There has been a lot of discussion lately about balancing the Strike Craft/Carriers and Its been observed the main problem is the un-counterable strike craft that focus fire on your capital ships making it go down in seconds. I thought there has to be a more elegant solution to just buffing Flaks, and while I do support a Flak buff and preventing Carriers from instantly replacing their SC without any cost, I also always wondered why SINs never had the elegant Interceptor.
Interceptor are designed for 1 thing: to destroy other strike craft, fighters and bombers in a Air-Superority mission. Their primarily mission and purpose is dirty messy dogfighting, taking the fight to the fighters/bombers and protecting the main capital ships from Strike Craft attacks. (There is some conflict with the real world definition of interceptors, but for the purpose of this thread we're going to take the Sci-Fi definition of specialized dogfighters.)
Bajorian Interceptor, Star Trek ; Colonial Viper Mark VII, Battlestar Galactica
The Interceptor is designed to be a class below the fighter and the bombers. Fighters being generally multipurpose can still take out capital ships by focus fire, while bombers will take them out in 2-3 passes (1 late game), Interceptors will do close to zero damage to ships larger than a LRM and cannot take out a HC or Capital Ships; they are meant purely for taking down other SC. In the spectrum of strike craft balance:
low Lethality against ships high
| ---------------------------------- | --------------------------------------|
Interceptor (none) Fighter (moderate) Bomber (Very high)
♣ ♦ ♥
WING COMMANDER Strike Craft.
♣ - The Bearcat Interceptor, developed as a pure interceptor customized to destroy other fighters
♦ - The Hellcat V Multipurpose Fighter
♥ - The Shrike Torpedo Bomber
The Thunderbolt Star Fury from Babylon 5, a remarkable improvement from the original Star Fury, and excelling at a Interceptor Role against enemy fighters.
In terms of lethality against Strike Craft, the scale is below.
low Lethality against SC high
| ---------------------------------- | ------------------------------------ |
Bomber (none) Fighter (multipurpose) Interceptor (high)
Star Wars
The underrated Y-Wing Well-known X-Wing A-Wing, fastest ship in the Rebel Alliance
In almost all popular Science-Fiction we see Interceptor craft. In Battlestar Galactica, Vipers don't attack Cylon basestars, they take out the raiders (bombers do that) one could argue there are only Interceptors and Bombers in depicted battles on Battlestar Galactica. In Star-Wars we have esp. designed A-Wings and Tie Interceptors to have a more specialized role in dog-fighting. In real life, the F-16 (a interceptor) is considered to be better than the multipurpose F-14 Tomcat in air to air combat and is the primarily first choice for such roles.
Why we need Interceptors in SINs
The problem with just having fighters and bombers, is when the enemy spams a lot of fighters, they are effective against large ships as well as other fighters. In a fighter and fighter war, the person with the most fighters (Flak withstanding) wins hence to effectively counter his fighters you just need more fighters than he does. What if you only make SC to begin with to counter his SC? You end up having to dump a significant amount of your fleet just to counter 1 aspect of his fleet. This problem is solved with Interceptors. Interceptors will engage in dog-fights with enemy fighters and effectively protect your own ships, and if you are relying on a melee shp-to-ship combat strategy you can blunt his fighter/bombers with your own interceptors. Note, Interceptors will still take losses from fighters, but fighters will need to fight at at least a 2/3 to 1 advantage to defeat interceptors. The cost-effectiveness of Interceptors will make those 1 or 2 SC slots on regular capital ships much more useful as now you could load up on Interceptors to better protect your capital ships against enemy SC despite being outnumbered. Interceptors will receive a 75% huge penalty received dmg penalty from enemy fighter/interceptors for targetting bombers if in the presence of their own escorts. (If the player micros to target the enemy bombers instead of enemy fighters/Int erceptors)
Interceptors will offer more and better Tactics in SINs.
People will now have to use ALL THREE TYPES of SC to achieve the best results. He will now need to have the correct ratios of Interceptors to counter other Interceptors, Fighters to support your own Interceptors, and escorting bombers while also doing some dmg to enemy ships, all the while protecting your own bombers which will now be the primarily attack SC. To ensure, Interceptors do not annhilate bomber SC and effectively moving them from the game, make them target enemy Interceptors and fighters first before they target the bombers, add to the fact Interceptors cannot dmg enemy ships larger than a LRM (and even for them they will do crappy dmg per sec) it makes Interceptors fit in perfectly with the SINs game. This adds more dept to SINs and more strategic planning in the allocation of SC to Carrier groups.
Yes this will make the counter table more complicated, but thats what happens when you add tactics and dept to a game.
I'd gladly appreciate any suggestions, and I really hope Ironclad takes a serious look at my proposal. (Dorian)
Now Enjoy the deadly Imperial TIE interceptors:
OBJECTION & REBUTTAL COLUMN
—"fighters already fill this role..."
No they don't, a fighter vs. a fighter will be equal. Fighters are significantly good at destroying ships, even capital ships leading many players to make purly all fighter SC for their carrier fleets because essentially as I mentioned you can only counter him by having more fighters then he does which if he is going for a pure SC-spam fleet and you aren't it makes it very difficult to counter fighters. With the addition of Interceptors Fighters will again be even more crucial to serve the role as Escort Fighters protecting bombers and dog-fighting Interceptors.
—"Bombers will be obsolete because now they have 3 counters" (assuming Flak is buffed)
No, they won't. Firstly Flak should counter all SC, regardless of if they are bombers/fighters/Interceptors. Also Interceptors will only be able to target bombers with impunity only if the bombers do not have their own fighter/Interceptor escort to get slaughtered which happens already anyway if bombers don't have fighter backup against enemy fighters. Bombers need escorts, is that something new? If you do escort them, then there is little difference with the addition of interceptors apart from now you need to tactically manage your ratios more. Which is a good thing.
—This will make everyone go back to LRF spam because the interceptors will take out all the strike craft that can take out the LRF.
No, it won't. The Interceptors will still be able to take out LRFs pretty decently, Interceptors will not be able to damage any ships larger than LRFs. Furthermore, everyone won't spam Interceptors because they can't damage large ships at all. Furthermore Fighters will still be able to defeat Interceptors in mass and if they mix in a few of their own Interceptors they will surely win.
— "Why not have the fighter changed to the stats of the interceptor? That way fighters can't take down crusiers or caps."
No, that is a bad idea because the fighter does have an important role right now. Also that'll completely make the bombers obsolete and un-tendable. Fighters should be able to take out heavier ships while being able to fight interceptors in a multi-purpose role. Also just replacing the fighter with the interceptor is limiting tactical options again to two types of strike craft.
—I played a game last night where I was going against [_] Tax in a 2v3 (my two allies were playing another [_] player). He had more fighters then me and had air superiority, even when I ended up with more physical carriers as I lacked the AM to replace the SC. The game was largely a stalemate with my egg leveling up under a repair cloud while I pumped out LF and LRMs and tried to kill his carriers. It wasn't his fighters that I was worried about killing my cap - it was the assailants or HCs!!! Due to tactics, I was able to last. An interceptor would not have made a difference as we would have both spammed them and ended up in the same situation...
This is a Straw Man Argument but in any event Yes, it would have helped. With interceptors included it would have ALL mattered on the ratio of Interceptors/Fighters/Bombers. If you had a higher ratio of intercepters then you would have won allowing some of your bombers to damage his carriers if you didn't you would have had to change your ratio, this is called adding tactics to the game. In this event YOU WERE BOTH CARRIER SPAMMING, in addition to letting players depend on the ratio, Interceptors would allow non-carrier spammers to use Interceptors to protect their ships. Should this not be an option?
I have to agree with spiral here. While I understand what you are trying to do, it doesn't fit the current game mechanics. Everyone who is crying that fighters are borken do not understand the game enough.
1) Strike Craft require AM to build. As spiral said, remove that AM with the LF ability, or run it down to 0 and the carrier cannot reproduce a new SC.
2) SC decay once the host dies. So send LF after the carriers. Fighters are not very effective vs them. However they murder LRM. LRM kills LF every well. So target the enemy LRM with your fighters and the carriers with your LF.
3) A number of capital ships have an ability to kill SC. The Kol flak burst is VERY effective. Add in somethign like the akkan range/accuracy boost or ceilo and it can be even more lethal.
4) As spiral said - 100 fighters will kill a cap. But so will 100 LF, 100 LRM or 100 scouts for that matter. It is a weight of numbers issue, not a balance issue. I can beat a 10 year old in a fight easy. I can probably beat 2 or 3 at once even. Can I beat 100 coming at me at one. No. The numbers are too many. Look what happened to Kramer in the Seinfeld episode. He was the best in the class and still went down in the back ally to the kids.
I played a game last night where I was going against [_] Tax in a 2v3 (my two allies were playing another [_] player). He had more fighters then me and had air superiority, even when I ended up with more physical carriers as I lacked the AM to replace the SC. The game was largely a stalemate with my egg leveling up under a repair cloud while I pumped out LF and LRMs and tried to kill his carriers. It wasn't his fighters that I was worried about killing my cap - it was the assailants or HCs!!! Due to tactics, I was able to last. An interceptor would not have made a difference as we would have both spammed them and ended up in the same situation...
Oh and I following the wiki link to interceptor - found the following text
Both types of aircraft sacrifice performance in the air superiority fighter role (ie fighting enemy fighter aircraft) by tuning their performance for either fast climbs or high speeds, respectively. The result is that interceptors often look very impressive on paper, typically outrunning, outclimbing and outgunning less specialized fighter designs. Yet they tend to fare poorly in combat against those same "less capable" designs due to limited maneuverability.
The same could be said to you. There are several links that discuss the different tactics to be use against this spam. If you cant be bothered to study and learn to use these tactics then what does that say about you.
Now I am not trying to flame you or anybody else. Because applying the idea of intercepters is just as challenging.
What I am trying to say is both of you have good points. If you are refusing to acknowledge his points then YOU are the troll .
stop yelling at him he is saying what he thinks.
just because it is against the majority doesnt mean anything
BUT as i said before this is a good idea and range for strike craft is a good idea. intersepters should also act as bomber escourts with fighters acting as close fleet support that would stop the spam of one type of strike craft because you would need all 3
Ok I have no problem with Interceptors at all I'm all for the idea but alot of the ships in the game will have to be reworked in order for them to be a functioning unit. Fore mostly Bombers and LRFs simple because all other ships only have 1-2 counters and they will have 1-3 depending on whether or not interceptors will attack light frigates or any frigate at all. Flak will need a huge buff preferably one that specificly makes it alot stronger against interceptors to give the interceptor a reasonable counter.
I have said in other post what needs to be done like in reply #13
enemy1 builds some LRFs = enemy2 counters with carriers with only fighter squadrons
enemy1 counters with carriers with interceptors = enemy2 counters with flak and LFs to counter carriers
enemy1 counters flak with LFs and equally counters carriers with LFs (already has LRFs to counter LFs) = enemy 2 coounters LFs with LRFs
enemy1 builds Heavy cruisers to counter = enemy2 builds bombers and support vessels to improve survival of frigates.
enemy1 builds interceptors and fighters to counter plus support vessels = enemy2 builds heavies and Interceptors and fighters.
I could go on But you can see why I think interceptors will work if all the other ships are reworked to flow with them especially bombers which are now hard pressed having 3 counters.
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Honestly I have no Idea where you are getting 80% from but I can say there are many people on this forum who have never lost to a carrier spammer including myself.
I'm sorry if you and others find it difficult to handle strike craft and carriers but I find it rather simple.
first yes Fighters are equal to fighters. you can only beat fighters by having either fighters or flak.
but your looking at it in the wrong direction. Its not he Fighters you have to beat its whats creating them the carrier itself you have to target then proceed to eliminated the left over strike craft.
By using Light frigates with their abilities you can mitigate the amount of strike craft your opponet can produce since Carriers under attack and with no antimatter can't produce strike craft at a fast rate. So If you have a few carriers and flak protecting your ships while they go about destroying the enemy carriers then you have basically begun countering the attack.
I have a thread geared toward addressing this weakness against carrier spam and other carrier combos that many players use and beat daily on ICO. Its in the strategy section.
I have fought and won matches against carrier spammers who had over 100 carriers. So I'm going to assume since 80% of people say that carrier spam is difficult to beat that I'm doing something extroadinary and its my fault for believing that other players can easily do what I can do.
Thanks Spiralblitz for using a proper form of debate (yes there are proper forms). Please CreditSuisse pay attention to all his (I am assuming male) words and dont start a flame war because someone disagrees with you. This started out a beautiful post. I would hate to see it get ruined.
I said in the thread topic that Interceptors will auto-target enemy fighters/Interceptors first. Interceptors will only be able to target bombers once the bombers' fighter/interceptor escorts are taken out.
I've said this. Interceptors can be countered by other interceptors too in any event.
yes and that is exactly what I'm showing you. the two opponents build interceptors to counter each others fighters and other interceptors. Is there something wrong with that.
That's great for the SP people out there playig AI. What happens when someone is playing MP and the opponent micros the interceptor? Does it ignore the targetting instructions given. Or have you just created a concept that works when controlled by AI but can be abused by a human? What happens if you eliminate the fighter/interceptor screen, start attacking the bombers and a replacement fighter/interceptor appears from the carrier on the other side of the system? Do they stop attacking, run accross the grave well and kill that one ship, only to return to the bombers, but stop half way and turn around due to another fighter appearing? You've just created a situation where a microing player keeps a number if his fighters docked and only launches them as cannon fodder to lure the interceptors back from the bombers.
Incidently - Interceptors as per that wiki link are designed to take out bombers.
An interceptor aircraft (or simply interceptor) is a type of fighter aircraft designed specifically to intercept and destroy enemy aircraft, particularly bombers, usually relying on great speed
This idea is AWESOME!!!!!!!
You ahve my full support (for what its worth )
You mean - like building fighters to counter the enemy fighters AND bombers???
Maybe spiral does know what he is talking about here....
Absolutely Brilliant
I would love to see this idea implemented into the game.
This would add a whole new level to the air superiority game and would prevent the game from becoming a "spam more than they can" kinda thing.
Devs should really take a close look at this.
I'm gonna say this again. It was in the original topic post.
Interceptors will receive a 75% huge penalty received dmg penalty from enemy fighter/interceptors for targetting bombers if in the presence of their own escorts. (If the player micros to target the enemy bombers instead of enemy fighters/Interceptors)
There is also Spiral's idea of making Interceptors slightly more vulernable to Flak then the others to give them an added counter.
I thought about additional strikecraft types, but it becomes very complicated. We now have 3 different squads, yes there is an advent squad that turns into mines. If you add addtional strikecraft then fighters would no longer be fighters, sicne you would have to remove their ability to kill other strikecraft and make then antilight variant assault craft.
Also it woudl be hard to balance 3 squads mroe so than 2 squad types. If you look at it now, as soon as one type is superior it will gain 100% usage over the otehr. That is why we never use bombers now, because fighters are slightly more useful. Same would be true with 3 squads. If there was one squad that was jsut awesome at killing other strikecraft, people would use 100% of those, and just make fewer carriers, and load upt heri fleet with otehr damage dealers like LRMs.
this is why I suggested Flak be the ultimate counter to interceptors to aviod that return to LRF spam.
Then so what? It'd make sense since Interceptor's are not armored as they are built for speed. Its likely they won't have the hull points + armor plating that regular fighters/bombers have since they don't need the protection.
Let, the Interceptor be slightly more vulernable to Flak then the fighters/bombers and now we have a good idea, that all in all deserves to be implemented.
Edited for flaming. I need to take a chill pill, I apologize.
What defines being within the presence of their own escorts? Same grav well, within X range units??? Not workable. You still have the issue that they stray out of range if it is the second and then the stats change...
You are a rage-o-holic aren't you? I was not making an argument, I was making a statement.
Some people do not seem to know what interceptors even were. I speak in the past tense because "interceptors" have not existed as a seperate class of warplane since the late '80s. Air-superiority fighters have taken on their role.
Interceptors were NOT dogfighters. That is what fighters are for.
Interceptors were purely anti-bomber aircraft with poor agility. They had NO air-superiority capabilities.
Adding in interceptors in this game will make no sense because the role is already filled by fighters. In fact, and-game statistics already refer to fighters as interceptors.
Firstly in science-fiction Interceptors are anti-fighter craft units like the TIE interceptor, I don't know what the specifics are in real life but it doesn't matter - theme fits well with SINs and is appropriate.
Furthermore I've already discussed at lenght, why FIGHTERs do not fill this role. Please read the Objections & Rebuttal Section in the original post beforehand.
Also to the question about the 75% recieved dmg penalty, it applies to the entire grav well. We know this can be done as in the beta 3 change the carrier received a build time penalty in the same grav well as enemies. If anyone has a better suggestion I'm open to any ideas!
Then why did you post this???
As Jule said - they have been made obsolete and existed to get to incoming bombers very quickly, shoot them down and return to base...
You don't seem to know what you are asking/arguing for, other then something to fix SC because you have an issue with them.
I find this post very interessant.
Thank you Credit suisse for your post and magnificient images..
I support this idea of a third category of strike craft myself but as your post is better documented I rally you.. But I support this idea to get a third category of strike craft mainly because it would an additionnal balance of power, and not because I find current strike craft unbalanced.
Unfortunately, with entrenchement, I disagree about overpower of strike craft. I'll create a post this afternoon about my point of view. But there are a lot of abilities/building that simply leave strike craft speechless.
Edit : about your comparison to real life..In fact MAIN issue of F-14 TOMCAT is to be ONLY one interceptor...it nearly doesn't have any bombing capability. That's why it's now replaced by F18E in US navy, that is a true multirole aircraft.and F16 is also a multirole jet....you mixed things up...F14 : interceptorF16/F18E : multirole jet
You're really really wrong. On all levels. I won't get into a nitpicking about the qualities of strike craft because that is such an red herring.
Everyone else, This is what Hack just did: "He criticized a contradiction in the wiki about interceptors" Then because I didn't pay attention to that contradiction about some random "fact" that had no bearing on my proposal, he dismisses the entire thread saying QUOTE: You don't seem to know what you are asking/arguing for, other then something to fix SC because you have an issue with them.
This is called a straw-man fallacy. Straw man - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hack is simply wrong. The interceptor is not being added to balance strike craft, its being added to add dept and tactics to the game with the added bonus of letting people who build strike craft just to counter other strike craft a more effective option. Hack's entire post was nitpicking on something that not even part of the idea, then makes a personal attack on me while at the same time suggesting this entire thread is wrong. Hack, that is shameless demagogue tactics right there.
Hack, if you're planning to be a demagogue full of logical flaws, please just stay out of this thread.
Credit Suisse, I support your proposal to increase strike craft diversity it would a good tactical addition.
And Hack78, I share the same idea as Credit Suisse but I don't have any problem about SC in Sins..
Let's stay on topic please..
Interceptors would be nice, and I think its a good idea. SC are lacking in roles now, and they are oversimplified.
Another addition I'd like to see would be Strikecraft stances.
Fighters:
CAP - Your fighters prioritize bombers, but stay close to the fleet/building. Useful for keeping a fleet safe while passing through a system.
Escort - Fighters stay near bombers, prioritizing other fighters. This allows your fighters to keep enemy aircover away from your bombers.
Intercept - Fighters behave just like they do now, intercepting bombers and other forces.
Bombers:
Antifleet - Bombers focus on enemy fleets, targetting whatever it does the best damage to.
Fleet support - Bombers stay near their capship, targetting whatever is nearby.
Strike - Bombers prioritize buildings
Do this on a fleet or a per ship basis. This will make SC more flexible, and easier to manage, both offensively and defensively.
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