Matrix Games Forums

Hi All,

I have been playing the game for a week or so now and am really enjoying it. However there is something that I can't figure out. That is how on earth do I survive against fighters when I am in a frigate.

I have been commanding one of the frigates in the Shadow destroyer group in the highland campaign. And I'm not having much trouble taking down capital ships. But whenever I am going against a carrier group I get aced by a squadron of fighters that rolls in and peppers me with antiship missiles. It only takes a handfull of hits and my nice shiny frigate is now a rapidly expanding ball of gas.

Am I right in thinking that PDBs can't target these missiles? If so is there anything you can do to protect yourself?

I have tried attacking the fighters as soon as I see them. But the MK7s don't seem to be effective enough to kill them before they get withing their firing range and then its game over...

I hope that someone out there has something I can try to keep my ass covered

Ps I'm only a LT Commander so I can't fly anything bigger than a Frigate yet.

Run..  Keep an eye on your navigation window for fighters heading your way. When you see some, set a course in the opposite direction and hit the autoflight. If you find yourself being fired on, hit the quantum drive and get away. Theres really no way to win against a swarm of anti-ship missiles except to be somewhere else quickly.. Frigates have a quantum drive right? I kinda went right for destroyers when my rank was sufficient..

Well, frigates are pretty fragile, and to be honest I'm not sure about what they're actually supposed to do, and as such, why anyone bothers to build them. Pretty much the best thing to do when assault fighters turn up is to order your ships to quantum out.
 
Even in a cruiser.
 
You won't hurt them (well maybe slightly in a frigate, but not at all in destroyers), and they really will hurt you.
 
Admittedly this is very much like modern fleet warfare in that all surface ships are horribly vulnerable to aircraft strikes, only surface craft have at least the capacity to protect the fleet against submarines (which are the only things which aircraft arn't actually very good against).
 
As far as I can tell in the game, cruisers, destroyers and frigates are built owing to corrupt practices or simple sheer inertia - they'd be far better off building small carriers.

The problem comes from the inability to target missles wit point-defence weapons. Hell, point defence was intended to protect against incoming missles. Fighters are quite overpowered as it is,you should need mass fighter attacks on a ship to overwhelm its point-defence to score kills!

Frigates function is to screen capitol ships from fighters,missles and/or anything else. A FF is a fragile escort or scout at best.

Well I guess that other than running there isn't much I can do then

It would be nice if Frigates being intended as an anti-fighter platform were more effective in that role. Heck even if their PDBs were only partially effective against fighter missiles it would be nice.

Maybe flack guns or something would be a nice addition.

Till then I will try running

Actually, no - from experience, we know that fighter missles have always been permitted to go through the PDB. Torps are what the PDB protects against, and they are really powerful should your PDB miss them or be disabled.
 
This is why you have the lasers - so you can create a gap in their pdb coverage.
 
I agree with you that FF should be there to screen against Assault missiles - but by being half decent against fighters would be my prefered way - essentially a mobile, quantum capable Sam/Flak battery, fitted with slow charging capacity based afterburners so it could potentially move to intercept a single flight, but have trouble if the attack is a feint...
 
Unfortunately they're not, unless someone has a better idea of what they're actually for other than their current "Target drone" status.

Is there a mod that makes capital ships not hopeless against fighter swarms?
I found it cheap to destroy most ships in a bomber wing in only one strike before anything can even return fire

Salutations,

I suggest you check out the Wasp Frigate from my Cartel mod. [;)]



Fighter screening.... you bet. This FF is armed to perform its assigned mission. This wasp definately has a sting. [;)]

Not invincible but it will take a lot of planes down with it. Which is what a frigate should do.

Hi,

Missiles are the ONE thing that CANNOT be targeted in the simulation except by manually shooting it down. Not easy.

They can be DECOYED though. ie the fighters decoy flare/drone.

Hi, thanks for your answer.
But cap ships using decoy would look weird I suppose.
Nice ship design anyway, I will give your mod a try.
Where is your avatar from? It reminds me of an old game, but I couldn't say which.

"Where is your avatar from? It reminds me of an old game, but I couldn't say which."
 
Quiet frankly, I don't remember where I downloaded that .gif from. I just thought it was interesting.
 
He doesn't have any hair either. [:)]

Hey  Have you made a cap ship with missile decoy parameters?
Just wondering if you were successful, I tried it once and it didn't work.
You could always replace the flare with a 3d model of a decoy, with a good eject parameter.
If it works that is.[&:]
 
Another way is to redef all the missile weps to a drone weapon, so pdbs can target them too.
 
T

"Hey  Have you made a cap ship with missile decoy parameters?"
 
I've tried... but to no avail. Missiles simply are not selectable as a target in the simulation. The Decoy flare is tied to fighter type craft.

I suspect that the decoys are very limited in their effective range versus missiles and it is hard coded in the simulation.

I set up one on one of my frigates and tried to defeat my Lance missiles. I could launch the flares but the result was No Effect. [:(] 

Even deploying a flak type weapon would prove fruitless because it still couldn't target a missile and thereby explode when in proximity.
 
After a day of experimenting... I reluctently gave up.

Hmm... good to know. I think for my mod all missiles are going to be programmed as drones.

[:)]  You can try to change the fighters ASM to a drone so you can shoot those down with your pdbs.
I 've also changed the MK7 interceptors to drones as well. I 've also made a "MK6" that is a missile,but targets only fighters or drones. And made a MK8 "drone" to target capships only.  I hated the way your interceptors would target incoming torps, but as soon as a capship comes into range it targets them instead and you let all the torps through. Basically wanted two seperate interceptors systems.
 
T

Commanders and modders,

While it is true that our pdb weapons can't target weapons designated as missiles, the platforms that carry the missiles CAN be targeted and destroyed.

ergo... we should concentrate on creating defensive weapons that can reach out and touch fighter and attack aircraft, with ill intent, before they can release their harpoon missiles.

I think negating the missile weapon catagory is not the best answer. Of course, if you are creating a mod that has no missiles at all, that's another thing.

In our past real wars, planes carried bombs or torpedoes to strike ships. The defender didn't think about actually shooting down the bombs or torpedoes. They targeted the planes. The planes in Starshatter can be targeted and destroyed and that would include their deadly cargo.

This may not help much in the simulations campaign missions, but when we build our own, we should include forces or weapons with the capability of intercept incoming waves of fighter or attack aircraft. Maybe not stop all of them, but some. Especially, if modders will be remaining in the Starshatter Galaxy.

It's a fine balance but I think it can be done with some thoughful mission creation. Missiles, after all, are not invincible. They can be destroyed BEFORE they are launched.[;)]

Keep Em Flying.

Can you reachout and touch them before they get in range of the Cap ships? Hey,now there is a reason for FF's! But can they live long enough to do the job?

Not with stock weapons except for other friendly aircraft.

I created a MK8 interceptor system which only targets fighters. I gave its missiles a 65 km range and increased their speed from 5,000 ms to 6,000 ms.

I'm still experimenting, but doing these simple improvement should make being a fighter pilot more difficult. Any planes getting through them deserve to launch their missiles. he he.
[:D]

Another change could be not to let fighter/bombers unload all of their ordonance at all. That would force them to stay longer in the vicinity in order to do their full damage.

ORIGINAL: wdboyd


In our past real wars, planes carried bombs or torpedoes to strike ships. The defender didn't think about actually shooting down the bombs or torpedoes. They targeted the planes. The planes in Starshatter can be targeted and destroyed and that would include their deadly cargo.

I agree with you that targeting the planes should be the main way to improve anti fighter missiles. But some modern day navy ships do have last ditch gattling style weapons to shoot down incomming anti ship missiles.

I think it would be cool to have some sort of last ditch short range point defence that can take down the smaller missiles. Perhaps a projectile system with limited ammo. Once the ammo is gone then your ship is fully open to missile attack.

Does the Starshatter Engine support making projectile based cannons rather than energy weapons?