Fighter balance

[Kjara]

Let me start by saying fighters currently work in the r/p/s sense.  However they are the weakest link there(mainly due to the fact that they don't scale as well).

Note this is more of an early game analysis, and assumes that you somewhat outnumber the ai in the small scale(that you are hitting one or 2 guard posts at a time).  In the early game if you are fighting odds not in your favor, it had better be with turret support otherwise its going to take way to long to replace your losses even if you can win.  It also assumes that you are attacking, and thus have to hit a mix of fighters/bombers/cruisers that the ai has garrisoning their bases, and that you don't have the time to lure the fighter support/bomber support away from the cruisers at every guard post when you outnumber it 20 to 1.  Ignoring what special units the computer may have, since that varies so much(but it will effect things).  Late game you should have at least 3 or 4 unique ships, and be able to handle things differently(as you have access to more specials, etc).

Lets take an early assault.  If you want to be able to hit a target and keep moving, you need to outnumber your target by a certain amount.  This lets you strongly keep losses down in both your bombers and your cruisers(assuming you have your bombers screen the cruisers to kill incoming fighters, then move them in to help kill turrets).  The key here is that cruisers kill bombers outside the bombers range of being able to do damage, and bombers kill fighters in the same way.  If you want to do the same against cruisers, you often have to fly your fighters through the screening cruisers if you want to kill them before they can kill your bombers/damage your cruisers.  This leads decent fighter losses to even when you have overwhelming fighter forces.  Thus when you are doing an extended raid you always run out of fighters first(well or your special units, as most of them have such low hp values) or you just don't use fighters, and have your cruisers kill their cruisers.  I've often found the 2nd to be more sustainable, and that I just use the fighters to be meatshields for wormhole transitions to keep my main bomber/cruiser force alive longer.

The problem here is that fighters don't scale nearly as well as the other two types.  Mass cruisers or bombers can kill the unit they counter without losses.  Fighters incur close to the same losses no matter how many you add to the group.

Fighters don't scale due to the fact that they kill cruisers so fast when they get into range and adding more fighters doesn't help them get into range faster.  If we reduced the amount of time it took to get them into range, but scaled their damage so that one fighter killed one cruiser in about the same time it used to(or even slightly slower), then there would be more of an advantage to having more fighters(aka have them move 1.5-2x as fast and do ~60% of their current damage).

Another option that might help fix this(and help fix the fact that fighter upgrades are currently rather lackluster compared to bomber and cruiser upgrades), would be to have one of things that upgrade significantly in fighters be their speed as you go up in tiers.  Would be annoying in terms of grouping(since you wouldn't want to group tier III fighters with tier I or II anymore), but you could still use the different fighter tiers for different duties.

One more extreme fix would be to have them synergize and speed each other up so that a larger pack of fighters moves faster than a smaller pack.  It would be interesting, not sure how even I feel about this fix though. 

Honestly the fact that fighters aren't much faster than the heavily shielded bombers has always bothered me a little(though I can see it for balance reasons, that you don't want them to be able to outrun their counter too much).  But if you have the bombers defend any target the fighter might want to hit(as the ai usually does), being able to outrun them doesn't really help all that much.

[Haagenti II]

Note this is more of an early game analysis, and assumes that you somewhat outnumber the ai in the small scale(that you are hitting one or 2 guard posts at a time). 

Very interesting. Especially as I think that fighters are not the worst unit (bombers are).

When I started this game, I always ran out of metal. And it took a while to find out that that was because my bombers got killed and replaced. Losing all your I fighters means 17K metal and 17K crystal. Losing all your I bombers means 120K metal.

- At start I never fight when I "somewhat outnumber" the AI. I only fight when I decisively outnumber the AI
- Hitting two guard posts at start is a recipe for disaster
- It is the purpose of the fighter to die. They are so cheap (100+100) that they can be replaced. They cost less than 1/3rd of a cruiser or bomber.
- Bombers die like flies.

I start out with something like:
- Build 150 units in the ratio of 7 fighters to 1 special (usually parasite) to 2 Cruiser II (I always upgrade these at start). Zero bombers.
- With the resulting blob start killing AI. Make a blob with your fighters up front. Group move to AI blob. As soon as it comes towards you start retreating. Once the blob starts thinning out, halt your cruisers and move all your fighters forward, fly through the reduced enemy blob and waste his cruisers.
- I have few casualties, as many of his ships are killed by my retreating cruisers. Most of my casualties are fighters (cheap).
- Keep building units in that ratio, and when there are no more fighters to build, upgrade to Fighter II (150+150) and build all of these as well. In my experience you can never have too many.

I lose mainly cheap fighters. I lose no expensive bombers as I have none. I lose few expensive cruisers. That means that I can build more and outnumber the AI even more. This is at AI 8.

Lets take an early assault.  If you want to be able to hit a target and keep moving, you need to outnumber your target by a certain amount.  This lets you strongly keep losses down in both your bombers and your cruisers(assuming you have your bombers screen the cruisers to kill incoming fighters, then move them in to help kill turrets). 

5:1 is a good amount for outnumbering. I don't use bombers for turrets. Fighters and cruisers do nicely (albeit a little bit slower).

Are bombers worthless? No. They kill forcefields (though with many casualties if the forcefield is heavily manned). They are the only thing that kill (super)fortresses. They are very useful against fighter raids. Bombers III and IV are much sturdier and much more useful.

But (IMO) bombers suck at start as they die so easily (one cruiser missile does it) and from long range.

[Kjara]

Well, when I mean hitting 2 guard posts, its usually two that are close to each other, and I can manage to take out one wave before the next wave gets into range(its just aggro'ed before I can clear the turrets of the first wave). 

If you tend to use the bombers more as just anti-fighters(aka keep them with or slightly behind the cruisers--replace with your favorite special anti-fighter unit if you want, spiderbots actually work pretty well here), they are pretty safe, esp if you kill cruisers before they get into range of the bombers.   Enemy Cruisers can't hit your bombers till you hit 6k range, and your cruisers can hurt theirs at what, 7.7k or so? With enough of a force difference, cruisers slaughter cruisers(esp if you have mark II vs mark I or mark III vs mark II).
The losses are a bit higher if you move in to help kill the turrets after all the cruisers are dead, but not that much higher with mark II or higher bombers(mark I just don't have enough hp).

I tend to find a 4 cruiser to 1-1.5 bomber ratio at the start is all you need for anything but wormhole transitions.  Just keep the bombers with the cruisers, they have enough range to slaughter fighters before they get attacks off, and the cruisers do all of the heavy lifting.   The only reason to have fighters there is for starships and for wormhole entries.

Replacing your cheap fighters is more of a problem when you want to start deep raiding.  I think its easier to maintain a bomber/cruiser deep raiding fleet than a fighter/cruiser.

[Haagenti II]

I tend to find a 4 cruiser to 1-1.5 bomber ratio at the start is all you need for anything but wormhole transitions.  Just keep the bombers with the cruisers, they have enough range to slaughter fighters before they get attacks off, and the cruisers do all of the heavy lifting.   The only reason to have fighters there is for starships and for wormhole entries.

Somewhat later, I transition to more cruisers as well. But you can build fighters so quick at start. Also, I play a lot against Vicious Raider and fighters are the only thing that hurt Raiders

Replacing your cheap fighters is more of a problem when you want to start deep raiding.  I think its easier to maintain a bomber/cruiser deep raiding fleet than a fighter/cruiser.

In the past (before the supply patch) I would bring mobile builders and build a factory now and then when deep raiding. With some engineers, they crank out 170 fighters in a minute or two.

I'm not sure yet how the new supply thing affects deep raiding: have to experiment more. It can't be good though: as you have to build an orbital much more often. But when you build an orbital, you build a factory as well and then the fighters are again replaced in minutes.

[Kjara]

Ah, part of it might be the vicious raider bit.  I haven't tried too many of the ai types yet.  Forcing the ai to have a ship type that only fighters counter would help make fighters more useful (this isn't true with cruisers imo, since cruisers counter cruisers better than fighters counter fighters or bombers counter bombers).

[darke]

Random thoughts:

Upgrading the turrets to stop the player being swamped so much by the AI's huge waves hasn't been compensated on the player side which plays differently against the AI.

The increase in range of the turrets, and the number of ships being trapped by the turrets haven't been compensated in upgrades to the bombers. It's too easy to trap a huge number of bombers outside their attack range with a small number of tractor turrets so even the relatively small number of tractor turrets the AI has stops the bombers from being as effective as they should be, whereas the cruisers have no issue, even if they are doing less damage.

Fighters are supposed to be cheap to make, fast and disposable. Yet they have the same unit cap as the slower to make and much less disposable units. You'd be worried less about loosing lots of fighters each battle if you had more of them to start with. So if the unit cap was doubled or something like having a second fighter type that you could build as well (that would be covered by the general "fighter" upgrade tree so you don't have to pay knowledge twice) it would be better.

Maybe have a "twin fighter" type ship in addition to the original fighter that just has double health double damage and double cost in comparison to the original (and upgrades with the same knowledge spent on the regular fighter, or halve the cost of regular fighter upgrades and put it on this). It'll make it a little more sturdy, and have a little more punch to it's attack, on the other hand since it will probably die in one hit anyway it'll mean it's less valuable in attacking high-damage targets, and more valuable in attacking low-damage ones.

[x4000]

Honestly, I'm not concerned with making every ship exactly consistent.  Fighters are smallish cannon fodder, and that's what they are intended to be.  Adjusting their ship cap upwards is not something I am interested in doing, as they can be quite useful as it stands.  A few fighters just absolutely RIP through cruisers, which are otherwise insanely powerful units.  That's a very cheap counter to one of the strongest units in the game.

Having more ship classes in the future is of course planned, but I'm pretty happy with the balance of the current fighters at the moment.  They were weak for a long time, but with recent health upgrades they are a lot stronger.

darke -- yes, the issue of the bombers stuck in tractor beams that are too far away from them to reach is a problem, I'll make a separate issue of that.

[Magitek]

I wouldn't mind having a more durable heavyduty fighter type, a frigate perhaps? But I wouldn't call it necessary.
I personally don't have a great beef with fighters, if anything, its the unit cap on em. I can't field enough to have enough solid groups of em whereever i want

I'm not sure if you could really call bombers stuck in tractors a problem. You should be using those inexpensive fighters mentioned to soak up the tractors first, though i'll admit, I get annoyed seeing my bombers out of range stuck in tractors

[x4000]

Bear in mind that there are several other fighter classes, some of which are more durable:  Tachyon MicroFighters, Bulletproof Fighters, etc.

Even other classes like Space Planes, EtherJets, Armor Ships, and Tanks, can be seen as variations on fighters to a certain extent.  The base game probably has as many fighter-ish variants as are needed for a while, as a number of players have commented on in the past.  I think that the focus in the first expansion, at least, is going to be more bomber/cruiser-ish versions, other ships with completely new abilities, and also another melee ship or two.