Questions about fighter bays and planetary stock levels

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Questions about fighter bays and planetary stock levels

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Questions about fighter bays and planetary stock levels - 9/15/2015 2:25:26 PM

AndysonofBob

Posts: 13
Joined: 8/21/2015
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I want to focus my empire so that each ship has fighter bays and torps as the main weapons. I have very little experience with fighters.

Do the fighters respawn if destroyed? If not how do you restock fighters?
What is the smallest number of fighter bays required to make fighters effective?
As a primary weapon could you install them on 300 sized ships? If not what would the minimum size be?
And should I mix and match fighterbays (bombers etc), if it even works like that?

WHen colonising new planets how do stock levels increase? If the planet has say 4 resources, will those items automatically be full presumably once I have a mine in place?

Thanks!

Post #: 1

RE: Questions about fighter bays and planetary stock le... - 9/15/2015 3:41:57 PM

CyclopsSlayer

Posts: 583
Joined: 2/11/2012
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Fighters repair damage over time, destroyed ones are rebuilt.

I put 5 bays on my endgame capital ships. 3 or less would only be an incidental distraction, not an Offense or Defense.

On a 300sz hull you would be hard pressed to get more than 2 bays in place. Against other 300sz hulls, effective, larger hulls you would need a fleet of them.

Bombers are my choice for offensive hulls. DW defaults to 1:1, I prefer more like 1:2 Interceptors to Bombers.

A Colony IS a Mine, you cannot place a mine at a colony, and colonizing a mined world absorbs the mine.

(in reply to AndysonofBob)

Post #: 2

RE: Questions about fighter bays and planetary stock le... - 9/15/2015 3:44:38 PM

Bingeling

Posts: 5186
Joined: 8/12/2010
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No exact numbers from me...

Fighters do respawn by themselves.

More is better. I have with AI designs used 4 or so carriers in normal fleets, and that matches the AI quite well. If you spread the fighter across multiple ships it could be less efficient, but the number of bays brought into battle is what counts.

300 size may be a bit small since the fighter component is large. Also, having them on small ships may make them quite vulnerable. I would suggest you experience a bit and figure out how various configurations work yourself.

Fighterbays have a mix of fighters and bombers. I think you possibly may be able to tweak their amounts, but I have never bothered to. This means that each bay bring a mix of fighters and bombers.

If you look at guides there are probably hard numbers for mining. Each mining component has a stat for how fast it mines. In the early game you may require 3 or 4 mining engines on a mine for max mining speed, but this goes down as you improve the mining through research upgrades. A colony mines automatically at a bit lower speed than a good mine (but it won't be shot down by pirates or lose its cargo when shot down, and it has unlimited cargo capacity).

Each tick, I believe maybe once every 6 days or so, a component "mines" units of the resource. The amount gained depends on the mining capacity of the station (whether it gives full output) and the quality of the resource. So you want 2-3 mining components of the right type, on high quality sources. Multiple resource types is a good thing, as you mine them all at the same (full) speed.

(in reply to AndysonofBob)

Post #: 3

RE: Questions about fighter bays and planetary stock le... - 9/15/2015 8:38:12 PM

AndysonofBob

Posts: 13
Joined: 8/21/2015
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Thanks!

I am playing those bird dudes with the special fighters so I am going to role play a fighter only fleet, with torps (why not)

I shouldn't need powerful engines because they will be range based ships so I think 400 size is the magic number, that way you can fit two, maybe three bays.

Questions:
What range do people use for their ships? Is 12 sectors safe standard?

(in reply to Bingeling)

Post #: 4

RE: Questions about fighter bays and planetary stock le... - 9/15/2015 10:08:58 PM

Aeson

Posts: 784
Joined: 8/30/2013
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quote:

I shouldn't need powerful engines because they will be range based ships so I think 400 size is the magic number, that way you can fit two, maybe three bays.

You should be able to fit at least three bays onto a size 400 ship, and if you're using the carrier role, you're going to need to fit 4 (40% of 400 size is 160; in order to meet the 40% fighter bays requirement on a carrier, you will need 4 standard fighter bays taking up 200 size or 4 advanced fighter bays taking up 180 size). If you want to use carrier-role carriers, then the closest you can come to size-400 with 3 fighter bays is size-375 with standard fighter bays or size-337 with advanced fighter bays.

Also, powerful engines are quite useful for range-based ships. You need to be able to keep the range open, after all.

quote:

Questions:
What range do people use for their ships? Is 12 sectors safe standard?

There is no such thing as one standard range for everything. It depends on the map size, on how long you want your ships to be able to fight without needing to refuel, on how distant your enemies are, etc. My rules of thumb in the early game are that a ship's effective range for protracted combat deployments is about one third of its design range, a ship's effective range for strike missions is about 40% of its design range, and a size-300 or so system defense ship can make do with 5 standard fuel cells. If I were to use a ship with a 12-sector design range, I would not want to fight protracted engagements more than ~4 sectors from my nearest refueling point, and I wouldn't want to launch strike missions against targets more than ~5 sectors away. If that's okay for your situation, then a 12-sector design range is acceptable. I would tend to say that a 12-sector range is probably workable, especially if you're not looking to fight a war too far from home or are willing to mess around with resupply ships.

Note that you will need to make some adjustments to this rule as the game progresses; a rule of thumb that is good when the combat power requirements are similar to the travel power requirements (time on station ~= time taken to get to station, assuming you also need to make a return trip and that you've used the above rule of thumb) might not be nearly as satisfactory when the combat power requirements are twice the travel power requirements (time on station ~= one half the time taken to get to station, assuming you need to make a return trip and have used the above rule of thumb). Also note that this rule is not particularly applicable to ships which are not intended for long-range deployment.

Also be aware that my rules of thumb are based upon how things work in the unmodded game. You're clearly playing with a mod since there are no "bird dudes with the special fighters" in the unmodded game, and so the rules of thumb that I provided may not work that well for you. Try them, see if they work, adjust them if they don't.

< Message edited by Aeson -- 9/15/2015 11:14:35 PM >

(in reply to AndysonofBob)

Post #: 5

RE: Questions about fighter bays and planetary stock le... - 9/17/2015 1:03:59 PM

Thrake

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Joined: 6/7/2014
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: AndysonofBob

What range do people use for their ships? Is 12 sectors safe standard?

As above, it depends on your map characteristics (map size and colonny prevalence if you tweaked it), but also on the situation.

Early on, you don't need much range, except in explorers; for those my first move is to add fuel cells to the design (especially if automated as then they will not go beyond their optimal range). It might help with a few other designs too (colonization ship or construction ship). If you use AI designs, I would also recommand adding some to the escort, because it has a shorter range than other designs, which will slow down your whole fleet once they run out of fuel, so another good early move is to add 1 fuel cell to escorts (I usually only tweak designs once I have enough technology unlocked but that one is an usual opener too).

(in reply to AndysonofBob)

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RE: Questions about fighter bays and planetary stock le... - 9/21/2015 5:39:00 PM

ldog

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Joined: 6/3/2014
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For anything other than explorers the range stat is pretty meaningless.
Especially once the game gets underway and you've got a level or two of fuel cell research done and more efficient reactors.
What warships are going to use moving around in fuel becomes trivial compared to their use during battle.
For warships, I go by power output - more energy used, more fuel used. Mid-late game I tend to go 3 for a 2 reactor ship, 5 for a 3 reactor.
I tend to play on 8x8, spam gas mines on fuel sources, and make use of resupply ships - ymmv.

(in reply to Thrake)

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RE: Questions about fighter bays and planetary stock le... - 9/21/2015 8:27:14 PM

AndysonofBob

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Joined: 8/21/2015
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Thanks for the replies! I think I am getting there

I have set up a bunch of fleets that I have got defending systems. The thing is they aren't doing much even if a station in the system is being attacked. I have to tell them to attack when I get the warning.
I am sure I have set the posture correctly defend targets in system. Home base is one of the targets in the system

Is there anything I might be doing wrong here? I have designed the ships myself.

edit: I notice I had the ships set to evade if enemy was more powerful. Could this be it? If so how do I fix this for my existing ships?

Thanks!

< Message edited by AndysonofBob -- 9/21/2015 9:29:04 PM >

(in reply to ldog)

Post #: 8

RE: Questions about fighter bays and planetary stock le... - 9/21/2015 9:23:07 PM

ldog

Posts: 90
Joined: 6/3/2014
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The design settings have to do with the range the ship trys to maintain to target.
What you are looking for is under the fleet name, to the right of current mission.
It will say "engage X". Which are set by options>empire settings>default engagement stances - auto if the fleet is automated, or manual if not.
Depending on your wants and needs there are various combinations of settings that are useful here, but for what you want change patrol (should be default anyway) and other to engage system targets.

(in reply to AndysonofBob)

Post #: 9