(are you really going to convince a missile that a 2nd giant 100kton dreadnaught magically appeared over to the left of your original target?)
Thoughts?
Note, I actually wasn't criticizing beam fighters as overly powerful. To Jorgen's point, I think they're well balanced right now, particularly for multi-faction (although I rarely play multifaction).
Right now missiles and larger ships benefit from decoys, but fighters do not (minimum decoy launcher size is 5HS or 25 tons, which is almost small enough to be useful, but not really, and a single size 5 decoy missile won't help much for a fighter of ~250tons or more). What if decoy missile effectiveness wasn't linear, but instead scaled significantly and inversely with size, AND make it applicable to incoming beam fire in addtion to missile fire? That would make them much more effective for fighters and much less effective for very large ships. That makes sense logically (are you really going to convince a missile that a 2nd giant 100kton dreadnaught magically appeared over to the left of your original target?) and would give fighters some protection from beam PD-type weapons similar to missile's ability to use decoys. Then to offset that and keep the current balance, allow BFCs to target multiple targets, you just don't get to control which weapon fires at which target. That's acceptable for PD and anti-fighter weapons, but you'd want to be more specific with large weapons, so you'd only assign one target to those types of BFCs.
Thoughts?
Right now beam fighters work because enemy ships can't kill target them fast enough. The bottleneck is fire control capability, not weapon capability. That's ok. It's realistic, and it makes fighters viable.
Where I struggle is there's not really a good explanation for why missiles are handled differently than fighters. If a single BFC running point defense weapons can target an infinite number of missiles, why can't it handle an infinite number of fighters who are larger (easier to see) and moving slower?
In general Steve has tried to eliminate differences in rules that exist just to make things work. This (and commercial vs military engines) are one of the few remaining like that. Does anyone have an idea of how to unify the fire control ruleset in such a way that beam fighters are still viable, missile offense/defense is still fairly balanced, but there's no logic hole in why BFCs can handle swarms of missiles but not more than one fighter at a time?
How about beam fighters with a single larger caliber reduced size laser that aims to outrange any massed beam PD (such as point blank Gauss or 5sec reload Railgun)?
That could still be viable for offensive use, and if they are faster than enemy beamfighters using gauss/rail it should in theory be a slaughter as well in FTR vs FTR engagements.
The recent missile changes were a way to make missiles more competitive vs energy-armed ships (including fighters), although a lot of players still think missiles are OP as well, so its probably more balanced now.Right now beam fighters work because enemy ships can't kill target them fast enough. The bottleneck is fire control capability, not weapon capability. That's ok. It's realistic, and it makes fighters viable.
Where I struggle is there's not really a good explanation for why missiles are handled differently than fighters. If a single BFC running point defense weapons can target an infinite number of missiles, why can't it handle an infinite number of fighters who are larger (easier to see) and moving slower?
In general Steve has tried to eliminate differences in rules that exist just to make things work. This (and commercial vs military engines) are one of the few remaining like that. Does anyone have an idea of how to unify the fire control ruleset in such a way that beam fighters are still viable, missile offense/defense is still fairly balanced, but there's no logic hole in why BFCs can handle swarms of missiles but not more than one fighter at a time?
