Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: stuart3

Sounds interesting. Can you make the warships travel in closer proximity to the ships they are escorting? They often seem to follow quite some distance behind them. I have often thought that that they aren't close enough for effective protection.

Unfortunately I can't modify this (as far as I know), but the problem should be negligible as fighter changes means now escort carriers can have proper coverage. Also, I'll be messing around with weapon ranges, conceptually the shortest ranged weapon has a reach between 500-700, this should alleviate such issues. Also the new emphasis on sub-light and tactical mobility probably means I'll also have to increase propulsion output (still working out by how much.) If everything goes fine, lighter craft should be relevant again.

I have found through my years playing is that if you leave frigates and escorts out of fleets and let them act individually, they will behave with pretty decent intelligence. Escorts will escorts freighters or miners, and go in to fight off attacks on stations while frigates will aggressively hunt enemy ships and stations. They will tend to take quite a few losses when left to their own devices, but on the whole they perform reasonably well.

ORIGINAL: Overlord015

I'm building a mod (which may never see the light of day) with Icemania's AI mod and Bacon Mod as a base. Bacon's mod adds gravity wells to systems, this means pirates and the AI can definitely threaten shipping in the traditional sense since now ships will be spending a whole lot of time at sub-light speeds.

Another option for defense from fighters is to arm the freighters themselves. My mod allows up to 10 weapons per private ship.