5 Fighters 2 1 (Squadron)?!

The English word "squadron" in reference to military units has been around since the 1500's.

A cavalry squadron (horse or armoured) typically consists of three to five troops. In the United States Army, a squadron is the Cavalry equivalent of an infantry battalion or artillery battalion; it is used for Armored Cavalry and Air Cavalry units. In the British Army and many Commonwealth armies, it is the counterpart of an infantry company or artillery battery. The designation is also used for company-sized units in the Special Air Service, Honourable Artillery Company, Royal Engineers, Royal Corps of Signals, Royal Army Medical Corps and Royal Logistic Corps, and formerly of the now defunct Royal Corps of Transport, as well as the Royal Marines.

Squadrons are commonly designated using letters or numbers (e.g. No. 1 Squadron or A Squadron). In some British Army units it is a tradition for squadrons to also be named after an important historical battle in which the regiment has taken part. In some special cases, squadrons can also be named after a unique honour which has been bestowed on the unit (e.g. The Queen's Colour Squadron of the Royal Air Force's RAF Regiment).


[edit] Aviation
[show]v • d • eAir Force units and formations
Section · Flight · Squadron · Group/Wing · Tactical air force · Numbered air force · Command · Air force

An air force, army aviation or naval aviation squadron typically consists of three or four flights, with a total of 12 to 24 aircraft, depending on aircraft type and air force. In the Imperial Japanese Army in the Second World War, three air squadrons were assigned to each air regiment. Some air forces (including the Royal Air Force and United States Air Force) also use the term for air force ground units. Multiple squadrons (typically three to ten) make up a wing.
In the Air Training Corps of the UK, a Squadron is a group of cadets who parade regularly.

In the Civil Air Patrol, a squadron is the basic administrative unit.


[edit] Navy
Main article: Squadron (naval)
A naval squadron can be either a permanent battle formation or an ad hoc grouping of warships, typically capital ships (battleships, battlecruisers, cruisers, or aircraft carriers). In the United States Navy, several ships of a similar type, such as submarines and destroyers, are administered as squadrons.

WWW Link


as you can see a squadron is based on what you are talking about and who you are talking to.

So basically other than the wiki link to inform us you have just confirmed my suspicions as to why the fighter groups are so small?  

If the button says "SQUADRON MANAGEMENT" I want to see a sqaudron not a bloody "SECTION". Show us the fighters and mayhem must ensue  

Historically in space warfare, squadrons have five craft. This is because the founder of Earth Space Defense Command really liked the number five. He thought it was much prettier than some of the other numbers, like four or six or twenty. If you have a problem with that, you can try to take it up with Earth Space Defense Command, but you'd be asking them to buck 4,000 years of tradition. Good luck with that. Alternatively, you could start your own space navy and make squadrons any size you want.

I think the main point is simply the apparent lack of fighters in any significant numbers rather than a pure definition of a squadron.....

From my experience of SoaSE games to date fighters are simply a distraction which add little to the gameplay.

Then you've never gone up against a carrier-heavy opponent

Even a carrier-light opponent can do NASTY things if you don't have any anti-strikecraft capability. Vasari Dreadnought analog Vs. a TEC players Sova comes to mind... poor guy didn't know how to save his poor ship, what with 3 bomber squads (and a "reserve" fighter squad) pounding it to pieces through his repair centers repair efforts.

AFAIK the numbers are based on performance first and balance second. Dictionary definition is really nowhere in the equation

Forget carrier heavy, just jump into a gravity well with 7 hangar bays with a massive fleet and watch your capital ships dissappear in seconds as 14 bomber squadrons kill them all in three passes each.

I certainly hope theres a massive fleet -- with that many hangars, you can't have a lot of repair centers, turrets, or PJIs!

Couldn't the number of fighters be increased without any blance issues if there were simply gohst fighters flying around that would be destroyed when the real fighter they were affiliated with was destroyed. If each fighter had three gohsts that would be about the numbers people are suggesting should be in a squadron

And, as pointed out, that is a performance killer.

a fighter squadron in ace combat is 4, therefore all fighters should be in groups of four

as i said a squad depends on who you are talking to and what you are talking about.

This would work if there was a simple slider that controlled the number of ghost fighters in a squadron.

On another note has anyone looked at the fighters up close when in combat? I think the formation is a little too tight, and needs a little more spacing because 1/2 of the fighters body is passing though his wingmen. If collision was in the game most of the fighters would be dead on takeoff

Just wondering how even at maximum zoom the fighters are smaller than frigates at zoom before icon view and most of the time all you can see is the unit icon that represents them as you need to zoom in further to see the little buggers, being able to cause an "apparent" issue with performance?

Maybe it's that some people want to run the game at maximum graphical power even if their machine can't handle it? I know i can't so i just run at about a medium setup and don't see any issue with performance, and to prove false advertising if this is the case:

"Technical Features

ins of a Solar Empire is powered by the Iron Engine - a brand new, advanced graphics engine from developer Ironclad Games that was built specifically for Sins. Using the latest in DirectX 9 technology, Sins is able to deliver a massive, detailed galaxy for the player to explore, expand into, exploit and ultimately conquer in real-time, all while being able to perform well on a range of systems and hardware.

Here are a few of the major features of the Iron Engine that you'll see in Sins of a Solar Empire:
Can support thousands of planets and solar systems, the only limitation is the player's system. Massive, detailed textures on ships, planets and orbital structures.
Hundreds of ships on-screen at once, engaged in epic battle.
Up to 10,000 particles (explosions, missiles, laser blasts etc.) on the screen at once in full-out combat.
Seamless zoom-in and zoom-out from looking at a one-man space fighter, to viewing your entire empire spanning billions of kilometers of space.
The Iron Engine is designed to perform well on systems ranging from middle-of-the-road hardware, to the biggest, most powerful machines on the market today. Effects, number of ships, planets etc. are only limited by how powerful your machine is. There are no hard-coded limits. "

I'd like 2x the number of fighters per squad, and reduce their health by 1/2 , so in the end there are more ships that are equal to the current ship amounts in strength.

It can easily be modded, but I hope it makes the retail game

For starters, humans haven't been to war in 1000 years, so who's to say what the number in a squadron should be?

Sins can handle as many fighter/bombers as someone wants to mod in (several people have previously), but as the FAQ says it all comes down to what your machine can handle. If you want to have 1000 frigates and 10,000 fighters on-screen, go for it, but don't expect them to behave well (since your splitting your processor power into 10,000 fighters and 1,000 frigate's AI routines) or for the game to not chug (cause you're putting a beating on your GPU/CPU) if you're playing on a minimum spec PC.

Its early in the morning for logic, but lets see if I can manage this...

Well, A) you can't just throw those units up whenever you want, you have to constantly track those "ghost" units just like the regular ones (CPU strain isn't really effected by unit size...). Which leads to...
It can't be set by individual players or you end up risking synch issues in multiplayer...
C) Because of that, the game design needs to make sure that both middle-of-the-road and high-end computers can play in the same game by not including the feature which could be supported.

I don't know about you, but I (really) detest the idea of a game that, at release, automatically incorporates something to split players apart like that. Yes, the engine can (probably) handle it; average / below average PC could chug even at the lowest setting so that person gets "locked" out of MP... not really fair to people who meet minimum, or even recommended, then tell them they can't play.

If you really want all those extra fighters simply because of some arbitrary number of units in a squadron, you can always wait for release, because I guarantee you someone is going to make a "fighter-heavy" mod. If no one else does, I'll figure it out... eventually.

cept that messes with guardas... although nobody really uses them anyways...

Huh, what? I use gardas plenty. I've seen the masses of strikecraft Multi likes to deploy to a battle (although I haven't played against him yet).