RE: Discussing CAS Style Anti-PDC Fighters and their possible merits...

[xenoscepter (OP)]

As the name implies; this is a post to discuss fighter craft, i.e. 500-tons or less, armed with Missiles or Mesons in the Anti-PDC combat role and how useful / useless they could be.

I have constructed one design for a Troop Transport using this type of fighter; it's in the Ship Design forum.

[Garfunkel]

Fighters are useless against missile armed PDCs unless you know their range and can launch outside of it. If your fighters are deep inside their range umbrella when the first missile blows up a fighter, you've basically lost the entire strike wing. So big ships are generally better off for taking out missile armed PDCs as they can weather the barrage until they launch their own missiles - or they can launch missiles from such a distance that the PDCs never get to fire at them.

Against beam PDCs everything works equally well that is outside the beam range. Since PDC fire controls get extra range, fighters are again at a disadvantage because it is more likely that the PDC fires & hits first, rather than the fighter. But of course it's relatively easy to mass a hundred fighters against four PDCs and ensure fast victory that way.

[Iranon]

What is your reason for offloading capability into a fighter instead of fitting the mothership with it?

Some I can think of:
- parasite is much slower than the mothership (engineless?) and needs to be carried where it's useful
- parasite is fast at the expense for fuel efficiency, and needs a mothership for adequate strategic range
- parasite can rely on its small sensor footprint to fulfil some missions undetected but needs support in others
- parasite carries very pricey equipment that is protected from breakdowns when not in use (or can be used from a hangar)
- parasite carries equipment that naturally lends itself to parasites, e.g. box launchers or fighter-only fire controls
- parasite has very different mission life (days for high-performance craft, years for some early warning assets or "reusable minefield" missile pods)

If there isn't a specific reason, you essentially pay extra for nothing. I suppose there's exposing a less valuable ship to harm, but that doesn't strike me as enough.