Weapons and Stuff

[scbfromnc]

New to the game and trying to understand:
1) Why would you choose Fighters/Bombers instead of only using beams or torps? For ex., beams have similar range and dmg but faster fire rate and faster speed vs a bomber. There must be an advantage to adding F/B to the mix that I'm missing.
2) Do countermeasures work to protect against all weapons or just missiles?
3) Does target tracking work only for beams or all weapons?

[CaptainBipto1]

From my limited experience fighters and bombers may have good luck engaging far off targets.

[Aeson]

1) Why would you choose Fighters/Bombers instead of only using beams or torps? For ex., beams have similar range and dmg but faster fire rate and faster speed vs a bomber. There must be an advantage to adding F/B to the mix that I'm missing.

As CaptainBipto1 suggested, fighters and bombers are fairly good standoff weapons. They have the added advantage of being a valid target for enemy weapons fire, which means that if a vessel uses e.g. a Phaser Lance to shoot a fighter you won't need to worry about that Phaser Lance shooting at your real ships for another 4.2 seconds (exact amount of time that a weapon is taken out of the picture varies based upon weapon rate of fire; something like a Titan Beam will barely be affected, while a Phaser Lance will have a more significant loss of effectiveness due to wasting shots on something like a fighter).

Fighters and bombers also have the advantage of being the primary weapon of carriers, which are a class of ship you can build after the third tech in the fighter line (advanced fighters? maybe tactical interceptors? I don't recall at the moment) and which can be built 50% larger than your current ship size restriction as long as at least 40% of the design size is dedicated to fighter bays, so if you really want that over-sized capital ship, these are where it's at (unless you want to play with Resupply Ships as your over-sized capital ships, which is also a valid choice as those can be much larger than carriers can be and only need to dedicate 20% of their design size to cargo bays, docking bays, and gas extractors).

2) Do countermeasures work to protect against all weapons or just missiles?

I'm not positive, but I think it affects all weapons. Regardless, it's also only a size-2 component or something like that. You're not really going to be sacrificing much to squeeze that into your design, and you only need one as they don't stack (two is better for the sake of redundancy).

3) Does target tracking work only for beams or all weapons?

I think it works for unguided weapons (blasters, phasers, rail guns, graviton beams, ion cannons, and maybe the area weapons) but not for guided weapons (missiles and torpedoes); I also doubt that the ship-only version would apply to fighters carried by the vessel. I'm not positive, though. Nevertheless, this is once again a component where you're not sacrificing much to include it into your design, as it's only another couple of size units.

[CaptainBipto1]

I like my resupply ships
OP asked about fighter/bombers. Does anyone here use the missile bombers? Iirc long range torpedo ones are slower/powerful, and shorter range missiles are faster/less powerful? Does it matter...

Point defense weapons are the best vs. fighters. Would it be worth making anti fighter carriers loaded with bombers? So the carrier doesnt standoff it moves as anti star fighter platform with 100% bomber wing?

[scbfromnc]

Beams and torps are also good stand-off weapons (range similar to fighters/bombers), but hadn't considered the alternate target concept. Good point. So now I've got another research area diverting me from those maxed out Titan Beams!

Unless I read it wrong, missile bombers have nearly twice the range (but half the dmg) of torpedo bombers. So I guess the choice of which to pick depends on the range of your enemy's weapons.

[Aeson]

OP asked about fighter/bombers. Does anyone here use the missile bombers? Iirc long range torpedo ones are slower/powerful, and shorter range missiles are faster/less powerful? Does it matter...

It doesn't really matter. The main reason to choose one type of bomber over the other is which type of long-range weapon you're developing - if missiles, then use missile bombers. If torpedoes, then use torpedo bombers. Otherwise, you'll have to research techs that you weren't planning to make use of within your fleet; if I spend time researching Assault Missiles so that I can get Advanced Missile Bombers when my standard long-range weapon for my navy is one type or another of torpedo, then I just wasted a lot of research which could have been better applied to a weapon system that I'm actually using. It should nevertheless be mentioned that the tech required to unlock carriers requires you to research a little way up the torpedo bomber line, which requires that you at least research the first tech in the torpedo tree.

There is one other consideration to bear in mind: I believe that the game will use whichever type of bomber was most recently unlocked, if the bomber is at about the same tech level. Thus, if you want your end-game carriers to use torpedo bombers rather than missile bombers, I believe that you need to either not research the high-end missile bomber techs at all, or research them before you research the high-end torpedo bomber techs.

Point defense weapons are the best vs. fighters. Would it be worth making anti fighter carriers loaded with bombers? So the carrier doesnt standoff it moves as anti star fighter platform with 100% bomber wing?

No. If you want to change the balance of fighters and bombers in your carrier fleet to anything other than a 50-50 split between your most recently researched bomber and your most recently researched fighter (I think that's the balance the game goes for, though I'm not positive), you need to do it manually on a carrier by carrier basis, and you need to do it every time your carrier loses a fighter (or bomber) because the carrier will replace the lost craft with whatever sends the balance back towards 50-50. There is no setting anywhere in the game that lets me say "I want 33% fighters, 25% torpedo bombers, and the rest should be missile bombers" or "I want 25% fighters and 75% bombers," and the game doesn't remember the fighter and bomber balance that you set manually by removing all the unwanted fighters and bombers and manually ordering the replacements.

Beams and torps are also good stand-off weapons (range similar to fighters/bombers), but hadn't considered the alternate target concept. Good point. So now I've got another research area diverting me from those maxed out Titan Beams!

Blasters very much do not have comparable range to fighters and bombers. Blasters do have comparable ranges to the ranges of the weapons carried by the fighters and bombers, but what's missing is that fighters and bombers can launch from their carriers from well beyond the range of a mere blaster and can engage targets even beyond their normal launch ranges.

Also, as far as diverting you from a research goal goes? It's probably better to pick one standard weapon and fully upgrade it than to have many mid-level weapon systems. Titan Beams have fairly similar ranges to Shockwave Torpedoes but have significantly better DPS (especially per unit size), and you can probably get Titan Beams with a focused research effort developing blasters to the exclusion of all else at about the same time you'd get Shockwave Torpedoes with a less focused research effort that improves torpedoes and one or two other weapon systems (say, blasters and fighters) in parallel. That said, it is certainly not a bad idea to have a standard close-range weapon and a standard long-range weapon at similar degrees of development.

Unless I read it wrong, missile bombers have nearly twice the range (but half the dmg) of torpedo bombers. So I guess the choice of which to pick depends on the range of your enemy's weapons.

The only weapons which are really threatening to fighters and bombers most of the time are point defense weapons and enemy fighters. All other weapons will preferentially target real ships if there's one in range, and regardless are generally fairly ineffective against fighters and bombers anyways. I would also point out that the choice between the two types of bombers is not exclusively one of which is safer from the weapons of your enemies. A torpedo bomber is much more likely to punch through enemy armor with its higher per shot damage than the missile bomber is, if the torpedo is fired from a sufficiently short range that its damage decay hasn't degraded the shot damage too far. There is also the question of what weapon systems you have; if you have fully developed the torpedo line but haven't touched the missile line, then torpedo bombers are much easier to develop than missile bombers (especially the high-end versions) because you've already developed the prerequisite technologies, and the reverse is true if you've fully developed the missile line but haven't touched the torpedo line. A further consideration here is that you must have at least developed the initial torpedo bomber line if you have access to carriers (unless you're using a tech tree mod that changes this), while unlocking carriers does not require you to have developed missile bombers at all. A counterargument here is that if you're using fighter bays on ships which are not dedicated carriers, then it's easier to fully upgrade your missile bombers than it is to fully upgrade your torpedo bombers, because advanced missile bombers do not require the tech that provides improved fighter bays and unlocks carriers whereas advanced torpedo bombers do require that tech (again, assuming you aren't using a tech tree mod that changes this, and also assuming that I'm remembering the tech tree correctly).

Also, while missile bombers carry a weapon system with greater range than the weapon system carried by torpedo bombers, missile bombers do not have twice the effective range of torpedo bombers as the carrier will launch either type of bomber (as well as the fighters) from the same range. So if the missile bombers use 600 range missiles and the torpedo bombers use 400 range torpedoes, and the carrier launches fighters at 500 range and recalls them if the target is more than 800 range away, then the missile bombers have an initial engagement range of 1100 range, compared to the torpedo bombers' 900 range, and a maximum engagement range of 1400 range compared to 1200 for the torpedo bombers; this is a considerably smaller advantage than the 50% range advantage that the missile bombers would seem to have in the bomber statistics, especially if both bombers can engage from beyond the range of enemy point defense systems or if neither can (or does). Please note that these numbers are just random numbers I made up, not actual in-game ranges, either for where the carrier launches/recalls fighters or for how far the weapons on the bombers can fire.

[scbfromnc]

It doesn't really matter. The main reason to choose one type of bomber over the other is which type of long-range weapon you're developing - if missiles, then use missile bombers. If torpedoes, then use torpedo bombers. Otherwise, you'll have to research techs that you weren't planning to make use of within your fleet; if I spend time researching Assault Missiles so that I can get Advanced Missile Bombers when my standard long-range weapon for my navy is one type or another of torpedo, then I just wasted a lot of research which could have been better applied to a weapon system that I'm actually using.

So if I'm reading this correctly, the Fighters/Bombers don't have their own special weapons, but the same weapons used in the rest of the game, i.e. if I have researched maxos blasters and shockwave torpedos, then the fighters/bomber will use those weapons. But what do the damage figures for F/B in the tech tree refer to? For example, Medium Torpedo Bombers are listed with a damage of 16.

Blasters do have comparable ranges to the ranges of the weapons carried by the fighters and bombers, but what's missing is that fighters and bombers can launch from their carriers from well beyond the range of a mere blaster and can engage targets even beyond their normal launch ranges.

So you're saying the listed range, 300 in this case of Medium Torpedo Bombers, is for the bomber and the torpedo range is on top of that?

As CaptainBipto1 suggested, fighters and bombers are fairly good standoff weapons. They have the added advantage of being a valid target for enemy weapons fire, which means that if a vessel uses e.g. a Phaser Lance to shoot a fighter you won't need to worry about that Phaser Lance shooting at your real ships for another 4.2 seconds.

I had read that point defense were used against fighters/bombers, but when I read this I thought it meant that they would also attract beam weapons if my ships were in stand-off.

[Aeson]

So if I'm reading this correctly, the Fighters/Bombers don't have their own special weapons, but the same weapons used in the rest of the game, i.e. if I have researched maxos blasters and shockwave torpedos, then the fighters/bomber will use those weapons. But what do the damage figures for F/B in the tech tree refer to? For example, Medium Torpedo Bombers are listed with a damage of 16.

Your reading of my statement is incorrect. The reason why I said that you should focus on missile bombers if you're already focusing on missile weapons is because some of the missile weapon techs are required for the missile bomber techs, while some of the torpedo weapon techs are required for some of the torpedo bomber techs. Thus, while it's possible to combine Concussion Missiles and Torpedo Bombers within your fleet, it requires more research to do so than the combination of Concussion Missiles and Missile Bombers while achieving roughly the same thing. The damage number listed in the details of the fighter or bomber is the damage for the weapon carried by that fighter or bomber.

Beyond that, missiles and torpedoes essentially fill the same role within your fleet - they're long range standoff weapons, with missiles being pure standoff and torpedoes being a sort of middle ground between missiles and blasters, with damage more like that of a blaster and range more like that of a missile. The overall effect is that there's not a whole lot of point to developing both the torpedo and the missile tree; you're better off spending the extra research on a weapon whose role doesn't overlap (such as the blaster line) or pushing up one of the standoff lines faster, or picking up carriers to improve your standoff ability.

So you're saying the listed range, 300 in this case of Medium Torpedo Bombers, is for the bomber and the torpedo range is on top of that?

The listed range is for the weapon carried by the bomber, i.e. the bomber's torpedoes attack targets within 300 range of the bomber. However, the bomber, in the example I gave, can be up to 800 range units from the carrier, making its targets up to 1100 range units from the carrier, which is a range unmatched by any other standoff weapon in the game. The bomber is still vulnerable to enemy fire, but who really cares? Anything spawned by a fighter bay is essentially free, and if you're playing with fighter swarms you either have enough that the losses don't seriously impact your fighter swarm's ability to bring down your opponents (an exception can be made for besieging a station, as so long as your fighter swarm is capable of outpacing shield regeneration and hull repair more firepower isn't exactly necessary, though it's certainly useful), or you aren't playing with a big enough swarm for whatever you're trying to do. The only issue with fighters and bombers taking fire comes when the loss rate of the fighters and bombers is higher than the replacement rate AND your fighter swarm isn't doing enough to offset whatever disadvantage you might have for coming to the fight with a fighter swarm instead of a sledgehammer.

I had read that point defense were used against fighters/bombers, but when I read this I thought it meant that they would also attract beam weapons if my ships were in stand-off.

Point defense weapons are used against fighters and bombers. However, an anti-ship weapon such as a Maxos Blaster will also fire at fighters and bombers if there are no valid larger targets in range; if it then enters firing range of the carrier or another warship shortly after discharging its shot at a fighter, that weapon then needs to wait out its firing interval before it can take a shot at your carrier or other warship. In the case of a weapon like a Phaser Lance, which has a relatively long cooldown period, this can be a bit of an annoyance and costs the ship a bit of efficiency in the engagement as a single shot from most weapons is unlikely to harm a fighter or bomber enough to kill it and the fighter or bomber isn't really the most valuable target for anti-ship weapons to shoot at. Essentially, the fighter or bomber is a distraction from nearby but slightly out of range more valuable targets which can reset the cooldowns on a ship's guns, potentially (but not assuredly) weakening the ship's alpha strike when it does enter engagement range of a real warship. It's not a significant advantage, and it's not something you can rely upon to take fire for your big ships once the ranges have closed, but it is something that can give you a slight edge (and if your carriers are getting engaged by real warships at ranges where the real warships can shoot them with mid-range weapons like blasters or the lower-range torpedoes (Shockwave, Epsilon, Shaktur FireStorm), they need any edge that they can get).