C# Suggestions

[serger]

I think INF+LOG are quite vulnerable in frontline formations, especially when attacking, so 62 log-tons on the rear can be still better of 100 log-tons on the front.

[nuclearslurpee]

I think INF+LOG are quite vulnerable in frontline formations, especially when attacking, so 62 log-tons on the rear can be still better of 100 log-tons on the front.

The problem is the build cost, 2.48 BP/500 GSP versus 1.0 BP/500 GSP is not even a competition. With the replacements system in 1.12+ you can lose front-line formation logistics elements from enemy fire, in addition to supply consumption, and replenish them from a supply dump in the rear echelon and still save a lot of build points compared to vehicle-based logistics.

With the replacements system you only need enough supply units to last about 20 rounds of combat, which is enough to fight for 5 days plus some extra to cover losses, and then the replacements will arrive at the construction increment. For most formations this is perhaps only 5% of the total tonnage and as non-combat units the logistics have 1/4 the usual chance to be targeted, so losses are not really very high except in cases of bad RNG.

[alex_brunius]

In the spirit of the Additional conventional systems change, it might be a good idea to make the Fighter pod techs a bit cheaper than 5000 RP each as well ( maybe 500 or 1000 ) to promote the use of conventional fighters and ground support?

Both from a plausibility standpoint and a gameplay standpoint ( since you have a bit of fighter production capacity as a conventional empire ) it feels strange to me that empires transition to TN tech without air-support typically.

[Jorgen_CAB]

In the spirit of the Additional conventional systems change, it might be a good idea to make the Fighter pod techs a bit cheaper than 5000 RP each as well ( maybe 500 or 1000 ) to promote the use of conventional fighters and ground support?

Both from a plausibility standpoint and a gameplay standpoint ( since you have a bit of fighter production capacity as a conventional empire ) it feels strange to me that empires transition to TN tech without air-support typically.

I usually play with very reduced research cost and I always reduce the cost of certain technologies like this as the cost of certain techs become a bit prohibitive in that context in my opinion. I also increase the amount of technology you can research in other categories up to about 30 levels from 10-15 levels om most technologies and reduce the step in each as well. I probably should just play on normal tech progression as I practically change almost every technology in the tree anyway.   

[nuclearslurpee]

Both from a plausibility standpoint and a gameplay standpoint ( since you have a bit of fighter production capacity as a conventional empire ) it feels strange to me that empires transition to TN tech without air-support typically.

I honestly think it would be better to get rid of ground support fighters as they currently stand and have them be another ground unit type in the same style as STOs - design a weapon pod, choose it in the unit creation window, and get a ground support fighter with some minimal engine/MFC/sensor tonnage in the same manner as we currently design STOs. Build them into a formation (again, just like STOs) and assign them to support a formation with FFD following the same rules as presently. There could be a new base unit class for these (in which case we could just do away with fighter pods entirely, but I digress) or you could choose from the available vehicle classes to customize HP and armor.

This would reduce the insane micromanagement that currently plagues ground support fighters, make the fighters scale much better with AA weapons (plus, reworking AA damage calculations would allow Steve to fix the stupid issue where LAA is useless until racial weapon strength is 10 or more), and frankly this makes much more flavor sense since air fighters and space fighters are not going to be designed similarly in most cases anyways.

Regular fighters can still do orbital fire support in the same way as any other ship for those who want to keep that kind of flavor, although given the micro involved I'm not sure there's more than 2-3 people in the entire playerbase who actually care about it presently.

[Garfunkel]

That's a pretty good idea and would solve the issue with them pretty neatly.

[alex_brunius]

and frankly this makes much more flavor sense since air fighters and space fighters are not going to be designed similarly in most cases anyways.

I don't quite agree with that as we should remember hybrid Space/Atmosphere fighters see quite extensive use in a large number of Sci-Fi universes even if I agree that it doesn't make much sense scientifically. Id like it if Aurora can expand flexibility to play out as many stories as possible and I'm not sure removing such flexibility where already implemented makes much sense, even if it would make "scientific" sense to do so.

I honestly think it would be better to get rid of ground support fighters as they currently stand and have them be another ground unit type in the same style as STOs - design a weapon pod, choose it in the unit creation window, and get a ground support fighter with some minimal engine/MFC/sensor tonnage in the same manner as we currently design STOs. Build them into a formation (again, just like STOs) and assign them to support a formation with FFD following the same rules as presently. There could be a new base unit class for these (in which case we could just do away with fighter pods entirely, but I digress) or you could choose from the available vehicle classes to customize HP and armor.

This would reduce the insane micromanagement that currently plagues ground support fighters, make the fighters scale much better with AA weapons (plus, reworking AA damage calculations would allow Steve to fix the stupid issue where LAA is useless until racial weapon strength is 10 or more) ...

Regular fighters can still do orbital fire support in the same way as any other ship for those who want to keep that kind of flavor, although given the micro involved I'm not sure there's more than 2-3 people in the entire playerbase who actually care about it presently.

That would be cleaner but also require a pretty extensive rework of fighter mechanics. Especially if we envision this new type of ground unit doing all current fighter missions with lots of special rules for targeting and resolution ( Support, CAP, Search & Destroy and Flak Suppression ). It would also require specific rules for situations like how to handle if one side only has fighters left and the other side have no AA or fighters left ( so they can't attack them ).

Space fighters being limited to regular orbital ground support would also remove one of the main reasons to use them if I understand things correctly as they wouldn't be immune to enemy STO weapons.

A solution that would probably require less work and benefit more areas while also keeping the freedom to design and use hybrid Space/Atmosphere fighters would be to work on the micromanagement issues instead. VB6 Aurora had specific controls to manage fighters in Squadrons, and also had the ability to move a selection of ships from one fleet to another with a single click. Something similar in C# would be greatly helpful here to cut down micro IMO.

[Jorgen_CAB]

But we could still use box launchers to stick the pods into and make our space to space bombers into space to ground fighters.

I would be in favour of making the air war on planets integrated into the ground forces as that makes much more sense. There could also be unit formation which have only ground fighters in them that can perform orbital support from ships as well. So... a ground unit you can stuff into a hangar OR transport hold. If in the hangar it can operate like if it was on the ground... good for preforming air suppression missions or just general bombardment prior to dropping the troops on the ground. They also could receive some benefit while operating from space rather than ground while directed by FFD.

[nuclearslurpee]

It would also require specific rules for situations like how to handle if one side only has fighters left and the other side have no AA or fighters left ( so they can't attack them ).

The rest are good points, but to address this one I think it is sufficient to make fighters difficult for regular ground forces to target (e.g. high hit modifier for the base class) so that the primary means of destroying fighters would be AA weapons but ground forces shooting their guns in the air can still do something (as has been done historically).

Alternatively, this may not be a huge issue - if a ground force doesn't bring necessary weapons and then loses as a result, this is a logical consequence of poor preparation. If Steve were to consider such a change this would probably be a decision to be made one way or the other.

[alex_brunius]

The rest are good points, but to address this one I think it is sufficient to make fighters difficult for regular ground forces to target (e.g. high hit modifier for the base class) so that the primary means of destroying fighters would be AA weapons but ground forces shooting their guns in the air can still do something (as has been done historically).

Alternatively, this may not be a huge issue - if a ground force doesn't bring necessary weapons and then loses as a result, this is a logical consequence of poor preparation. If Steve were to consider such a change this would probably be a decision to be made one way or the other.

The issue would be silly examples like if 500k+ ton of cheap militia would win a battle but the enemy side had say 5 fighters left that can't be hit resulting in the militia being unable to win despite the given logical result would be them simply overrunning the airbases. Giving regular forces a miniscule chance to hit could work but might not be trivial to do either due to issues with rounding for extremely small numbers, and it being tricky to balance ( you would need to answer questions like can a super heavy bombardment artillery gun hit fighters better than a militia rifle or an AT gun or Mortar can? ).

I'm not saying it's impossible to solve, just that it would probably add complexity to handle edge cases and need some extra effort.

[nuclearslurpee]

If we add a new FTR base type with something like 0.01 hit modifier (for example), it would be sufficiently hard to hit that AA weapons would be preferable, but 500,000 militia firing randomly into the air should be able to down 5 fighters before they get brrrrt'd to death.

There would definitely be a lot of complications required to implement this, for example how should fighters interact with formation settings (front line attack/defense, support, etc.)? However if Steve wants to deal with such questions and the programming involved I think it would be a good change for the ground combat system.

[xenoscepter]

 --- I feel it prudent to point out that many GSFs will be traveling 100~500x the speed of the rocket that put a man on the Moon IRL. Half a million militia may well still be insufficient against even a measly five fighters...

[serger]

I think it's easy and natural to add a rule, that you need some quantity of frontline units to control a colony, or your installations will leak to enemy's colony proportionally to this lack of units in the frontline.
Maybe even use different units with different multipliers (smth like stationary x1, inf x2, vehs x4) to represent, that mobile units are able to control more territory.

[ArcWolf]

...Especially if we envision this new type of ground unit doing all current fighter missions with lots of special rules for targeting and resolution ( Support, CAP, Search & Destroy and Flak Suppression ). It would also require specific rules for situations like how to handle if one side only has fighters left and the other side have no AA or fighters left ( so they can't attack them ).

why not make those combat missions be the fighters equivalent to rear echelon, support, Front line defence/Attack?

[Jorgen_CAB]

If we add a new FTR base type with something like 0.01 hit modifier (for example), it would be sufficiently hard to hit that AA weapons would be preferable, but 500,000 militia firing randomly into the air should be able to down 5 fighters before they get brrrrt'd to death.

There would definitely be a lot of complications required to implement this, for example how should fighters interact with formation settings (front line attack/defense, support, etc.)? However if Steve wants to deal with such questions and the programming involved I think it would be a good change for the ground combat system.

Why would we just not make it so that if fighters is targeted by a ground force as a regular attack the fighters defend as if they are on the ground and not flying... you are overrunning the fighter base and will likely cripple a few of them before they retire to another airbase... this is just like attacking any other unit on a breakthrough attack or when in the offensive line.

There would be no problem if there are only fighters left, they are the only targets and will die pretty fast.