First Beam Fighter

[Maharava (OP)]

First off, I know about the Tracking Speed gap between laser and fire control and it's getting fixed. Now, i've never used Fighters before: have I missed anything?

Broadsword class Fighter    410 tons     15 Crew     55.1 BP      TCS 8.2  TH 36  EM 0
4390 km/s     Armour 2-4     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 4
Maint Life 20.62 Years     MSP 42    AFR 2%    IFR 0%    1YR 0    5YR 3    Max Repair 12 MSP

FTR Ion Engine E800 (1)    Power 36    Fuel Use 8000%    Signature 36    Armour 0    Exp 25%
Fuel Capacity 20,000 Litres    Range 1.1 billion km   (69 hours at full power)

12cm C2 Near Ultraviolet Laser (1)    Range 24,000km     TS: 4390 km/s     Power 4-2     RM 3    ROF 10        4 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S00.5 12-3000 (FTR) (1)    Max Range: 24,000 km   TS: 12000 km/s     58 17 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Small Power Reactor (1)     Total Power Output 3    Armour 0    Exp 5%

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

It's probably quite a weak ship, I'm more just playing around with size/weight atm and making sure it has everything it needs to function

[Nathan_]

you don't need that much maintenance for the fighter, likewise for fuel. If this is a 5.6 design it is unwise to build fighters bigger than 250 tons.

[Vynadan]

For ion technology, that looks like both a pretty big fighter and a little on the slow side. Still fast for ion tech ships, but for a fighter I'd personally aim around 6k km/s. That looks like a 1 HS 3x Power engine - if you go for 2 HS you take about 12.2% extra tonnage, but double your engine power (and marginally save on fuel). With the beam armament you'll want all the speed you can get.

The maintenace as Nathan_ states seems really overdone - Try fitting a single fighter engineering space on there, you'll seldomly need more than that.
The fuel is quite a bit too, but that depends on how far out you want those fighters to go.

Technically though, the ship is sound the way it is and has everything it needs to fly - It'll need an active sensor provided by another ship to find its targets, though.

[metalax]

Looks like you are running a version of aurora prior to 6.0 so you are stuck with a single fixed size engine. As this is the case, you want your fighter to be as small as possible to maximize speed which is a fighters only real defence.

I assume that this will operate within range of your fleet active sensors or you will have a sensor fighter accompanying the strike wing.

If you are not already, drop down to a single fighter engineering space.
Drop down to a single tiny fuel tank, perhaps two if you need particularly long range.
Design a smaller reactor, you only need two power not three. Fighters can't be refit so there is no point in future-proofing it for when you upgrade your capacitor tech.
I'd personally strip off the extra armour, as I find the higher speed gives a better length of survival that a small amount of armour.

[Maharava (OP)]

Wow that WAS a long maintenance life XD i thought I'd stripped that off. I have downgraded the engineering and fuel spaces to 'Tiny' (now i've researched it, and this is pre-6.0 (6 won't work on my PC for some reason). I've also done the smaller reactor (I'll look into getting a newer version of my design up when I get home)
I'll have a look at what speed difference the armour makes too. Might be able to have the second layer and keep my speed high now I've downgraded the stuff. Thanks for your opinions.

And a 20 year life span? It's a 1/5th generation fighter, made fr long voyages...(I kid of course)

[CaptainBipto]

Off topic but I finally as  able to do the Portable release and Aurora works great (again) on my Windows 7 pc.