interceptor I fire some missiles and then the interceptor dodges them for 30 seconds, and then I fire more missiles; I’ve literally never run out of missiles in a cruiser.

If you are extremely skilled, and lead every missile fired at you into an enemy cruiser, yes you will damage the cruiser and contribute to the fight. After doing this for several minutes your contribution to the fight should be about equal to a cruiser clicking their mouse one time to fire a volley. From the perspective of playing to win, you’re a wasted player putting out damage by the dozen, while players in cruisers put out damage by the thousands per click.

Pont defense shouldn’t target torps and mines

This reminds me, isn’t the plan to buff capital ships with point defense and other upgrades? That will make interceptors even more worthless.

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A point defense weapon that you manualy have to fire could be implemented , just Iike the flak cannons on a destroyer.

So it still require aiming and locking and firing from the cruisers point of view against interceptors and bombers and mines.

I think we can conclude that are several ways to change it.

Or much simpler , nerf the range of missles so it become a close range defense weapon.

11

I’ve been thinking if chaff gets hyper-buffed to where it lasts long enough to detonate torpedos, interceptors could actually chaff screen for capitals and actually intercept those incoming torpedos. Sure you can do it for long range torpedos but the dangerous ones are up close, and they require the capital to dodge them atm.

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The plan is to add laser based point defense weapons that are exclusively torp and missile focused, although mines might be included as well. I believe that the plan is to make these point defense weapons more effective the farther away the target missile/torp was fired. This is going to make long range torp spam a thing of the past.

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But right now , long range missles spam is also a problem. Because it nullifies the role for interceptors. But good to know long range torp spam is going to get adressed

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The aim is to have options for ship fitting, but you will still have to choose what you focus on, shields (more HP? better recharge rate?), anti-cap weapons, anti-bomber weapons, point defense, mobility. You can’t have it all.
I think the devs understand the issues with vertical progression and will keep it manageable while focusing on horizontal progression.

15

I was under the impression that was the goal for TQFE, but not I:B. That would ruin the PVP balance, with people feeling they lost an engagement simply because someone’s configuration countered theirs whether it’s true or not. It’s toxic and bad design for an arena game.

In the short time, I know alternate loadouts are coming, but I wasn’t aware there was a plan beyond that. And I hope there isn’t.

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So the short answer is “yes, they will buff capital ships”. They will reduce the effectiveness of an anti-capital-ship strategy. That is a capital ship buff. The most used and effective ships in the game, to the point of being overused (in my opinion), will receive a buff.

17

Modern jet fighters get all of their advantages from operating in the air while everything else is stuck on the ground or in the sea. The interceptor doesn’t have that, it’s basically a small nimble PT boat going up against bigger better armed boats.

If you wanted to make the interceptor useful as anything other than a stepping stone, perhaps try to give it the advantage of operating in the “air”, or infinity’s equivalent to it, such as warp. Warp ramming is a current warp-based combat tactic that (I assume) is unintentional and will one day get patched out if possible. But maybe interceptors and other small ships could have better thought out warp-based capabilities. Maybe there could be a class of missile that can be deployed from (and against) craft that are in warp, or there could be something that disables another craft’s warp while in transit so that they can be engaged far away from a base. That way an interceptor can be used to… y’know, intercept things.

Plus it seems a shame to have an entire star system to do battle in and all that space gets used for is flying in between bases.

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18

Does interceptors warp not charge faster? It seems like it. You can already warp in and out to pick fights with them.

People thinking the interceptor is weak just sounds silly to me and makes me wonder what game you’re playing. They wreck Bombers and Corvettes, which are strong-yet-cheap ships that need to be dealt with. There’s a lot of people who enjoy playing those ships even when they have the credits for a cruiser, as well.

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The point is not that interceptors can’t deal with them but that other ships like the cruiser can deal with them much easier from longer ranges.

Therefore nullifying their role on the battlefield.

Interceptors should be the main counter to bombers and Corvettes not missles spam from cruisers.

2 Likes
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Maybe this is a problem that will be mitigated with ship loadouts, so then larger ships can specialise into different roles. Smaller ship classes already seem to have their roles picked for them.