Sins Forums
Hello All,
Last week, I was playing online and charged in with my 24 capital ships ONLY TO BE KILLED BY A SWARM OF 100 BOMBER CRAFT THAT I COULDN'T HIT!
Is there a mod that allow capital ships to attack fighter/ bomber craft?
If not, i'll need to make one!
First of all 24 caps? What mod were you playing?
Second, bombers do counter capitalships you know. That's one thing you shouldn't be mad at them for doing. 
Really, letting capitalships shoot at them would not solve the "problem". Titans can shoot at strikecraft yet there are just so many bombers in 100 squads it cannot hope to take them all out. Really you just need a lot of fighter escorts, and some capitalships with antifighter abilities like the Kol's flak burstor Halcyon's telekinetic push to deal with that.
If you built all capital ships possible online that is a huge mistake beginners make, even a moderate player will know you have nothing against bombers that counter capitalships hard. Online never build that much capital hips, 1-2 is enough if you can keep them alive, they will never level up if you have 10 of them, and are weaker than the same fleet capacity used by frigates (a level1 capitalship is no match for 5 heavy cruisers, it is the most simple example, only on higher levels they get closer).
Sins logics is extremely stupid in my opinion. In reality even tradeships would have anti-strike craft weapons, here it is very surprising that only the biggest ships, Titans have (but starbases don't, yeah let's build a huge defensive thing with many weapons, but let's let the enemy to kill it with bombers that cannot even be targeted by our magnificent last chance structure... seems legit)...... Or is it strange only to me?
it wouldn't have been tough to add 1 hardpoint per side to the starbase meshes, assign the weapon to anti-SC and remove particle effects so it doesn't overload the particle handling.
It is possible to mod in 2 extra weapons (either one could be "point defense") for cap ships and star bases... the former would be far easier though, considering that you'd need to modify like 10 meshes for each SB upgrade combo... and that's even if you don't have the extra weapon(s) as unlocked via upgrade...
I still want to give it a try, though. Eventually, what with school and a bit of Fallout NV modeling.
Anyway it would be a great way to individualize each faction/ship, e.g. a carrier might have anti-light and anti-very-light turrets (epic v.s. all SC but sucky versus anything else) whereas a dreadnaught might have an anti-module/heavy hitter weapon (or two) and weak defense lasers if at all; the Marza would probably have fewer/weaker PD than, say, the Radiance, which never gave a "siege" ship vibe like Marza and the Desolator (can't remember...? too busy smashing things as TEC/Advent Rebels to notice the names of the junk-creators). The Desolator and new destoyer bug thingy (at least) should definitely get disintegration beams; the Rapture, Halcyon and new destroyer should get the psionic surge, as they seem to fit the "rage-filled psychic nut-job" implied by the things.
Speaking of which, I found that setting the Marza's missiles to do Anti-Module damage prevented them from targeting anything other than structures. I haven't tried putting that dam. type on another weapon e.g. lasers but anti-module missiles at least are hard-coded to only target planet modules.
Extremely inefficient when enemy bombers are in huge numbers,and supported by flak (I know the base will shoot down flak, but still would be good to be realistic, NO INTELLIGENT RACE would build starbases without anti strike craft weapons if they know their enemy has strike craft, would be extremely stupid...)
Getting four or six fighters for a star-base upgrade isn't necessarily the best bargain; or in other words you need to keep defense craft, hangers/carriers etc. there as a permanent garrison.
Whereas if the base has some good AA batteries then a few extra fighters (and/or bombers) start weighing in more IMO. It provides greater flexibility/usefulness.
Besides, as others have mentioned, capital ships aren't as heavily utilized as they could be. Capital ships are a carrier-heavy cruiser-siege frigate combo with staying power and abilities. Adding anti-strikecraft weapons into the mix is certainly a fair bargain.
Consider also that real life battleships spent most of their time shelling beaches, soaking up bombs and bullets, and providing a crap-ton of flak cover for the carrier fleet, and on occasion blasting apart hapless frigates and destroyers.
Okay, so I am not entirely clear on how to import the vanilla meshes and textures to XSI. MyFisto's mod wiki lists the 30-day trial of 3DMax (it's a broken link) and a page containing the vanilla models has two broken links; it also does not have the new rebellion capital ships.
Although I did find a thread on adding new hardpoints via coding... I might just do that, there isn't too much of a need to have new turrets for light point defense cannons... and I suppose I could "borrow" existing hardpoints for say a Gauss cannon on the Kol, or extra anti-module torpedoes on the Marza.
I am not entirely clear on how that would work, though.
I still might need the star base meshes. More importantly, as I'd like to add shields to Vasari/TEC, I'll need their structures and maybe a few advent structures/shields for reference.
regarding the starbase meshES, each of the upgrades (eg tradeports,frigate factories etc) has it's OWN meshand there is also meshes for the combination of the upgrades, so you will get to practice the addition of weapon points in starbase meshes A LOT.
harpo
but bombers are supposed to counter capitalships? Ah well this is the modding area so I suppose my kind aint welcome here.
bombers counter caps,structures, frigates(softly) and titans (for rebellion), and anybody that is trying alterations/ideas & mod IS welcome.
harpo
Indeed. I'd probably just try and make an ability like flak burst myself. Only need to add one point per mesh, maybe not even that if you can use the center point. Probably need to learn some particle forge to make the effects bigger though.
Everyone's welcome, but if someone wants to make a mod that totally screws up the balance, there's no point in pressing them not to do it. It's their mod!
Titans have point defense (yes they're huge, but then so are star-bases) and there's no reason that capitals and SBs couldn't have a weaker equivalent.
You could always decrease the accuracy v.s. strikecraft; or if you use say capital-ship or composite damage type for the PD then you could set a different accuracy rating (or leave it at the ~10% it's already at). Then the Akkan's TU becomes even more valuable.
The point is to make things a bit more "interesting" and hopefully give both caps and SBs a bit more resilience. If nothing else, it could somewhat mitigate Bomber Spam (**Vasari** 
), particularly if, say, the weaker carrier or support caps get better point defense.
ETA: just wanted to add as a WWII example, no battleships were ever lost to bombers while under fighter escort IIRC. The Yamato and her escorts took quite a pounding; with 150 (11) AA guns and even a special "Beehive" shell for her main guns; against 400 planes in 12 waves she was toast, but I can only imagine how things might have turned out if she had a fighter escort.
FOr comparison, the Battle of Midway gives a better example of how AA batteries, damage control, and the quality of crews, planes, and gunners all taken together could affect things. The first wave of B-17s missed the Japanese fleet entirely; none of the US torpedo bombers hit; yet a third of the Japanese fighter losses were due to the base's AA batteries, rather than the fighters.
Unescorted bombers should be torn apart by a few fighters/cap. ships alone; unescorted capital ships are in deep s**t against anything more than a couple of squads, barring extreme quality difference.
I've currently modded in point defense for the Vasari and TEC capital ships, still need to to the Advent and the Star Bases.
It's also completely arbitrary in numerical terms; so I'll need to whack things down a bit in "testing"...
Just finished the star bases today (still haven't really tested everything yet), not sure when I'll upload, though. I have made quite a mess of vanilla cap ship weapon ranges (phh), added additional weapons to capital ships (a "beam" to the Akkan, using Advent appearance and ion hit effect- an Ion beam in other words, in all but name/research bonuses, despite having a spare weapon type named "Ion"; disintegrators to the Devastator, Evacuator, and the new battleship; and the "psionic surge" to the Halcyon and Rapture), vacillated on both the weapon type ("point defense" or flash beam... flak or autocannon....) and damage type/accuracy (composite for great damage, but poor accuracy??), among other things; and a from-scratch redo of the ancient new-abilities mod I made, adding new stuff to defense platforms and the like; I'm planning to upload at least two files, one with just the new defense cannons (but not the other "extraneous" weapons) and the other with everything else.
I'll also check compatibility with the 4X mod (the "bare" one should be fine, it only modifies meshes and the entity files for the cap ships and the Star Bases) as the other stuff will almost certainly have some conflicts.
Okay. Here's the VERY ROUGH version; it works just fine, but the range/accuracy/damage levels and type (anti-heavy) are all whacked up (or at least very arbitrary) so....
gah, can't figure out how to attach a zip. I've really spent too much time on this... can't put off schoolwork, heh.
Um... you CAN counter that many strikecraft with caps... it just depends on the area of engagement and what you have your caps specced for...
One squad isn't exactly much of a problem, no.
That's not really the point, though; more than that flak turrets would allow the cap to defend itself without having to hunt down a carrier on the edge of the grav well, or plunge into a defense system to knock out the hangars, or so on. It also makes sense. Capital ships should have anti-fighter weapons; they always have/had them in Real Life and they certainly have them in Sci Fi.
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