Fighters and bombers.
A huge part of space combat. I have recently edited all the code for the space fighters . Also models have been edited by me, to have better collision meshes. Normally a fighter of a bomber is very easy to hit, the game registers a large box around the ship which once it gets hit, the ship itself gets hit. This is a box because it is very poly friendly, and it's easy for the game to balance as you can have a corvette and it will tear through a squadron. I decided I did not want to have that, I want a fighter squadron to last more than 10 seconds to an anti fighter corvette.
Fighters still have the same shitty dps (damage per second) they're just harder to kill now, forcing you to do something about all of those fighters, because a lot of fighters for the enemy equals no bombers for you, and bombers actually do have a good dps vs larger ships. They are also quite expensive and you don't get a lot from larger ships, unless it's a carrier ofcourse.
So bombers are pretty important to any fight. They can inflict a lot of damage over a long period, but I have set it up so that bombers don't do rediculous damage, so you wont see one Aurora squadron take out a Paladin anytime soon, unlike the original game where one squadron of Y wings would take out a Star Destroyer if it was unprotected. Damage is as follows:
Bombers do:
50% damage to fighters
50% damage to bombers
40% damage to corvettes
250% damage to frigates
150% damage to capital ships
With low dps (compared to a capital laser shot) and with the high accuracy required now to hit squadrons, this will force you to invest in fast interceptors rather than spamming corvettes. Once again this plays into my vision of having to make not just "One ship class to rule them all" but several ships from all tiers.
Note that cheaters will be caught! Just building one of every class will fail you horribly. Capital ships have some insane dps (vs their respective targets) so try building one of each class and all of your support ships will disappear very rapidly as you need the appropriate units to counter the high dps units. Strategy over brainless spamming. This has been tested by me a lot of times so no worries. No spamming. Not even the easy AI is stupid enough to do it.
Oh yeah, you might be thinking of bombers are countered so easily why not just spam fighters and win that way? Well let me state the damage of fighter craft:
Fighters do:
100% damage to fighters
100% damage to bombers
30% damage to corvettes
25% damage to frigates
10% damage to capital ships
This with very low base damage. As you can see this will certainly not work, you will not have enough dps to destroy the frigates designed to destroy fighter craft, which both sides have atleast one for.
This balances out pretty well ingame, I hope this has brought some understanding to you about the place of fighters and bombers on the battlefield.
-Geroenimo
Love the idea of your hit boxes, always wondered why in the force a laser hitting 5ft in front of the fighter kills it. Now it will be more like actual fighter combat, you have to actually hit it. :P
Oh well. No more invasion of the corvettes. :P