What the heck is wrong with the speed ratios of ships in this game?

[Rykmentti]

Most Corvettes, Gunboats and Bombers are faster than Heavy Fighters, Fighters and some of the Interceptors. What's the point of a heavy fighter, that is slower than most frigates or corvettes?

I thought the General consensus is that, the smaller the ship, more agile, maneuverable and faster it will be? Smallest ships would be scouts, next would be interceptors, that specialize in fighting small craft and then fighters would be jack of all trades small craft, that could also take on corvettes and frigates and maybe cripple turrets on larger ships or even take them out in large numbers. Bombers would specialize in capital ships/stations with heavy weapons/rockets/torpedoes/missiles from long range.

Then we have frigates, cruisers, destroyers, carriers and battleships. Why are some of the destroyers faster than some of the fighters(!!!) I know destroyer is not as maneuverable than a fighter but holy damn, If I can't catch a destroyer, with a heavy fighter, without boosters, something is seriously wrong.

Is there something I'm missing here? Or am I totally mistaken about something? Can you boost the speed of your ships somehow and I've just totally missed it?

What am I doing wrong?

[mmmcheesywaffles]

Capital ships are bigger and gave more inertia. When they go into Travel Mode they can keep smaller ships travelling along with them. However when in non Travel mode the capital ships are slower and smaller ships can run rings around them.

[Wraith]

Smaller ships are more agile but agility does not equal engine speed

Take the nova for example it one of the best fighter for interception.

They also have stronger strafing abilities

Sure the corvette are faster but has you tried turning or strafing on them it god awful

[Rykmentti]

Originally posted by Wraith:

Smaller ships are more agile but agility does not equal engine speed

Take the nova for example it one of the best fighter for interception.

They also have stronger strafing abilities

Sure the corvette are faster but has you tried turning or strafing on them it god awful

Yeah, but if the enemy can just keep doing strafes at you and you can never chase, because they are faster than you, unless you boost after them, which takes a lot of your shields and then you are screwed, if your shields get down, because you can't boost anymore and god forbid if they start boosting. By the time you turn around, your enemy is already doing another run at you or is out of range. I'm mainly talking about AI controlling the fighters, players can do boosts and short travel mode jumps but I've never seen AI do a competent job at it.

Also if you compare some of the heavy fighters and fighters to corvettes and gunboats (Gladius and Kukri with Katana and Jian, comparable combat load outs of course, for example), they are almost as maneuverable but much faster. Frigates and bigger ships sure are pretty clumsy but how are you supposed to keep a squadron together, if the "flagship" of that squadron is fastest ship among them, while being the biggest? By the time frigate starts fighting the enemy, rest of your squadron has lagged behind. Not to mention your strike craft struggling to keep up with the enemy frigates and corvettes, not to mention Corvettes and Frigates burst potential, with their stronger weapons.

Also then comes the problem of interception speed and how effective that ship is. The faster the ship is, the more effective it is at intercepting other ships, protecting and fighting/staying in the fight in general, since they can always get to the next place or target faster, but with slow ships it wastes a lot of time and severely hampers their effectiveness.

[blackphoenixx]

You're not wrong. Of the heavy fighters only the Chimera and Balaur are worth using, and the Balaur is already pretty iffy. Even then there's no point using them over the Moreya once you get that.
The slower ships like the Ares, Gladius or Eclipse? Don't even bother. There is no situation in which they're not clearly inferior.

Some of them are probably supposed to make up for the slower speed with more shields, but that doesn't work out in practice at all. Speed is the most important stat for fighters to survive. And some of them are just worse than the others in every category with nothing to make up for it.

That's not just a problem with fighters though, every class of ship in the game has a few winners and a whole lot of duds the player should never bother with except for RP reasons.
It wasn't nearly as bad in vanilla but some of the added SPL and especially TER ships are simply better than the others, and the difference isn't small.

Easy example? The Takoba.
As maneuverable as a Nova (except without the tilt engines), the shielding of a Falcon and faster than a Perseus or Mamba. And on top of that it gets two unique weapons other factions can't even equip on their ships, one of which is the best allrounder fighter weapon in the game.
Why would you ever use another fighter as an interceptor?

[Wraith]

corvettes and gunboats are no way near as maneuverable you can literally take one out and start using it thrusters and it will be a slog compare to the fighters who actually have the thruster strengths and mass.

No matter what ship the player will always be stronger then the AI which is why I always compare AI vs AI

For example I use eclipse and kalis because they have strong rotation thruster which with combat thrusters make them strong turners

The AI don’t fight like the player so they don’t benefit from the speed as much as the player

[blackphoenixx]

Originally posted by Wraith:

The AI don’t fight like the player so they don’t benefit from the speed as much as the player

All the turning rate in the world will not help you if you can't catch up to your enemy.
And while the Kalis is fairly good in that regard - though no match for any of the decent fighters and too undergunned and slow to be a good bomber - the Eclipse is mediocre at best by the standards of S-class combat ships - it's turning rate is barely faster than a PAR Nemesis.

Even aside from the ability to force your enemy to engage (something you can't do if they're faster than you) speed is crucial for AI-controlled fighters IS as a survival stat because it's what makes most of the enemies shots miss - even the Ares and Kalis can't afford to tank hits, but they're sitting ducks to pretty much any weapon other than plasma and blast mortars and will suffer heavy losses the moment they're not heavily outnumbering the enemy - a decent wing of Takobas can easily take on half again their number in Xenon and come out with 1 or 2 losses at worst, if any.

The non-split heavy fighters may become usable if you stick SPL Mk4 combat engines and engine mods into them but that's mostly because 99% of NPC enemies have really terrible loadouts, not because they're good. The difference between the two is like night and day.
Their effect is in no relation to their cost and they fall far behind the better fighters who easily match them with a much lesser investment.

[Axeface]

There is nothing wrong with it, it is just different to the frankly narrow-minded approach of other ww2-sim space franchises. In reality large ships would have a lot more leeway to increase their thrust to weight ratio, carry more fuel etc. I like it, and in fact ide like capital ships to be even faster in travel drive than they currently are.
Fighters of course have acceleration on their side because they are small, but as far as speed is concerned i'm fine with this approach.

[blackphoenixx]

Originally posted by Axeface:

In reality large ships would have a lot more leeway to increase their thrust to weight ratio, carry more fuel etc.

In reality mass increases exponentially with size, not linearly. So no, they don't.

Even aside from that game balance takes precedence over "realism" - this is a game, not a simulation. Ship selection should be about tradeoffs, not about one or two simply being better at everything.
3/4ths of S class ships being completely useless is hardly a desirable state.

[Wraith]

Originally posted by blackphoenixx:

All the turning rate in the world will not help you if you can't catch up to your enemy.
And while the Kalis is fairly good in that regard - though no match for any of the decent fighters and too undergunned and slow to be a good bomber - the Eclipse is mediocre at best by the standards of S-class combat ships - it's turning rate is barely faster than a PAR Nemesis.

Even aside from the ability to force your enemy to engage (something you can't do if they're faster than you) speed is crucial for AI-controlled fighters IS as a survival stat because it's what makes most of the enemies shots miss - even the Ares and Kalis can't afford to tank hits, but they're sitting ducks to pretty much any weapon other than plasma and blast mortars and will suffer heavy losses the moment they're not heavily outnumbering the enemy - a decent wing of Takobas can easily take on half again their number in Xenon and come out with 1 or 2 losses at worst, if any.

The non-split heavy fighters may become usable if you stick SPL Mk4 combat engines and engine mods into them but that's mostly because 99% of NPC enemies have really terrible loadouts, not because they're good. The difference between the two is like night and day.
Their effect is in no relation to their cost and they fall far behind the better fighters who easily match them with a much lesser investment.

You are ignoring the fact that the AI does NOT use it speed to much advantage they are almost always in range of each other and that is why turn rate is so much more powerful.

Also calling the Kalis fragile when it can literally tank every other fighter in the game and is agile enough to fight back seriously?

[SirProsik]

Ai is always close to each other? Tell that to my M miners and S fighters that are never close or the M traders too that get destroyed while the S fighters are at the gate waiting while xenon/pirates come calling. If they were close then they would have a formation and protect each other. Just like the xenon do.

[Wraith]

Originally posted by SirProsik:

Ai is always close to each other? Tell that to my M miners and S fighters that are never close or the M traders too that get destroyed while the S fighters are at the gate waiting while xenon/pirates come calling. If they were close then they would have a formation and protect each other. Just like the xenon do.

When they are dogfighting….
In sector

[blackphoenixx]

Originally posted by Wraith:

You are ignoring the fact that the AI does NOT use it speed to much advantage they are almost always in range of each other and that is why turn rate is so much more powerful.

Also calling the Kalis fragile when it can literally tank every other fighter in the game and is agile enough to fight back seriously?

The defensive advantage of speed is not creating distance but avoiding projectiles. A ship flying less then 300m/s will get torn apart in seconds in IS combat because it gets hit by pretty much every shot fired at it.
A faster fighter barely gets hit at all.

And the Kalis IS fragile. Even in the best case scenario of fitting it with TEL Mk3 shields for maximum shield capacity they have barely over half the shields of a single M shield. Anyone who's ever tried to send a corvette into a Xenon swarm knows EXACTLY how "tanky" that is, which is "not at all".

Fighter survivability depends heavily on taking advantage of how their shields regenerate, which depends on not getting hit for 10-15 seconds. Having 5k shields instead of 2k doesn't change that, it's a drop in the bucket when even a single pulse laser does 200+ dps if every shot hits you.

I'm not discounting the advantage of a high turn rate, it is important. But it's simply not enough on its own.

Originally posted by SirProsik:

If they were close then they would have a formation and protect each other. Just like the xenon do.

Xenon don't protect each other, they just fly in giant blobs and attack everything that moves. They gather up before going through a jump gate but if you park your defense fleets a distance away you'll see they spread out into the same ragged lines your own ships do.

[Wraith]

Originally posted by blackphoenixx:

The defensive advantage of speed is not creating distance but avoiding projectiles. A ship flying less then 300m/s will get torn apart in seconds in IS combat because it gets hit by pretty much every shot fired at it.
A faster fighter barely gets hit at all.

Avoiding projectile is dictated by thrusters not engine speed.
Your engine is going only straight and does not help as much to avoid projetiles unless somehow your base speed is faster then the projectile coming at you (not really possible).

Originally posted by blackphoenixx:

And the Kalis IS fragile. Even in the best case scenario of fitting it with TEL Mk3 shields for maximum shield capacity they have barely over half the shields of a single M shield. Anyone who's ever tried to send a corvette into a Xenon swarm knows EXACTLY how "tanky" that is, which is "not at all".

A crovette sucks at fighting fighters so you literrally send it to it death.
My Eclipse personal fighter (AI controled) can take out 7 xenon fighters and come out with 40percent hp.

Originally posted by blackphoenixx:

Fighter survivability depends heavily on taking advantage of how their shields regenerate, which depends on not getting hit for 10-15 seconds. Having 5k shields instead of 2k doesn't change that, it's a drop in the bucket when even a single pulse laser does 200+ dps if every shot hits you.

which is exactly why thrusters turn rate are more important because it actually stop them from getting hit...

[Axeface]

Originally posted by blackphoenixx:

Originally posted by Axeface:

In reality large ships would have a lot more leeway to increase their thrust to weight ratio, carry more fuel etc.

In reality mass increases exponentially with size, not linearly. So no, they don't.

Even aside from that game balance takes precedence over "realism" - this is a game, not a simulation. Ship selection should be about tradeoffs, not about one or two simply being better at everything.
3/4ths of S class ships being completely useless is hardly a desirable state.

Can you link something about that? You are not talking about the square cubed law are you?

[Axeface]

Originally posted by blackphoenixx:

Originally posted by Axeface:

In reality large ships would have a lot more leeway to increase their thrust to weight ratio, carry more fuel etc.

In reality mass increases exponentially with size, not linearly. So no, they don't.

Even aside from that game balance takes precedence over "realism" - this is a game, not a simulation. Ship selection should be about tradeoffs, not about one or two simply being better at everything.
3/4ths of S class ships being completely useless is hardly a desirable state.

Also, fighters are not useless. People here are assuming that because they are not 'fast' (as in, top speed) they are useless, but they are not. If I am taking on a Xenon I I will take an eclipse, if I took an M I would die unless I resort to 'jousting'. The fighter is far more manoeuvrable and for that reason its almost invulnerable to the I's weapons.
Smaller fighters like the Nova or Elite are a step down, they are exceptional at dodging fighter based weapons, making them very good at going against other fighters - but they dont have the firepower to take on an I and wipe out all of its components in minutes.