First fighter design

[Cavgunner (OP)]

Well I'm still in my first game and my empire is slowly growing.  I have occasionally encountered Precursor and Swarm ships that have eaten my scout ships.  The time will soon come to take the fight to them.  This is the best fighter I can make with my current techology, and it will be based off my first generation of small carriers.  What do you think?

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Wildcat class Fighter    290 tons     3 Crew     65.6 BP      TCS 5.8  TH 16.8  EM 0
8275 km/s     Armour 2-3     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 2.4
Annual Failure Rate: 58%    IFR: 0.8%    Maint Capacity 0 MSP    Max Repair 26 MSP    Est Time: 0 Years
Magazine 16   

FTR Magneto-plasma Drive E500 (1)    Power 48    Fuel Use 5000%    Signature 16.8    Armour 0    Exp 25%
Fuel Capacity 10,000 Litres    Range 1.2 billion km   (41 hours at full power)

Size 2 Box Launcher (8)    Missile Size 2    Hangar Reload 15 minutes    MF Reload 2.5 hours
Missile Fire Control FC69-R100 (70%) (1)     Range 69.3m km    Resolution 100

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposes

[Brian Neumann]

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

[Cavgunner (OP)]

How about this then?  It's a little bit more explodey...

My warhead tech is actually fairly good so I will probably stick with the Size 2 missiles.

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Wildcat class Fighter    290 tons     3 Crew     67.6 BP      TCS 5.8  TH 19.25  EM 0
9482 km/s     Armour 2-3     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 2.4
Annual Failure Rate: 58%    IFR: 0.8%    Maint Capacity 0 MSP    Max Repair 26 MSP    Est Time: 0 Years
Magazine 16    

FTR Magneto-plasma Drive E650 (1)    Power 55.2    Fuel Use 6500%    Signature 19.32    Armour 0    Exp 60%
Fuel Capacity 10,000 Litres    Range 1.0 billion km   (27 hours at full power)

Size 2 Box Launcher (8)    Missile Size 2    Hangar Reload 15 minutes    MF Reload 2.5 hours
Missile Fire Control FC69-R100 (70%) (1)     Range 69.3m km    Resolution 100

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposes


[Beersatron]

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

[Cavgunner (OP)]

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

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

[sloanjh]

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

[Brian Neumann]

I usually want to either have the minimum armor, or if is not to much of an impact then level 3 armour will keep your fighter alive through a couple decent hits, or a lot of point defense missiles hitting them.  For the engines go for the greater speed, the fuel is a pain, but the speed will keep you alive far more often than the fuel will prevent you from using the fighters in the first place.  This is especially true if you are trying to get multiple strikes in on things like the swarm while running away from them.  In that case the more speed that your fighters and carriers have the better.  I will often put the 10% speed upgrade (10% explosion chance) on my lighter warships.  It gives them a little extra speed over the heavier combatants, and by the time they are taking internals they are probably dead already anyway.  That extra speed lets them be used in escort positions far more easily.

Brian

[LtWarhound]

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.

[Cavgunner (OP)]

I've reworked my main fighter design a bit.  I'm not really interested in having 4 or 5 different types of fighters, so I'm trying to make these designs as multi-purpose as possible.

Also below is the early warning craft I intend to use to guide it to the target.

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Warhawk class Fighter    300 tons     4 Crew     74.6 BP      TCS 6  TH 19.25  EM 0
9166 km/s     Armour 1-3     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 2.4
Annual Failure Rate: 60%    IFR: 0.8%    Maint Capacity 0 MSP    Max Repair 34 MSP    Est Time: 0 Years
Magazine 16   

FTR Magneto-plasma Drive E650 (1)    Power 55.2    Fuel Use 6500%    Signature 19.32    Armour 0    Exp 60%
Fuel Capacity 15,000 Litres    Range 1.4 billion km   (41 hours at full power)

Size 2 Box Launcher (8)    Missile Size 2    Hangar Reload 15 minutes    MF Reload 2.5 hours
Missile Fire Control FC49-R20 (FTR) (1)     Range 49.6m km    Resolution 20
Starflash Size 2 Anti-ship Missile (8)  Speed: 31,200 km/s   End: 24m    Range: 45m km   WH: 4    Size: 2    TH: 208 / 124 / 62

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposes

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Hawkeye class Early Warning Craft    455 tons     9 Crew     181.6 BP      TCS 9.1  TH 19.25  EM 0
6043 km/s     Armour 1-5     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 0
Annual Failure Rate: 91%    IFR: 1.3%    Maint Capacity 0 MSP    Max Repair 105 MSP    Est Time: 0 Years

FTR Magneto-plasma Drive E650 (1)    Power 55.2    Fuel Use 6500%    Signature 19.32    Armour 0    Exp 60%
Fuel Capacity 60,000 Litres    Range 3.7 billion km   (6 days at full power)

Active Search Sensor MR51-R20 AWACS (1)     GPS 2100     Range 51.7m km    Resolution 20
Active Search Sensor MR2-R1 (70%) (1)     GPS 21     Range 2.3m km    Resolution 1

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposes


[LtWarhound]

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.