Fighters of the Stardust Empire

[Jorgen_CAB]

As far as I know there has been no changes to hangars in PDC. They are mainly useful for storing fighters not as operational bases, you need space stations or tenders for that.

Fighters are otherwise very strong in the delivery of missiles. The main drawback of FAC is their size, they are simply easier to detect, both with passive and active sensors. This is the main strength of the fighters and why I use fighters as my main delivery system for offensive missiles.

In order to support a good offensive fighter force I build auxiliary carriers. The primary mission for these ships is to transport, train and support my fleet. You might see them as the equivalent of escort carriers in WWII.
They have minimal weaponry, missile magazines and sensors, their main function is to carry fighters, recon and other utility crafts around. Mine are usually between 8000-12000t with commercial engines and the same speed as most other support ships.

I however never use fighters to patrol and defend planets or systems. I rather build corvette sized ships for that 2000-3000t. With patrol ship with sensors at 750-1000t and/or recon crafts at 250t that is launched from corvettes.
Using fighters I need fighter stations, I find that corvettes are cheaper to use than fighters for what they do. Corvettes can also be upgraded for a reasonable price while fighters must be rebuilt if you want to change anything.

In any way... maintaining fighters is expensive. But if done properly can pay back in a big way with cutting down your losses in major conflicts since you can target enemy battle groups way beyond their effective sensor range.

[vonduus]

I agree again, note that in my book only beam fighters are classified as fighters . If there is missiles involved it is quite another ball game.

Basically my problem is that I have figured out a useful doctrine for missile warfare, but I haven't yet found a good way to use beam weapons offensively. Not to my satisfaction, that is. But I have also seen what can happen to an all-missile fleet that runs out of missiles. In this situation beam fighters can be handy. But so can FACs. So my current fleet is a missile-based fleet with a strong back-up of beam FACs, and no fighters.

Here my interest in fighters is not so much how they perform in serious battle as it is the way they can be utilized as very cheap tour of duty platforms for otherwise unemployed officers. I am always short of senior officers for my big ships, and the only way I know of to get more is to have a lot of officers employed.

And because I don't trust beam fighters as weapons (they always get shot down), they will probably never see battle anyway, and consequently I could let their design be based, not on sound military principle, but on a cost-hype factor calculation. What will impress the public that is cheap? The only military specification that has to be met, is that it must have a motor strong enough to allow for tactical training missions.