The Logistics And Practicality Of Fighters

[Killer_Rabbit]

Recently I have had discussions on a number of threads that conclude that fighters will be the meta of space combat compared to larger ships. However given that in order to make an effective fighter you would likely need to sacrifice armour and fuel in order to allow it to dogfight it's unlikely that far beyond a deployment platform such as a station or carrier that fighters would be able to be deployed as they would require a lot of fuel to get far out as well as the logistical support of replacement parts and armour if damaged as well as the fact fighters are not going to carry extra ammunition and fuel beyond what is in the immediate magazine and fuel tank. As such for factions to carry out long range reconnaissance and patrols the logistics needed to supply a fighter wing would require a lot of effort as not only would they use a lot of ammo and fuel, replacement parts such as armour, weapons or generators would have to not be supplied to other ships.

Then there is the problem of defence for the carrier. Since the carrier is a large investment of resources then enemy factions would obviously want to heavily cripple or destroy it if not try to salvage parts for their own ships as such there would need to be an escort fleet of dedicated AA ships, frigates and destroyers to act as pickets in front of the main fleet as well as support vessels to supply the fleet as well as possibly mobile mining platforms to collect and refine resources to support the fleet while it is moving if it is far away from a supply station. Given all these factors deploying a carrier fleet would require a large amount of effort and resources and as such given their vulnerability and resources requirements it is unlikely that they would be deployed to deep space reconnaissance and patrols which would likely be filled by a squadron or two led by a heavily armed cruiser or destroyer which while still needing resources would require less than a carrier fleet as such would fighters be deployed much outside of large fleet battles and station defence.

 

[Erwin_Tesla]

With the Empirial fighter (i think) using lasers it doesn't use any ammunition. It just takes power directly from the reactor. The reactor wouldn't be strained since it is a small ship. The biggest threat to fighters logistically is propellant like you mentioned. Fighters will mostly be using lasers due to not relying on ammunition I believe.

 

[Killer_Rabbit]

But the trouble with lasers is while you don't need ammunition draining the battery of the fighter is not going to be great as the fighter will be designed to be as small and light as possible so you will want as many systems as possible running off one or two generators

 

[blablagame]

But the trouble with lasers is while you don't need ammunition draining the battery of the fighter is not going to be great as the fighter will be designed to be as small and light as possible so you will want as many systems as possible running off one or two generators

If you have some batteries the Lasers and the systems can feed off of that and the reactors will fuel them back up, if you're not using your lasers they take like 4 seconds or something for one battery to charge back up from what I've seen, so if you have a reactor and some batteries you should be fine right?

 

[[QS] Combustible]

Long range fighters aren’t too hard to make, so I think they will definitely be used everywhere. Not everyone wants to join a huge faction just so they can serve as a repairman on a carrier. They want to fight, so they will get a long range fighter and pirate for a bit.

 

[Killer_Rabbit]

Long range fighters aren’t too hard to make, so I think they will definitely be used everywhere. Not everyone wants to join a huge faction just so they can serve as a repairman on a carrier. They want to fight, so they will get a long range fighter and pirate for a bit.

With the long range fighters used for piracy where would you store the stuff you looted cos if you make it too big its not much of a fighter

 

[[QS] Combustible]

Bring in a heavy hauler afterwards.

 

[Recatek]

Even reasonably small ships can fly for hours, days even with efficient thrusters and proper generator management. For your given play session length (usually a few hours, barring the diehards), even a very stripped down fighter has more than enough uptime to get out, do a thing, and get back within that timeframe.

Large ships won't be viable until armor is an order of magnitude more effective for its weight. As it stands they're currently just sitting ducks without the survivability to compensate. Most ship weapon shots penetrate multiple layers of armor, so why even bother when you can focus instead on not being hit in the first place via speed and size.

 

[Dommy]

Most ship weapon shots penetrate multiple layers of armor, so why even bother when you can focus instead on not being hit in the first place via speed and size.

Game is still in CA, there's still only one armour type in public servers. No reason to plan stuff according to how its in a testing server with limited stuff, if we're going to hypothesise large space battles, we might as well assume that when they're plausible and have a reason to be, then there's going to be heavier armour.
This "because it doesn't exist in CA even though devs have said it will exist means it wont ever exist and we cant hypothesise about it" attitude is really bad. Though now, yes, in CA, now, (maybe not in EA, maybe in EA) size must be small and speed must be fast.

 

[CalenLoki]

BTW using several layers of thin decorative plating (3cm each) is way more mass efficient than standard 12cm plating. Thick slabs are the worst.
So with proper armouring technique you can already do some fast and tanky designs.

But yeah - better materials will be game changing.

 

[Killer_Rabbit]

In one of the combat streams one of the devs said the meta in ca at the moment is small fast ships as there is no good armour but once thicker armour comes in you will see bigger ships

 

[Joshua]

I seen that some of you have stated that the carrier is a bad move. In normal military strategy carriers can contain many small fighters, meaning more than one ship for the enemy faction to deal with. Not just that, but a carrier means that the fighters do not fly far away from each other, giving well defense for the carrier and the fighters. The only downside to the carrier is, you will need to have more than one person on the ship in order for the defense to properly work. However if you have weapons on the carrier and star fighters, your defense would likely be very hard to match. The attacker can only focus on so many targets, it would be very unwise to attack a carrier with a team of people aboard. Technically the armor can be layered, so even now you can have thick armor for you ships agreeing with CalenLoki.