Unassigned Fighters

[Kingfisher (OP)]

In the fighters screen, my fighters appear to have no assigned squadron.  When i try to move them to a carrier, error 381 is presented.  help?

[Nathan_]

I generally make a taskgroup of the fighters via the f12 screen, and then order them to "land on mothership + assign" and select what carrier I want them on. That will work in a pinch if you just want your fighters on a carrier, otherwise you'll likely have to figure out squadron assignment.

[Hawkeye]

Open the Fighter Squadron screen (F7), select the squadron, you want the fighters to be assigned to, doble-click the fighter to assign it to the squadron.
Make sure, the "show all Race Fighters" (upper right) is ticked, or un-assigned fighters will not show up in the list
Make sure, the carrier you want the squadron to be based on is selected (upper left "Mothership"), if you want to land/launch the squadron from this screen

[ollobrains]

anyone got a good fighter design ?

[Kingfisher (OP)]

Mine has a 10 Cm miniturised ultraviolet laser.

[Hawkeye]

Beam armed fighters are very _very_ difficult to do. If the enemy has any AMM capability, your fighters will die in droves before they even reach firing range. This is the reason most people (me included) stick with Box-Launcher armed fighters. Keep the fighter size below 300 tons (200 to 250 tons is even better), so they are significantly faster than your warships (what would be the point of a fighter, if your battlship can outrun it?).
You might want to include a scout-fighter (with an active sensor) in your squadron, if you want them to operate outside sensor coverage from your carrier/fleet scout/planetary sensor base.