#MakeFightersGreatAgain

[Orn'om]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmk3YS7xLOo&feature=youtu.be​

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Make fighters great again!

But seriously, when the board first started there was an abundance of fighter designs. It was like everyone and their mother wanted to be either a Jedi/Sith or...a pilot and the race was on to build ships with big hangars, fast interceptors, and great all-rounders. Now the Invasion and Skirmish "Meta" seems to have shifted to making the biggest and hardest hitting capital ships. Why is that I wonder, when time and time again it is shown that (even for the bad guys) having a competent fighter squadron or two can be the difference between a massive ship slaughtering an entire fleet, or that same massive ship being blown out of the sky.

Discuss on why you think Starfighters have dwindled in popularity on Chaos or, if you think they haven't. What is their role in PvP role play now?

 

[Ayhia Katar]

From what i understand the biggest issue is people unwillingness to take damage when fired upon, meaning firefighting means little if your opponent will always dodge your attacks.​

 

[Coratanni Cartel]

I always thought this was fairly obvious.

Not the greatest example, but in Empire At War the mechanics of the game basically make fighter/bomber swarms capable of taking down Star Destroyers super easily too.

 

[Siobhan Kerrigan]

I've been on the board since 2013. Maybe I've missed something or my memory is biased, but I don't think this 'Golden Age of Starfighters' ever existed. It seems to me that it's even more niche than fleeting in general (and fleeting is already extremely niche, even under the regime of Factory 5.0).

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

Hm, interesting discussion point.

I read a lot of invasions and I don't necessarily see a downturn in the number or consistency of pilots.

I think it's just more to do with the fact that for a long time large-scale fleeting didn't have a lot of interest, and now people LOVE fleeting and the sort of chessboard quality of that aspect of the game. Fleeting obviously involves dogfighting but I think because it's just been around longer it's not as new and exciting. Eventually once the newness wears off I would expect both to blend - or at least, hope, because as you point out smaller fighters are critical to a lot of the examples of space battle we have in legends & disney canon.

I also think the ability to craft dreadnoughts will maybe bring about the usefulness and fun of smaller pilots again!

 

[Malok]

Well...

1. Every faction has capital ships, not every faction has PC pilots. PC pilot squadrons are rare and dogfights barely happen.

2. Can't force damage on another player, so heroic pilot moments don't happen. You'll never see a Death Star trench run actually work in an Invasion.

3. The shift from listing individual fighter numbers inside a ship's hangar to just listing a squadron removed the necessity of building your Interceptor/Workhorse/Bomber/Dropship beforehand. Now you can sub your main SD and worry about fighters way down the line.

4. While every faction has ships, not every faction fleets.

Making fighters great again would require an interest in PC pilot play to be way up there and for Starfighters, on a writer level, to be regarded as an actual threat as opposed to gnats.

 

[Jsc]

1. Physics
2. Force Users = Gundam Newtype Pilots = No Force Null Tech Works = NFUs suck = Droids do it better anyway
3. Fast-mount Lasercannons = Twink or Die
4. How does Stealth work again?
5. PC Squadrons need as many people as a whole faction! Blarg.
6. Vong tech
7. My fight suit doesn't work in space?! #FashionSouls
8. New Factory Tech > genre tropes
9. etc etc etc

 

[Janick Beauchamp]

We mustn't forget that the canon lore of dogfighting tends to center around LS factions or NFUs, with some space given to Imp-faction pilots, and there is very limited space in Sith-faction lore for dogfighting, if any. That, even though Vader demonstrated conclusively that the Force-abilities involved in piloting do not depend on Force-alignment.

I also remember one of the past dogfighters' contemporaries (sadly that particular dogfighter is no longer active in Chaos for months) claiming that there is no character development or tension in a dogfight, or otherwise "no story", even though I know it's false. Sure, dogfighting may not allow for the use of flashy Force-powers, you might not see the enemy pilots face-to-face (in fact, if you see the enemy pilot's face, you're at point-blank range or even worse, at risk of collision), and every sortie is a potential brush with death, but I know a character's emotions and other internal conflicts can and will play a role in a dogfight (cf. ANH).

[member="Ayhia Katar"] I know the usual complaint as applied to PvP dogfighting, that is, that PC-piloted craft tend to limit hit-taking to shields, if that. And I also remember that having NPC wingmen in tow (anywhere from 1 wingman to a full squadron) may alleviate that to an extent. That, even though the material playing field is pretty even, and definitely more level than is the case in fleeting, grounding or personal equipment. In my experience, there is hardly any salt from dogfighting sources even when there are, in fact, PC dogfighters on both sides, despite the "plot-shield" problem.

[member="Siobhan Kerrigan"] [member="Matsu Xiangu"] Even if PC-based dogfighting was somehow easier to fit in a story under today's warfare format than it ever has been, one extra hurdle is that 3D movement is harder to wrap one's head around, and also at the speeds at which it happens. And it's not just the complete lack of consistency as to how effective fighters are in canon, either (and every canon faction that actually had dogfighting stories suffers from that to an extent).

[member="Darth Metus"] Personally I found dogfighting to be only marginally harder to write than a conventional duel, even though I fought exactly one PvP dogfight across all my characters as a writer (Utapau) and that's mostly a question of 3D movement as opposed to 2D.

 

[Orn'om]

[member="Siobhan Kerrigan"] When I talk about the fighter "Golden Age" I mean how they were like Capital ships are now, where there would be fighter after fighter subbed to the Factory and Elite Fighter made to be faster or based off of this factions elite fighter. Opposed to now where it seems like every week there is some new bundle of Star Destroyer-sized vessels or Battlecruiser being subbed.

Can't force damage on another player,

This is one of my largest problems with dogfighting. Now people don't even want to lose one ship (even if its mass produced and there's no PCs on board). But if people are going to fly giant wedges in space that can't move out of the way of a fighter, the least they could do is write the defenses.

I do think its slightly funny when people don't even want one turret to take a hit haha

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]
WHY People gravitated towards fleeting is something I'm interested in as well. I agree that it has something to do with the chess aspect to it. I think the downfall of dogfighting might also have something to do with the perceived finality of a "loss" in a dogfight as well and few people are happy to potentially lose their favorite character.

 

[Siobhan Kerrigan]

When I talk about the fighter "Golden Age" I mean how they were like Capital ships are now, where there would be fighter after fighter subbed to the Factory and Elite Fighter made to be faster or based off of this factions elite fighter.

Ok. Thanks for clarifying. I'm more in agreement with that. I recall several 'elite starfighter subs' back in the day. One example would be the Aleph, which I recall being an event prize for the Roche Event. The Rasillion also comes to mind.

But the actual use and importance of starfighters and the like in invasions/skirmishes lagged behind the Factory output.


[member="Zeke Farthen"]

 

[Orn'om]

Agreed. I feel like the only tech that really gets true useage by name are big ships and armors, everything else has been put to the wayside ):

 

[Gren Blidh]

The difference is that unlike Poe Dameron, nobody on Chaos has plot armor.

 

[Cyrus Tregessar]

That video raises some interesting points, but if taken on face value you run into a really fundamental issue.

Mainly that if we take it on face value (turbolaser ranges being to the tune of 50-60 miles and such) but also presumably much faster than the capital ships they are attached to, you end up with sublight speeds around several hundred miles an hour for large ships. That's not even close to being fast enough to escape earth's orbit. It's absolutely unfeasible for space travel. At 1000mi/h you're talking about 10 days to get from the moon to earth. Meanwhile in TLJ they run up on planet in a period of time supposedly less than 24 hours?

So I would be very wary of drawing any sort of conclusion from a movie that makes zero effort whatsoever to have any form of internal (much less external) consistency.

Additionally, stepping away from the real world physics, the guy is flat wrong when confronted with standing Legends canon, widely used on this site. There are two types of shields, Ray and Particle, the former blocks energy and the latter stops kinetics. As a general rule, standard deflector shields present on every ship feature both.

Now you're absolutely right that the role of strike craft has been painfully minimized by most fleeting engagements here, and that's for a variety of reasons, not all of them really fair. The first is that in the movies in particular we're dealt with large doses of plot armor and stupidity by design. Who the kark designs a ship to just blow the kark up when you drop a few bombs on it(coughHMSHoodcough)? In other words, while the idiocy and incompetence of the First Order in the movie makes for entertaining cinema, it's poodoo writing/plotting and it's sort of unfair ot assume the characters/ships/weapons/fighters/whatever of people here are just as guilty of stupidity by design as in the movies.

At leas the death star got retconned to have its fatal flaw put in on purpose. I actually really liked that they did that, because otherwise it implies the poeple who built the thing where STAGGERINGLY STUPID. I don't know, I find incompetent villains to be boring, YMMV.

The second reason is that there has been a trend on this site for the past few years to try and come to terms with some of the nonsensical physics and create some sort of internal consistency. Part of that has made things look a little more like Jutland than Midway. Bear in mind, you're talking about unifying something that says a TIE FIghter can pull 4100G acceleration (about 24 miles A SECOND) but that a concussion missile has an effective range of 3000 METERS. The general trends here lean towards assuming ships are fairly durable (as opposed to what we see in the movies) and begin engagements at long ranges while gradually closing. It also sees missiles as close-range weapons due to the general effectiveness of defensive systems in being able to shoot them down. By extension, fighters become simply another delivery method for said missiles.

It's not all numbers and tech, it's also personal preference on many people's part (like myself, for example). I like battleships better than fighters. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The last reason has to do with people clinging to fleet limits and not wanting to take hits in what should be simply a narrative environment. This and plot armor is probably the most significant factors.

FWIW I write the hell out of anti-fighter and anti-missile defenses.

 

[Orn'om]

Mainly that if we take it on face value (turbolaser ranges being to the tune of 50-60 miles

I think his assumption on turbolaser ranges was less that they have a max of 50-60 miles and more that shields in SW reduce the effective range of said weapons. He even says that if a target was unshielded it would take serious damage from a turbolaser even at long ranges, its the shield that lowers the effective range because it appears that most ship shields in SW are bubble-shaped rather than shields wrapping ships like wrapping paper. His omission of particle shields is troubling, but I don't think that particularly changes much.

How do you all write ship shields? Wrapping paper or bubbles? I think that would be interesting to know as well when it comes to the role of fighters in combat.

Admittedly close up ship battles just look cooler on screen as well.

EDIT/Addition:

I also have recently been moving towards incorporating some "stupidity of design" into some tech just because I feel like that is such a big part of SW tech. Sure we all want to win and just want do do and make things that make sense to us. Like, why wouldn't you make all your armors impervious to blasters and lightsabers, or why wouldn't you use slugthrowers on targets using anti-blaster shields. And to me from a role playing stance, it just feels more Star Warsy doing it and to be honest more challenging getting things done and keeping people alive. Makes it feel more like Star Wars than a war RP that happens to use SW tech as a base. But that's just my opinion on it.