Why do my fighters explode?

[Zook (OP)]

When I forget to put newly built fighters in hangars and they hang around a while in orbit, they tend to suffer engine malfunctions and explode. The have no engineering spaces, but shouldn't maintenance facilities prevent that?

[Erik L]

Maintenance facilities only deal with ships, not fighters.

[sloanjh]

And the reason for this is to represent the cost of basing facilities, i.e. so that 1 maintenance installation can't support 10K fighters....

John

[Redshirt]

You pretty much need to put them into hangers quickly. Fighters are wings strapped on barely controlled bombs. Long range fighters should take engineering sections. They come in a fighter-sized version at a fairly low tech level.