LameFox wrote: ↑Fri, 17. Sep 21, 06:29
It may not be armageddon for player fighters which can be withdrawn and repaired when necessary but while I was watching the AI deal with it (e.g. fighting xenon) they definitely had no way to cope with it at all. If a few Ks came through a gate all the S ships there would be dead by the end. The capital ship's explosion is laughably more effective against fighters than its weaponry. IMO at the very least there needs to be something telling the AI to withdraw out of range when the ship is dying.
And while it doesn't matter much if you remain in a carrier, testing it in a well shielded fighter flying nearby I found the 'explosion imminent' warning was only of marginal use. It gives no hint of direction or distance that would make it useful in a larger fight (e.g. conflict near a gate) and in fact you hear it from outside the damage radius, so you won't even know if you are in danger—responding could make your situation worse. The damaging AOE itself is invisible which in principle I find disappointing. Invisible AOE damage is just not good gameplay. And the range is so extreme relative to fighter weapons that you absolutely rely on having shields to boost away with. Conventional flight is not fast enough. Considering how fast an L ship's hull can go down once its shields drop it seems set up to cause sudden deaths from unseen damage, poorly indicated by one audio warning.
Overall this game gives me very mixed messages about fighters. I agree with the earlier comment about turrets—it seems to me they were made notably less effective compared to older titles, probably to get people into fighters personally, but then as a side effect swarm tactics became too easy. Now they're trying to swing things back the other way but the method feels very unpolished right now and, based on having played with mods that improve turrets, it is not even a better experience from within a fighter than if they hadn't made them so useless to begin with.
Much like the way ships would struggle with landing or flying near stations at release, I feel like this is one of those things that will be immersion breaking and frustrating for players trying to get into this game.
Yes, from what I have seen the fighters AI have no means to deal with explosion damage. I guess the player can compensate for that by ordering the fighters to atack the capital ship then queue an order to move to a safe position after, rince and repeat. Not the most elegant solution, but it might work.
Agree on the point of invisible AOE damage, also, in my clip, the K's exploded simultaneously, but only one have display the circle of the explosion animation
Don't know about the turrets eficiency changes in 4.10...for me, my bolt turetts on the Raptor seem to be more efficient now, even surgical to some degree. That is one of the reasons I went and tested a torpedo loaudout for some fo my wings, I was like...whelp, now turetts are more precise, so I must destroy the capitals faster, but aparently, the xenon made no gains in that area
Honestly, I don't know what is the best aproach on fighters efficiency against capital ships. I remember in X3TC fighters being a joke against capitals...I also remember the 5 xenon Q camping the gate, ready to reduce your mighty destroyer to dust...so there were always counters to destroyers. I also remember chiling in some fighter...boom, splat, game over...what happen?...a hostile destroyer passed by, 5 km away...ahhh
I'm not really sure if I want to return to that
), flak on the turetts, best speed to a xenon sector with a nice S/M swarm at the gate. I go to the location, to see the wonder of the new and improve flak turetts in 4.10. My turetts and engines reduce to dust really fast...my shields at full strength, almost 
