Problem with fighters

[Brian Neumann]

and then you have to re-assign each time a target dies.

try doing that when fighting the swarm.

On the F8 combat screen to the far left there is a button "Same Loc" in an area titled multiple targets.  It was specifically designed to help with swarm combat.  Select a ship and set up the fire control for it.  Select a target for one of the fire control and then use this button.  It automatically targets the same fire control on all other ships of the same class on a different target that is at the same location as the first target and is of the same class as the first target.  If a enemy is already designated as a target it won't be targeted again.  Essentially this means you only need to target 1 ship in each class that is engaged.  It helps quite a lot when fighting large groups like the swarm.  It helps if you assign enough firepower to the fire control to kill a target fairly quickly. 

Brian

[se5a]

how does this work for non reloading missile fighters though? it's either overkill or micro manage assignment of missiles to fire-control.

[Brian Neumann]

Assuming that each fighter only has 1 fire control you are going to end up with each fighter targeting 1 fac.  If there are more fighters than targets then the extra fighters will not have a target to start with.  After the missiles hit the targets the rest of the fighters will be able to target what is left.  This is assuming that the fighter missiles are doing enough damage to cripple or kill a target.  If they aren't getting that much then the multiple target setup is not going to be much help.  I have not used this is a while with missile fighters so there might be something that I am forgetting.  You might also be able to fire a salvo of missiles and then have the fighters that did not fire retarget and fire on the next round (assuming good training levels, otherwise it might be a little longer).  If you think that your fighters are carrying to many missiles for a single target you might want to restrict them to fewer than the full load of missiles and have them fire the rest on the next time around.  If your missiles have any self guiding capability this would work fairly well even if the original target was destroyed. 

Brian