The Avalon: A Fighter Carrier

posted on August 25th, 2012, 5:12 pm

new question.

in the past if an avalon died, its fighters would go to ships with the big shuttle bays passive.

now when an avalon dies, what happens to its valkyries? do they now begrudgingly go join other ships like the old fighters?

posted on August 25th, 2012, 6:05 pm

Yup, that's correct - all Fighters can be supported by vessels equipped with the nice large shuttle bays. This means for instance, if you have an Intrepid with 10 attached Fighters, when the Intrepid dies its Fighters will head to the nearest bay-equipped starships. If you only have Avalons and Allround ships and you kill the Avalons which carry all the Fighters, those Fighters will leave the battlefield for lack of support.

posted on August 25th, 2012, 7:22 pm

can you make the fighters warp out when they have no support nearby? that would be so awesome (pointless for gameplay, but awesome).

also will any buildings have big enough hangers to keep fighters supplied? i'd guess that starbase would be perfect for this, it doesn't spawn any fighters itself (maybe that could be a purchase per fighter thing, unrelated to this discussion), but an avalon can use the fighter transfer special on the starbase, and if an avalon dies, the starbase can still support fighters. just like akira will do.

another question about fighter transfer special. say i have an avalon, and i give an allround ship (without support bays) 1 fighter, then i fly the avalon and allround ship away from each other. which ship does the fighter follow around?

posted on August 25th, 2012, 7:25 pm

Fighters stick to the ship on which you used fighter transfer. They only change their carrier if their carrier is lost.
Vessels can support an unlimited number of fighters gained per Fighter Transfer, but Fighter Transfer costs resources.

posted on August 25th, 2012, 7:26 pm

oh and to answer the second question: At the moment their are no buildings with hangars, but we can think about that

posted on August 25th, 2012, 7:40 pm

a question about the mechanics of large shuttle bays passive.

if a carrier dies, how does the game decide where the fighters go? does a ship with bays have to be within a fixed radius for fighters to attach to it, or will the game just pick the closest viable bays to send the fighters to?

i hope it's the second option, because then if starbases get the bays to support fighters that lose their carriers, after a failed battle where you lose all your carrier/bays ships, the fighters would then be able to fly back to your starbase, which is pretty much what i imagine would happen in canon battles, the fighters would just fly home to base.

posted on August 25th, 2012, 7:43 pm

Yet another vessel to survive the transition...

So, is this a hint that some ships are getting removed from the game in the next update, or am I reading too much into it?

posted on August 25th, 2012, 7:50 pm

i really like the idea of the fighters going back to defend the starbase,

i tried to rush for avalons once, and all 5 i had were destroyed so the fighters went strait to the nearest yard to decommission themselves.

posted on August 25th, 2012, 8:17 pm

Plain awesome, I was never a great fan of small ships but after watching DS9 for like 5 times, I grew fond of Federation Attack Fighters , Peregrine and Maquis Raider.

posted on August 25th, 2012, 8:47 pm

Yet another vessel to survive the transition...

So, is this a hint that some ships are getting removed from the game in the next update, or am I reading too much into it?

I d take this with a grain of salt. The current federation line up has many vessels that cant be axed easily. Easily meaning without some fan rage. Its understandable that some of the older designs (TMP ERA and earlier) would be map objects, But Id expect most of the TNG ERA and on vessels to stay in some limited capacity via Warp in. Im sure that the comment is more regarding the global changes to all factions and not just limited to federation ships.

That's actually correct. The Avalon itself launches the new Valkyrie Fighters. The older Peregrine Fighters are easier maintained by other spacecrafts and have their appearance in the Fighter Transfer.

Glad to see I was correct.... not that being right matters. This is the cool stuff I come to expect from Fleet ops, new designs taking a front seat while the older vessels we know and love taking an interesting and unique supporting role.

posted on August 25th, 2012, 8:53 pm

This is pretty cool, I was actually doing this the other day with the map editor, spawning tons of avalons around an akira and then deleting them so the akira had a swarm of fighters around it. Great post!p.s. the new akira textures look great.

posted on August 25th, 2012, 10:10 pm

Yet another vessel to survive the transition...

So, is this a hint that some ships are getting removed from the game in the next update, or am I reading too much into it?

May be some of the most underused ships like the Cho'naq are temporarily removed to be either reworked or replaced lateron. On the federation side however, I think no more than two vessels might have gone for the next release. I can imagine the Miranda-II and Excelsior-II having no real gap to fill at the moment. Or the civilian ships have been replaced, may be.
The statement could also mean there are re-models on their way which look totally different from the former ones or there's been some shiptype renamed.

posted on August 26th, 2012, 2:50 am

a question about the mechanics of large shuttle bays passive.

if a carrier dies, how does the game decide where the fighters go? does a ship with bays have to be within a fixed radius for fighters to attach to it, or will the game just pick the closest viable bays to send the fighters to?.[...]

Currently they just go to the nearest unit with hangars - just like in in 326

posted on August 26th, 2012, 7:11 am

Currently they just go to the nearest unit with hangars - just like in in 326

i hope this stays as is. it makes more sense than the ships flying off the map. they would know where an allied ship with hangars is and go there for support.

posted on August 26th, 2012, 2:31 pm

I find this idea great and have a question or a proposal.Is it only a direct fighter transfer of already produced units or transfers the Avalon-Class the ability to produce fighter, too? If it would also transfer the property in the form of a credit or something like that, you could vary the class of small vessels depending on the ship class. It means for example older ships like the Excelsior and the Galaxy could start shuttlecrafts like Type 6-Shuttles (Goddard) or Type 7- Shuttles (D'Alison). The Intrepid-Class for example is indeed a weaker ship but it could start modern Type-9-Shuttles, fighters or runabouts. So you could also make the strengths and weaknesses of each vessel differentiated...