I don’t see any “logical inconsistency”, I will concede deliberate omission of highly detailed gameplay features that we have no idea if they will be present in the game or not.
I really don’t like where this is going, “damage immunity”, adding “huge amount of rock-paper…”, “mentality”. You have no idea if your intended actions and gameplay features will cause effects that you think they will cause. Also if anything, making a “more complex system” is less feasable nearly by definition.
This is a rather general assumption. Do you have any idea? I think I do (and I uphold the right of being wrong). And before you go all scared that I’m breaking gaming, this is not an outrageous concept. Pretty much every game I play has this idea incorporated. It’s the simple idea that you can’t fight a tank with small arms. Or that your tank is really really bad at killing submarines. This is way more grounded in reality than you might think.
In gaming, your players get pissed for exactly those kind of scenarios and they scream murder, that’s why game developers give players a way for infantry to kill a tank and allow tanks to shoot at helicopters. For instance, you can’t put a tiger tank that is in reality untouchable by any other tank of that era in the same match composed of realistic opponents.
Have you ever visited EA forums, where there is an outcry that the reload rate of one weapon is 1 second slower than some other, it basically has nothing to do with realism.
I don’t know where this spaghetti argument is going, are you contributing anything to this discussion, is this personal?
Best of game developers don’t have an exact idea of how exactly their intended gameplay feature will be used and abused. The more complex you make it, the harder it’s to predict.
Just to remind that adding complexity is a bad thing for gameplay. You should try to maximise depth and minimise complexity.
As often, Extra Credits made an interesting video on this particular point of game design:
http://extra-credits.net/episodes/depth-vs-complexity/
Also, arbitrary RPS rarely makes for good gameplay. If I can damage X ship, not because I use slow-firing, slow-moving projectiles against a nimble fighter, but because it mounted a Protophotoneutrino shield generator that negates my Neutrinoprotoquarkion beam, that will mostly create frustration.
As far as realism’s concerned, there’s pretty much no excuse for a fighter or group of fighters to be able to pose any threat to a capital warship. As is often stated, a space fighter isn’t to a space battleship what a modern jet fighter is to a modern battleship (the former operate in the same medium while the latter operate in different media, hence the fighter jet’s particular advantages).
A real space fighter is more analogous to a waverunner with a machine gun as compared to a battleship; there’s absolutely no contest. And with that image in mind, consider a space carrier.
The best way to create a niche for space fighters, imo, is to work some limitations into the FTL system that favor smaller craft. Perhaps have warp accelerations be inversely proportional to the volume of the warping craft or something like that, so larger ships rapidly become sluggish over interplanetary distances. Fighter vs. battleship engagements are still out of the question, but fighters always maintain initiative, so they serve much much better as scouts and eco-harassment units, while strategic assaults and ground-holding is left to the dedicated warships.
Any stealth system implemented would also likely benefit smaller ships as well.
I disagree. In a battlestar Galactica esque battle any fighter on the field can carry nukes which would be pretty small, and I imagine nukes packing quite a punch even against capital ships
I’m inclined to agree with @Skyentist. @Timmon26 you’re assuming that the small fighters/bombers are incapable of carrying extremely powerful weapons that come in a reasonably small package. That’s like saying there’s no way a B-2 bomber can destroy a city because it’s too small. If it’s carrying a thermonuclear weapon it can most assuredly destroy an entire city by itself.
That nuke fighter needs fuel, armor, engines, a life support system, an FTL gismo, and a pilot, which all makes it more visible, slower, and thus much easier to shoot down with PD, and it needs to be recovered once it makes its run - all to deliver a disposable nuke that’s already self-propelled. For the cost of the fighter and pilot you could just build more nukes, or at least a bunch of decoys so the one nuke makes it through.
There’s no reason not to just shoot nukes out of your capital ship; it can carry hundreds.
In BSG they use a wall of flak to stop dozens of Cylon missiles (which might as well be nukes) from hitting the Galactica, but, for no reason at all, can’t shoot down one raider with a nuke on board. Only vipers can shoot down raiders, because reasons apparently.
B2’s have a stealth advantage, which may not be viable in space for a variety of reasons. Once detected, it can be promptly SAM’ed out of the sky. Regardless, in space, any stealth system applicable to a manned ship is also applicable to an unmanned warhead. Again, just fire nukes from your battleship.
If that waverunner were dragging along a couple of torpedoes, or similar weapons, however, it would then have a good chance of dealing damage to the much larger ship.
Which is where the “bomber” niche would come from. Mounting, comparatively, powerful weapons on small, extremely maneuverable platforms with enough space for the gun(s) and a couple shots for it/them.
A 20+ meter fighter, drone, or any corvette with, say, LMk5 or Mk1 hardpoints (possibly up to Mk2 for the corvettes) would fit the bill splendidly.
Not having any of your own but still being in a position where you have to fight someone who has them seems like a good reason.
Bombers are the guerrilla’s weapon, not the navy’s.
It has to approach the battleship first. Good luck with that. Better to just lob a few shells from over the horizon. There’s a reason torpedo waverunners aren’t a thing, in a combat situation at least. But as you said:
Indeed. Like I said in my first post, fighters are suited to eco-harassment (also analogous to the B2 destroying the city), but not to ship-to-ship combat against a hardened warship.
Surprise and stealth may make bombers viable, but that depends heavily on the game’s stealth mechanics.
Fighters and bombers are dramatically cheaper than a capital starship. You could afford to lose hundreds, possibly thousands of them before you would approach the cost of a large capital ship. You can also build them much quicker. It’s quite economical to try and swarm the enemy with many smaller ships - just look at Iran’s naval strategy against the U.S. for a real-world example of this.
A nuclear missile, in order to maximize it’s maneuverability and speed thereby reducing the likelihood it can be disabled en-route to its target, will not contain any heavy equipment such as an FTL. Scramjet technology is currently being aggressively pursued for exactly this reason - along with reducing time to target. Therefore it will still need an external launch platform, such as a bomber, to get it within range. There are good reason’s that warfare today isn’t anything more than people firing missiles at each other and I don’t expect that’d change in the future for space combat.
Is that reason that waverunners were invented too late?
Well, space fighters are unrealistic in the first place. So whatever (carefully crafted) handwavium we are using to make them possible could also be used to make them effective against capital ships if gameplay is better for it.
Possible balance points:
[quote=“INovaeKeith, post:27, topic:598, full:true”]
you’re assuming that the small fighters/bombers are incapable of carrying extremely powerful weapons that come in a reasonably small package.[/quote]
[quote=“INovaeKeith, post:31, topic:598”]
Fighters and bombers are dramatically cheaper than a capital starship.[/quote]
These two cannot be applied to the same ship. There may be a small ship capable of delivering an extremely powerful weapon, but that small ship must be inordinately expensive. In an MMO, cost is measured in player time. In an arena game, it’s probably measured in time-based resource points.
If I can build up a city by spending 100 resources and you can build up a B-2 that can destroy my city by spending 2 resources , then that’s a griefer’s dream. If that city can only be attacked after spending 100 resources on that B-2, then there is a reasonable level of balance. My city defenses may destroy your investment or your fighter’s weapons my destroy my investment. Balance.
Of course, if the B-2 is invulnerable to the city’s defenses then it’s back to being a griefer’s dream. If the US was run by crazies who thought everyone who was not ‘democratic’ should be nuked, cities would be vaporized right and left.
Ships that require X resources should be capable of doing X damage. Ships that require 2X resources should be capable of doing 2X damage. The variable is player skill. If a skilled guy in an X ship goes up against an unskilled guy in a 2X ship, the guy in the X ship may take no damage at all, while the 2X ship could be destroyed. But that’s an extreme of an expert against a novice. When peers face each other off, the X ship should be destroyed and the 2X ship should be at half damage.
Part of this scheme is that damage sticks. If my destroyer takes a hit from a fighter, it now has damage that requires resources to repair. If I don’t repair the damage from a fighter attack yesterday, I’ll still have that damage when another fighter attack arrives today. Finally, repairs need to consume the same resources that it took to get those resources in the first place.
Yes, this is true if all ships have the same role, and serve the same purpose, like in a combat only game. But obviously a mining barge that cost X resources shouldn’t be as powerful in combat as a fighter that costs the same resources. The same applies to your city example. If the city has a special purpose, then defense spending should be a part of it. 100 resources for the city + 2 resources for defense against an enemy that only spends 2 resources on attack make sense if the city generates resources continuously.
It also applies to carriers and other ship roles. Imho this makes mass-building small inexpensive fighters plausible and not necessarily unbalanced. It might also be more fun to play against many smaller enemies than playing against 1 big ship and it could also make recruting new players important for corporations.
RTS have good balancing to that regard.
A high tech bomber may cost only 5% of the resources the factory it came out of costs but if you forget to defend that factory that bomber may have an easy time destroying it. If you are prepared for a strike and defend it though the bomber is destroyed without doing any damage. Those resources are lost.
And yes. ICBMs rule everything 
… god I love Nuclear Weapons.
Sorry, but that makes no sense. Maybe if things were very simple and damage was the only factor then, yes.
It’s a bit more involved than that even in a basic setup. Flak costs a lot less than a bomber, but it can take it down, a fighter might be cheaper, yet able to take it down. If you follow this logic according to you, then everything should cost exactly the same and that seems silly even to a kid that only buys sweets at the local shop.
Other factors are clearly present, that city is producing resources, might even be producing bombers. So it will be protected with flak and maybe even fighters, then you need a strike force to accompany that nuke bomber and that strike force might cost as much as the city.
I really don’t see anything wrong with @INovaeKeith logic concerning the cost ratios, it just might need some balancing between a few hundred and a few thousand.
If we consider the primary feature that the I-Novae engine offers, planetary landing and combat, then we may see the role for smaller fighter craft return to a place of practical realism and tactical value.
So far the discussion seems to center around pure space combat, but by including the planetary medium… how will this change the discussion?
Atmospheric flight may be limited to craft of a smaller size, as dropping your capital ship into a low atmospheric orbit, or even attempting to land, could be incredibly expensive, and put your ship (or even your teams capital ship) in a position of unnecessary risk.
But then that too begs the question, will heavy weapons be able to carry out “Orbital Bombardments” in order to eliminate targets? Yet in cases where an occupied planet has strong orbital defenses, would a small group of fighters and bombers be easier to sneak through?
Planets bring about a new dynamic, especially if they hold value, like resources, spawn points, and ship class bonuses…
Not if you want carriers and fighters to be equally viable options for a combat craft. Why would you want carriers and fighters to be equally viable combat craft in a twitch-controlled space combat arena?
Yes, please.
I don’t care how it will change gameplay (as long as it is fun and balanced). But orbital bombardment and counter-orbital batteries are simply too cool to ignore.