Fighter/Drone Ideas

DraconisTheWyvern

On trello there is a post about this; this is just my take on what should be done in regards to fighters/drones.

1) you can allow the player to create their own drones/fighters in a building zone/mode for fighters/drones.
this would mean creating special parts for this build mode such as a fighter/drone reactor which powers things in a radius or wiring systems (as well as other parts). an a different save folder for fighter/drone designs and have the design minimize when it is spawned in so it actually looks like said fighter/drone

2) you don't necessarily need to have a special reactor as stated above what you could do is have a system where the fighter/drone returns to its mother ship when ever it needs to refuel/repair/rearm/repower

3) I heard @Walt likes the BSG style of special sections for take off and landing. personally I disagree an think there should just be one part that handles the take off and landing. granted it maybe easier graphically/etc. to have separate parts for the two functions.

4) I agree with the idea of having the ability to have more than one fighter bay an each fighter bay increasing the amount of fighters. the question is how much though? I think it should be 2 maybe 3 fighters per bay and the bay its self should be a 2 by 2. you could have multiple fighter bay sizes as well for example a 4 by 4 bay in addition to the 2 by 2 an a 1 by 2.

Edit:

5) you could also have a fighter/drone factory to replace lost fighters/drones and make it so it replaces them very slowly (say a fighter every half a minuet) to help prevent none stop swarming. or do this an have a fighter/drone factory cap per ship.

Walt

DraconisTheWyvern 3) I heard @Walt likes the BSG style of special sections for take off and landing. personally I disagree an think there should just be one part that handles the take off and landing. granted it maybe easier graphically/etc. to have separate parts for the two functions.

This isn't really something I've thought about to any great extent. I can see having a single takeoff & landing strip.

Oneye

DraconisTheWyvern I think it should be 2 maybe 3 fighters per bay and the bay its self should be a 2 by 2.

That would be way too easy to spam. If fighters/drones are going to do any sort of damage they need to take up a good amount of space, say maybe 3 by 4 and holds 3 fighters and that's not including the fighter factories or landing/taking off strips.
Other than that I agree with your arguments.

Dibs

If you have to build the drones/fighters, I can see space quickly becoming an issue. Even if it's a thin 3 block width size drone/fighter for example, the bay would probably have to be at least 5 wide to allow entry. It's gonna be pretty interesting to see how it's treated.
I'd be okay with drones amounting to a small AI controlled flight module with your gun of choice installed that has to redock into a ship mounted bay module to reload/recharge/repair with commands treating it as if it where any other gun on your ship

Walt

I'm thinking that a single fighter will probably be somewhere between 3x3 and 5x5. You'll need a bay for each one, plus takeoff/landing strips depending on how quickly you want to be able to launch/land all your fighters.

Kroom

I think that 3x3 is a too small to have some freedom of building, also it will look way too tiny compared to the crew.

Walt

Kroom I think that 3x3 is a too small to have some freedom of building, also it will look way too tiny compared to the crew.

Build grid will probably have small squared, so a 4x4 fighter might actually be an 8x8 grid.

ImNotLaffng

Walt I think it would be great to have it fully expandable with a small grid to build small crewed or drone fighters with them being able to be pretty large, but limited to the size of their modular landing pads or runways. The landing pads and/or runways would be modular and expandable, letting small fighters/drones use small runways that bigger fighters/drones wouldn't.

DraconisTheWyvern

Froshen What about co pilots or if we want to reinvent the heavy fighter aircraft with rear/side turrets? To an extent it should be automated but not entirely.

I also think their should be a bubble shield so we can shield our fighters/drones.

Your thoughts Walt

Dibs

I think it would be wise to align expectations early on this one. How does everyone envision the collective features necessary for drones/fighters?
Is it something you can just mix in with regular ship design, or will it be a defining feature of a ship that can span the full length of a ship on the scale of a massive railgun?

Kroom

Will the crew shrink with the ship? or the cockpit will be 2x2 in the small grid to match the 1x1 size of normal grid crew?
In my mind this is the size of a useful small fighter:

image https://i.imgur.com/2JIpTcD.png
the green guy is supose to be in the normal grid

What about Medium/Heavy fighter or bombers? They will problably need a 6x6 normal grid.

image https://i.imgur.com/D6s36sN.jpg

Froshen

I think that fighter class need totally new parts. They should have only one pilot or none (its heckin space ship they can be operated by carrier/AI). So the infrastructure in the fighter have to be automatic. How about making ammo modules and rails that push the ammo into magazines of the weapons. also they should be propelled by the motor that have to be powered from reactor. That would make totally different kind of feeling when you build and optimize the fighters. So for example if the shield goes down the reactor have to recharge it, so motors are slower due to more consumption of power from shield battery. That mechanic should be also conncected with engines.

Froshen

DraconisTheWyvern Yea co pilots are goodie too. Just wanted to point that it would be awesome if the fighters would have different mechanic than normal ships. I think that finite ammo and power management would be a good example for that. On the other hand this gonna be kinda hard to make even work, not to mention about balance. It should be added when the core mechanics with big ships is wide enough. I think game needs more way to make support ships. Like repair beams, tractor beam, mine laying, something like disabling modules. The wars should be like in Homeworld. Fighters, Corvette's and frigates strangled in battle. Battle should have more layers than just 1-1 big ship duel. And... yea i know that game is free, and the staff that make the game are outnumbered by our desires.