Beta 2.0.1 Fighter vs Turrets feedback

[Gameswalker]

At this time I would say adding extra fighter bay subsystems is not worth it. Here are the reasons.

• Orange tier armed turret subsystems give you 6 turrets and 2 defensive turrets (plus some auto-turrets). 
• The same tier fighter subsystem gives 2 more fighter squadrons. Fully equipped it is like having eight turrets which is barely more than the turret subsystem
• To fill out each squadron will take around 6-12 hours of production. Getting the parts for 6 slots of turrets takes minutes. This is a huge disadvantage to carriers.
  • Note that you can buy fighters but their damage output is so low compared to created turrets/fighters that 12 store purchased fighters don't have the firepower of one turret created at a turret factory.
• Fighters have difficulty catching the enemies due to the high (AI boosted) ship speeds and with the new 3.5 max range fighter weapons this is even worse.
• Fighters inherently are more player time consuming to use with launching, targeting, and retrieving after a battle.
• The ship requires hangers which take up space and in hard games are far more vulnerable to block loss than an fully armored ship.
• Fighters are easily destroyed by some enemies which target fighters with smaller guns. Maybe this is as much of an issue now with the increased durabilities but due to fighter bugs and not playing on hard in Beta I can't verify their current survivability fully. 
• 2.0.1 Fighter costs are through the roof. A Xanion fighter now costs 110k Xanion (R-Miner 10 DPR). That cost is so high that they are no longer worth producing. That is like a million credits which is starting to get in ship cost range. My 10 slot Heavy Cruiser costs 140k Xanion + 227k Trin to build and 3.4 million credits. The manufacturing cost of the turret that fighter is based on is 3.6 million credits. Give the scarcity of materials in 2.0+ I'd rather just make more turrets and save the minerals for ship / station production.
  • Some numbers for comparison

Version 1.0

(118 DPS) 3.98 million Blueprint ->  Avorion fighter R-mining cost 11k Avorion

(19760 DPS) 4.449 million Blueprint-> 5098 DPS tesla fighter cost 36.6 k Avorion

(1043 DPS)  899k million lightning Blueprint -> Fighter costs 17k Xanion

(25.8 DPS) 221k Blueprint-> (7.7 DPS) R-Mining Fighter cost 8k Xanion

 

Version 2.0.1 

(35.8 DPS) 987 Blueprint -> (10+ DPS)R-Mining fighter costs 114k Xanion 

(1442) 952 Pulse Cannon BP -> (450+ DPS) Fighter costs 81k Xanion

I would suggest increasing the fighter subsystems by a factor of 3 or just remove the need for fighter subsystems. And reduce the fighter costs to 1.0 levels

In the version 1.0 of the game I mainly used fighters for killing very specific targets (before I got good turret factory rolls) and for base defense in near the center of the galaxy. With the new restrictions (and torpedos as loot which I can use instead of fighters for specific targets) I will likely have very little use for fighters in Beta 2.0 with the current fighter rules.

 

Edited August 12, 2021 by Gameswalker
Showing changes in costs from 1.0 to 2.0.1