Post
Wed Jan 30, 2013 1:09 am
#54
by Slevan
The idea is cool for simplicity and ease of landing, but I'm a little skeptical about actually slowing down the fighters within the field simply to make ships feel bigger. It's just one of those things that could really trash fighters, like some people were suggesting, make a massive wake field, get a ton of anti-fighter weaponry and devastate them before they really got close enough to threaten you. Or even if you couldn't expand the field, making a ship move slower at its most vulnerable point, (close to the enemy flak and fighter escorts) seems like a good way to lose a lot of fighters. Personally I don't care much for fighters beyond having a ton of them to protect my cap ships from other fighters, harass their carriers and target the engines and gun emplacements of cap ships, but I know other people are big on them which is cool. I just don't want this turning into something people use to say capital ships should have a size limit because others they'll get so big fighters will get too slow or whatever.
Rather than physically slow down a fighter because it is in proximity to a cap ship to make it feel bigger, one, let capital ships just be gargantuan, maybe have a tonnage or length cap you can put on prior to starting the game if you don't want huge ones, and two, have different thrusters for fighters. Have a intercept thruster you use to close on a destination, one that's a fair bit faster, but you couldn't maneuver with in combat without splattering your pilot with the g-force, then have combat thrusters which you can switch to mid combat allowing for rapid maneuvering, and if you want to gain some ground or get away you can switch between during combat, allowing you to charge in towards capital ships with a ton of fighters at massive speed making tracking hard, switch thrusters as you fire weapons, maneuver in close to the ship and essentially slingshot around the hull then switch back and jet out of there, hit and run style?
The enemy of my enemy dies next.