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Reduce Fighter costs - They cannot survive.


Luminaire
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Now that you've managed to make combat fighters unusable, reduce their crafting time and resource costs..

 

In all the years that i've been with avorion, even back when the fighters did not have dodges, they were always usable, in some form. It was possible. I've never complained about their fragility and costs, because it was always possible to utilize them in battle in some way. They could survive if used right.

 

Now though, with the fact that PDC is a dime a dozen on enemies, and enemy speeds makes it so even ranged fighters are put into PDC fire before long, along with 2 hours of crafting + 1.3mil resources being wiped out in 10 seconds from a single anti-fighter flak cannon, there is no longer a justification for these costs. Fighters now officially die faster and easier than they ever have in the past. They are useless, a waste of time and resources to build, and an infuriating resource drain.

 

I have always loved carriers/fighters, and now they only thing they care useful for is mining/salvaging.. What a tragedy.

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why? Why would you want reduced range for PDCs/PDLs on fighters?

Cause 7km+ range is too much for a fighter, IMO.  TBH, I'm not exactly sure that PDCs in general should have that range.  PDLs I think are already in the 3-4km range threshold, so they wouldn't necessarily need to be reduced.  Or even 4-5km I'd be ok with.  Just not what PDCs have now.

 

Currently you could simply use a normal Laser for the fighter and get 30% (or was it 33%) of its' damage (in the best case), you'd still get 100% accuracy and use it against fighters and anything else.

 

When I just loaded up the game and tested with chainguns, their damage was reduced to 10%.  I don't know if it reduces the damage by the same amount on all weapons, or if it varies depending on what the weapon is?

 

But those Bombers shouldn't get down to size 1, in return you get "a lot of HP" and firepower.

 

Definitely in agreement that bombers (if it's a class of fighter they introduce) and shuttles and the like should have minimum sizes that are higher than 1.

 

Not very far at all if the fighters had free-floating barrel designed cannons because that would reduce the recoil.

And railguns would have very little recoil because they use electromagnetic force to launch high velocity projectiles instead of a powder charge like cannons do.

 

Sorry, Vis, but a railgun feels the same recoil effects.  Doesn't matter the method of accelerating the projectile, the counter force is still felt.

 

The problem with missiles is they would take a very long time to reach the target. And if each fighter had a limited number you would have to keep recalling your fighters after they fired to reload them.

 

Missiles are awfully slow in this game.  I don't think they're traveling at realistic speeds, but I haven't taken the time to look that info up yet.  Also, you could have the return to reload be automated, but not as an exact "once the last missile is fired, return to base".  There could be different conditions and limits put on it.  Although, in modern warfare, I don't think they would return for reload, anyway.  They'd just use them very sparingly.

 

Having fighters that could only have PDC/PDL would be a terrible idea because then you would have fighters that are only effective against other fighters.

 

Not necessarily.  As I said, no bonuses (thus remove the damage bonus to other fighters) and no penalties (thus no damage penalty for being equipt on a fighter).  Of course, at the time I wrote this, I still had a tech 37 PDC floating around in my inventory from 0.30 with 48+ dps.  When I just used the debug menu to attempt to generate some more tech 37 PDCs to see what kind of damage they could get to, the best I could get was around 7 dps.  I think the devs did something to nerf them in 0.31, or else I had something else going on at the time that allowed that.

 

Also, all the other weapons in this game are super unbalanced and can get to stupid high damage atm because of the RNG setup they have.  If they were to pull that back in under control and considering the 90% damage reduction on weapons being used to build fighters (except on PDCs as per my suggestion above), then it wouldn't have been that unfeasible (except now the devs nerfed the PDCs, so, you know).

 

Giving fighters 2 weapons would make them too effective against too many things. Because then you could give a fighter a PDC for other fighters and a railgun for ships.

 

Sorry, when I wrote that, I didn't mean you could equip any turret you want as the secondary weapon.  I meant that your only choice was a missile weapon or the like (and not necessarily even a turret from your inventory, but a predetermined weapon), but with the size penalty.

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Sorry, Vis, but a railgun feels the same recoil effects.  Doesn't matter the method of accelerating the projectile, the counter force is still felt.

Huh, no... The recoil from a railgun wouldn't have anywhere near enough force to "push those fighters back". The recoil force would be pushing against the fighter's weight/mass plus the force of the fighter's engines pushing it forward. If we used the weight and engine power of an F-22 for example. The recoil from the railgun would be pushing against about 43,340 pounds (19,700 kilograms) or 83,500 pounds (38,000 kilograms) if the F-22 is at it's 'Max takeoff weight'. And the F-22's 2 Pratt & Whitney F119-PW-100 engines put out about 35,000 lbf (156 kN) of thrust per engine. That makes for a very heavy projectile the railgun's recoil would have to push against to send it flying backwards.

 

The US Navy has a railgun they have been working on to put on ships. It fires a projectile that weighs about 23 lbs (10.4326245 kg) at a velocity of mach 7 (2382.03 m/s)... So how much force would you need to fire a 23lb projectile at mach 7? It would be about 24850.82 Newtons of force, which would only be about 5586.69 pounds of force... That is way less than the force of a single of the F-22's engines.  :D

 

The only way the fighter would be push back is, if it was sitting in space not moving forward at all with it's engines turned off. Then it fired the railgun. But even then it wouldn't go backwards very fast. It would be going back at a speed of about 1.26 m/s (2.81 mph) just from pushing the fighters weight. That's about walking speed. LOL. ;D

Also the railgun on a fighter would be much smaller than the example I used and would need even less force to fire an even smaller projectile. The pilot might not even notice the recoil.

So railgun fighters would be just fine. ;)

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Hi Vis,

 

The US Navy has a railgun they have been working on to put on ships. It fires a projectile that weighs about 23 lbs (10.4326245 kg) at a velocity of mach 7 (2382.03 m/s)... So how much force would you need to fire a 23lb projectile at mach 7? It would be about 24850.82 Newtons of force, which would only be about 5586.69 pounds of force... That is way less than the force of a single of the F-22's engines.  :D

in a galaxy far, far away, where torpedoes are chasing their targets at speeds of 3000 m/s, a railgun isn't as primitive as those of the US-Navy :P

 

In the game even 300m long 5 slot ships are slowed down from the recoil of cannons/railguns, a fighter that has got about 1000 times less mass could be pushed back.

 

EDIT:

 

Hi Fury,

 

Currently you could simply use a normal Laser for the fighter and get 30% (or was it 33%) of its' damage (in the best case), you'd still get 100% accuracy and use it against fighters and anything else.

 

When I just loaded up the game and tested with chainguns, their damage was reduced to 10%.  I don't know if it reduces the damage by the same amount on all weapons, or if it varies depending on what the weapon is?

I think it's 30 or 33% for 1-slot (0.5 size) turrets without any firing-cycles (overheating, burst-firing or energy-weapons on their own battery).

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Huh, no...

 

Your earlier post read to me as if you believed that because the railgun was using electromagnets instead of powder charge, that there was less recoil/counter force felt by the weapon. I was merely trying to say that isn’t true, that two weapons firing the same sized projectile to the same speed would feel the same counter force regardless of the propulsion method.

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Hi,

 

Can we just agree that fighters need to be re-balanced before final release?

 

They're slow

They're costly

They're easily killed

I can't agree with all points. If you are just using some kind of Interceptor-Fighter (to kill other Fighters), then the costs aren't that high.

 

The other points are correct, Fighters are too slow and (depending on usage) don't survive long enough.

 

Your earlier post read to me as if you believed that because the railgun was using electromagnets instead of powder charge, that there was less recoil/counter force felt by the weapon. I was merely trying to say that isn’t true, that two weapons firing the same sized projectile to the same speed would feel the same counter force regardless of the propulsion method.

And railguns would have very little recoil because they use electromagnetic force to launch high velocity projectiles instead of a powder charge like cannons do.

That's the quote...

 

Back to those railguns:

The US Navy has a railgun they have been working on to put on ships. It fires a projectile that weighs about 23 lbs (10.4326245 kg) at a velocity of mach 7 (2382.03 m/s)...

At about 2.4 km/s, a projectile would need 12 seconds for 30 km -> we would see the projectile travelling to its' target (and we would most likely miss a moving target with such slow railgun-projectiles).

 

What should we assume? 0.1 s for 30 km would be a speed of 300 km/s (still just 0.001 times C0)?

Even if those projectiles are just 1 kg each, the resulting forces are much higher then your calculations.

 

BTW: Pratt & Whitney F119-PW-100 achieve 156 kN with the afterburner (according to the information I found).

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Your earlier post read to me as if you believed that because the railgun was using electromagnets instead of powder charge, that there was less recoil/counter force felt by the weapon. I was merely trying to say that isn’t true, that two weapons firing the same sized projectile to the same speed would feel the same counter force regardless of the propulsion method.

The recoil force wouldn't have the same kick as a cannon. It would be less, just spread over a longer period of time. If you are comparing the initial force the cannon would be more like a punch while the railgun more like a shove. Also the 2 weapons would not at all be firing the same size/weight projectile. The cannon's projectile would be way heavier because it would need to be filled with high-explosive materials to do damage to it's target, while the railgun fires just a small metal projectile. The BL 18-inch Mk I naval gun, fires a shell that weighs 3,320 pounds. The US Navy's railgun needs a lot smaller and lighter of a projectile to kill things with. :D 

 

 

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At about 2.4 km/s, a projectile would need 12 seconds for 30 km -> we would see the projectile travelling to its' target (and we would most likely miss a moving target with such slow railgun-projectiles).

 

What should we assume? 0.1 s for 30 km would be a speed of 300 km/s (still just 0.001 times C0)?

Even if those projectiles are just 1 kg each, the resulting forces are much higher then your calculations.

 

BTW: Pratt & Whitney F119-PW-100 achieve 156 kN with the afterburner (according to the information I found).

 

Yeah, Avorion was not meant to be a super realistic game. The devs made the projectile reach it's target instantly when it really shouldn't. ;D

The railgun effects look more like lasers. Maybe in the weird Avorion future they have much better technology to make faster railguns with less recoil. I was using real life stuff to compare because that is all we have to go by at the moment.

What makes way less sense is, how do lightning guns work? ::)

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The recoil force wouldn't have the same kick as a cannon. It would be less, just spread over a longer period of time. If you are comparing the initial force the cannon would be more like a punch while the railgun more like a shove. Also the 2 weapons would not at all be firing the same size/weight projectile. The cannon's projectile would be way heavier because it would need to be filled with high-explosive materials to do damage to it's target, while the railgun fires just a small metal projectile. The BL 18-inch Mk I naval gun, fires a shell that weighs 3,320 pounds. The US Navy's railgun needs a lot smaller and lighter of a projectile to kill things with. :D

 

It'd still be the same amount of force if the rounds were the same weight and and accelerated to the same speed.  And really, while yes, the railgun does it over a "longer period of time", we're still talking about milliseconds, perhaps less.  (Best I could find on short notice was about one of the tests where the round was fired at mach 5 experienced acceleration of over 60000 g.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun    Should also note that elsewhere in that same article, there's mention of one of the tests accelerating the round to mach 10.)

 

We're also only guessing at the size of the railgun and cannon rounds used in game.  The default turret images make them look similar in size.  And watching the videos of the US Navy trials of a railgun, the amount of damage those rounds are causing to the steel looks significantly less compared to what the 18 in cannons could do.  Though on that note, I'm pretty sure they're being designed to replace the smaller 5-in guns on cruisers and destroyers, anyway, which use 70 pound rounds.  (I would be interested in knowing the density/weight differences between the high explosives used and the steel of the shell, though.)  I've also read some stuff that they're still trying to scale these up further.  Based on the wording, it makes it seem like they don't consider these current models as capable of dishing out as much damage as even the 5 in guns, yet.  This article mentions wanting to get up to 40 pound rounds with 64MJ of energy.  https://www.technologyreview.com/s/409497/electromagnetic-railgun-blasts-off/

 

All I'm trying to say is that a railgun trying to fire an identical sized round as a cannon to identical speeds is going to see identical counter forces being applied.  Recoil wise it may be slightly different, but for all intents and purposes on its overall effect on the craft it's mounted to, it's going to be pretty similar cause we're still talking about acceleration in a time span that's so small that you might as well consider it the same.

 

Edit: Found others discussing similar:

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You would never be firing an identical sized round from an identical sized weapon. The cannon rounds of the same sized weapon will always need to be bigger and heavier. A railgun is meant to be more of a piercing weapon to knock out critical components on a ship. The railgun doesn't need to do wide spread damage like an HE cannon shell. If you can just put a hole through the enemy ships main reactor that ship is pretty much dead.

 

But I think we have horribly derailed this thread more than enough and gone way off topic. ;D  

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You would never be firing an identical sized round from an identical sized weapon. The cannon rounds of the same sized weapon will always need to be bigger and heavier. A railgun is meant to be more of a piercing weapon to knock out critical components on a ship. The railgun doesn't need to do wide spread damage like an HE cannon shell. If you can just put a hole through the enemy ships main reactor that ship is pretty much dead.

 

But I think we have horribly derailed this thread more than enough and gone way off topic. ;D

 

Yes, fully aware of that.  Again, your earlier post mentioned because of the difference between the use of electromagnets and powder charge, not size.  That's what I was disputing.

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Yes, fully aware of that.  Again, your earlier post mentioned because of the difference between the use of electromagnets and powder charge, not size.  That's what I was disputing.

No no no, I meant when you compare the 2. The projectiles would be very different and do their damage in a very different way. One being a small metal dart fired at high velocity and the other being a large shell with an explosive charge.

 

But getting back on topic now... While I agree fighter cost should be reduced and HP buffed a little, I think we need way more ways to use fighters. Instead of just launching them and attacking. Players should have to use them more tactically to be effective with them.

 

Something else I think could be done with fighters to change things up a bit and give them more flexibility... Is when you are making fighters after you add a set number of points into 1 stat, a bonus ability could become available to buy for more points. Like after you add X number of points to speed, the 'Afterburner' bonus ability becomes available. Afterburner would give fighters a speed boost for a short time that could help them get in to 'point blank range' faster or run away if the battle is not going so well. :P This would also have a short cooldown so fighters couldn't just spam it, but it would help in a pinch.

Maybe for the maneuverability stat you would have the 'dodge' ability but maybe it should be called something else, like 'Evasive Maneuver' or maybe just 'Evade'.

And I think the pilot's skills could just reduce the cooldown timer or maybe even give a small increase to the ability.

Need to come up with bonus abilities for the other stats, but I think this would make fighters a lot more interesting as well as the different tactics you could use with these bonus abilities.

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As much as I love talking/reading about real world weapons vs the game, we should probably focus on what could be done to help fix the fighter situation.  I've messed around with them some recently and can confirm that fighters are very, very fragile when it comes into contact with one of those PDC ships which are everywhere.  As I mentioned in my last post on this topic, I do think that ships need more HP and different modes of attacking a target (orbit/divebomb/sentry). 

 

Also, like I mentioned previously, when in the fighter factory, an increase to movement speed should go up drastically allowing the player to design really fast interceptors if desired.  The same could (and probably should) be applied to the "durability"  upgrade at the factory.  It would then become a fun balancing act of deciding if your fighter should be more survivable but slower, or really fast and small, or expensive and good all around.  Either way, I think that the increases in fighter stats should increment much more than they do when you put a point into speed, durability, maneuverability, ect.  Obviously this won't apply to some of the stat increasers like size.

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Yeah, fighters are very problematic and I'd imagine many solutions at once to make them more usable again.

  • Fighter costs: Honestly imo since poi is so efficient and prevalent in enemy compos, fighters are currently "throwable" (as, inverse of durable). Both fighter production effort and resource cost are linked to fighter cost, which is as big as the weapon it is based of.
    • I'd honestly use 10 times that value then square root it: it's make better and better fighters cost less and less more resources because at the end of the day the better fighter will almost be destroyed at the same speed than a worse fighter, hence cutting the force multiplier they represent. So 10 000 cost earlygame fighters would cost 100 (a pittance), while 1 000 000 cost ones would cost 1 000, and godroll 100 000 000 cost would cost "only" 10 000.
    • Eventually, use rarity level as goods level (currently Fighters are produced as fast as (GL 1 ?) Energy Cells) so rarer fighters (which may have more dodges because more points to put into Maneuvrability) take longer to build and more common fighters may be used as fast-buildable spares.
  • Carrier and Fighter interaction: Currently, nothing happens UI-wise when a fighter is attacked before getting destroyed, and even then, it only notifies that bleep one of your fighters (in the sector) has been destroyed, which is not helpful, especially if you're driving another ship than the carrier in which case you are helpless to save the others.
    • It'd be cool to have fighters chat to their carrier, relaying that one of their squadmates (by squadron name) is attacked by point defense from a (named) ship, while red blinking would be visible on the attacked squadron's icon: it'll allow the player to distinguish which squadron is under attack if they're driving the carrier.
    • Also, make carriers prone to returning damaged fighter squads (depending on Captain skill level... and carrier hull/shield status: critical carriers would just send all fighters fighting instead of hiding in a ship that will explode, making the player lose more resources than necessary).
  • Fighter AI: Currently fighter AI is kind of crude.
    • It would be cool that attacked fighters would give up on their attack runs for a moment if they run low on dodges instead of "tanking" enemy poi until out of dodges and destroyed.
      • Carrierless fighters would become desperate and do nonstop vanilla attack runs so carrier fights wouldn't drag on forever though 😅.
    • Fighters would also have different "classes" and behaviors depending on weapon range (long range = bomber that fires from far away, poi = interceptor), because those kinds of changes would even affect AI-driven carriers.
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As much as I loved skimming this thread that somehow deviated into an argument about railguns and real-life weapons, I just wanted to say that it may be a long while until any of these suggestions are taken, as the main dev himself admitted that fighters are actually "Overpowered" in their current state despite being nearly useless or impractical to sustain for the reasons that have been beaten to death in past posts.

I do agree that fighters need more speed and HP though. Cost I'm not so sure on since it's based on the quality of the fighter (which seems terrible due to their current stats, but that can be fixed. We've at least progressed past fighters having 1 HP!).

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