Fighter-Freighters

[Borealis4x (OP)]

Now that fighter-sized freighters don't need cargo-transfer moduals, I think they have the potential to be much more useful for supplying colonies on moons or within the same system. Basically, anywhere the fighter-freighter can get to in a matter of minutes would benefit due to how cheap and quick to build they are.

However, their small engines and cargo-bay could make fuel-efficiency an issue. Small engines are already gas-guzzlers and a fighter-freighter will usually take multiple trips to deliver things. Plus they would hog officers.

What do you think? Would fighter-freighters be useful?

[Lord Solar]

Given that the smallest size of cargo hold is 500 tons, I can't really see viable Fighter-Freighters existing. What I have seen is someone building a fighter colony ship for early game. There are 250 ton and 50 ton cyro bays so that sounds quite plausible. You could also make a fighter MSP supply ship for a FOB or something like that.

[nuclearslurpee]

The smallest cargo hold remains 500 tons, so it's not possible to build fighter freighters. You can still do emergency cryo as well as fuel and ordnance transports though, but these have pretty limited uses at such a small scale.

A big issue with fighter-size auxiliary ships in general is that since the minimum commercial engine size is 25 HS, fighter-size ships will always be subject to maintenance requirements including potentially breaking down, whereas a normal 40 kT early-game freighter for example is commercial and will not have this problem. This is in addition to the fuel inefficiency already mentioned.

The only real use I see for fighter-freighters is as emergency auxiliary parasites on a carrier. In that case you can use them to provide emergency lifepod pickup, refueling for a ship that runs out of gas, or ammo replenishment. Even then, the emphasis is on "emergency" here, since the ideal case is to have fleet logistics already in place to handle such things.

[xenoscepter]

 - They have one very big use: Mineral Haulers.

 - Fighters are extremely efficient in terms of Maintenance Life, and they aren't terribly fuel inefficient. They can be used to haul minerals to and from CMCs or other sources of mining. Yes, the Mass Driver does it better, but from a Role-Play standpoint this matters. They are also faster than Mass Drivers, especially late game, and such might outdo it from time to time.

 - Likewise with Commercial Hangars they could be used to set up Orbital Miners. The Orbital Miner goes to a location and the fighters go to unload it at a centralized drop-off point for collection by bigger freighters. These bigger haulers could mount a Jump Drive for moving said Orbital Miners, or a mothership could be used for the purpose instead.

 - Alternatively, in a Conventional Start they could be used alongside Fighter-Sized Colony Ships and Fighter-Sized Troop Transports to move Colonists, Construction Vehicles and the minerals to build Infrastructure around... thus providing colonization.

 - In the same vein, they could be used to colonize new systems from a central colony, since the maintenance and fueling facilities needed would be minimal, and Fighter Factories and Ground Forces Construction Facilities would be the only real requirement to construct them and their constituent parts.

[vorpal+5]

The issue somehow is that there is no (civilian) shuttle class, so we want to use fighters for what a shuttle would do.

I have modded the tiny cargohold to only weight and hold 250 tons and I have a fighter-freighter using it. Except it still don't work, as you need apparently a shuttle bay to unload cargo, fighter hull or not.
I also have a modded fighter-tanker with a reduced weight refueling module, it works.

[Droll]

The issue somehow is that there is no (civilian) shuttle class, so we want to use fighters for what a shuttle would do.

I have modded the tiny cargohold to only weight and hold 250 tons and I have a fighter-freighter using it. Except it still don't work, as you need apparently a shuttle bay to unload cargo, fighter hull or not.
I also have a modded fighter-tanker with a reduced weight refueling module, it works.

Perhaps you can mod in a baby shuttle bay as a stop gap.