As much as big ships blasting away at each other is a staple of science fiction, it's hard to imagine some things like planetary conquest being accomplished by just one big boat. There's going to be fleets - swarms of little ships that the Battleship can't fire at all at once, and pods full of troopers to seize planetary control. And especially since many of the ships in GL would be quite large, it would make sense for them to have a squad of smaller fighers. (a la Battlestar Galactica)

So I propose that once a ship gets to a certain size, (Titan, perhaps, shouldn't be too hard to reach), it gets its own fighter squadron.

The power of the fighters would be totally based on the abilities of the main ship - so even though a small ship could still have a fleet, the extra boost would not be as much as on a better-armed ship.

The fighter squad would have a set of abilities that the player could choose from, each lasting eight hours. Only ONE ability could be active at a time, and the player would NOT be able to pick a new one for another eight hours. So if the player wanted the fighters to help take down a base, they'd have to wait another eight hours before they could switch to something else.

Fighters would draw from their own energy pool that does NOT recharge. The only way for the fighters to gain energy is for the player to refuel them from their ship's reserves. Cost of abilities and the fighters' energy pool would be proportional to the player's own energy maximum.

Abilities
(Remember, only ONE of these could be active in any eight hour period)

Covering Fire: The fighters draw fire from an enemy base, reducing damage from bases (ONLY) by 20% for 8 hours.

Raiding Party: If a player does enough damage to a base to have a 50% or better chance of getting a base crate, their base raid automatically succeeds.

Suppressing Fire: During a planetary invasion, a random offensive/defense structure is ignored in the attack. This can be *any* structure, even uniques. The structure is not destroyed, and the bonus does not apply to other players if the invasion fails.

Defensive Formation: Ship defense and passive attack is boosted by 10% (you do more damage if someone shoots you, but not if you're shooting at something)

Research Expedition: The fighters are sent on a reconaissance mission. At the end of eight hours, they will return with Research Points (Common), a newly scanned planet (uncommon), an expedition-only artifact (rare)

Pirate Patrol: The fighters are sent on a sector patrol. At the end of eight hours they will return with Mineral Points (Common), Artifact Points (Uncommon), or a patrol-only artifact (rare)

Shipboard Marines: You're considered to have twice as many crew members when defending against raids

Advance Scouts: Refresh your Battle Tab (PC ships only)

Signal Jamming: Gain 20% cloak

Definitely like this idea! +1



So say something like fighters' energy pool is 10% of the players maximum energy, and in order to activate the abilities of a fighter squadron you use, say, 20% of the fighters' energy pool...this would allow you to use a total of 5 fighter squadrons before needing to refuel their energy? And how would we refuel their energy, would be like an option on the ship tab or something, where we can "spend" energy on refueling the fighters' energy pool?

+2

this is a idea ive been wondering about for ages a BIG +1 to this idea but what ship size would you have to be before you get fighters? maybe the mid sized ships can get unmaned drones or something but you have to get a artifact to install them? but then also maybe you could at a high enough rank refit your ship to be a carryer not a battle ship with fighters in place of attack mods you send them out to fight in a low risk low reward style of fighting and the fighters take so much energy to launch and also can get shot down in a fight so you would have to replace them and they would do a damage over time effect on there target till there energy ran out at what point you would have to refuel them with your ships one energy granted a attack would alert them to whos attacking even if you dont disable them just to be fair

Thanks for the feedback! I was envisioning them as mainly a chargeable ability rather than a discrete thing. Dan's currently concerned about too much energy floating around - keeping your fighter squadron charged would be an optional energy sink that would give a customizable, nifty ability without giving you xp. I'm thinking something like:

Fighters Max Energy = 25ish% of your ship's max energy

With activating an ability using up 20-25% of the fighters' total pool. You'd open up your 'Fighter Squadron' panel and have a list of available abilities, as well as 'Charge Fighters.' Type in how much to charge 'em, up to the max, or have a button that does 20% increments.

So for me with 5000 energy, it'd cost me 1250 energy to fully charge them, which would get me 4-5 uses before I they ran dry. A lower energy ship would pay proportionally the same.

Abilities could be researchable - you'd start with a couple and then earn more as you went down the tree. (or power up existing ones). There could be branches that boosted the fighters' max energy or made them more efficient.

There could also be more powerful abilities with longer cooldowns - something like

Relay Sabotage - Gain four Star Chart Purgers - 24 hour cooldown
So your fighters would be out of commission for an entire day, but you'd get Purgers in return.

The idea of researching more abilities for fighter squads (or enhancing those already unlocked) sounds like an awesome idea as well. I could see this having a lot of use in the game, and adding a new level of play as well.

Definitely like this idea!

+1, something I can dump me extra energy in.

Games with large numbers where there doesn't need to be kind of getting annoying to me visual wise.

How about for X% of your energy, it gets 4-5 uses?
As in you drop (let's say) 30 (the most you can donate to them)% of your MAX energy into them, and they gain 5 actions.

Say you drop 6% of your m$ax energy into them, you would get one action rather then having 1250 energy for 4-5 uses

i thought one flaw with galaxy legion was its use of decks to show ship's power. i much prefered the idea of tonnage.

that way you could maybe multiply the decks by 1000 to get a tonnage of shipping, thus that way you could envision it as a whole fleet of ships fighting and trading etc together.

Problem with that is that max energy is not a constant...
I can just charge them when my energy is low by dropping my generator and put on all the relays and energy weapons... that's rather "cheat-ish"

WHat about different costs for different levels of boost. I.E. if you are sending your guys on a raid, you can spend 50 (80%com 15% unc 5% rare) or 200nrg gives 60/30/10 or 1000nrg gives 35/35/30