Squadrons lagging/crashing

Manned squadrons has been a big request on Miro’s thread about what he should work on next.

No one disputes that squadrons should be manned. The problem is non-squadroned ships being autolaunched with +clanpost ability that allows battlegroups to quadruple their firepower.

Removing +clanpost from absolutely anything sub-capital is one option to stop autolaunching from capitals..but I like autolaunch as a function. Making it impossible to autolaunch for a ship is probably the best option if it is possible to flag capital hangers as no-autolaunch.

The removal of clanpost from starfighter seems like an excellent balancing step. It requires squadrons to be manned, or at least paid attention to instead of launched, let go, and never again thought of. Autolaunching ships seems fine to me in the sense that is that not the purpose of the squadron command set as it is right now? Using autolaunch with autopilot + clanpost to get around squadron max limitations seems petty and it does… what in the end? It is not people playing against each other at that point. The tactic is empty, requiring no effort, but being largely uncombattable.

Maybe the problem isn’t such a ‘what,’ but a ‘who.’ But hey, that’s my thoughts.

As for an actual solution, there isn’t an easy one. I personally feel it’s an unfortunate oversight in build and design and it won’t be corrected quickly or even in the near future.

I just want to point out that I’m almost positive the problem isn’t starfighters. It’s the autolaunched, autopilot ships. If it’s possible, make it so that autopiloted squadron ships immediately attempt to return to bays and that’s it. Force players to manipulate their own squadrons. Maybe remove the +clanpost option from anything that doesn’t count against cap limits.

If you’re going to insist on removing clanpost regardless, then it needs to be coded so that starfighters can also ONLY be in the outer position of a fleet, or make it so that when you try to target a ship that’s not on the inside/outside, code autotargets you to an available target on the outer formation.

Despite the crying and whining out of a certain few people the awnser IS simple, and it IS easy. Really easy…Remove clanpost from starfighters. No ones carrying enough of anything else into a fight to lag the mud by autolaunching them.

Side note, Kebrons idea about the squadron grouping was pretty awesome regardless of all other things. That would cut down on so very much spam…

I am simply saying if you’re going to remove clanpost from starfighters, then also remove their ability to be anywhere but the outer formation of the BG.

That should happen out of common sense anyhow. I also wonder how viable it would be to make starfighters do, in general, less damage to cappies. Without affecting their stats. I really don’t think that’s possible without extensive changes though.

Remove clanpost from all non-squadron starfighters, problem solved. Ofcourse then you could still deploy +-80 starfighters from an entire battlegroup. What would it result in: People can still use autolaunch on squadroned vessels to make them usefull in combat. Ofcourse, if you put them in midguard or central and leave your caps open, the moment a cap goes down an entire squadron of fighters becomes useless as they lose their clanpost. Then again, you can say that 90 starfighters is too much still, but it certainly is a step in the right direction, and it is still nothing compared to the 200+ total fighters that were deployed over the course of a battle. Still being able to autolaunch bigger ships such as gunships and corvettes would be nice though, since those are single vessels that contribute as much to the lag as a single starfighter, yet cost the space of 12-15

What we did with putting a single squadron of 8 some fighters in a central position for boarding purposes is imo a totally valid tactic, and despite being in a central position way in the end of the battle my ship did end up being targetted by an autopiloted cappy, so i dont really see why it should be made so it can only be in outer.

Because code prevents you from being targeted anywhere but the outer, with the occasional glitch if you’re hopping around between targetable/non-targetable positions(you also might have drifted past 1000 units from your lead ship).  The reason starfighters should be outer, especially if you remove clanpost, is because when you have an absurd amount of starfighters, with people mixing up what’s outer and what’s inner, Having clanpost actually helps you. This is because autopilot automatically targets stuff in the outer most position.Otherwise, space fights would be a matter of who can cycle through target xxx, nope, target yyy, nope, target zzz, bingo, rinse and repeat.

I’m not happy about this change either because a lot of tactics have to go out the window somewhere because of it, one way or the other.