The Warhawk looks fine, good mix of MFC and missile range - having an MFC with more range than the missile helps against enemy ECM.

Gunboats and fighters, I want the sensor craft to move at the same speed as the attack craft.  Same with the tankers (yes, I make a fighter tanker and a gunboat tanker, mostly for squadrons based as planetary defense forces, it sucks when some NPR scout is hanging around a jump point just out of operational range of the squadron).  Putting additional fuel on the scout fighter/gunboat has worked out well in extending the range of the squadron, so I don't tend to use tanker fighters on fleet based squadrons.

I wouldn't worry about the resolution size 1 sensor, since you don't have any anti-missile capacity on the fighters.

As long as your missile can reach out to 50m km, that first design is fine.  At that range, they aren't likely to see the fighter.  I tend to designate that as a bomber, really, given the speed and range of the MFC/Missiles.

Take a look at the armor DAC, it will show you that your current armor is 3 boxes wide, and two rows deep.  Which means if the armor absorbed 100% of its capacity (not the way to bet) it will stop the first 6 points of damage.  Everything after that goes internal.  Even if you add more armor, each new level of armor is only 3 more points of damage soak, max.  Most of your internals are likely to be 0 or 1 HTK (hits to kill).  Basically, don't expect a fighter to take damage and make it back.  Raw speed (my 100 ton interceptors go 37500km/s) and being small enough the enemy can't lock onto them at range are what keep a fighter alive.  Dumping the armor will give a bit more speed.

That's too bad.  How much armor would it need to have to "make a difference?" 

On a fighter, probably so much that it would be too slow.  Besides, you should be launching on the bad guys from beyond the range where they can see/lock up you.

Which brings up a different point - you're going to have trouble shooting at anything smaller than 5000 tons, given the R100 fire control.  I've been using R20 in my most recent game so that I can shoot at FAC; this only drops the range by a factor of ~2.2, which should still keep you far out of the bad guys' envelope.

Also, what is the concensus on using an engine with greater performance but also a greater explosion chance?

For single engine combatants (e.g. fighter, FAC), your ship suffers a mission kill anyway if the engine goes.  So from an explosion point of view it doesn't do any harm to go for greater performance (and actually helps with hit probabilities).

The problem is fuel consumption - you gave up 20% range for that extra performance.

John

You should probably drop it down to 1 armour, 2 is not going to make any difference to be honest!

You want to get their speed up a little bit.  Around 9000km/s will be enough to work with.  This lets them barely outrun the swarm warriors which you will want to be able to do.  I would probably drop 1-2 box launchers.  Other than that it is a decent starting fighter.  You might find that a size 3 missile works better, but that is heavily dependent on your missile tech.  Try to get a warhead of 4 as this gives you a little extra penetration.

Brian