Fighters are just another RPS element that counter specific builds but are hard countered by other builds.
Especially biweave FDLs don't like them but a single Sp railgun can snipe their PP to leave them idling for the rest of the fight as there is no way to tell the fighter to either reboot/repair or self-destruct.
This leaves the owner forced to either shoot his own fighter (which is stupid enough itself) or just fight without it.
Additionally since NPCs obviously have aimbot they are abused for and against fighters. Hostile NPCs with railguns usually will oneshot them while friendly fighters will have insane hit rates even at expert ranks.
The issue here is their power and weaknesses are not balanced. They can be insanely powerful but can also be insanely useless.
To fix this I suggest the following (even though I doubt anything of the below will even be considered, I take it more as a test):
1. Reduce hardness piercing of fighters and add damage resistances. Fighters currently deal absolute damage and have an armor piercing of 100 according to personal tests.
2. Allow to launch multiple fighters using multiple NPCs (one for each)
3. Increase maximum amount of NPCs hired to 6
4. C7 fighter bay no longer stores 32 ships in two bays but 16 in four bays
5. Allow to assign fighters their targets using the contacts panal. Choose hostile contact->attack with fighter X/Y/Z.
6. Add swarm commands instead of single fighter commands
7. Allow multicrew players to manage swarm commands as the gunner role
8. Increase fighter hull strength by 150% (so 250% strength in total)
9. Reduce fighter thermal signature to 1500 meters or lower when not shooting or at ~40% heat
10. NPC crews do not drain credits when inactive
11. Reduce profit share to a flat amount of credits per rank (Elite drains 1m/day Harmless drains 10k/day ... drains nothing when inactive).
12. Add a tiny amount of rebuy participation. The higher the rank the more they participate to a maximum of 2.5% of your total rebuy cost
13. Fighter bays and thus NPC crews now have access to escape capsules and do not die upon ship destruction
14. Add NPC fighter allignments to major supowerpowers and add skill boost/penalty according to their fighter ship. Example: Federation pilot uses an imperial fighter -> skill penalty of 1 rank. Elite pilot will fly with deadly skill. In case of federal fighter it gets a boost beyond Elite
15. Allow for engineer effects for fighters and its weapons
16. Allow for custom fighter builds instead of predifed builds that do not synchronize with parent ship builds
17. Add ability to group multiple fighters to sub-wings
18. Do not show parent ship on radar when its fighters are shooting at hostiles
19. Balance stealth gameplay (emissive effect and NPC radars abiltiy to permanently stealthed targets, includes NPC fighters' radar)
The suggestions are oredered in priorities with 1. being the most important and 16. being more optional and basically a QoL improvement.
This will lead us to a new style of play for all combat players and big ship owners and finally gives big ships a new utility/strength that other ships do not have access to or just to a limited degree.
It adds more depth to combat in general PvE and PvP alike and will be benefitial especially in intense combat scenarios like PvE CZs/RESs and PvP wing fights.
The main goal here is to allow for carrier ships where the scale and seize of a ship matters the most, justifying expensive equipment and rebuy costs.
Players must consider wheather they want to go for more fighters at the cost of main ship defenses (shield scell banks in particular) or find a healthy balance of both if they decide to go the carrier style.
Finally we would be provdided the tools to change our large ships from a forward fireing platform that barely has more eDPS than medium ships to a more capital ship role .. jus tas they look like.
Ultimately this solves multiple issues at once:
a) Big ship costs, hitbox and lack of agility not being backed up by enough firepower compared to medium ships
b) Big ship's lack of special gameplay choices (like small ship stealth bombing)
c) Unrealistic gameplay limitations (only able to launch a single fighter)
d) Lack of QoL improvements
e) Imbalance of fighters between power and weakness, RPS gameplay
Would be amazing to see big ships as a threat they should be instead of a major hitpoint soaking platform that gets shot down faster than a Viper MK III.
Also other ships like the Gunship benefit form that change as it needs more than a single fighter, especially in CZs/RESs and wingfights to defend itself while it is so hard to move.
The same applies for the Keelback. It could have the ability to be a mini-carrier at the cost of defenses but in combination with a balanced stealth gameplay we could even have access to mini-stealth-carriers.
Heavy ships then would have more firepower at the cost of defensives and finally allows for immense pressure in large scale combat. In assassination scenarios this is not too effective as it takes quite some time to launch multiple fighters, let alone two. In this time the parent ship takes heavy damage and loses its strength due to the lack of launched fighters (is basically the case right now ... just with more SCBs).
Especially biweave FDLs don't like them but a single Sp railgun can snipe their PP to leave them idling for the rest of the fight as there is no way to tell the fighter to either reboot/repair or self-destruct.
This leaves the owner forced to either shoot his own fighter (which is stupid enough itself) or just fight without it.
Additionally since NPCs obviously have aimbot they are abused for and against fighters. Hostile NPCs with railguns usually will oneshot them while friendly fighters will have insane hit rates even at expert ranks.
The issue here is their power and weaknesses are not balanced. They can be insanely powerful but can also be insanely useless.
To fix this I suggest the following (even though I doubt anything of the below will even be considered, I take it more as a test):
1. Reduce hardness piercing of fighters and add damage resistances. Fighters currently deal absolute damage and have an armor piercing of 100 according to personal tests.
2. Allow to launch multiple fighters using multiple NPCs (one for each)
3. Increase maximum amount of NPCs hired to 6
4. C7 fighter bay no longer stores 32 ships in two bays but 16 in four bays
5. Allow to assign fighters their targets using the contacts panal. Choose hostile contact->attack with fighter X/Y/Z.
6. Add swarm commands instead of single fighter commands
7. Allow multicrew players to manage swarm commands as the gunner role
8. Increase fighter hull strength by 150% (so 250% strength in total)
9. Reduce fighter thermal signature to 1500 meters or lower when not shooting or at ~40% heat
10. NPC crews do not drain credits when inactive
11. Reduce profit share to a flat amount of credits per rank (Elite drains 1m/day Harmless drains 10k/day ... drains nothing when inactive).
12. Add a tiny amount of rebuy participation. The higher the rank the more they participate to a maximum of 2.5% of your total rebuy cost
13. Fighter bays and thus NPC crews now have access to escape capsules and do not die upon ship destruction
14. Add NPC fighter allignments to major supowerpowers and add skill boost/penalty according to their fighter ship. Example: Federation pilot uses an imperial fighter -> skill penalty of 1 rank. Elite pilot will fly with deadly skill. In case of federal fighter it gets a boost beyond Elite
15. Allow for engineer effects for fighters and its weapons
16. Allow for custom fighter builds instead of predifed builds that do not synchronize with parent ship builds
17. Add ability to group multiple fighters to sub-wings
18. Do not show parent ship on radar when its fighters are shooting at hostiles
19. Balance stealth gameplay (emissive effect and NPC radars abiltiy to permanently stealthed targets, includes NPC fighters' radar)
The suggestions are oredered in priorities with 1. being the most important and 16. being more optional and basically a QoL improvement.
This will lead us to a new style of play for all combat players and big ship owners and finally gives big ships a new utility/strength that other ships do not have access to or just to a limited degree.
It adds more depth to combat in general PvE and PvP alike and will be benefitial especially in intense combat scenarios like PvE CZs/RESs and PvP wing fights.
The main goal here is to allow for carrier ships where the scale and seize of a ship matters the most, justifying expensive equipment and rebuy costs.
Players must consider wheather they want to go for more fighters at the cost of main ship defenses (shield scell banks in particular) or find a healthy balance of both if they decide to go the carrier style.
Finally we would be provdided the tools to change our large ships from a forward fireing platform that barely has more eDPS than medium ships to a more capital ship role .. jus tas they look like.
Ultimately this solves multiple issues at once:
a) Big ship costs, hitbox and lack of agility not being backed up by enough firepower compared to medium ships
b) Big ship's lack of special gameplay choices (like small ship stealth bombing)
c) Unrealistic gameplay limitations (only able to launch a single fighter)
d) Lack of QoL improvements
e) Imbalance of fighters between power and weakness, RPS gameplay
Would be amazing to see big ships as a threat they should be instead of a major hitpoint soaking platform that gets shot down faster than a Viper MK III.
Also other ships like the Gunship benefit form that change as it needs more than a single fighter, especially in CZs/RESs and wingfights to defend itself while it is so hard to move.
The same applies for the Keelback. It could have the ability to be a mini-carrier at the cost of defenses but in combination with a balanced stealth gameplay we could even have access to mini-stealth-carriers.
Heavy ships then would have more firepower at the cost of defensives and finally allows for immense pressure in large scale combat. In assassination scenarios this is not too effective as it takes quite some time to launch multiple fighters, let alone two. In this time the parent ship takes heavy damage and loses its strength due to the lack of launched fighters (is basically the case right now ... just with more SCBs).
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